THE CHARACTER

OF AN

HONEST AND WORTHY PARLIAMENT-MAN.

A Folio Half-sheet, no date.

HOPE the reader will not be so unwise, as to expect, that I should here entertain him with a pompous enumeration of all those imaginary virtues, wherewith the romantick modellers of a Platonick, or Utopian commonwealth, adorn their paper senators; when the character, even of a real Cato, would be altogether as useless in our times, as it is rarely found to be practised; and, consequently, as little regarded now, as he himself was, by the corrupt age wherein he lived. Not, but that our nation has, of late, produced as great heroes, as any antiquity can boast of, yet it cannot be imagined, that they are to be found in every little town or borrough.

As for my honest and worthy parliament-man, all the qualifications, that I desire to find in him, are only such as it would be the greatest affront imaginable to any English gentleman, to think him destitute of; that is, that he should be a man of sense, integrity, and honour. Let him but follow their dictates, and then all the duties which we may reckon, or think of, to be incumbent on him, will be as easily performed by him, as they are demonstrable to be the obvious and natural consequents of such principles.

As for his religion, he is a sincere, as well as open professor of that which by our laws is now become essential to his office, I mean that of the Church of England. Nor is he of it, because it is established by law, or that he was bred in it; but, before he settled his opinion, he maturoly examined its first principles, and found them agreeable to the Divine Will, and right reason; he discovered the folly and errors of those who oppose any points of its doctrine. And, being thoroughly satisfied in the fundamentals, for its discipline, he intirely submits himself to the judg ment and authority of those, to whose conduct and discretion, the go vernment of the church has been in all ages committed,

But though he be a zealous churchman himself, yet he is so far from persecuting those who dissent from the established religion, purely for conscience-sake, that he is ready to pity their weakness, have coinpassion on their infirmities, and express the greatest tenderness imaginable for their persons, whenever that time shall come, when it will be his chance to meet with those, whose scruples arise rather from a real defect of their understandings, than some worldly interest or desire of filthy lucre, an obstinate, peevish, or self-conceited humour, or the vain-glorious spirit of contradiction.

As for his sentiments in state affairs, in which, next to his religion, his greatest desire is to be orthodox; before they fix, he always tries them with the touch-stone of reason; and, consequently, thinks it law. ful for him to be a Latitudinarian in judgment, in relation to civil matters: I mean, so far as not to expect to find an infallible judge, amongst either Tories, Whigs, or Trimmers. He takes up opinions upon trust from no party, nor condemns any, because they are of it, who differ from him in other things. And, therefore, he could not but smile, to see, in our late times of dissension, so many, in all outward appearance, honest and thinking men, continually jog on, like a gang of pack-horses, after the leaders of their several parties; and though they wander after these blazing, but deceitful lights, into never so many crooked and bye paths, yet, with an implicit and blind faith, still believe themselves to be in the right way.

For his own part, his only aim is at the honour, safety, and interest of his country. On this mark, he keeps his eye constantly fixed; nor can the dreadful frowns of an enraged prince, or the horrid clamours of a possessed multitude, ever be able to remove him from his point. He finds that his beloved virtue brings such solid, though invisible rewards along with her, that he is equally insensible to the promising smiles of fawning great ones that would tempt, and the terrible menaces of the fiercest demagogues, that would force him to forsake her. He can securely, without any fear of infection, deride the folly, and pity the madness of those who forfeit their honesty, to found their happiness upon the unstable basis of court favours, or popular applause.

He truly enjoys all that freedom in his actions, which he thinks his duty to procure for, and defend his countrymen in. He is wholly a stranger to the servile ambition of gaining the favourable opinion of others; nor can he tell what it is to fear the censures of any. He is directed, influenced, or byassed by none; and, whilst he is engaged in his country's service, he thinks the most glorious epithets, the world can fix upon him, are those of a rigid, inflexible, ill-natured, honest

man.

When he discovers that any have designs contrary to the publick good, let their authority and power be never so great, he opposes their opinions, with all the courage and zeal his generous principles can furnish him with, without any respect to their persons. But when the time comes, wherein the right side shall turn uppermost, as after all revolutions it ever will at last, he is then so far from trampling upon his fallen adversaries, that he becomes, I mean, as a private man, most tender of their persons, without any respect to their opinions.

He is altogether unacquainted with that base and degenerate passion, called hatred. Yet, there is one sort of men, whom he thinks worthy of the utmost degree of his contempt and scorn; I mean, those false and treacherous friends who have formerly gone along with, nay, much before him, in the same cause; those pretended zealots for their country and religion, who, for their own paultry interest, or some by-ends, made it their business to set us together by the ears, with their noisy clamours against popery and slavery; but, when the danger was become real, and just hanging over our heads, when our church and state were

designed for immediate ruin, with the same mercenary breath, servilely offered themselves to be employed as tools, in the destruction of them both. These, he conceives, ought to have a mark put upon them, as the worst of traytors; he takes them to be the vilest of men, or rather (to use the expression of one, who, perhaps, may think himself concerned here) to carry nothing of men, that is, Englishmen, but the shape.'

But I now find myself necessitated, to take my hand from off the tablet, lest, instead of compleating the portraicture of an honest parliament-man, I should insensibly touch upon them, who deserve another character. My intention then being, like my honest patriot's, willing to offend no man, I shall take my leave of him at present, with this remark only, That a nation, where such as he preside at the helm, will, without doubt, be altogether as happy, as if it were steered by Plato's philosophising governors, or governing philosophers.

A PRIVATE LETTER

SENT FROM ONE QUAKER TO ANOTHER.

The following letter (which was really sent from a country Quaker, to his friend in London) I here publish, not with design to reflect on the Quakers, but that the reader may see I am so impartial, that I will insert every thing wrote either by Churchman, Presbyterian, or Quaker, &c. that I think deserves it.

Friend John,

Desire thee to be so kind as to go to one of those sinful men in the flesh, called an attorney, and let him take out an instrument with a seal fixed thereunto, by means whereof we may seize the outward 'tabernacle of George Green, and bring him before the lumb-skin men ' at Westminster, and teach him to do, as he would be done by. And so I rest thy friend in the light.

R. G.

A VIEW

OF

THE REIGN OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST:

Wherein the true Causes of the Civil War are impartially delineated, by Strokes borrowed from Lord Clarendon, Sir Philip Warwick, H. L'Estrange, and other most authentick and approved Historians.

London, printed in Quarto, containing twenty-eight pages.

is a melancholy reflection, that the best things, through the per and that the liberty we enjoy in England, under the best of queens, and the best-constituted government, should, by some licentious and servile writers, be abused to the defaming honest patriots, and branding publick-spirited nations; which naturally tends to the bringing in slavery: for nothing can more effectually destroy our happy constitution, than the heats and animosities industriously raised and fomented amongst us by a party of designing men, who, under pretence of vindicating the memory of the royal martyr, asperse and calumniate those who endeavour to compose our differences.

A sad instance of this we find in the usage the Reverend Dr. Kennet, Doctor in Divinity, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and Minister of St. Botolph's without Aldgate, has lately met with, upon account of an excellent sermon by him preached before his parishioners, on the thirtyfirst of January last, and since made publick in print, to clear the misapprehension of some few who heard it, and to silence the confident, though false, report of a far greater number who did not hear it.

The publication of this sermon has, in a great measure, had a contrary effect to what that reverend divine ought reasonably to have expected. For, though it has undeceived many honest people, yet, at the same time, it has given birth to several libels, in which his innocent expressions are maliciously made to signify what the author never had in his thoughts.

The first thing, excepted against by the doctor's unfair censurers, is the title, as well as the subject of his sermon, endeavouring to insinuate to the world, 'That civil war is an expression that palliates the crime, rather than any ways agreeable to the solemnities of the day.' How this can give offence to any, is hard to be imagined, since the word 'civil war' was ever used as synonymous with rebellion, even by the warmest sticklers for that unfortunate prince; as Dr. Kennet himself does, in several places in this very sermon.

However, which of the two words, civil war, or rebellion, is the properest, history alone can determine; and therefore let us listen to historians.

Things were now going fast on (says Dr. Welwood *) towards lessening the confidence betwixt the King and parliament; and yet there were not wanting endeavours, on both sides, to accommodate matters by soft and healing methods, when the King's coming to the house of commons in person, to demand five of their members, whom he had ordered the day before to be impeached of high-treason, did put all into combustion, and gave occasion to the house to assert their privileges. This was the most unlucky step King Charles could have made at that juncture, and the indiscretion of some, that attended the King to the lobby of the house, was insisted upon, as an argument, that the King was resolved to use violence upon the parliament; which, it is to be presumed, was a thing far from his thoughts. Whoever they were, that advised the King to this rash attempt, are justly chargeable with all the blood that was afterwards spilt; for this sudden action was the first and visible ground of all our following miseries. For, immediately upon it, there was nothing but confusion and tumults, fears and jealousies every where, which spread themselves, to Whitehall in the rudest manner, so that, his Majesty thinking himself not safe there, he retired with his family to Hampton-court. The King leaving the parliament in this manner, there were scarce any hopes of a thorough reconciliation. But when, after a great many removes from place to place, his Majesty came to set up his standard at Nottingham, there ensued a fatal and bloody war; which, it is reasonable to believe, was never designed by either side. Each party blamed the other for beginning this war, and it is not easy to determine, which of them began it. Though the King made the first steps that seemed to tend that way, such as, raising a troop for a guard to his person, summoning the gentlemen and freeholders of several counties to attend him in his progress to the north, and ordering arms and ammunition to be bought in Holland for his use; yet the parliament did as much at the same time, for they likewise raised guards of their own, and took care that the magazine of Hull should not fall into the King's hands. So that the King and parliament prepared themselves insensibly for war, without considering, that these preparations must gradually and inevitably come to blows in the end. During the whole course of this unnatural war, it was hard to divine what would be the fate of England, whether an absolute, unlimited monarchy, a new huddled-up commonwealth, or a downright anarchy. If the King should prevail, the first was to be feared; if the parliament, the second was to be apprehended; and, if the army should set up for themselves, as afterwards they did, the last was inevitably to follow. All which some of the best men about the King wisely foresaw, and trembled at the event of every battle that was fought, whoever happened to be the victors. It was the dread of these misfortunes, that hindered the lords and commons, whom the King called to Oxford, to assume to themselves the name of the Parliament of England, and from declaring those

Welwood's Memoirs, p. 67, & seq.