Scott and others, lest we should call them a House of Lords, -not, alas, lest he the peppery Constitutional Debater, and others such, should lose their own heads, and entrust their Cause with all its Gospels to a new very curious Defender of the Faith! It is somewhat sad to see.

On the morning of Monday January 25th, the Writer of the Diary called Burton's, Nathaniel Bacon if that were he, finds, on entering the House, Sir Arthur Haselrig on his feet there, saying, "Give me my Oath!" Sir Arthur,' as we transiently saw, was summoned to the Peers House; but he has decided to sit here. It is an ominous symptom. After "Mr. Peters" has concluded his morning exercise,* the intemperate Sir Arthur again demands, "Give me my Oath!" "I dare not," answers Francis Bacon, the official person; Brother of the Diarist. But at length they do give it him; and he sits: Sir Arthur is henceforth here. And, on the whole, ought we not to call this pretended Peers House the "Other House" merely? Sir Arthur, peppery Scott, Luke Robinson and Company, are clearly of that mind.

'However, the Speaker has a Letter from his Highness, summoning us all to the Banqueting-House at Whitehall, this afternoon at three; both Houses shall meet him there. There accordingly does his Highness, do both Houses and all the Official world make appearance. Gloomy Rushworth, Bacon, and one "Smythe," with Notebooks in their hands, are there. His Highness, in the following large manful manner, looking before and after, looking abroad and at home, with true nobleness if we consider all things, speaks:

MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN OF THE TWO
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT,

(For so I must own you), in whom together with myself is vested the Legislative Power of these Nations! The impression of the weight of those affairs and interests for which we are met together is such

* Burton, ii. 347.

that I could not with a good conscience satisfy myself, if I did not remonstrate to you somewhat of my apprehensions of the State of the Affairs of these Nations; together with the proposal of such remedy as may occur, to the dangers now imminent upon us.

I conceive the Well-being, yea the Being of these Nations is now at stake. If God bless this Meeting, our tranquillity and peace may be lengthened out to us; if otherwise, I shall offer it to your judgments and considerations, by the time I have done, whether there be, as to men,' * 'so much as' a possibility of discharging that Trust which is incumbent upon us for the safety and preservation of these Nations! When I have told you what occurs to my thoughts, I shall leave it to such an operation on your hearts as it shall please God Almighty to work upon you. [His Highness, I think, looks earnest enough today. Oppressed with many things, and not in good health either. In those deep mournful eyes, which are always full of noble silent sorrow, of affection and pity and valour, what a depth today of thoughts that cannot be spoken! Sorrow enough, depth enough, and this deepest attainable depth, to rest upon what it shall please God Almighty" to do!]

I look upon this to be the great duty of my Place; as being set on a watch-tower to see what may be for the good of these Nations, and what may be for the preventing of evil; that so, by the advice of so wise and great a Council as this, which hath in it the life and spirit of these Nations, such "good" may be attained, and such "evil," whatever it is, may be obviated. [Truly!] We shall hardly set our shoulders to this

* humanly speaking.

work, unless it shall please God to work some conviction upon our hearts that there is need of our most serious and best counsels at such a time as this is! I have not prepared any such matter and rule of speech to deliver myself unto you, as perhaps might have been fitter for me to have done, and more serviceable for you in understanding me; but shall only speak plainly and honestly to you out of such conceptions as it hath pleased God to set upon me.

We have not been now four years and upwards in this Government, to be totally ignorant of what things may be of the greatest concernment to us. [No mortal thinks so, your Highness!] Your dangers, for that is the head of my speech, are either with respect to Affairs Abroad and their difficulties, or to Affairs at Home and their difficulties. You are come now, as I may say, into the end [Which may but prove the new beginning!] of as great difficulties and straits as, I think, ever Nation was engaged in. I had in my thoughts to have made this the method of my Speech: To have let you see the things which hazard your Being, and 'those which hazard' your Well-being. But when I came seriously to consider better of it, I thought, as your affairs stand, all things would resolve themselves into very Being! You are not a Nation, you will not be a Nation, if God strengthen you not to meet these evils that are upon us!

First, from Abroad: What are the Affairs, I beseech you, abroad? I thought the Profession of the Protestant Religion was a thing of "Well-being;" and truly, in a good sense, so it is, and it is no more: though it be a very high thing, it is but a thing of

"Well-being." [A Nation can still BE, even without Protestantism.] But take it with all the complications of it, with all the concomitants of it, with respect had to the Nations abroad, — I do believe, he that looks well about him, and considereth the estate of the Protestant Affairs all Christendom over; he must needs say and acknowledge that the grand Design now on foot, in comparison with which all other Designs are but low things, is, Whether the Christian world shall be all Popery? Or, whether God hath a love to, and we ought to have 'a love to, and' a brotherly fellow-feeling of, the interests of all the Protestant Christians in the world? [Yes, your Highness; the raging sea shut out by your labour and valour and death-peril, with what indifference do we now, safe at two-centuries distance, look back upon it, hardly audible so far off, ungrateful as we are!] He that strikes at but one species of a general to make it nothing, strikes at all.

*

Is it not so now, that the Protestant Cause and Interest abroad is struck-at; and is, in opinion and apprehension, quite under foot, trodden down? Judge with me a little, I beseech you, Whether it be so or 'no. And then, I will pray you, consider how far we are concerned in that danger, as to 'our very' Being!

We have known very well, the Protestant Cause is accounted the honest and religious Interest of this Nation. It was not trodden under foot all at once, but by degrees, that this Interest might be consumed as with a canker insensibly, as Jonah's gourd was, till it was quite withered. It is at another rate now! For certainly this, in the general, 'is the fact: The Papacy, and those that are upholders of it, they have openly

*Means "one limb of a body:" metaphysical metaphor.

and avowedly trodden God's people under foot, on this very motion and account, that they were Protestants. The money you parted-with in that noble Charity which was exercised in this Nation, and the just sense you had of those poor Piedmonts, was satisfaction enough to yourselves of this,* That if all the Protestants in Europe had had but that head, that head had been cut off, and so an end of the whole. But is this 'of Piedmont' all? No. Look how the House of Austria, on both sides of Christendom, 'both in Austria Proper and Spain,' are armed and prepared to destroy the whole Protestant Interest.

Is not, to begin there, the King of Hungary, who expecteth with his partisans to make himself Emperor of Germany, and in the judgment of all men 'with' not only a possibility but a certainty of the acquisition of it, is not he, since he hath mastered the Duke of Brandenburg, one of the Electors, 'as good as sure of the Emperorship?'** No doubt but he will have three of the Episcopal Electors 'on his side,' and the Duke of Bavaria. [There are but Eight Electors in all; Hanover not yet made.] Whom will he then have to contest with him abroad, for taking the Empire of Germany out of his hands? Is not he the son of a Father whose principles, interest and personal conscience guided him to exile all the Protestants out of his own patrimonial country, out of Bohemia, gọt with the sword; out of Moravia and Silesia? [Ferdinand

*proof enough that you believed.

** Emperor Ferdinand III., under whom the Peace of Westphalia was made, had died this year; his second son, Leopold, on the death of the first son, had been made King of Hungary in 1655; he was, shortly after this, elected Emperor, Leopold I., and reigned till 1705. "Brandenburg" was Frederick William; a distinguished Prince; father of the First King of Prussia; Frederick the Great's great-grandfather; properly the Founder of the Prussian Monarchy.