Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

lian, when he might as justly say, a Straffordian*, or a Cantibirian +: we embrace the first apparition of virtue or vice, and let the substance pass by untouched.

For, if we examine the life of Lewis the Eleventh of France, we shall find he acted more iH, than Machiavell writ, or, for aught we know, ever thought, yet he hath wisdom inscribed on his tomb; and, had he not kissed his crucifix ever after the doing a dishonest thing, pronouncing a sentence or two, that discovered the complexion of his heart, he might have past for as honest a man as all wise ancestors or any prince living in his time, who now lie quiet in their graves; a favour this man is denied by ignorant and ungrateful posterity.

He was secretary to the State of Florence, of which he hath written an excellent and impartial history; he had lived in the days of Pope Alexander the Sixth, been familiar with his son Cæsar, and what these princes were is sufficiently known.

No time was fuller of action, nor more shewed the instability of worldly honours, than the occurrences that happened in Italy at this time. Now, from a man wholly employed in court affairs, where it was thought madness to look beyond second causes, worse things might have been with better reason expected, than these so bitterly condemned; which are, indeed, but the history of wise impieties, long before imprinted in the hearts of ambitious pretenders, and by him made legible to the meanest understanding; yet he is more blamed for this fair expression, than they are that daily commit far greater impiety, than his, or any pen else, is able to express.

It was his profession to imitate the behaviour of princes, were it never so unseemly nay, religion cannot condemn the speculation of ill in ministers of state, without laying herself and professors open to all injury.

For, upon how great disadvantage should a good prince treat with a bad neighbour, if he were not only familiar with the paths of wickedness, but knew other ways to shun them, and how to countermine their treacherous practices?

Do any blame Albertus for writing obscenely? Nay, do not they rather call him the Great, because he hath so plainly set open the closet of nature? Indeed, if any man can pretend a just quarrel to Machiavell, they are kings; for, as it is the ordinary course of light women to find fault with the broad discourse of that they maintain their power by, so statesmen may best blame the publication of these maxims, that they may put them in practice with more profit and security.

The unjust steward is commended for his worldly wisdom, and, what doth he say more of Cæsar Borgia, than that he was a politick tyrant? An dif, without leave of the text, he propose him for an example, yet it is of ill: and who is more fit to be a pattern to a villain, than one of the same coat?

Most of the estates in Italy did then voluntarily, or were compelled to change their masters; neither could that school teach him any thing

• Alluding to the Earl of Stafford, beheaded in K. Charles I's reign. Archbishop Laud.

+ Alluding to N. B. These two were looked upen by the Author, and many others, his cotemporaries, to be evil counsellors to K. Charles I. and, as such, were Machiavells in England.

more perfectly than the way to greatness, nor he write a more acceptable treatise than aphorisms of state.

He saw the kingdom of Naples torn out of the house of Angieu by Ferdinand, and the people kept in tyranny both by the father and son; he saw the no less mad than disloyal ambition of Lodowick, Duke of Milan, who took the government upon him out of the hands of young Galeas, with as much treachery and cunning as Francis Sforca, father to Galeas, had done from the Dukes of Orleans; he beheld Charles' the Eighth, King of France, brought into Italy by the said Duke of Milan, to keep the people at gaze, whilst he poisoned his nephew, who was to expect the dukedom when he came of age; he saw the descent of Charles winked at by Pope Alexander the Sixth, in hope to raise a house for his son Cæsar out of the ruins of some of the princes, in which he was deceived; for the French King made himself master of all Italy, entered Rome twice, put the holy father to take sanctuary in the castle St. Angelo, and there to subscribe to such conditions as the victorious king was pleased to prescribe him; upon which his holiness came out: and, though Charles, in shew of reverence, did kiss his foot, yet he took his son Cæsar for hostage, to secure the performance of his promise, though he covered it with the name of ambassage, ever to reside with the king, in token of amity; and, after Cæsar had made an escape, the holy father, contrary to his oath, made a league against the French King.

He was an eye-witness of an amity contracted between the vicar of Christ and his known enemy the Turk; with whom he agreed for money to poison his + brother, who was fled into Christendom, for fear of Bajazet, then reigning, and was under the pope's protection at Rome; and might have been of excellent use to any prince that would have invaded the Turk, had not his holiness observed his promise to this monster, which he seldom kept with the best of men.

After all this, he saw the French King lose all Italy, with the same dexterity he had gained it; and Pope Alexander and his son both overthrown by one draught of poison, prepared by themselves for others; of which the father died presently, but the son, by reason of youth and antidote, had leisure to see, what he had formerly gotten, torn out of his hands, and he forced to flee to his father-in-law, the King of Navarre, in which service he was murthered.

To these ambitious practices of princes may be added the domesticall impiety of the pope, who was a corrival with his two sons in the love of his own daughter, the lady Lucretia, whom they all three enjoyed; which bred such a hatred between the brothers, that Cæsar, being jealous that the other had a greater share in her affection, killed him one night, and threw him into the Tiber: nay, it could not be discerned when the head of the church spake truth or falshood, but by the extraordinary execrations he used, when he meant to deceive.

Neither are these only the commodities of Italy, but the usual traffick of all the courts in the world; for the mark that God hath set upon Jeroboam, who, according to our dialect, may be stiled the Ma + The Grand Seignor.

• The Pope.

chiavell of the Jews, cannot scare most princes out of his path; and how many kings have failed to set up altars, both at Bethel and Dan, when they think their power may be weakened by the people going to Jerusalem? Saul, being a private man, went to the prophet to ask after his father's asses; but, being a king, went to the devil to know the suc cess of a battle.

[ocr errors]

Christ himself saith, Not many great, not many mighty are cal led' men in soft raiment may be found at court, but their consciences are commonly seared and hard.

This makes me think, the wise men, that came from far to see our Saviour, thought him an earthly prince, and not the King of Heaven, else they would never have sought him in the court of Herod, from whence nothing could come but cruelty and oppression.

The church of Rome, that did anciently deserve honour of all the world, after it came to be a court, grew fruitful only in impiety; and, though we do acknowledge her still to be a church, because she hath all the lineaments of religion in her, yet they are so blended in superstition, pomp, and cruelty, that it is no easy task to find the truth amongst them. For as a good fruit-tree leaves not to be the same as it was before, though covered and embraced with ivy and ill-weeds, the natural daughters of time, which neither spare things sacred nor prophane; so Rome may be called a church still, though covered with trash and idle ceremonies; in which the pope and the cardinals shroud themselves, so as, if knowledge, occasioned by the illumination of God, had not houted them out of some corners of the world, they had not only made good, by an unquestioned prescription, those errors in being, but brought in more; and, being themselves masters of all temporal estates, and were there nothing else against them, but greatnesss and impiety, it were enough to convince them of falshood and novelty.: pride is ac knowledged by all to be the root of ill; now where doth it prosper sa well, or grow so strong as in princes, and such as do attend on their affairs? The effects of which sin can be contained in no narrower compass, than the whole mass of impiety that is apt to commit; for it made Phocas to kill his master, Cæsar to overthrow the liberty of the bravest common-wealth that ever the world, did, or is likely to behold; it prompts the hands of children to pull unseasonably the pillows from under the heads of their dying fathers; it is this that fills heaven and hell with souls, the earth with blood; this pride made Charles the Fifth to arm himself against his own pope, that very year in which God had done him the honour to take one of the greatest monarchs in Christendom prisoner; it caused his son Philip to mingle the blood of his own child with the infinite quantity he spilt upon the face of Eu rope; yet his thirst could not be quenched, though he set a new world a-broach in America, which he let run till it was as void of people, as he was of pity.

Is a prince named in any chronicle, but in red letters? Nay, what are chronicles: registers of blood, and projects to procure it, yet none blames them that write them. I do not intend to make an apology for him, being so well acquainted with the miseries of those, that are so un

[ocr errors]

happy as to fall under the government of such principles; all I aim at is, to prove that, if he were justly arraigned, he could not be condemned by men in like place, who ever were his peers, if not worse, because advice without execution hurts only the giver.

Yet Machiavell saith, what prince had not rather be Titus than Nero But, if he will needs be a tyrant, he shews him the way that is least hurtful to his temporal estate, as if he should say, thou hast made thyself already an enemy to God and thy people, and hast nothing to hope for, beyond the honour of this world, therefore, to keep thee from the fury of men, be sure thou art perfectly wicked, a task not hitherto performed, it being yet beyond example, that any tyrant should perform all the mischief that was requisite for his safety, no more than the best kings did ever all the good; and of this he makes Cæsar Borgia, Alexander the Sixth's son, a pattern, who removed all the impediments that stood between him and his desires, and provided against all cross accidents but his own; being sick at the time of his father's death, which hindered him so, as he had no leisure to attend his business, which was to make one succeed in his father's place, that might, at least, have favoured his projects: but I verily believe, as I see by daily experience, that those which go on in the same track, though they have brought their purposes to as happy a conclusion, yet they shall not want impediments, or discontents, that shall out-talk the pleasure of their ambition; but, since it is oftentimes the will of God to give success to ill means wisely contrived, who can advise better than this Florentine? A member of the Roman church, and is, in that regard, to be less blamed, because he had as much religion as the pope then in being; with whom all impieties were as familiar as the air he breathed in.

Neither are these rules he speaks of omitted in the best kings, if they be wise; for which of them doth not dispatch his ungrateful actions by deputies; and those that are popular with his own hands? Do any observe their r promise so exactly, as not to fail when they see the profit greater than can be expected at another time? And all this he saith only to a prince. For, had he given those documents to a son, or any other that had filled any narrower room than a kingdom, he might, with juster reason, have undergone all censure; but, being to make a grammar for the understanding of tyrannical government, is he to be blamed for setting down the general rules of such princes? Now, if falshood and deceit be not their true dialect, let any judge that reads their stories: nay, cosenage is reduced into so necessary an art amongst them, that he, that knows not how to deceive, knows not how to live. That breach of faith, in private men, is damnable, and dishonourable, he cannot deny; but kings seem to have larger charteis, by reason of their universal commerce; and, as ambassadors may be excused, if they lye abroad for the good of their country, because they representtheir masters persons: with far greater reason may they do it, than they that employ them, provided they turn not the edge of these qualities towards their own people, to whom they are tied in a more natural and honest oblit gation.

For a common-wealth is like a natural body, and, when it is all to gether, shews a comely structure; but search into the intrails, from whence the true nourishment proceeds, and you shall find nothing but blood, filth and stench: the truth is, this man hath raked too far in this, which makes him smell as he doth in the nostrils of ignorant people; whereas the better experienced know, it is the wholesome savour of the court, especially where the prince is of the first head.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

With their common Place of Residence.

Being discovered by one Mrs. Susanna Snow, of Pirford near Chertsey, in the County of Surrey, who was vainly led away for a Time, through their base allurements, and at length fell mad, till by a great Miracle shewn from God, she was delivered.

O Israel, trust in the Lord, for in the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous Redemption, Psal. cxxx.

London printed, 1641. Quarto, containing six pages.

IT

was in the county of Surrey, at a village called Pirford, three miles from Chertsey, there dwelt a gentleman by name Snow, who had to his daughter a very beautiful and religious gentlewoman, who was not only a joy to the father, but also an exceeding joy to the mother; she had not long gladded the hearts of her parents, with a virtuous and dutiful behaviour, when the devil, arch enemy to mankind, sought to subvert and eradicate this well planted virtue, and thus it happened:

This gentlewoman, Mrs. Susanna Snow, for so was she called, holding prattle with one of her father's men, one day began to question with him about the new sects of religion which now were so much talked of, enquiring what news he heard of any of them.

He answered, that it was his chance to be at a little village called Bagshot, not six miles from thence, where he heard of a company that

« AnteriorContinuar »