would be very many and daily) concerning mistakes, misunderstandings, and mis-entries of clerk registers.

Several judicatures would introduce several rules and courses of proceeding. Men would seldom buy or sell on credit, out of their own judicatures, when they did not know by what rules or courses of proceedings those transactions should be judged. They would be fearful of the influences which the inhabitants of the several jurisdictions would have on the judges and jurors in their several judicatures; which would break the commerce and trade which the several parts of this kingdom now have each with the other.

The union of our law, which is the unity for our common bene. fits, would be lost in our causes concerning our lands or goods, although the tryals of matters of fact by juries are twice yearly in the several counties, to the great ease and benefit of the subjects; yet the judgments in points of law, on those tryals, are, in the Courts of the King's-Bench, Common-Pleas, and Exchequer, before the judges of those courts, learned in our laws. This keeps the law intire, and to be the same throughout the whole king. dom.

It cannot be foreseen how far those new judicatures would intrench on the intireness and interest of the monarchy of this kingdom. Seven several judicatures, in seven several jurisdictions, might endanger endeavours for another heptarchy. The persons in the se veral jurisdictions would be so involved by their interests in the judgments given in their several judicatures, as to leave no means unattempted to maintain those judgments, and to be unquiet when proceedings should be against their persons or estates, elsewhere than in their own judicatures.

A LETTER TO MR. SERJANT,

A ROMISH PRIEST,

Concerning the Impossibility of the Publick Establishment of Popery here in England.

SIR,

May 19, 1672.

SINCE I was last with you I have thought of what you said, That 'ere long all our parish churches would be in your possession.' This hath occasioned me to write (I will not say my advice) but my opinion: That you and your clergy should not attempt that which I perceive you have already in your speculations. They who know the history of your services in the last wars, and since, must acknowledge that you have deserved well of your prince, in

that not only you asserted his cause in the field with the loss of a limb, but, which is more, you discovered to one of his great mi nisters of state the design of the Roman Catholicks, managed by Sir Kenhelm Digby, and father Holden, an English sorbonist, to put their part of this nation under the subjection and patronage of Oliver. It is in respect to you, and so many as are of your loyalty as well as religion, that I wish in the game they now play, by venturing high, they may not lose all. You are much mistaken, if from a toleration you conclude an assurance of publick establishment. It is one thing to gain a favourable look, another, that one should so fall in love, as to espouse your cause. Consider the difficulties, if not impossibilities, which in great number oppose your hopes. The chiefest, as you ought to apprehend, is the firm resolution of the king, to defend the Church of England, as it yet stands; a resolution in him so unmoveable, that neither an interest in mighty princes, obtainable by such an exchange, could invite, nor the arguments of military men could persuade him to renounce that church, from which he then * received no advantage, but the satisfaction of her communion, and suffering in her defence. You cannot but know withal, that, to believe him inclinable to you, is to commit treason in your hearts, since that, to say so, is declared treason by an act of parliament. But, if you should prove so sanguine and full of fancies, as to believe what was formerly ineffectual, might now prevail; I cannot commend your judgment, except you shew, that either your religion is better, or else that interest doth more strongly draw the king towards you now than heretofore. For the former part, religion, you say it ought not in the least to be altered; and we acknowledge, if it were reformed, it will be less worth to the clergy. For the other, concerning interest of state, if it dissuade under those circumstances, much more will it at this day. In those times he might, by this course, have been restored to three kingdoms. Now he would hereby give up half his jurisdiction, to wit, supremacy; and, after a while, a good part of his revenue, the appendant posses. sions of his supremacy. But this is not the worst; for, besides this, by setting up Popery, he sets up the Pope as his collegue and fellow sovereign in all his majesty's dominions. He gives him, at once, all the clergy, and implicitely as many as they frighten with purgatory and hell.— -To obey God's vicar rather than

man.

This hath been done, not in the case of the church alone, but in temporal quarrels betwixt him and other princes. But, if you still hold the conclusion against unanswerable objections, what means, pray, can you propose, whereby this may be accomplished? Exercise all your imaginative power, fancy any thing, though never so unlikely, to be granted or practised, so it be but in the uitmost degree of possibility. There are but two ways to do it, either by parliament, and you cannot expect that this parliament, which appeared so earnest against your toleration, should set you

In the time of his banishment and the grand rebellion.

up as the national church. And if you hope this parliament may quickly die of old age, and that another more favourable to the distressed may sit in their rooms, you will find yourselves mistaken; and that it is not your party shall be the men, but rather such, who, though they served your turn, never loved you when they were uppermost.

Let me farther advise you not to forfeit your discretion so far, as to expect as sudden a publick change of religion now by a parliament, as was in Queen Mary's days. Then the reformation had only been begun by King Edward his six years reign, and carelesly managed by the greatest persons under him, whose chiefest aims appear to be quite another thing. So that thereby, whilst they neglected to bring over the country gentlemen to protestantism, they confirmed them in popery. Thence was it, that the Romanists might much better promise themselves to be restored under that queen, than at these years when people still remember her; and for several generations have been reconciled to the reformation by writings in those controversies, and held in by penal laws, and estranged from Rome by 88.* and the 5th of November.t Now you cannot look for any good from a parliament, you may rightly dread their displeasure; especially if you should stretch your liberty of conscience to the perverting of other men's: For do what you can, and declaim never so much against a parliamentary religion; the commons will have a committee for religion, or else liberty and privilege are utterly lost.. So that you ought by a private exercise of your worship, and a peaceable demeanor, to provide for the coming of a parliament, as by repentance men do for death, because it cannot be avoided, but may be made less hurtful.-By this time, I suppose, you may have laid aside all hopes of being advanced by a parliament, and cast your thoughts towards a standing army. Certainly you will find this conceit as airy as any of the rest, for (besides that he, whose authority should raise it, intends you no more than a bare and limited toleration) there are very many and obvious hinderances of that project: The kingdom, being an island, takes away the pretences hereof, which are alledged by our powerful neighbours, and allowed by reason of their situation. So that, on the surmises of such a thing, the mutinous temper of this climate would appear as jealous of their liberties, as in some countries men are of their wives. And withal, where could you raise men for the service? Your own gentlemen of estates would not endure foreigners; and they must necessarily want home-born soldiers, there being not a sufficient number of your religion, and of none to give the law of arms to all your adversaries. And where will you get the main weapon, money? Though your religion should open their

The time of the Spanish invasion, with their invincible Armado, as they were pleased to term it; though God brought it to nothing; the particulars whereof are printed in this collection. See Vol. I. p. 47, 148.

The day when the Papists had contrived to destroy the three estates of the nation assembled in parliament, by blowing them up with gunpowder, and since called, The Gunpowder Plot, or Treason.'

stock and treasure as for a holy war, yet, in a little time, either their stock or their zeal would be spent, and then an army in its own country cannot so easily get bread by the sword, as labouring men can do by the spade. For proof of this, you may call to mind how that both rump and army were well nigh famished into a dissolution, when the country declared they would pay no more taxes. In such necessities, soldiers, like beasts of prey, will fall one upon another and devour their keepers too; and, if you he lieve them to be wholly mercenary, they are never so likely to be hired to a design contrary to their former commission, as when their masters cannot pay, nor their enemies can be plundered, yet will freely part with money upon their own terms. You see, sir, how I have followed your propagators through all, both probable and wild methods, which they can invent; all which appearing unprofitable and unlikely, they will not surely, like vain projectors, waste what they have, for that which they can never obtain.

Your Servant,

THE DUTCH REMONSTRANCE,

CONCERNING

The Proceedings and Practices of John de Witt, Pensionary; and Ruwaert Van Putten, his Brother; with

others of that Faction.

Drawn up by a Person of Eminency there, and printed at the Hague.

And Translated out of Dutch, August the 30th, 1672.

London, Printed by S. and B. G. and are to be sold by R. C. over-against the Globe in Little-Britain.

Quarto, containing Thirty-five Pages.

Turs remonstrance contains such facts of treachery in the guardians of a state, that of all others boasts the most of its freedom and liberty; and was attended with such fatal consequences, even a popular and tumultuous seizing and execution of those traitors, who had received French money to deceive and corrupt the deputies of the people; and to disable their Nation from making any resistance to their powerful enemy, the French king: That, methinks, the very remembrance thereof should not only deter every minister of that state from thenceforward from practices of the like nature, but call upon the whole states of the United Provinces to exert their liberty, by bringing such miscreants to condign punishment; and to be ever in readiness to repel their natural enemy the French, and to embrace every opportunity of approving their good fidelity, by duly executing those treaties, which the wisdom of their forefathers have obtained for the said purpose. And the seasonableness of reprinting this remon strance cannot be questioned, if we consider the following passages in a late memorial presented on the 17th of August, N. S. instant, by Mr. Trevor, his

Britannick majesty's minister plenipotentiary to their High mightinesses the Sates-general, at a time that the said republick is attacked in its barrier by the said enemy of France, who has, with little or no resistance, taken several of their strong-holds; has threatened and attempted to invade that power, which not only made them a free people, but has at all times protected them in their greatest distresses; in which that great statesman not only remonstrates the hazard of the present circumstances, to which the States are reduced, but, with a pen noways inferior to the eloquence of Cicero himself, displays the real advantage and necessity for their preservation, to act vigorously, conformable to their treaties, with their faithful allies against their common enemy: For, says he,

High and Mighty Lords,

IT is with great regret, that, in pursuance of the pressing commands of the king my master, I find myself obliged to put your High mightinesses in mind, that the term prescribed so positively and clearly, by the treaty of 1678, for employing your good offices with the power, who was the aggressor in the present war against his majesty, expired some time since, without their having in any manner procured the re-establishment of the publick tranquillity, and without his majesty's having had the full benefit of the said treaty.

His majesty is very far from intending to importune your High But what he owes to mightinesses with complaints or reproaches. himself and to the publick security, does not permit him to keep silence any longer upon the inexccution of a treaty, the most important, and the most essential of all those which unite his crown with your state. The king might naturally have promised himself a more expeditious determination, as well from the known good faith of your ligh mightinesses, which was doubly engaged by the war declared at the same time against the queen of Hungary, as from the events with which his majesty's requisition has been followed.

If good faith did not permit your High mightinesses to see your allies attacked, without breaking with the aggressor, your own dignity allowed you still less to see yourselves attacked in so sensible a part as your barrier, without resenting it, like sovereigns jealous of their honour, and attentive to the preservation of their rights.

Where is the state which, in such circumstances, would not with eagerness and of itself have sollicited an alliance so powerful, as that to which the king my master and the Queen of Hungary do not cease inviting your High mightinesses?

The king hath set forth, with so much strength, in his letter of the 13th of last April, which was delivered to your High mightinesses upon the 29th of the same month, the justice of his demand; your High mightinesses have yourselves, as well by your provisional answer, as by the succours which you have furnished to his majesty, acknowledged in so direct a manner the force of your engagements, that nothing remains for me to do, but to press the intire accomplishment of them.

Give me leave, High and mighty lords, to appeal to your own k k

VOL. VII.