his people, the commons were grown discontented with the present government, two adverse armies were lodged in our land, and all this, with a new whole army of evil consequents, brought on by the secret contrivements of our adversaries, and on all hands the way was so prepared, altars set up, and priests enough in readiness, that nothing was wanting, to ripen their harvest for the sickle, but a proclamation for setting up publick mass, in all our churches; which things, when I seriously considered, and now of late, looking again upon the regions, I discern what alteration God hath begun to work amongst us by the pious endeavours of our happy parliament, I cannot but take up that saying of the psalmist, Psalm cxxiv. 1, 2, 3. If the Lord had not been on our side,' may England now say: If the Lord had not been on our side, when men rose up against us, they had then swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us; then the water had drowned us, and the stream had gone over our soul;' if the plots of the pacific Arminians bad once set up the bridge of reconciliation, whereon the protestant and papist should have met, and the trapdoor had taken effect, then the swelling waves had gone over our souls indeed: 'But praised be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey unto their teeth; our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler, the snare is broken, and we are delivered;' so that we may truly say, as the psalmist there concludeth, Our help standeth in the name of the Lord, who made both heaven and earth. And now what remaineth for us to do but this? By daily and earnest prayer, to beg a blessing upon our gracious Sovereign, the King's Majesty, and upon the high and honourable court of parliament, that God will be graciously pleased to finish, by their happy consultations and pious endeavours, that good work of mercy, which he hath so graciously begun for this land and nation, to make a total and intire reformation in church and state, and particularly to root out this disloyal brood of Inigo Loyola from amongst us, preventing their plots, and turning the wisdom of their Aitophels into foolishness, that the gospel of Jesus Christ may have free passage amongst us, until his return to judge the quick and dead. This is, and shall be the daily prayer of,

Thy well-wishing friend and servant in the duties of a minister of Christ gospel.

W. F. X. B.

VOL. V.

H

A CONFERENCE

BETWEEN

THE TWO GREAT MONARCHS OF FRANCE AND SPAIN,

Concerning these our present Proceedings in England.

Wherein is discoursed of the Being of our Runaways under their Dominions, with a Consideration of their Dangers past, in the Wars betwixt England and them.

Printed in the Year 1641. Quarto, containing eight Pages.

Ho

France.

[OW now, Brother Spain? How run the cheating dice of this inconstant world?

Spain. Sometimes fives, sometimes sevens, sometimes nines, all upon odd numbers; but, if you will but give me the hearing of it, I will tell you such a sackful of news from England, that will make you laugh; hold, buttons, hold.

F. Prithee be brief, I long to hear the news.

S. Then thus: There is a thing held there at this time, which is called a Parliament, in which, as it seems, they use to chide offenders; now there were some which favoured our religion somewhat more than others, and faith, for fear of chiding, they are run for it, and lie now some under the covert of thy wings, and some under mine; and, on the other side, for they are, a many of them, in the extremes; some are so puffed up with pride, that honesty hath got the upper hand: the coblers and weavers, sow-gelders and tinkers, chimney-sweepers and butchers, do not stick to say, but that the spirit moves them to preach; nay, they do it as jealously, as our ancient sex hath done at Amsterdam over a hotchpotch.

F. Faith, this news makes me smile, indeed; but, prithee, tell me, hast thou not some armada intended against that little island, that temple of delight, that paradise, in comparison of all the world again? Have the jesuits no brains left, to invent a second powder-plot, or one as bad, or else worse? Doth the dragon always wake that keeps these golden apples, the tree of Minerva ?

S. Yes, they have brains enough, and courage enough, in setting such plots on foot, but, a pox on it, it takes no effect; for one had as good shoot arrows at the stars, and have a cracked coxcomb for one's labour, as any ways meddle with them; for God doth overlook them, and keep them safe, else could they never have escaped all those plots which I, and mine, had laid for them.

F. Why, sure, they are as wicked as any nation under the sun, How then should God be said to protect them?

S. For the love he bears to some; for there are very honest-meaning men amongst them, which do make a conscience of their ways, which thing is most acceptable of any thing in the sight of God.

F. But, in faith, now were the time, whilst the Scots are intrenched, and their subjects distracted, some on this side, some on that side, to come with some armada, or forward some gunpowder-plot, or some such grand treason. Oh the fruition of that same little sweet gardenplot would make France and Spain flourish.

S. Hark a while, and you will soon grant how ridiculous this childish folly of yours is; a wise man will never attempt impossibilities; for, certainly, it is as easy for any single arm to equal a whole troop of men, as for you or I to effect our wishes in this thing; for, certainly, they have borrowed from Jupiter, the heathen god, Argus with his hundred eyes, to overlook all our actions.

F. Tush, tush, thou art just like a coward, who, if he be once beaten, will hardly come on to the combate again; because your invincible armada, as you termed it, was bumbasted by the subjects of a maiden Queen, therefore it is impossible for us to do any good upon the same land; come, thou talkest idly for want of sleep.

S.

Why, brother of France, did you never feel the force of England? Look you but back to the Black Prince, where you shall find that the then predecessor sent him a ton of tennis-balls, instead of his right he held by the Salick law? but he turned his balls into gun-stones, and kept such a racket about France, that he made the whole court of Gallia shake.

F. I do not deny, but that we have both smarted enough, and that is the reason I am so willing to take an advantage against it.

S. I tell thee what, brother, I can compare England more commodiously to nothing than a lion which lay sleeping by the way-side; the traveller, coming by, would needs make sport with the lion, as he said, by hollowing in his ear to awake him, which he did; the lion, being not used to such unaccustomed noise, rose, not quite awaked, and tore this traveller in pieces. Just thus it fareth with us at this time, for England is asleep, and unless it be awaked, we need not fear any thing; but if we compel it to draw its sword once, it is not all our intreaties will sheathe it again.

F. Well, thou hast given me such an item, that I will look before I will leap; I will surely have some great occasion, before I will meddle with them.

S. Faith, we have business enough of our own, if we would but look after it.

F. True, yet I thank God I am in peace with the whole world. S. I would that I could say so too, for I protest ingenuously, I can scarce tell which way to turn myself, for on one side of me the great Turk lies, like some unseen monster, devouring all which shall come before him; on the other side, the Hollander is as a devil to me, for I cannot have a ship on the seas, but if espied by him, he is sure to sink for it. And, again, I look every day when the Portuguese will

fasten on me; and, above all things, I fear them, because they have been for men in England.

F. Why, I prithee, whither wilt thou fly in this distress?

S. I know not whither, unless I shall do, as the fool said he would, put on a clean shirt and drown myself.

F.

Then what will become of thy soul?

S. Psha, I will have a pardon from the pope before I do it.

F. That was well thought on indeed; but hark, I prithee, what dost thou think of the pope's imperious government? Dost thou think it to be lawful according to the commands of God?

S. Faith, I cannot tell; but I had a little pity and compunction rose the other day in my stomach towards the protestants, but they were presently down again; I hope it is the right way.

F. I hope so too; for, if it be not, I protest we are in the wrong way, and a wrong way will lead us to a wrong place, and that wrong place will not yield us half the delight we expect; wherefore it behoves us to take heed what we do, and, for all the pox, look to ourselves.

S. As you think, so think I; for certainly we are guided by some wandering planet; for such sudden changes in such great personages, as I have seen many, stand for example to confirm their assertion to be true. But, faith, methinks I could even love the English heretical religion; what musick hath transformed me from myself? Where is now the pride of our ancient religion, that it is thus turned topsy. turvey? What, have we lost our boasted freedom? What unknown desires are these which invade and take possession of my frighted soul? Are all those virtuous objects, which I heretofore perceived in our Roman religion, vanished? Have I stood the shocks of so many fierce wars for religion sake, stopped mine ear against all Syren notes that heresy ever sung? To draw my barque of faith (that with wonder hath kepta constant and honoured course in this channel of my religion) to be carried into the gulf of a continual heresy: But now, methinks, I feel my soul return again, and answer: I will first with mine own hands dig up a grave to bury the momental heap of all my years, before I will change my plighted faith unto the church of Rome.

F. Well said at last; in troth, I was afraid that the beast of Rome had been some kin to a stag, and had used to shed her horns; but thank God it is no worse.

S. If I have offended, at the worst, to die is a full period to calamity.

Ě. But is there nothing to be felt after death? Dost thou think that thou thus singest a requiem to thy soul before thou diest? I prithee, consider, and tell me what thou thinkest on it?

S. Why, I have heard, that there is a place called the Elysian fields, where those that have done well shall rest in peace. I have heard again, that our English hereticks hold, that there is only a heaven and a hell: those that do well shall enjoy the joys of heaven, and those that do ill shall feel the torments of hell: but our pope makes us believe that there is a purgatory; but, faith, I cannot tell what to think of it.

F. Well, farewel, brother, I protest, I persuade myself that the world is almost at its end, for I fear it is buzzed abroad in England, that the monuments of the kingdom shall all be pulled down, and crosses, of which, I have heard, that Abington and Cheapside crosses excel all: also, there must be no organs, to the utter undoing of all singing men. But, brother, farewel; the news you hear, I pray, inform me of.

S. I will; farewel, farewel.

FRAGMENTA REGALIA:

OR,

OBSERVATIONS ON THE LATE QUEEN ELISABETH,
HER TIMES AND FAVOURITES,

Written by Sir Robert Naunton, Master of the Court of
Wards.

Printed Anno Dom. 1641, Quarto, containing forty-nine Pages.

To take her in the original, she was the daughter of King Henry the

and one of the maids of honour to the divorced Queen, Katharine of Austria (or as the now stiled Infanta of Spain) and from thence taken to the royal bed.

That she was of a most noble and royal extract by her father, will not fall into question, for on that side was disembogued into her veins, by a confluency of blood, the very abstract of all the greatest houses in Christendom; and remarkable it is, considering that violent desertion of the royal house of the Britons, by the intrusion of the Saxons, and afterwards by the conquest of the Normans: that, through vicissitude of times, and after a discontinuance almost of a thousand years, the scepter should fall again, and be brought back into the old regal line and true current of the British blood, in the person of her renowned grandfather, King Henry the Seventh, together with whatsoever the German, Norman, Burgundian, Castilian, and French atchievements, with their intermarriages, which eight-hundred years had acquired, could add of glory thereunto.

H3

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