I

whole business shall be prepared for him, and that we have shewed him our duty and love, and settled his customs, in such a bountiful way, as he may reap his part of the fruit of trade; I am confident, say, that he will vouchsafe you all favour, fit to be conferred upon good subjects; and not only to protect you abroad, by his forces and authority, and by treaties with his neighbours, but by increasing the privileges of merchants at home, and confirming all their charters; the breach whereof hath been a great discouragement unto them; and, without which duly observed, they cannot regulate their trade.

There are some particulars, in the Spanish trade, perhaps worthy of animadversion, as underselling a good commodity to make money, or barter for tobacco, to the imbasement of our own staple for smoke, which, in a due place, ought to be taken into regulation.

Another consideration, for a ground of trade, ought to be the nature of it, with whom, and for what we trade, and which trade is most principally to be nourished; which, out of doubt, are the Northern trades, which are the root of all others, because the materials, brought from those parts, as from Sweden, Muscovy, Norway, Prussia, and Livonia, are fundamental, and of absolute necessity; for, from these trades, get we the materials of shipping, as pitch, tar, cordage, masts, and such like, which inables us to make all the southern trades, themselves, of less use, being only wine, fruit, oranges, and curiosities for sauces, or effeminacy; but, by these, we sail to the East-Indies, and may erect a company of the West-Indies, for the golden fleece which shall be prepared for you, whensoever you are ready for so great a consultation.

The right way to nourish these northern trades, is, by his Majesty's favour, to press the King of Denmark to justice, not to insist on his intolerable taxes, newly imposed upon trade, in the passage of the Sound; in example whereof, the elector of Brandenburgh, joined with the King of Poland, hath likewise more than trebled the ancient and capitulated duties; which, if that they shall continue, I pronounce all the commerce of the Baltick sea so overburthened, that the eastland company cannot subsist, nor, without them, and the Muscovy company, the navigation; but that the materials for shipping will be doubled, which will eat out all trades. I have given you but essays, and struck little sparks of fire before you; my intention is but to provoke the wit and abilities of others; I have drawn you a map, wherein you cannot see things clearly and distinctly; only I introduce matter before you, and now I have done, when I have shewed you the way how to enlarge and bring every particular thing into debate.

To which end, my motion and desire is this, that we may send to every several company of merchants, trading in companies, and under government and privileges; and to ask of them, what are their grievances in their general trade (not to take in private complaints:) what are the causes of decay, or abuses in their trades, and of the want of money, which is visible; and of the great losses, both to the kingdom, and to every particular, by the late high exchanges: And to desire every one of these companies, to set down their judgment, in writing to the committee, by a day appointed. And having, from them, all the general

state of the complaints, severally, we shall make some judgments of these relations one to another: this done, I desire to require all the same several companies, upon their own papers, to propose to us, in writing, the remedies applicable in their judgment: which materials having all together, and comparing one with another, we shall discover that truth which we seek; that is, whether trade and money decay or not? And how to remedy it.

But I have one request more, and so I will ease you of my loss of your time. That when, from all these merchants, we shall have before us so much matter, and without such variety, and, perhaps, not without private and particular ends, that then you will give me leave to represent to you the names of some general, and others disinterested and well experienced in many particulars, who may assist our judgments in all the premises, particularly in money and exchanges, and give us great light to prepare our result and resolution, to be, by the whole house of commons, represented to his Majesty; and, for expedition, that a sub-committee may be named, to direct this information from the merchants.

A

TRUE DESCRIPTION,

OR

RATHER A PARALLEL BETWEEN

CARDINAL WOLSEY, ARCHBISHOP OF YORK,

AND

WILLIAM LAUD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, Printed in the year 1641. Quarto, containing eight pages.

THE

HERE be two primates, or archbishops, throughout England and Wales, Canterbury and York, both Metropolitans, York of England, Canterbury of all England; for so their titles run. To the primate of Canterbury are subordinate thirteen bishops in England, and four in Wales; but the primate of York hath at this time but two suffragans in England, namely, the bishops of Carlisle and Durham ? though he had in King Lucius's days, who was the First Christian king of this our nation, all the prelacy of Scotland within his jurisdiction; Canterbury commanding all from this side the river Trent to the furthest limits of Wales, and York commanding all from beyond the

Trent to the utmost bounds of Scotland: and hitherto their prime archiepiscopal prerogatives may, not improperly, be paralleled.

In the time of Henry the First, were potent two famous prelates, Anselm of Canterbury, who durst contest against the king; and Girald, of York, who denied to give place, or any precedence at all to Anselm. Thomas Becket, who was first chancellor, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Henry the Second, bore himself so insolently against the king his sovereign, that it cost him his life, being slain in the church, as he was going to the altar. But, above all, the pride, tyranny, and oppression of the Bishop of Ely, in the reign of Richard the First, wants example; who was at once Chancellor of England and regent of the land, and held in his hand at once the two Archbishopricks of York and Canterbury; who never rode abroad without a thousand horse for his guard to attend him, whom we may well parallel with the now great Cardinal of France; and need he had of such a train to keep himself from being pulled to pieces by the oppressed prelates and people, equally extorting from the clergy and laity; yet he, in the end, disguising himself in the shape of an old woman, thinking to pass the sea at Dover, where he waited on the strand, a pinnace being hired for that purpose, he was discovered by a sailor, and brought back to abide a most severe sentence. Stephen Lancthon, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the time of King John, would not absolve the land, being for six years together indicted by the pope, till the king had paid unto him, and the rest of the bishops, eighteen thousand marks in gold. And thus I could continue the pride of the prelacy, and their great tyranny, through all the kings reigns; but I now fall upon the promised parallel betwixt Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York and Cardinal, and William Laud, doctor in divinity, and Archbishop of Canterbury.

They were both the sons of mean and mechanick men, Wolsey of a butcher, Laud of a clothworker; the one born in Ipswich, threescore miles, the other in Reading, thirty miles distant from the city of London; both of them very toward, forward, and pregnant grammarscholars, and of singular apprehensions, as suddenly rising to the first form in the school. From thence, being young, they were removed to the University of Oxford, Wolsey admitted into Maudlin college, Laud into St. John's; and, as they were of different times, so they were of different statures, yet either of them well shaped, according to their proportions: Wolsey was of a competent taliness, Laud of a less size, but might be called a pretty man, as the other a proper man; both of ingenious and acute aspects, as may appear by this man's face, the other's picture. In their particular colleges they were alike proficients, both as active of body as brain, serious at their private studies, and equally frequent in the schools; eloquent orators, either to write, speak, or dictate; dainty disputants; well versed in philosophy, both moral, physical, and metaphysical, as also in the mathematicks, and neither of them strangers to the muses, both taking their degrees according to their time; and, through the whole academy, Sir Wolsey was called the Boy-batchelor, and Sir Laud, the Little Batchelor.

The main study, that either of them fixed upon, was theology; for, though they were conversant in all the other arts and sciences, yet that they solely professed, and by that came their future preferment. Wolsey, being batchelor, was made schoolmaster of Maudlin school, in Oxford, but Laud came in time to be master of St. John's college, in Oxford, therein transcending the other, as also in his degrees of master of arts, batchelor of divinity, and doctor of divinity; when the other, being suddenly called from the rectorship of his school, to be resident upon a country benefice, took no more academical degrees, than the first of batchelor; and, taking a strange affront by one Sir Amius Paulet, a knight in the country, who set him in the stocks, he endured likewise divers other disasters; but that disgrace he made the knight pay dearly for, after he came to be invested in his dignity. Briefly, they came both to stand in the prince's eye. But, before I proceed any further, let me give the courteous reader this modest caveat, that he is to expect from me only a parallel of their acts and fortune, but no legend of their lives; it therefore briefly thus followeth.

Both these from academicks coming to turn courtiers; Wolsey, by his diligent waiting, came to insinuate himself into the breasts of the privy-counsellors. His first employment was in an ambassy to the emperor, which was done by such fortunate, and almost incredible expedition, that by that only he grew into first grace with King Henry the Seventh, father to King Henry the Eighth. Laud, by the mediation and means, wrought by friends, grew first into favour with King James, of sacred memory, father to our now Royal Sovereign King Charles. They were both at first the king's chaplains; Wolsey's first preferment was to be Dean of Lincoln, of which he was after bishop. Laud's first ecclesiastical dignity was to be Dean of St. David's, of which he was after bishop also. And both these prelatical courtiers came also to be privy-counsellors. Wolsey, in the beginning of Henry the Eighth's reign, was made bishop of Tournay, in France, soon after bishop of Lincoln, and before his full consecration, by the death of the incumbent, was ended, translated to the Archbishoprick of York, and all this within the compass of a year; Laud, though not so suddenly, yet very speedily, was from St. David's removed to London, and from London to Canterbury, and this in the beginning of the reign of King Charles. Thus, you see, they were both archbishops; and, as Laud was never cardinal, so Wolsey was never Canterbury.

But, in some things, the Cardinal much exceeded Canterbury, as in holding all these bishopricks at once, when the other was never possessed but of one at one time. The Cardinal also held the Bishoprick of Winchester, of Worcester, Bath and Wells, with a fourth, and two abbotships in Commendam: he had besides an hat sent him from Rome, and made himself cardinal, that, being before but York, he might overtop Canterbury. But our William, howsoever he might have the will, yet never attained to that power, and, howsoever he could not compass a hat from Rome, yet made the means to have a consecrated mitre sent from Rome; which was so narrowly watched, that it came not to his wearing. Moreover, the Cardinal extorted the chancellor

ship from Canterbury; but we find not that Canterbury ever either intrenched upon the jurisdiction, or took any thing away from the Archbishoprick of York.

Wolsey likewise far outwent him in his numerous train, and the nobleness thereof, being waited on not only by the prime gentry, but even of earls, and earls sons, who were listed in his family, and attended him at his table; as also in his hospitality, his open house being made free for all comers, with the rare and extraordinary state of his palace, in which there were daily up-rising and down-lying a thousand persons, who were his domestick servants. Moreover, in his many entertainments of the kings with masks, and mighty sumptuous banquets, his sumptuous buildings, the prince-like state he carried in his foreign ambassages, into France, to the emperor, &c. in which he spent more coin in the service of his king, for the honour of his country, and to uphold the credit of his cardinal's cap, than would, for the time, have paid an army royal. But I answer in behalf of our Canterbury, that he had never that means or employment, by which he might make so vain-glorious a shew of his pontificality, or archiepiscopal dignity: for unbounded minds may be restrained within narrow limits, and, therefore, the parallel may something hold in this too.

They were also in their judicial courts equally tyrannous; the one in the chancery, the other in the high commission; both of them at the council-board, and in the star-chamber, alike draconically supercilious. Blood drawn from Dr. Bonner's head, by the fall of his cross, presaged the Cardinal's downfall Blood drawn from the ears of Burton, Prynne, and Bastwick, was a prediction of Canterbury's ruin; the first accidental, the last premeditate and of purpose. The Cardinal would have expelled all the Lutherans and Protestants out of the realm, this our Canterbury would have exiled both our Dutch and French church out of the kingdom. The Cardinal took main delight in his fool Patch, and Canterbury took much delight in his party-coloured cats. The Cardinal used, for his agents, Bonner, and others; Canterbury for his ministers, Duck, Lamb, and others. They both favoured the see of Rome, and respected his holiness in it. The Cardinal did profess it publickly, the Archbishop did reverence it privately. The Cardinal's ambition was to be pope, the Archbishop strove to be patriarch; they both bid fairly for it, yet lost their aim; and far easier it is for men to descend, than to ascend.

The Cardinal, as I have said, was very ambitious; the Archbishop was likewise of the same mind, though better moulded, and of a more politick brain, having a close and more reserved judgment in all his observations, and more fluent in his delivery. The Cardinal was very curious in his attire, and ornament of his body, and took great delight in his train, and other his servants, for their rich apparel: the Archbishop's attire was neat and rich, but not so gaudy as the Cardinal's was; yet he took as much felicity in his gentlemen's rich apparel, especially those that waited on his person, as ever the Cardinal did, tho' other men paid for them; and if all men had their own, and every bird her feather, some of them would be as bare as those that profess themselves to be of the sect of the Adamites. To speak truth, the Arch