Will. No doubt of it.

Tom. Then words have prevailed a great way, and will possibly be attempted farther; but, if those will not do, thou knowest what follows next; besides, it is apparent, they aimed now to make a push for a commonwealth; for they affronted the king, in the first place, as I have told you; then, in the next place, they voted the lords denial to try Fitz-Harris was a denial of justice, and hinderance of discovering of the popish plot, and twenty stories more they called it; which was as much as to say, they were not fit to sit in that house; for, if they were unjust in their doings, and countenanced the popish plot, what worse could have been said of them? And if this had taken, at the next vote they had been useless, and then welcome the rump again; they would only have wanted him that was headed at the Tower-hill twenty years ago, what did you call him?

Will. I believe thou meanest Sir Harry Vaint.

Tom. Ay, ay, that was he, if he had been alive to have joined with the purblind lord, and the colonel with cut fingers, and a few more, all had been right.

Sam. Pray thee, Tom, what would they have done with this Fitz. Harris, what is that fellow ?

Tom. I think nobody knows what he is‡; but I take him to be a crossbiters; but if he chance to be hanged, as he is like to be, it is doubtful he will be cross-bitten himself.

Sam. Why the parliament were bloody mad at him, and would needs have hanged him themselves.

Tom. O Sam, thou knowest not parliament-craft, the next way home sometimes is the farthest about. If they could have gotten the lords to have received the impeachment against him, they would have kept him alive, and played more tricks than thou canst imagine; they would have made him bowl off and on, as thou dost at nine pins, and made his evidence good and right in what they had a mind; and arrant lyes in what they liked not. And he had been as far from hanging by their means, as the lords in the Tower; only they would possibly have found law to have bailed him; which could not be found for the treasurer Danby, whom they know they have no power to hang, unless they do with him, as with the old Earl of Strafford||.

Will. But, for all their cunning, he may yet come to be hanged;

*This Fitz-Harris was employed by the court to write a seditious pamphlet, which, being privately printed, was to be sent by penny-post to the protestant lords, &c. which opposed the court; and then their houses were to be immediately searched, and, where these pamphlets could be found, they were to be made the foundation of a plot against the government. This scheme was communicated to one Everard, and by him discovered to Sir William Waller, who informed the king of it, who ordered Fitz-Harris to be taken into custody, but declared his resentment at Sir William, saying, That he had broken all his measures.' Therefore the house of commons resolved to examine and try the Irish Priest, Fitz-Harris, at their own bar, hoping to make a full discovery of so wicked a design, and to bring the contrivers thereof to condign punishment. But the court influenced the lords to reject the impeachment of Fitz-Harris by the commons, and to order him to be prosecuted at common law, where the court had power to prevent any material discoveries; and immediately to sacrifice the man, who had so imprudently divulged the secret intrusted to him.

tal. Vane.

He was an Irish papist who had free access to the Duchess of Portsmouth, and kept a correspondence with her favourite woman, Mrs. Wall, and with the French ambassador's confessor.

viz. A trapanner.

Make a law on purpose.

and if he be, stand clear, I believe there will be stories told, some will not be willing to hear.

Sam. Before my heart, you two are gotten very cunning at state affairs, I believe you did nothing but listen and hearken after news.

Tom. If the parliament had sat at our town a twelvemonth, I would not have wrought in my barge an hour; but, if ever a parliament deserved a by-name, this little short-arsed one deserved that I have given it, both for meddling with what they did so simply, and meddling with those people and places out of their power.

Sam. Well, but now this parliament is dissolved, all this is over, and now they have neither power to vote, nor act, nor nothing; and I hope we shall have quietness, and the court at Windsor.

Tom. It is true, they are unroosted from their publick sitting-places, both at Westminster and Oxford; but the men that shape out all the work are not idle; that will appear before long in the Common Hall of London, and from other places where they have power to set mischief on foot.

Tom. I remember Gaffer Tompson of Abington had a dozen men and boys that laboured his barge; and, to his cost, he found they were all plotted together to rob, steal, and to do him any mischief they could: nay, would almost tell him to his face, they would have what they list. He was a quiet honest man, and loved not trouble, and hoped, in vain, for amendment a long time; but at last he took a resolu tion and turned them all off at once, and got a new floor-full, that knew nothing of the roguery of the other crew; and then all things went well with him.

Will. He was in the right of that; for, if he had left any of the old ones in the barge, they would have corrupted all the rest.

Tom. Dost not think, there are some old rumpers has done a great hurt amongst the members?

Will. I am for a new floor full or none at all; there is no hopes of any good from Tompson's old crew.

Tom. Gaffer Tompson has a special care, not only to keep his new men from companying with the old ones at London and at Abington; but also, that they should not come and rob him by a strong hand.

Will. They durst hardly do that; for then it had come to hangum tuum. However, it was wisdom in him to have an eye to them, for they met often together to consult which way to be revenged of him; and however he knew the laws of the land would protect him, which must protect every body.

Sam. I pray God bless his majesty, and give him power to put his laws in execution; and then, I think, none but his enemies will have occasion to repine; and let the disbanded reformadoes do what they dare. Amen.

Because it sat but seven days.

THE

CHARACTER OF A DISBANDED COURTIER,

Ingenium Galbæ male habitat.

From a Folio Edition, printed at London, Anno Dom. 1681.

HE

E was born with an aspiring mind, by much too high flown, for his quality and his estate. His dexterity, in doing ill, made him thought capable of performing admirably well, if ever he came to be employed and entrusted. He was preferred, for ability, to high degrees of honour and office, admitted into the cabinet councils, made acquainted with all the secret wheels (and could tell how many cogs there were in each wheel) upon which the great engine of state was turned, and kept in motion. By the favour of his prince, he acquired sufficient riches to support the splendor of a new-raised family.

His glory was so eminently conspicuous, that there were but few persons below the crown seemed above him: And nothing was wanting to render his felicity as lasting as nature intended his life, but a heart that knew how to be grateful to a most munificent benefactor. He thought all the favours and honours he enjoyed were less than the reward of his merit: That thought puffed him with pride; such a sort of pride, as is commonly attended with an irrecoverable fall, (which was his fortune:) and, at his fall (like that of his predecessor) might very well have been proclaimed: Woe to you, the inhabitants of the earth, for the devil is come down among you.'

Open revenge against his sovereign, being too dangerous to attempt, he presently resolves upon secret. He exposes all the weaknesses and infirmities of the court (from which no court is free) and where he can find no real faults, he feigns imaginary ones, and passes them off for current. By this new and false optick, he represents every molehill of mistake, in the publick administration, for a mountain as tall as Teneriff, and as dangerous as the top of Ætna. Nay, he multiplies and magnifies the very miscarriages, which were the effect of his own evil counsel. He amuses the freest nation in the universe, with wild rumours, and extravagant apprehensions of slavery; under the government of a prince, who, in acts of favour, mercy, and clemency, has exceeded all his predecessors. He fills the heads of the people full with whimsical fears of fantastick devils (chimeras which only his malice had raised) on purpose to frighten them out of their loyalty and their wits, and prepare and ripen them for bedlam, or for rebellion. He

makes the pretences of liberty, the stirrup to get up, and † religion the steed he rides, in pursuit of his monstrous designs. With these pretences, he cheats the innocent; and promising to open their eyes, serves them, as the apostate angel did our parents in Paradise, only blows into them the dust of disobedience, and robs them of those jewels he pretends to bestow, viz. Liberty and religion; which are both so much talked of and both so little understood.

Being a gentleman of little or no religion himself, he seems, for all that, to espouse every division and subdivision of it; every faction and person, who are bold enough to stand stiff in opposition against the well settled government. What avails it, that he is, in his own nature, a frugal man? He keeps open house for entertainment of all state male-contents, without consideration either of qualities or qualifications. And what is he the better for being temperate himself, so long as he accompanies and carouses, and contracts intimacy and amity, with the lewdest debauchees, that he thinks will help to forward his private intrigues? He becomes all things to all men, in the very worst of senses; perverting the design of St. Paul, that he may, at least, delude some, to be as bad as himself.

Having lost his honour with his prince, and reputation with the best of men, he cringes, and creeps, and sneaks, to the lowest and basest of the people, to procure himself, among them, an empty, vain-glorious, and undeserved name, the patriot of his country.

And, lastly, hoping to be made the little head of the great rabble, he persuades them to believe, that they are all betrayed: encourages them to strike home against the enemies of king and kingdom (pointing at the faithfullest and most affectionate servants to both) well knowing that the mighty fabrick can never be shaken, till its main pillars and supporters be, by cunning and sly stratagem, either destroyed, or undermined.

By this, may appear the weakness of that modern piece of state policy, Oblige your enemies, your friends you are sure of already :' And the transcendent wisdom of Solomon's advice: 'Let thy own friend, and thy father's friend, never be forsaken.'

Liberty is not a freedom for every man to do what he pleases; an exemption from just laws : These laws were made for the punishment of transgressors; and are the true liberty of every honest man. The destroying of which laws is throwing down the fence, whereby virtuous and good men are secured and protected.

+ Religion does not consist in the stubborn adhering to this or that party, or in crying up one faction as infallible, and censuring all others as damnable: But in doing justice, and loving mercy, and walking humbly with God (says Micah the prophet). And is first pure, and then peaceable,' says St. James the apostle.

* Of King Charles the Second.

THE EMPEROR'S CONCESSIONS

TO HIS

PROTESTANT SUBJECTS OF HUNGARY,

AS THEY WERE SENT FROM VIENNA IN LATIN, AND ARE NOW TRANSLATED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL COPY.

London: Printed in 1681. Folio, containing two pages.

As our news-papers often mention the Queen of Hungary's ratification of the privi leges granted by her imperial ancestors to the protestants in Hungary, I presume. that the following specimens of them will be acceptable, and worthy to be preserved

in this collection.

The most gracious resolution of his sacred Imperial Majesty, our most benign Lord, in the matters of religion; obtained by the mediation of his Excellency the Palatine of Hungary, the eighth of this present month of October, 1681. Exhibited by the Vice-Palatine to the noble and magnificent lord, representing the royal person, and to all the illustrious states and orders of the realm, in the state-house of that kingdom; viz.

THA

I.

HAT all and singular the states and orders within that kingdom, whether they be peers, or gentlemen, or free cities and privileged towns, that immediately relate to the crown, shall remain in their faith and religion.

II. That all the Hungarian soldiers, that inhabit on the frontiers of the kingdom, shall enjoy the same freedom of religion.

III. That not only the aforesaid liberty in religion shall be granted to them, but also the free use and exercise thereof; saving to the several lords of the soil their rights and properties.

IV. That it shall not be lawful for either party, hereafter, to remove, or expel the ministers of the church for religion, in such places where the exercise of their religion is practised.

V. That there shall be no more seizures of churches.

VI. That those churches, which, in the time of the late troubles, from 1670, till now, have been seized, shall remain to the present possessors.

VII. That, in every county, those of the Augustan confession, and all such as are comprehended under that name, shall have liberty to build a church for the exercise of their religion, if there be none there already.

VIII. That, if they have any churches there already, they shall be left to them, together with the revenues thereunto belonging.

Protestant.