from the sequel of this book, which ventures in the very first period to affront more than one nation with an untruth * SO remarkable; and presumes a more implicit faith in the people of England, than the pope ever commanded from the Romish laity; or else a natural sottishness fit to be abused and ridden: while in the judgment of wise men, by laying the foundation of his defence on the avouchment of that which is so manifestly untrue, he hath given a worse soil to his own cause, than when his whole forces were at any time overthrown. They, therefore, who think such great service done to the king's affairs in publishing this book, will find themselves in the end mistaken; if sense and right mind, or but any mediocrity of knowledge and remembrance, hath not quite forsaken men.

But to prove his inclination to parliaments, he affirms here," to have always thought the right way of them most safe for his crown, and best pleasing to his people." What he thought, we know not, but that he ever took the contrary way we saw; and from his own actions we felt long ago what he thought of parliaments or of pleasing his people: a surer evidence than what we hear now too late in words.

He alleges, that "the cause of forbearing to convene parliaments was the sparks which some men's distempers there studied to kindle." They were indeed not tempered to his temper; for it neither was the law, nor the rule, by which all other tempers were to be tried; but they were esteemed and chosen for the fittest men, in their several counties, to allay and quench those distempers, which his own inordinate doings had inflamed. And if that were his refusing to convene, till those men had been qualified to his temper, that is to say, will, we may easily conjecture what hope there was of parlia ments, had not fear and his insatiate poverty, in the midst of his excessive wealth, constrained him.

his

"He hoped by his freedom and their moderation to prevent misunderstandings." And wherefore not by their freedom and his moderation? But freedom he thought too high a word for them, and moderation too mean a word for himself: this was not the way to prevent misunderstandings. He still" feared

* Dr. Gauden, the real author of the Eikon Basilikè, was in search of a bishopric, not of truth, when he made this assertion; which, if it were believed, or judged to be a plausible falsehood, by those of his own party, would no doubt to his mind be success enough.-ED.

VOL. I.

Y

passion and prejudice in other men;" not in himself: “and doubted not by the weight of his" own "reason, to counterpoise any faction; it being so easy for him, and so frequent, to call his obstinacy reason, and other men's reason, faction. We in the meanwhile must believe that wisdom and all reason came to him by title with his crown; passion, prejudice, and faction came to others by being subjects.

"He was sorry to hear, with what popular heat elections were carried in many places." Sorry rather, that court-letters and intimations prevailed no more, to divert or to deter the people from their free election of those men whom they thought best affected to religion and their country's liberty, both at that time in danger to be lost. And such men they were, as by the kingdom were sent to advise him, not sent to be cavilled at, because elected, or to be entertained by him with an undervalue and misprision of their temper, judgment, or affection. In vain was a parliament thought fittest by the known laws of our nation, to advise and regulate unruly kings, if they, instead of hearkening to advice, should be permitted to turn it off, and refuse it by vilifying and traducing their advisers, or by accusing of a popular heat those that lawfully elected them.

"His own and his children's interest obliged him to seek, and to preserve the love and welfare of his subjects." Who doubts it? But the same interest, common to all kings, was never yet available to make them all seek that which was indeed best for themselves and their posterity. All men by their own and their children's interest are obliged to honesty and justice: but how little that consideration works in private men, how much less in kings, their deeds declare best.

"He intended to oblige both friends and enemies, and to exceed their desires, did they but pretend to any modest and sober sense;" mistaking the whole business of a parliament; which met not to receive from him obligations, but justice; nor he to expect from them their modesty, but their grave advice, uttered with freedom in the public cause. His talk of modesty in their desires of the common welfare, argues him not much to have understood what he had to grant, who misconceived so much the nature of what they had to desire. And for "sober sense," the expression was too mean, and recoils with as much dishonour upon himself, to be a king

where sober sense could possibly be so wanting in a parliament.

"The odium and offences, which some men's rigour, or remissness in church and state, had contracted upon his government, he resolved to have expiated with better laws and regulations." And yet the worst of misdemeanours committed by the worst of all his favourites in the height of their dominion, whether acts of rigour or remissness, he hath from time to time continued, owned, and taken upon himself by public declarations, as often as the clergy, or any other of his instruments, felt themselves overburdened with the people's hatred. And who knows not the superstitious rigour of his Sunday's chapel, and the licentious remissness of his Sunday's theatre;* accompanied with that reverend statute for dominical jigs and inaypoles, published in his own name, and derived from the example of his father, James? Which testifies all that rigour in superstition, all that remissness in religion, to have issued out originally from his own house, and from his own authority.

Much rather then may those general miscarriages in state, his proper sphere, be imputed to no other person chiefly than to himself. And which of all those oppressive acts or impositions did he ever disclaim or disavow, till the fatal awe of this parliament hung ominously over him? Yet here he smoothly seeks to wipe off all the envy of his evil government upon his substitutes and under officers; and promises, though much to late, what wonders he purposed to have done in the reforming of religion: a work wherein all his undertakings heretofore declared him to have had little or no judgment: neither could his breeding, or his course of life, acquaint him with a thing so spiritual. Which may well assure us what kind of reformation we could expect from him; either some politic form of an imposed religion, or else perpetual vexation and persecution to all those that complied not with such a form.

The like amendment he promises in state; not a step further than his reason and conscience told him was fit to

*It may be observed that our wise and pious ancestors thought Sunday the day best adapted for theatrical representations: and that, during a great part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the theatres were licensed to be open only on that day. (Origin of the English Stage, p. 222.) Stephen Gosson, in his School of Abuse, (12mo. 1579,) says of the players,-"These, because they are allowed to play every Sunday, make four or five Sundays, at least, every week."-Ed.

be desired;" wishing" he had kept within those bounds, and not suffered his own judgment to have been overborne in some things," of which things one was the Earl of Strafford's execution. And what signifies all this, but that still his resolution was the same, to set up an arbitrary government of his own, and that all Britain was to be tied and chained to the conscience, judgment, and reason of one man; as if those gifts had been only his peculiar and prerogative, entailed upon him with his fortune to be a king? Whenas doubtless no man so obstinate, or so much a tyrant, but professes to be guided by that which he calls his reason and his judgment, though never so corrupted; and pretends also his conscience. In the meanwhile, for any parliament or the whole nation to have either reason, judgment, or conscience, by this rule was altogether in vain, if it thwarted the king's will; which was easy for him to call by any other plausible name. He himself hath many times acknowledged to have no right over us but by law; and by the same law to govern us: but law in a free nation hath been ever public reason, the enacted reason of a parliament; which he denying to enact, denies to govern us by that which ought to be our law; interposing his own private reason, which to us is no law. And thus we find these fair and specious promises, made upon the experience of many hard sufferings, and his most mortified retirements, being thoroughly sifted, to contain nothing in them much different from his former practices, so cross, and so reverse to all his parliaments, and both the nations of this island. What fruits they could in likelihood have produced in his restorement, is obvious to any prudent foresight.*

* Warburton observes that "the king's best friends dreaded his ending the war by conquest, as knowing his despotic disposition." (Clarendon's History, vii. 563.) His revenge also was feared by others, and the apprehension of it seems to have frequently stood in the way of peace. Clarendon having loosely hinted that the persons of his opponents might be secured, in case of a reconciliation between the king and the parliament, Warburton pertinently asks,-" Did these grandees believe they might be secured, or does the historian assure us that they would? If the first, it is certain they did not confide in the king's security offered to them, as appears throughout their whole conduct." And again :-"The leaders in the house of commons wanted some extraordinary security against the king's vindictive temper on his return to power; and the last treaty had shown that he would not give it them, so they grew resolved that the sword should decide all." (Clarendon's History, vii. 576.)—Ed.

And this is the substance of his first section, till we come to the devout of it, modelled into the form of a private psalter. Which they who so much admire, either for the matter or the manner, may as well admire the archbishop's late breviary, and many other as good manuals and handmaids of devotion, the lip-work of every prelatical liturgist, clapped together and quilted out of Scripture phrase, with as much ease and as little need of Christiar. diligence or judgment, as belongs to the compiling of any ordinary and saleable piece of English divinity, that the shops value. But he who from such a kind of psalmistry, or any other verbal devotion, without the pledge and earnest of suitable deeds, can be persuaded of a zeal and true righteousness in the person, hath much yet to learn; and knows not that the deepest policy of a tyrant hath been ever to counterfeit religious. And Aristotle, in his Politics, hath mentioned that special craft among twelve other tyrannical sophisms. Neither want we examples: Andronicus Comnenus, the Byzantine emperor, though a most cruel tyrant, is reported by Nicetas to have been a constant reader of Saint Paul's Epistles; and by continual study had so incorporated the phrase and style of that transcendent apostle into all his familiar letters, that the imitation seemed to vie with the original. Yet this availed not to deceive the people of that empire, who, notwithstanding his saint's vizard, tore him to pieces for his tyranny.

*

* Of this tyrant Gibbon gives the following curious account :-" Andronicus, grandson of Alexius Comnenus, is one of the most conspicuous characters of the age; and his genuine adventures might form the subject of a very singular romance. To justify the choice of three ladies of royal birth, it is incumbent on me to observe, that their fortunate lover was cast in the best proportions of strength and beauty; and that the want of the softer graces was supplied by a manly countenance, a lofty stature, athletic muscles, and the air and deportment of a soldier. The preservation, in his old age, of health and vigour, was the reward of temperance and exercise. A piece of bread and a draught of water was often his sole and evening repast; and if he tasted of a wild boar, or a stag, which he had roasted with his own hands, it was the well-earned fruit of a laborious chase. Dexterous in arms, he was ignorant of fear. His persuasive eloquence could bend to every situation and character of life; his style though not his practice, was fashioned by the example of St. Paul; and, in every deed of mischief, he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute." (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. ix. p. 93.) The rest of his character, and his adventures, must be read in the history itself, where they are developed with the hand of a master.-ED.