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 jurisdic tion; 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 graminarscholars, 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 tallness, 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 be ginning 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 be ginning 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

bishop's men were all given to covetousness and wantonness, that I never heard of were in the Cardinal's men.

As the Cardinal was sumptuous in his buildings, as that of Whitehall, Hampton-court, &c. as also in laying the foundation of two famous colleges, the one at Ipswich, where he was born, the other at Oxford, where he had his breeding; so Christ-church, which he left unfinished, Canterbury hath since repaired; and wherein he hath come short of him in building, though he hath bestowed much on St. John's College, yet he hath outgone him in his bounty of brave voluminous books, being fourscore in number, late sent to the Bodleian or University Library. Farther, as the Cardinal was chancellor of Oxford, and as the Cardinal, by plucking down of small abbies, to prepare stone for his greater structures, opened a gap for the King, by which he took the advantage utterly to raze and demolish the rest; so Canterbury, by giving way for one bishop to have a temporal trial, and to be convicted, not by the clergy, but the laity, left the same path open both for himself, and the rest of the episcopacy; of whch, there before scarce remained a precedent.

I have paralleled them in their dignities; I will conclude with a word or two concerning their downfalls. The Cardinal fell into the displeasure of his king, Canterbury into an extreme hatred of the commons: both were arrested of high treason, the Cardinal by process, Canterbury by Parliament. The Cardinal at Keywood castle, near York, Canterbury at Westminster, near London; both their falls were speedy and sudden: the Cardinal sat as this day in the high court of chancery, and within two days after was confined to his house; Canterbury as this day sat at the council-board, and in the upper-house of parliament, and the same day was committed to the black rod, and from thence to the Tower. The Cardinal died at Leicester, some say of a flux; Canterbury remains still in the Tower, only sick of a fever. Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas.

THE

BILL OF ATTAINDER

That passed against

THOMAS EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Printed for J. A. 1641. Quarto, containing six pages.

WH HEREAS the knights, citizens, and burgesses of the house of commons in this present parliament assembled, have, in the name of themselves, and all the commons of England, impeached Thomas Earl of Strafford, of high treason, for endeavouring to subvert the