It will doubtless touch your royal heart, Sire, with the most pleasing sensations, to hear the agreeable information which I have the honour to communicate to your majesty, that there is an entire and equitable plan fixed for securing the royal throne, as soon as it is recovered. All who served or favoured the usurpation, are not only never to be trusted, but to be dispatched and forfeited, like the regicides, Sire, at the last restoration. They are however to be treated in the mean time. with gentle language, and even to be fed with fair hopes, since it would be premature and imprudent to terrify them into more desperate measures of defence than they are even now taking.

These forfeitures, Sire, and the stocks which have been rather funds of public rebellion, than of the public revenue, will competently exalt and enrich his M- -'s court and followers. The present churchmen, who have so long and wilfully topped themselves off from the apostolic succession, are to be divested of all their usurped emoluments; their ministry will be declared schismatical, and all their ordinations null. Many of the church lands will be resumed, most of them perhaps forfeited, and the rest purchased. Thus, Sire, the church will be brought to flourish with the monarchy, and to crush all sectaries, and all republicans. For at present, alas! none but Presbyterians govern the church; none but republicans administer the monarchy.

Permit me, Sire, to acquaint your majesty with one successful stroke of our policy, which hath done us marvellous service. We have convinced all our adherents, that the present complying churchmen, bishops and clergy, are Presbyterians; and that Presbyterians are much worse Christians than Papists, a nickname which schismatics give to Catholics. In this step, Sire, we do but confirm our esteem and charity for the Gallican church, with which we have long studied to unite our own, and even agreed to a scheme for that purpose; a scheme which Mr. Lesly, a celebrated champion of ours, had the honest boldness to present to an English convocation in the reign of queen Anne.

We have, Sire, many writers, and many books ready written, to prove all our claims, as soon as we can master the kingdom, and the press; passive obedience, and indefeasible right shall be again our constant, and our affectionate themes, loudly and awfully echoed by every divine from every pulpit; doctrines, Sire, ever dear to his R. H's best predecessors, and tenderly nourished by them. We shall produce, Sire, voluminous histories (purposely composed) to prove the succession of the Stuarts from the ancient monarchical house of Noah, and that the said succession was never interrupted, whatever breaches time and violence, necessity and accidents, may have made in it. An egregious performance this, Sire, worthy the countenance of all rightful kings, and of all offended patriots who oppose kings whom they cannot approve.

It is the firm purpose of his R. H. (for to him his royal father, your majesty knows, will resign) it is, Sire, his fixed resolution, to revive, and even to sharpen the old laws, and to reign with vigour, like an absolute master, at least by the direction of the greatest of all. For it will be, Sire, his study and his pride, always to reign according to your model, and by your sage counsel; and to shew himself worthy of such a revered, such a superior pattern and director.

Y

Such, Sire, are the sentiments, views, bopes, and situation of his K. H. the P. R. heaven and your majesty have rendered him hitherto victorious. He hopes that the greatest king upon earth will concur with the king of heaven, in accomplishing a work so favoured and forwarded by both.

I shall impatiently wait, Sire, for the honour of your majesty's commands, and still more impatiently for the execution of them from your majesty's ministers.

NUMBER 83.

The Loyalty of Papists never to be trusted by Protestants. Religions and Liberty inevitable Sacrifices to a Popish Revolution.

In the latter end of the year 1639, in the Irish Parliament, the Irish Popish members, who were many, were extremely forward to shew themselves well affected and zealous subjects, and concurred unanimously in a vote for four subsidies to the king. In the middle of the year 1641, the Irish rebel against the king, they massacre all his Protestant subjects, and are led and animated in all their brutal outrages, by these very Papish members, lately so complaisant, so loyal, and so zealous for the king, now defying his authority, overturning the government, and butchering his only true subjects.

It is remarkable enough, that so able a man as the earl of Strafford (he was then only lord Wentworth, and lord deputy, but was afterwards earl of Strafford, the name which he is chiefly known by) then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, bad, but the year before, in all his dispatches from thence flourished, in high strains, upon the loyalty and affection of the native Irish: he even upbraids the Scots, then forced by oppression into arms, with the exemplary and peaceable behaviour of the Irish.

This representation that great man partly meant as a compliment upon his own management, and probably, found it well pleasing at court, where Popery was too much in fashion, and the Irish too much caressed for being Papists, especially by the queen, who governed the spirit of the king. He, too, though a Protestant, was partial to Popery as a religon favourable to high monarchy, such as, it cannot be denied, he was fond of. Yet the discerning Lord Lieutenant is so candid as to warn the king against employing the earl of Antrim to quell the troubles in Scotland, as the king was inclined he should; for this Popish earl was then in great favour with the king, and even with archbishop Laud. "I neither hope much (says the sagacious Wentworth) from his parts, nor from his power, nor from his affections.As he is a Papist, and grandson to that famous rebel, the earl of Tyrone, be is not to be trusted with any store of arms which he is now applying for."

In another letter to the king, about raising forces in Ireland against Scotland, "He beseeches his majesty, not to grant the earl of Antrim

2 troop (which he would surely be a suitor for) as a thing which would prove very unpopular to all the English, from his religion, his race, his unfitness for trust, his interested views, his evil and traiterous designs, &c." Besides, lord Strafford, in all his letters, treats him as a very weak, vain man.

After all this weighty warning, the king is still favourable to this Popish earl, talks of his free and noble spirit, at that conjuncture, and recommends him to the Lord Lieutenant, as worthy to be trusted and employed. His majesty, soon after, in a letter to Strafford, tells him, "I should be glad you could find some way to furnish the earl of Antrim with arms, though he be a Roman Catholic; for he may be of use to me at this time, to let loose upon the earl of Argyle."

Antrim, thus encouraged, applied for six thousand arms, and even purposed to put the forces he raised under the command of his cousin O Neal. "I am astonished says lord Strafford, with his lordship's purpose, colonel O Neal, understood to be in his heart and affections a traitor! What a prospect for all us English here, to see six thousand men (Irish Papists) armed with our own weapons (ourselves by that means turned naked) men led by Tyrone's grandchild, the son of old Randal Mac Donald, in the same country, formerly the very heart and strength of those mighty, long, lasting rebellions?"

But though the Lord Lieutenant had excellently exposed the danger of arming Lord Antrim, the misled king orders him to give the earl all possible assistance, and even to give him a commission under the great seal, to levy forces. An army of Irish Papists were accordingly raised, and officered by a savage list of frighted names, Macs and O's all of rebellious race; all, two years after, bloody butchers in the Irish rebellion, and, even now, all ready to begin it, with a commission from his majesty, turned against himself, as well as against his subjects. At best the earl of Antrim did no service to the king; he had other aims, though he had not capacity, nor, just then, an opportunity, to pursue them. He took the first opportunity, and most barbarously improved it; yet, after the restoration, he pleaded king Charles the First's commission for all he did, and actually got a pardon from king Charles the Second, I think, upon that plea.

One thing is extremely remarkable it appears to be the opinion of Lord Strafford, that before the earl of Argyle declared himself, and took the covenant, his country was given away by the king to the earl of Antrim and others.

If king Charles the First, so true a Protestant, was thus perniciously misled and betrayed by Papists; what wonder that Charles the Second, a real Papist, the more dangerous and guilty as he was a pretended Protestant, a prince of such loose principles, and a libertine in life, was as fond of Popery as he was of arbitrary power, a known foe to law and virtue, and Protestants; a known dissembler, partial to Papists, their constant friend and dupe? He was in all their measures hearty; though he was too lazy and timid, and too much devoted to voluptuousness, to risk_bis ease and pleasures, and crown, by openly declaring for the Pope, and introducing Popish superstition barefaced, both so odious to the English.

His brother, whose zeal, like his blindness, was extreme, tried the mad experiment, and madly perished in the trial. He was baffled

deposed; and surely it was worse than death, to fall from a throne, to live upon alms from the enemy of the English name.

His pretended son is a saturnine bigot, full of the dreams of his divine right, which implies blind slavery in his subjects: he is drunk with fell vengeance against them for the damnable crimes of sacrilege and rebellion, in renouncing him and his oracle and prompter, the Pope. What hope can be conceived of his offspring? Neither be nor they dare, if they would, abjure the Pope or arbitrary power. Without the Pope they may want bread, and hereditary right implies a right to be arbitrary. The blood they pretend to is but a discouraging recommendation, yet they have no other.

It must appear gross mockery, mockery even to barbarous Highlanders, to employ such bloody savages, to rob the property and to confine and murder the persons of men, under the crazy pretence of restoring liberty. The great grievance is, that liberty is too fixed and flourishing; that it tramples upon superstition and tyranny, and must be pulled down before these can be set up.

By what law does the invader pretend to come in, but that he has right against law, and to destroy law? His intrusion, by all the steps of violence and blood, infers that no violence can disqualify him, nor could disqualify his pretended father; that therefore be hath, and his pretended father had, a right to rule by violence, and that no man in the three nations, nor the three nations themselves, have any right to oppose violence. Concise reasoning! "All that is in them, all the lives, all the property in them, are mine by right, and I will take it by force."

His auxiliaries from abroad are as shocking as his claims at home, the power of France, the curses and demands of the Pope, France pants for our destruction, and knows that the sure way to destroy us, is to enslave us; to render us forlorn and even double slaves at once to French and Papal tyranny; nay, slaves at second hand to a king of straw, a royal shadow, set up by Rome and the house of Bourbon. What dare he refuse to his masters and creators? His own bigotry, his hatred of Protestants, his dread of liberty, and the merit of extirpating heresy, will all excite him to execute his deputation with zeal. Religion, liberty, trade, all odious to his masters and to himself, must fall sudden sacrifices to their joint policy and zeal.

What think you, Englishmen, Protestants, and freemen, of the shocking scene? For all this is no more than the necessary effects and natural operations of Popery and tyranny. Gratian, the famous canonist, the great oracle of the Vatican, maintains, "That a Christian city (or community) may be totally and lawfully burned for a few heretics dwelling in it." This decision, so positive and bloody, is but agreeable to the universal spirit and practice of Popery. Nor can there be such a thorough renouncing of Christ by the strongest words of apostacy, as the butchering of men and Christians in his name, and blasphemously urging his authority.

If the heresy of a few draws down and warrants this fiery doom upon a community, What hath a whole nation of heretics to expect? What indeed, but incessant fires, and furnaces seven times heated?

Take warning, O Britons! When your government is gone, your liberty is gone, and your religion must follow. Foreign politics, and in

defeasible right, will, must, soon swallow your dear liberty, and all your fortunes. Papal zeal, for ever burning and bloody, must, will, furiously extinguish your religion, and burn your persons and Bibles. Remember queen Mary: Remember the French and Irish massacres: Remember the Spanish inquisition, with the unrelenting racks and flaines there: Remember the swift and inhuman destruction everywhere brought upon Protestants by Popery; and may God give you understanding in all things!

NUMBER 84.

Remarks upon the Appeal of the Pretender (young or old) to the People.

By the style of the pretender's declaration he seems to rely, for his principal support, upon the stupidity and infatuation of the nation. He says, "his only intention is, to reinstate his subjects in the full enjoyment of their religion, laws and liberties." When we are in the most copious possession of all these blessings, even to profusion and satiety, beyond all the nations of the earth, he comes from Rome, where religion is founded in fraud, rapine and cruelty, to reinstate us Protestants in the full enjoyment of our religion, which is accursed by Rome, and we are dainned by Rome for holding it.

Just so Queen Mary reinstated her subjects in the full enjoyment of their religion, by setting up the Papists to burn the Protestants, and pursued this motherly goodness and protection of them in all their rights, to the end of her detestable life. She promised as fair as he does, promised the very same things, and professed the same public spirit.

What reason can we have to believe that he will not follow her Catholic examples, educated, as he is, in the same Catholic principles, which eternally infer the same Catholic spirit? Before we can take his word, he must shew us, what he never can shew, that ever a Popish prince kept his engagements to Protestant subjects, or that the genius of Popery, and the maxims of the Pope, will suffer him to keep them? Did his pretended father keep them? He does not pretend to say that he did; he cannot pretend to say it. He knows that he did not; yet does not condemn, nor even censure him, for not doing it, nor for breaking all his solemn oaths, and invading all our rights.

What therefore does he mean by his intention "to reinstate his subjects in the enjoyment of all their rights?" I doubt he hath a double meaning; first to mislead, if he can, such as already enjoy all their rights; when at the same time he intends, as his education and religion direct him, to spoil them of all. He would draw them the while to think that they are wronged of their right, and he comes to restore them. Thus he gives weak minds hopes, in order to bring them to give him admittance; and then, when they have made him master, he will teach