Other necessary notes to be observed.

THAT there may be order taken to have a store of powder, match, bullets ready cast, moulds of divers bores, charges, bow-strings, shooting gloves, warlrasses, and such other necessaries fit to be used at that time: Whereof (I doubt me) whether the whole shire be able to furnish the tenth part, that would be required. Whereof it were good to be provided aforehand, and brought in carts, to those places of assembly; whereby men may be readily furnished for their money, and the service nothing hindered in time of need.

That it be looked unto, by such as have charge to take the view of men, and their weapons, that every shot be provided of a mould, a priming pin, a ferries, a flint, and match powder, which things are as needful to be seen into, as the piece itself, although few provide and make reckoning thereof.

That, in the said musters and assemblies, there be good numbers of labourers appointed, who may also be assigned to have a spade, a mattock, a shovel, an ax, or a bill. And these pioneers, to resort to the places of assembly, at every alarm; over whom, should be a skilful engineer appointed, to have the chief charge and govern

ment.

And, whereas you have great numbers of hacknies or hobblers, I could wish, that upon them you mount as many of the highest and nimblest shot as you can, which may be sent down to the sea-side upon every alarm, or to such streights and places of advantage, as to a discreet leader shall seem convenient. The which arguliteers shall stand you in as great stead, as horse of better account.

For, by the means of them, men will take great courage to offer a proud attempt upon the enemy, being assured of their succour, if any occasion or appearance of danger force them to retire.

It were considerable, that all the youth of the land were well prepared with bows and arrows. For in woody places, or behind banks, or in other places these might annoy the horse and men: Witness the brave battles atchieved in France, by bowmen; and these arms would supply many thousands, which are not able to get better.

Their wild preachings and practices in Germany.

Printed in the Year 1642. Quarto, containing twenty-eight pages.

ABOUT the year of our Lord 1525, all Germany was put into an

uproar and confusion, by the seditious preaching of some turbu lent ministers. The ringleader among them was one Thomas Muncer, who pretending a wonderful and more than ordinary zeal, having with great passion preached against the popish errors, at length began to preach against Luther, terming him as too cold, and his sermons as not savouring enough of the spirit; with great earnestness he pressed the exercises of mortification, and exhorted to a more frequent and familiar conversation with God; he pretended to some divine revelations, that God by dreams and visions did reveal unto his saints his will. By these discourses, he won a great opinion and reputation with the people, who daily flocked after him and admired him as a man divinely inspired: At length he began more plainly to publish his design, and told hist followers, that he had received a command from God to kill and root up all wicked princes and magistrates, and to chuse better in their places.

Frederick, Elector of Saxony, hearing of these his seditious sermons, banished him out of his country; from thence he went first to Norrenburg, then to Mulhuse; every where poisoning the people with his seditious doctrine; because the senators of Mulhuse, and the better sort, disliked him, he wrought so effectually with the base people, that, rising in a tumult, they turned out their chief magistrates, and created others. So that now Muncer was not only a preacher, but a senator; whatsoever he commanded, was done, his pleasure was a law, and his direction in all things, as he said, a divine revelation. He taught a community of all goods to be most agreeable to nature, and that all freemen ought to be equal in dignity and condition. By this means he gathered great companies of mean people, who, leaving their labours, thought fit and just to take part with others of better wealth and store.

In Swevia and Franconia, near forty thousand peasants took arms

upon this occasion; who robbed a great part of the nobility, and plundered many towns and castles, Muncer, being their chief captain. He had a companion, a bold fellow, one Phifer, who talked much of his dreams and nightly apparitions; especially of one dream, wherein, he said, he saw in a barn an infinite company of rats and mice, all which he had chaced away and destroyed: This dream he expounded to be a commandment sent him from God, that by force and violence he should destroy all the nobility. And Muncer, to the same purpose, moved the boors throughout Franconia and Thuringia to undertake this holy war, as he called it, against their princes. Phifer, with some of his troops going out into the neighbour-country, wastes and destroys noblemen's houses, chaceth away the most, taketh some, and bringeth them captives. This good success gave great courage to the party. Muncer wins his forces with the rest of Phifers.

In the mean while, Albert Count of Mansfield, setting upon them with some troopers, kills about two hundred. The seditious, discouraged with this loss, retire a while and keep in. This gave leisure and time to the neighbouring princes, John Duke of Saxony and his Cousin George, Philip Landgrave of Hesse, and Henry Duke of Brunswick, to collect some forces against them, about one thousand five hundred horse and some companies of foot. The rebels sat down on the side of a mount where they had some advantage of the place, but they were not well armed, and most of them ignorant in war. The princes therefore out of pity advised them to lay down their arms, and offered them pardon, if they would deliver up the authors of the sedition. Muncer, finding himself in some danger, encourageth them with a long and earnest exhortation; pretends, That this great action was undertaken by command from heaven, that God would undoubtedly assist them against the tyrants; that he had promised in many places of scripture to assist the oppressed against their wicked governors; that those tyrants, so he called the princes, followed only their ease and pleasures; neglected justice; pillaged their subjects with intolerable exactions; had no care to reform the corruptions of the church; spent all their life in pride and luxury: That therefore, without doubt, the time was now come, when God would take vengeance upon those Canaanites, and restore to his own good people the liberties of their goods, their lives, and consciences: That, as God had assisted Gideon, and David, and the Israelites, and gave them victories by miracles, so they should now find his power and love no less in their deliverance; and, for a token of his especial favour, mark, said he, yonder rainbow in the clouds, which, being represented in our own colours, God hereby giveth us an evident testimony that he is present with us in this battle, and will root out our enemies.

Some few of the more desperate were animated with this oration, and especially with the rainbow; but the most of them apprehended the instant danger, and the rather, because in their army all was carried tumultuously without any rule or order. Muncer, against the law of arms and of nations, had killed a noble young gentleman who was sent to parly with them, The princes being the more provoked with this cruelty prepared for the onset. Philip the young prince of Hesse spoke

to the soldiers to this purpose: That he could not excuse himself and some other princes from some errors, but this could not excuse the rebels for their sedition; that God every where expresly chargeth all people every where to honour and obey their magistrates: That of necessity people must contribute of their goods to the honour and support of their princes: That princes on the other side did protect them by their power and laws. That, whereas the rebels called for the liberty of their consciences, and of the gospel, though princes should deny it, yet that were no just cause of rebellion; that the gospel was propagated through the world, not by force and violence, but by patience and sufferance of the first Christians: That yet their clamours herein were causeless, and their pretences unjust, seeing the most princes of Germany had then given way to the reformation. That these rebels did but cover with the name of the gospel their own impious and bloody designs: That their true aim was, to take away all government, to bring in confusion into the state, atheism and barbarism into the church; that therefore their hypocrisy was so much the more damnable to pretend the name of God and of religion to their intended confusion; and more to this purpose.'

At the first onset the rebels were quickly and easily put into disorder, and above five-thousand slain upon the place, and three-hundred more taken in a town hard by; Muncer himself, hiding his head in a village, was apprehended, and brought to the Duke of Saxony and the Landgrave: Being asked by them why he had thus abused the miserable peasants, and raised these tumults; his answer was, he had done but his duty, and that such princes as hindered the reformation of the church ought to be so opposed. The Landgrave, on the contrary, proved unto him by testimony of scripture, that governors ought to be had in honour; that all sedition is forbidden by God, and that, by the laws of the gospel, no Christian may take arms against their lawful prince upon any pretext whatsoever. To this when he replied nothing, he was brought to the rack to know what his purposes were, and who were the principal contrivers of this conspiracy. His fellow Phifer was taken and beheaded in Mulhouse; Muncer himself being brought upon the stage was extremely confounded and dejected, and not able to give any tolerable account of his faith, yet in general terms confessed his fault and his error, and his head, being cut off, was carried upon a spear through the army.

This Muncer was the first author of the much famed sect of the Anabaptists, so called from their doctrine and practice of rebaptising; for they forbid children to be baptised: And, if they have been, rebaptise them: They carried at first a great shew of sanctity; they talked, that it was not lawful for Christians to contend in law upon any occasions; nor to bear magistracy, nor to swear, nor to have any thing proper; but that all things ought to be common amongst all

men.

These were at first their discourses, but by degrees they fell to publish other more pernicious doctrines. When this sect began first to creep in Germany, Luther and all other learned divines mightily opposed them, and magistrates every where punished them, yet secretly they in

creased and raised many dangerous tumults. But especially in Munster the prime city of Westphalia: Where they acted a mad and most memorable tragedy.

In that city one Bernard Rotman, a minister, by his pains and preaching, had there reformed the church, and cast out the popish bishop and his clergy. About the year of our Lord 1533, John of Leyden, a taylor by his trade, an Hollander, and an earnest anabaptist, came to live in the city of Munster. This fellow privately insinuated the doctrine of rebaptisation, much contemning the contrary opinion; Rotman in the beginning vehemently preached against him, and his phantastical opinions, as pernicious both to the state, and to religion. Yet Leyden prevailed much with the base people, and infected great numbers, who had their secret meetings in corners and conventces most usually in the night, admitting none but such as were addicted to their opinions: And within a while Rotman himself began to incline towards them, and to condemn the baptism of children as impious and heretical; insomuch that the number of anabaptists was daily increased: And the Landgrave of Hesse intreated by the senators of the city to send some preachers of learning to confute them, and contain the people in

order and obedience..

Accordingly he sent unto them Fabritius, a messenger, and others, who were provoked by the anabaptists to a disputation which was admitted by them, and by the senators. But the sectaries, afterwards better considering their own ignorance and weakness, to which they were conscious, and trusting to their multitudes, refused to dispute, and took another course. One of them runs up and down the city as if possessed by the spirit, and cries, 'repent and be rebaptised, lest the wrath of God overwhelm you.' Divers others cried out in the same manner.

Some simple men obeyed for fear, being terrified with their clamours, and some of the richer sort, to save their fortunes; for the anabaptists began to rob all their adversaries, and gathered together into great troops; they possessed themselves of the arms and strongest parts of the city, and made proclamations, that all who were not rebaptised were to be accounted pagans and infidels, and to be killed. Rotman and Bernard Knipperdoling, his companion, send letters to all the neighbouring villages, inviting all of their faction forthwith to come to Munster, and promise liberal satisfaction for their estates and goods that they were to leave.

Hereupon multitudes of men and women, especially of the base beggarly sort, make haste to Munster. The citizens of the better sort, seeing the town filled with strangers, forthwith secretly convey away themselves and their families, and leave there the anabaptists, who, now perceiving their own strength, and the weakness of the other party, first chuse new senators, all of their own faction, then create consuls, and make Knipperdoling the chief. They quickly afterwards burn the suburbs, and spoil all churches; straightway they run, by troops, through all the streets, crying, repent; and soon after, get ye hence all ye wicked, if you mean to save your lives. They run armed up and down, and chace out of the town all that did not favour the sect, without respect of age or sex, so that many women with child miscarried by