tempts he purposeth upon our lives and liberties, hath been, and still is endeavouring to be admitted, and let further into the government, and, accordingly, hath accosted the king, by my Lord Durass, in that matter. This is the more surprising, forasmuch as one would think, that it is not possible he should be further let into the government, having Berwick, Hull, Langer-point, Sheerness, Portsmouth, and the maga zine of the Tower (Legg being now master of the ordnance) in the hands of his sworn vassals and creatures; and having also the superintendency of all civil affairs in him, unless, by taking the scepter actually into his hand, he should confine the king to a country house, and an annual pension. And his partisans about the town talk of no less, than the having the duke crowned, during the king's life, as Henry the Second, though upon far different reasons, was crowned, in conjunction with King Stephen. And I wish that what the brother of the King of Portugal hath, of late years, effected against his prince, did not awaken our jealousy to fear that the same may be attempted, by a dispensation from the infallible chair elsewhere. However, they have taken care, should they accomplish this design, that they may not be obliged to entertain our Catharine, as they, in Portugal, did the French madam, married to Alphonso; forasmuch as the best part of the portion with our princess, namely Tangier, is, through the courage and conduct of my Lord Inchequine, one of the duke's greatest confidents, as good as disposed of. But, should they proceed in this design against his majesty, it becomes all his majesty's good subjects to endeavour, as one man, the rescuing him from under their power, seeing the very designment of such a thing is a treason of so high a nature against the king, that we should be wanting in our allegiance, should we not apply ourselves in the use of all possible ways and means to punish and avenge, as well as prevent the execution of it. Now, my lord, these are but few of the many particulars, by which we are sufficiently enlightened concerning the Duke of York; and we may abundantly learn from these, how much we are indebted to his majesty for his grace, favour, and care, in appointing such a one after him to succeed over us. Do not all our fears hereupon immediately vanish and die; and hope, joy, and gladness revive in our hearts, on this prospect, with the king hath given us of so good an heir? But, poor prince, we at once compassionate and forgive him, knowing that this proceeds. not from his inclination, but that he hath been hurried and forced to it. Nor do we need any further assurance of the inward propensions of his majesty's heart, and the dislike his breast is filled with for what he hath done, but the endeavours which he used, under daily and manifold importunities to the contrary, to have avoided it, and the sadness which appears in his countenance, since over-awed to publish this declaration. And as for the Duke of York, let him not deceive him. self; for as he may perceive by this, that we fully understand him, and know the kindness he entertains for us; so we are prepared for him, and resolved to return unto him, and his, in the kind they intend to bring. For, having both divine and human laws on our side, we are resolved neither to be papists nor slaves, and, consequently, not to be

subjects to him, who hath avowed either utterly to extirpate us, or to reduce and compel us to be both the one and the other.

Lastly, for the issuing of all this controversy, concerning whose right it is to succeed next after his majesty, men, here about the town, accustomed to discourse, think that there need but two proposals, and those very rational ones, to be made. The first is, that, the parliament being admitted to sit, they may examine this affair, whereof they alone are competent judges. Whatsoever declarations may otherwise signify, yet it is a principle which can never be obliterated out of the minds of Englishmen, that they are neither binding laws, nor can alienate or extinguish the rights of any. Shall the son of a common person be allowed the liberty to justify his legitimacy, in case his father prove so forgetful, or so unnatural, as to disclaim him? And shall the Duke of Monmouth, merely by being the son of a king, forfeit this just and universal privilege? If his majesty was indeed married to that discountenanced gentleman's mother, he is, by our laws, the son of the kingdom, as well as the son of King Charles. And therefore it is necessary, as well as fit, that the people should, in all due and legal ways, understand whether they have any interest or not in him, before they be commanded to renounce him, or resign it. All therefore we desire is, that this matter may be impartially and fairly heard; and that before those, who alone have right to be judges of it; and, as no other course but this can satisfy the minds of people, so it cannot be expected that, upon the authority of a declaration, especially gotten as this was, they should sacrifice the share, which, for any thing yet appears, they have in him, as their apparent prince and next heir to the throne, And, unless this be obtained, the people will, undoubtedly, think their own rights invaded, whatsoever the said duke judgeth of his.

The second thing we would humbly beg, as well as propose, is, that, the parliament being called to sit, the Duke of York may be legally tried for his manifold treasons and conspiracies against the king and kingdom. For, if he be innocent, and that the right of succession be his, all men will quietly acquiesce under him; but, if he should prove guilty, as we no wise question but that he will, shall his treasons, when a subject, qualify him to be a king, and pave the way for his rising to the throne? According to all equity, as well as law, he ought first to justify himself from all traitorous attempts and acts against the king and people, before he be allowed to have his claim heard, concerning any title that, in time to come, he may have to rule over these nations. I shall subjoin no more at present, save that

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London, June the 10th, 1681.

I am,
My Lord,

Your most obedient Servant.

THE TEARS OF THE PRESS,

WITH REFLECTIONs on the present state of ENGLAND.

London, printed and are to be sold by Richard Janeway, in Queen's-head Alley, in Paternoster Row, 1681. Quarto, containing nine pages.

TH

HE Press might be employed against, or for itself, according to the good, or hurt, its labours have spread abroad in the world. Look on them on the one side, you will confess, the tears of the press were but the livery of its guilt; nor is the paper more stained, than authors, or readers. The invention of printing, whether as mischievous as that of guns, is doubtful. The ink hath poison in it, the historian, as well as naturalist, will confess; for, impannel a jury of inquest, whence learning, or religion, hath been poisoned, and scribendi cacoethes, dabbling in ink, will be found guilty. For,

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Learning hath surfeited us; for, amongst other excesses, that of learning may surfeit us, according to Tacitus; and this was true before printing, when the cure of the disease most are sick (nisi te scire hoc sciat alter) of publishing; which was harder, by reason of laborious transcription, vanity, or contradictions employing the pen even then. Of the former, let Didymus the grammarian lead the van; of whom Seneca saith, Quatuor millia librorum scripsit; miser, si tam multa supervacua legisset!' that he wrote four thousand books; miserable man, if he had read so many pamphlets! And, in those controversies about Homer's country; whether Anacreon offended more in inconti. nence, or intemperance, &c. most of them being stuffed with such, or grammatical questions: a disease continued, if not increased since printing, two much declining things for the declension of words: witness such laborious works in criticisms needless. (I asperse not the wise choice of useful queries in that study.) The result, it may be, of many pages is the alteration of a word or letter, its addition, or subtraction. O painful waste-paper! How empty is the press oftentimes, when fullest? Empty we must acknowledge that, which vanity filleth, as we may well think, when it issueth some poetick legend of some love-martyr, or some pious romance of more than saints ever did; or some fool, busied about government, in the neglect of his own affairs and sphere. What pamphlets these late times have swarmed with, the studious shopkeeper knoweth, who spendeth no small time at the bulk, in reading and censuring modern controversies, or news; and will be readier to tell you what the times lack, than to ask you, what you lack? We live in an age, wherein was never less quarter given to paper. Should Boccalini's parliament of Parnassus be called among us, I fear our shops would be filled with printed waste-paper, condemned to tobacco, fruit,

&c. Hardly any cap-paper would be in use, till that of legends, pamphlets, &c. were spent. How justly may we take up that complaint in Strad. Lib. i. Prælect. 1. wherein he brings in printers complaining against rhiming (poetick they would be called) pedlars into the press: quique noctu somniant, hac mane lucem videre illico gestiant. Already, what danger are we in of eating up Antichrist confuted in the bottom of a pye? or to light tobacco with the dark holdings-forth of new lights? To see the Antinomian honey-comb holding physick (at the second hand) in a stool-pan, sure, argueth a surfeit in the press, that thus swarmeth with vanity, or controversies; which is its worst fault, as being the mischief of a sadder and engaging consequence. Alas, what now is the press, but an office of contention, issuing rather challenges, than books? When pulpits grow hoarse with railing, then doth this take up the quarrel, that often admitteth of no arbitrator, setting the world on fire of contention, schism, and heresy; introducing strife, wars, and bloodshed. Alas, how miserably is truth torn by antilogies and little better than scolding, and suffereth more by this pen and ink war, than by pike and bloodshed! By how much more captivating of assent sophistry is," than success, among reasonable souls (that coming nearer reason, than success doth justice.) And we know, truth is often watered by mar. tyrs blood, receiving more strength from the red-lettered days in an almanack, than whole tomes of pro's and con's. And what truths, politicks, or news suffer by the press, is weekly experienced. It is nothing to kill a man this week, and, with ink, instead of aqua vitæ, fetch him alive the next; to drown two admirals in one week, and to buoy them up again next; so that many of those pamphlets may be better termed Weekly Bills of Truth's Mortality, than faithful intelligences of affairs.

Nor fareth it better with peace, than truth; the feathers and plume seconding the quarrel of the quill, from inveighings to invading, declarations to defiance, remonstrances to resistance, and that to blood.

The press rippeth up the faults and disgraces of a nation, and then the sword the bowels of it. What printing beginneth, by way of challenge, its contemporary invention, guns, answers in destruction

accents.

And the enormities of the press are caused partly by writers, and partly by readers.

Among writers, some write to eat; as beggars examine not the vir tues of benefactors, but such, as they hope or find able or willing, they ply, be they good or bad, wise men or fools; so do they beg of any theme that will sell; true or false, good or bad, in rhime or prose, and that, pitiful or passable, all is one: ink must earn ale, and, it may be, three-penny ordinaries; write they must, against things, or men (if the spirit of contradiction prove saleable) that they can neither master, nor conquer; sparing neither Bacons, Harveys, Digbys, Browns, &c. though nought else do they obtain, except such a credit, as he did, that set Diana's temple on fire to perpetuate his fame.

Another sort are discoverers of their affections, by taking up the cud gels on one side or other; and it is come to that now, that an author scarce

passeth, that writeth not controversies ecclesiastical, political, or philosophical; though far better it were for publick good, there were more (deserving the name of Johannes de Indagine) progressive pioneers in the mines of knowledge, than controverters of what is sound; it would lessen the number of conciliators, which cannot themselves now write, but as engagedly biassed to one side, or other: but these are desiderata, vereor, semper desideranda: things wanting, and to be desired, I fear, for ever.

A second cause of the enormities of the press are buyers. The chapman's vanity and weakness of choice maketh the mart of less wor thy books the bigger. Such is the fate of books, as of other ware, the coarser the ware, the more the seller getteth by it. Examine the truth, and it will too evidently appear, that, in these times, the bookseller bath frequently got most by those books, that the buyer hath got least by, being not only the luck of Rabelais's bookseller, that was a loser by his book of Seneca and Judgment, but abundantly repaired by that ingenious nothing, The Life of Garagantua and Pantagruel. What age ever brought forth more, or bought more printed wastepaper? To read which is the worst spending of time (next the making them) and the greater price given for them, and far above their worth.

But, the distemper of the press being so various and hazardous, what cures can we propose?

Why truly, for them in Fieri, no such correcting the press, as breaking it; but the chiefest help is prophylactical, a care preservatory. Also, an index expurgatorius of vanity and whimsies would save paper from being so stained, and would keep it from burning, it may be, by the common hangman; and so a nation less molested, idle persons better employed. But, not to make our eyes sore by looking on the hurt, let us turn them on the benefits of a well-employed press; and then we shall see it a mint of solid worth, the good it hath done, and yet may do, being inestimable. It is truth, armoury, the book of knowledge, and nursery of religion; a battering-ram to destroy and overthrow the mighty walls of heresy and error; and also communica tive of all wholesome learning and science, and never suffering a want of the sincere milk of the word, nor Piety's Practice to be out of print (and that not only in one book) constantly issuing out helps to doing, as well as knowing our duty. But the worth of the warehouse will be best known by the wares, which are books; which will herein appear, which also no prudent man will deny, that they are.

For company, good friends; in doubts, counsellors; in damps, comforters; time's prospective; the home-traveller's ship or horse; the busy man's best recreation, the opiate of idle weariness, the mind's best ordinary, nature's garden and seed-plot of immortality; time spent needlesly from them is consumed; but, with them, twice gained; time, captivated and snatched from a man by incursions of business, thefts, or visitants, or by one's own carelesness lost, is, by these, redeemed in life; they are the soul's viaticum, and, against death, a cordial.

VOL. VIII.