Wilkins, his institutions, philosophical chimeras and witty reply to Page 461, The reasons of the execution of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle. The king's grief for the former. Bishop Burnet's vindication of the duke of Hamilton. p. 462, The number of the Seats' forces that entered England, July 8, 1648. p. 465, Cromwell's victory, and the spirit of Dr. Grey's remarks. p. 479, Bishop Warburton's question answered. p. 481, A stricture on bishop Warburton. p. 485, A fact stated by the bishop, and Cromwell's reply to the London min- isters. p. 484, The ordinance of the parliament against heresy censur- ed. Dr. Disney's reflection on the punishment it appointed. p. 486, The opposition to it. p. 488, Who were allowed to attend the king at Hampton court. p. 489, The attachment of the parliament to pres- byterianism. p. 490, The sum granted to the king in lieu of the court of wards. His adherence to the delinquents. p. 501-2, A reference to Dr. Grey. p. 505-6, Mr. Neal's reasons for the unsuccessfulness of the treaty at Newport defended against Dr. Grey's remarks: and his reflection on the king's insincerity and dilatoriness supported. p 511, Mr. Neal's character of the officers of the army explained. p. 512, Ludlow's state of the question in dispute between the king and the par- liament. p. 514, The number of representatives proposed in a paper called "The Agreement of the People." The vote of the 5th of De- cember reversed. p. 515, The protest of the secluded members. p. 523, The king tries his fortune by the Sortes Virgilianæ. p 521. The king's insincerity in the treaty at Newport. Some remarkable circum- stances, which attended the execution of the king. p. 525, Bishop Warburton's remark on the anniversary sermons of 30th of January. p. 526, A concession of bishop Warburton concerning the king's breach- es of faith. p. 527, The great sale of the Eikon Basilike. and the ef- fects it produced. p. 529, Bishop Warburton's sentiments on its au- thenticity, p. 531, Bishop Warburton's description of the operations of the army. p. 533, Bishop Warburton's construction of the conduct of the presbyterians with respect to the death of the king. p. 535, Bishop Warburton's opinion, who had the greatest hand in it. THE SUPPLEMENT. Page 547, Republication of bishop Taylor's defence of the baptists. p. 553, A letter of Mr. Hanserd Knollys. p. 555, Some account of the church in Deadman's-plaee; and of its ministers, Mr. Hubbard and AUTHOR'S PREFACE. NO period of civil history has undergone a more critical examina tion than the last seven years of king Charles I, which was a scene of such confusion and inconsistent management between the king and parliament, that it is very difficult to discover the motives of action on either side; the king seems to have been directed by secret springs from the queen and her council of papists, who were for advancing the prerogative above the laws, and vesting his majesty with such an absolute sovereignty as might rival his brother of France, and enable him to establish the Roman-catholic religion in England, or some how or other blend it with the protestant. This gave rise to the unparalleled severities of the star-chamber and high-commission, which, after twelve years triumph over the laws and liberties of the subject, brought on a fierce and bloody war, and after the loss of above a hundred thousand lives, ended in the sacrifice of the king himself, and the subversion of the whole constitution. Though all men had a veneration for the person of the king, his MINISTERS had rendered themselves justly obnoxious, not only by setting up a new form of government at home, but by extending their jurisdiction to a neighboring kingdom, under the government of distinct laws, and inclined to a form of church discipline very different from the English: This raised such a storm in the North, as distressed his majesty's administration; exhausted his treasure; drained all his arbitrary springs of supply; and (after an intermission of twelve years) reduced him to the necessity of returning to the constitution, and calling a parliament; but when the public grievances came to be opened, there appeared such a collection of ill-humors, and so general a distrust between the king and his two houses, as threatened all the mischief and desolation that followed. Each party laid the blame on the other, and agreed in nothing but in throwing off the odium of the civil war from themselves. The affairs of the church had a very considerable influence on the welfare of the state: The episcopal character was grown into contempt, not from any defect of learning in the bishops, but from their close at tachment to the prerogative and their own insatiable thirst of power, which they strained to the utmost in their spiritual courts, by reviving old and obsolute customs, levying large fines on the people for contempt of their canons, and prosecuting good men and zealous protestants, for rites and ceremonies tending to superstition, and not warranted by the laws of the land. The king supported them to the utmost; but was obliged, after some time, to give way, first, to an act for abolishing the high commission, by a clause in which the power of the bishops, spiritual courts was in a manner destroyed; and at last to an act depriving them of their seats in parliament. If at this time any methods could have been thought of, to restore a mutual confidence between the king and his two houses, the remaining differences in the church might easily have been compromised; but the spirits of men were heated, and as the flames of the civil war grew fiercer, and spread wider, the wounds of the church were enlarged, till the distress of the parliament's affairs obliging them to call in the Scots, with their solemn league and covenant, they became incurable. When the king had lost his cause in the field, he put himself at the head of his divines, and drew his learned pen in defence of his prerogative, and the church of England; but his arguments were no more successful than his sword. I have brought the debates between the king and Mr. Henderson, and between the divines of both sides at the treaties of Uxbridge and Newport upon the head of episcopacy, into as narrow a compass as possible; my chief design being to trace the proceedings of the parliament and their assembly at Westminster, which (whether justifiable or not) ought to be placed in open view, though none of the historians of those times have ventured to do it. The Westminster assembly was the parliament's grand council in matters of religion, and made a very considerable figure both at home and abroad through the course of the civil war, till they disputed the power of the keys with their superiors, and split upon the rocks of divine right and covenant uniformity. The records of this venerable assembly were lost in the fire of London; but I have given a large and just account of their proceedings, from a manuscript of one of their members, and some other papers that have fallen into my hands, and have entered as far into their debates with the erastians, independants, and others, as was consistent with the life and spirit of the history. Whatever views the Scots might have from the beginning of the war, the parliament would certainly have agreed with the king upon the foot of a limited episcopacy, till the calling the assembly of divines, after which the solemn league and covenant became the standard of all their treaties, and was designed to introduce the presbyterian govern ment in its full extent, as the established religion of both kingdoms. This tied up the parliament's hands, from yielding in time to the king's most reasonable concessions at Newport, and rendered an accommodation impracticable; I have therefore transcribed the covenant at large, with the reasons for and against it. Whether such obligations upon the consciences of men are justifiable from the necessity of affairs, or binding in all events and revolutions of government, I shall not determine; but the imposing them upon others was certainly a very great hardship. The remarkable trial of archbishop Land, in which the antiquity and use of the several innovations complained of by the puritans, are stated and argued, has never been published entire to the world. The archbishop left in his diary a summary of his answer to the charge of the commons, and Mr. Prynne in his Canterbury's doom, has published the first part of his grace's trial, relating principally to points of religion; but all is imperfect and immethodical. I have therefore compared both accounts together, and supplied the defects of one with the other; the whole is brought into a narrow compass, and thrown into such a method, as will give the reader a clear and distinct view of the equity of the charge, and how far the archbishop deserved the usage he met with. I have drawn out abstracts of the several ordinances relating to the rise and progress of presbytery, and traced the proceedings of the committee for plundered and scandalous ministers, as far as was necessa ry to my general design, without descending too far into particulars, or attempting to justify the whole of their conduct; and though I am of opinion that the number of clergy who suffered purely on the account of religion, was not very considerable, it is certain that many able and learned divines, who were content to live quietly, and mind the duty of their places, had very hard measure from the violence of parties, and deserve the compassionate regards of posterity; some being discharged their livings for refusing the covenant, and others plundered of every thing the unruly soldiers could lay their hands upon, for not complying with the change of the times. In the latter end of the reign of Queen Ann, Dr. Walker of Exeter published an attempt to recover the number and sufferings of the clergy of the church of England; but with notorious partiality, and in language not fit for the lips of a clergyman, a scholar, or a christian; every page or paragraph, almost, labors with the cry of rebellion, treason. parricide, faction, stupid ignorance, hypocrisy. cant, and downright knavery and wickedness on one side; and loyalty, learning, primitive sanctity, and the glorious spirit of martyrdom, on the other. One must conclude from the doctor, that there was hardly a wise or honest patriot with the parliament, nor a weak or dishonest gentleman with the king. His preface is one of the most furious invectives against the seven most glorious years of Queen ANN that was ever published; it blackens the memory of the late King WILLIAM III. to whom he applies that passage of scripture, I gave them a king in my anger, and took him away in my wrath; it arraigns the great duke of MARLBOROUGH, the GLORY of the English nation, and both houses of parliament, as in a confederacy to destroy the church of England, and dethrone the queen. "Rebellion, says the doctor, was esteemed the 'most necessary requisite to qualify any one for being intrusted with 'the government, and disobedience the principal recommendation for 'her majesty's service.. Those were thought the most proper per'sons to guard the throne, who, on the first dislike, were every whit 'as ready to guard the scaffold; yea, her majesty was in effect told all 'this to her face, in the greatest assembly of the nation. And to say all that can be said of this matter, all the principles of 1641, and even those of 1643, have been plainly and openly revived." Thus has this obscure clergyman dared to affront the great AUTHOR, under Gon, of all our present blessings; and to stigmatize, the MARLBOROUGHS, the GODOLPHINS, the STANHOPES, the SUNDERLANDS, the COWPERS and others, the most renowned HEROES and STATESMEN of the age. It must be confessed, that the tumults and riotons assemblies of the Jower sort of people, are insufferable in a well-regulated government; and without all question, some of the leading members of the long parliament made an ill use of the populace, as tools to support their secret designs; but how easy were it to turn all this part of the doctor's artillery against himself and his friends; for Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, in their return from their several prisons, were not attended with such a numerous cavalcade, as waited upon the late Dr. Sacheverel, in his triumphant progress through the western counties of England and Wales; nor did they give themselves up to the same excess of licentiousness and rage. If the mob of 1641 insulted the bishops, and awed the parliament, so did the doctor's retinue in 1710; nay, their zeal outwent their predecessors, when they pulled down the meetinghouses of protestant dissenters, and burnt the materials in the open streets, in maintenance of the doctrines of passive obedience and nonresistance, which their pious confessor had been preaching up; "a bold insolent man, (says bishop Burnet) with a very small measure of religion, virtue, learning, or good sense :" but to such extremes do men's passions carry them, when they write to serve a cause! I have had occasion to make some use of Dr. Walker's confused heap of materials, but have endeavored carefully to avoid his spirit and language. 6 No man has declaimed so bitterly against the proceedings of parliament upon all occasions, as this clergyman; nor complained more loudly of the unspeakable damage the liberal arts and sciences sustained, by their purging the two universities; the new heads and fellows of Oxford are called, a colony of presbyterian and independent novices from Cambridge; a tribe of ignorant enthusiasts and schismatics ; an illiterate rabble swept from the plough-tail, from shops and grammar-schools, &c." The university of Cambridge is reported by the same author, "to be reduced to a mere muster by the knipper-dolings of the age, who broke the heart-strings of learning and learned men, who thrust out one of the eyes of the kingdom, and made eloquence dumb; philosophy, sottish; widowed the arts; drove away the muses from their ancient habitation, and plucked the reverend and orthodox professors out of their chairs.-They turned religion into rebellion, changed the apostolical chair into a desk for blasphemy.-They took the garland from off the head of learning, and placed it on the dull brows of ignorance.-And having unhived a numerous swarm of laboring bees, they placed in their room swarms of senseless drones.-"+ Such is the language of our historian, transcribed from Dr. Burwick ! 6 * Walker's Introduct. p. 139, 140. Ibid. p. 115. Querela Cant. |