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pipe, which was performed with all agility and chearfulness ima. ginable.

And from this heath the troops marched off before him, viz. Major-general Brown's, the Merchant-adventurers, Alderman Robinson's, the Lord Maynard's, the Earls of Norwich, Peterborough, Cleveland, Derby, Duke of Richmond's, and his ma jesty's own life-guard,

In this order proceeding towards London, there were placed in Deptford, on his right hand (as he passed through the town) above an hundred proper maids, clad all alike, in white garments, with scarfs about them; who, having prepared many flaskets covered with fine linnen, and adorned with rich scarfs and ribbands, which flaskets were full of flowers and sweet herbs, strowed the way be fore him as he rode.

From thence, passing on, he came into St. George's Fields in Southwark, where the lord mayor and aldermen of London, in their scarlet, with the recorder, and other city council, waited for him in a large tent, hung with tapestry; in which they had placed a chair of state, with a rich canopy over it, When he came thi ther, the lord mayor presented him with the city sword, and the recorder made a speech to him; which being done, he alighted, and went into the tent, where a noble banquet was prepared for him.

From this tent the proceeding was thus ordered, viz. First, the city-marshal to follow in the rear of his majesty's life-guard: next the sheriffs trumpets; then the sheriffs men in scarlet clokes, laced with silver on the capes, carrying javelins in their hands; then divers eminent citizens well mounted, all in black velvet coats, and chains of gold about their necks, and every one his footman, with suit, cassock, and ribbands of the colour of his company; all which were made choice of out of the several companies in this fa mous city, and so distinguished; and, at the head of each distinction, the ensigu* of that company.

After these followed the city councilf, by two and two, near the aldermen, then certain noblemen and noblemen's sons. Then the king's trumpets, then the heralds at arms.

After them, the Duke of Buckingham; then the Earl of Lindsey, lord high chamberlain of England, and the Lord General Monk; next to them Garter, principal King of Arms; the Lord Mayor on his right hand, bearing the city sword, and a Gentleman Usher on his left, and, on each side of them, the Serjeants at Arms with their maces.

Then the King's Majesty, with his equeries and footmen on each side of him, and, at a little distance on each hand, his royal brothers, the Dukes of York and Gloucester; and, after them, divers of the king's servants, who came with him from beyond sea; and, in the rear of all, those gallant troops, viz. the Duke of Buckingham, Earls of Oxford, Northampton, Winchelsea, Litch

Or arms of the Company painted or embroidered.

† Cominon Council.

field, and the Lord Mordaunt; also five regiments of horse belonging to the army.

In this magnificent fashiou his majesty entered the borough of Southwark, about half an hour past three of the clock in the afternoon; and, within an hour after, the city of London, at the Bridge; where he found the windows and streets exceedingly thronged with people to behold him; and the walls adorned with hangings and carpets of tapestry, and other costly stuff; and in many places sets of loud musick; all the conduits, as he passed, running claret wine; and the several companies in their liveries, with the ensigns belonging to them; as also the trained bands of the city standing along the streets as he passed, welcoming him with joyful acclamations.

And, within the rails where Charing-cross formerly was, a stand of six-hundred pikes, consisting of knights and gentlemen, as had been officers of the armies of his late majesty of blessed memory; the truly noble and valiant Sir John Stowell, Knight of the honourable Order of the Bath, a person famous for his eminent actions and sufferings, being in the head of them.

From which place, the citizens, in velvet coats and gold chains, being drawn up on each hand, and divers companies of foot soldiers; his majesty passed betwixt them, and entered White-hall at seven of the clock, the people making loud shouts, and the horse and foot several vollies of shot, at this his happy arrival. Where the house of lords and commons of parliament received him, and kissed his royal hand. At the same time likewise the Reverend Bishops of Ely, Salisbury, Rochester, and Chichester, in their episcopal habits, with divers of the long oppressed orthodox clergy, met in that royal chapel of king Henry the Seventh, at Westminster; there also sung Te Deum, &c. in praise and thanks to Almighty God, for this his unspeakable mercy, in the deliverance of his majesty from many dangers, and so happily restoring him to rule these kingdoms, according to his just and undoubted right.

• King Charles I.

1

THE

CENSURE OF THE ROTA

UPON MR. MILTON'S BOOK,

INTITLED,

The ready and easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth.

Die Lunæ 26, Martii, 1660.

Ordered by the Rota, that Mr. Harrington be desired to draw up a Narrative of this Day's Proceeding upon Mr. Milton's Book, called, "The ready and easy Way, &c." And to cause the same to be forthwith printed and published, and a Copy thereof to be sent to Mr. Milton.

TRUNDLE WHEELER, Clerk to the Rota.

Printed at London by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the Sign of the Windmill in Turn-again Lanc, 1660. Quarto, containing sixteen pages.

SIR,

IAM commanded, by this ingenious Convention of the Rota, to give you an account of some reflexions that they have lately made upon a treatise of yours, which you call, The ready and easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth; in which I must first bespeak your pardon, for being forced to say something, not only against my own sense, but the interest, which both you and I carry on; for it is enjoined me to acquaint you with all that was said, although I take as little pleasure to repeat it, as you will do to hear it. For whereas it is our usual custom to dispute every thing, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at one another with our heads, as rams fight, until we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the box; and seldom any thing, how slight soever, hath appeared, without some patron or other to defend it: I must confess, I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did against you, when any thing was put to the question, from the beginning of your book to the end; for it was no sooner read over, but a gentleman of your acquaintance said, he wished, for your own sake, as well as the cause you contend for, that you had given your book no name, like an anabaptist's child, until it had come to years of discretion, or else that you had got some friend to be gossip, that has a luckier hand at giving titles to books than you have. For it is observed, you have always been very unfortunate that way, as if it were fa

• This is the 26th number in the catalogue of pamphlets in the Harleian Library.

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tal to you, to prefix bulls and nonsense to the very fronts of your learned works, as when you call Salmasius, Claudius Anonymus, in the very title of that admired piece, which you writ to confute his wife and his maid. As also in that other learned labour of

yours, which you stile Tetrachordon, that is to say, a Fiddle with four Strings; but, as you render it a four-fold cord, with which you undertake (worse than Captain Ottor, and Cuthbert the Barber) not to bind, but, most ridiculously, to unty matrimony. But in this book, he said, you were more insufferable; for you do not only stile your declamation, The ready and easy Way, as if it were the best or only way, to the disparagement of this most ingenious assembly, who are confident, they have proposed others much more considerable; but do very indiscreetly profess, in the same place, to compare the excellencies of a commonwealth with the inconveniencies and dangers of kingship; this, he said, was foul play, and worse logick. For, as all conveniencies, in this world, carry their inconveniencies with them, to compare the best of one thing with the worst of another is a very unequal way of comparison. He had observed, that comparisons were commonly made on the wrong side, and so was this of yours, by your own confession. To this another added, He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed, but for the company of chandlers and tobacco-men, who are your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said, that he himself reprieved the whole defence of the people of England for a groat, that was sentenced to vile Mundungus, and had suffered inevitably, but for him, though it cost you much oil and labour; and the Rump three-hundred pounds a year, to whose service it was more properly intended; although, in the close, you pronounce them to be as very rascals as Salmasius, and all the christian world calls them, if ever they suffered any of their fellow-members to invade the government, as Oliver Cromwell and others have since done, and confess yourself fooled and mistaken, and all you have written to be false, howsoever you give yourself the second lye in writing for them again. After this, a grave gentleman of the long robe said, You had broken the heads of all the sages of the law, and plaid false in the very first word of your treatise. For the parliament of England, as you call the Rump, never consisted of a packed party of one house, that, by fraud and covin, had disseized the major part of their fellows, and forfeited their own right, by abetting the ejectment of the whole house of peers, and the greater part of their own, which was always understood to be the whole house, with whom they had but a joint right. That they had been several times justly dissol ved by the army, from whom they really derived their authority; and the general voices of the people, in whom they had declared the supreme power to reside; and their own confession, upon record in their journal-book. But this, he said, you stole from Patriot Whitlock, who began his declaration for a free state with the same

words; and he wondered you would filch and pilfer nonsense and fallacies, that have such plentiful store of your own growth. Yet this was as true as that which follows, that a great number of the faithfullest of the people assisted them in throwing off kingship; for they were a very slight number, in respect of the whole, and none of the faithfullest that forswore themselves, to maintain and defend that which they judged dangerous, and resolved to abolish : And, therefore, they turned regal bondage, as you word it, into a free commonwealth, no more justly and magnanimously, than other knights of the post do their feats, by plain down-right per jury. And the nation had little reason to trust such men with their liberty or property, that had no right to their own ears, but, among the rest of their cheats, had defrauded the very pillory of its due. This, being put to the ballot, was immediately carried on in the affirmative, without a dissenting pellet. When presently a gentle man, that hath been some years beyond-seas, said, he wondered you would say any thing so false and ridiculous, as that this com monwealth was the terror and admiration of France itself; for, if that were true, the cardinal and council were very imprudent to be come the chief promoters of it, and strive, by all means to uphold that, which they judged to be dangerous to themselves, and for the interest of a nation, which they hate and fear so much as they do! us; for, if this free state be so terrible to them, they have been very unwise, in assisting it to keep out the king all this while, especially if they saw the people of Paris and Bourdeaux disposed, as you say, to imitate us, which appears very strange; for, by their history, any man would judge, we had catched the disease of them. As for our actions abroad, which you brag of, he said, he never heard of any where he was, until Oliver Cromwell reduced us to an absolute monarchy, under the name of a free state; and then we beat the potent and flourishing republick of the United Provinces. But, for our actions at home, he had heard abroad, that they savoured much of Goth and Vandal barbarism, if pul ling down of churches, and demolishing the noblest monuments in the land, both publick and private, beside religion and all laws, human and divine, may amount to so much. And yet, he said, he granted what you affirm, that they were not unbecoming the rising of a glorious commonwealth, for such are usually founded in faction, sedition, rebellion, rapine, and murder. And how much soever you admire the Romans, ab infami gentem deducis Asylo, if you remember, they were, at first, but a refuge for thieves and murderers. In all Asia, África, and the New World, there is no such thing as a republick, nor ever was, but only that of Carthage, and some paltry Greek colonies upon the skirts of Asia Minor; and, for one commonwealth, there have been an hundred kingdoms in the world; which argues, they should be the more agreeable to mankind. He added, commonly republicks arise from unworthy causes, not fit to be mentioned in history; and that he had heard many persons of honour, in Flanders, affirm, that It was not the tyranny of Spain, nor the cruelty of Duke d'Alva,

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