And one thing more , saith that judicious Prelate , I 'le be bold to speak out of a like Duty to the Church of England , and the House of David ; They , whoever they be , that would overthrow Sedes Ecclesiae , the Seats of Ecclesiastical Judgment , will not spare , if ever they get . Power , to have a pluck at the Throne of David : And there is not a Man that , is for Parity , all fellows in the Church , but he is against Monarchy in the State : And certainly , either he is but half headed to his own Principles , or he can be but half hearted to the House of David . And how exactly he hit the Truth in his Conjecture the Event did most Tragically justifie .

But still the Power of the Sword , the Militia of the Nation , hung terribly , as they thought by the single hair of the Kings Authority , over their heads ; and their fears of a future account ; if ever their Soveraignty should come to a Period , and the suspicion that this Gordian-knot which they had so strongly woven , though it could be no other way untied , might yet be loosed by Alexander's Method , made them extremely Sollicitous , to wrest that Power out of the hands of the King . And to effect this , all those Plots and Contrivances which the Reader will meet with in the ensuing Collections , some of which are manifestly detected to be False , Forged , and Ridiculous , were with the utmost Industry improved and magnified , to run the People headlong into Tumults , Mutinies and Rebellion : There was the Plot of the Army against the Parliament ; the Plot against Pym by sending him an infected Plaister in a Letter , the Plot in Scotland against Hamilton and Arguile , which was to beget another of the same Nature in England ; Beal the Taylor 's Plot of 104 Men , who for 40 s. apiece for the Commons , and 10 l. for Lords , were to kill just so many of the Lords and Commons to a Man ; there was the Plot discovered in a Letter to Mr. Bridgman ; information of French , Spanish , and Danish Plots , besides the great Plot of the Papists and Bishops to bring in Popery , and the King and his Evil Councellors , to destroy Priviledges and Parliaments , and to fire the City , and cut the Throats of the Citizens .

Now all these Plots Centred in this one Point , that the Kingdom being in such extreme Danger , not only from Foreign Enemies , but Domestique , the People could have no manner of Security for their Lives , Liberties , Estates or Religion , unless the King would trust the Parliament with the Power of the Sword , the Militia of the Kingdom , the Navy , Forts , Garrisons , Castles , Magazines and Stores , and more especially the Tower of London , and the Towns of Portsmouth and Kingston upon Hull ; that so by their Order and Appointment such Persons as His Majesty thought fit to bestow those Trusts upon might be displaced , and such as the Parliament could confide in , the Creatures of the Faction , might have those important Trusts and Charges conferred upon them .

Whilst the People , continually amused and alarm'd with these apprehensions of Danger , which the Faction perswaded them threatned them from every quarter of the Heavens , were blown up into an Universal Ferment of desperate Fears and incurable Jealousies ; the Horrid Rebellion in Ireland broke out , which gave such Countenance and Colour to all the former , though never so fictitious Rumors of Plots and Conspiracies , that the Nation was all in a Flame , and under the most dreadful Apprehensions , that the very same Design was laid for the Ruin and Destruction of England , which gave the Faction all the Confidence and opportunity they could have wished or desired , to seize upon the Militia by force , which they could not by perswasions obtain from the King , who now evidently saw , where all their fine Pretensions to Loyalty and Duty would most certainly Terminate . And so resolutely were they bent upon this Usurpation , that they permitted the Rebellion in Ireland , for want of timely Supplies of Men and Money to suppress it , to grow to that formidable height , as to put England to the vast Expence of Blood and Treasure , which it did afterwards by the neglecting to extinguish this fire upon its first Eruption .

Nor was this the only Use which the Faction in the Two Houses in England made of this Rebellion in Ireland . For when afterwards they came to break out into a Rebellion themselves , certainly not less horrible and detestable , since they pretended to be acted by a Religion which hitherto had decried Popery upon the very score of allowing Principles of Rebellion , deposing and murthering Lawful Princes , the Parliament in their Papers , Answers and Declarations , secretly reflected upon the King ; and by their impudent Agents and Emissaries , and the allowed Scriblers and News-Printers , the very Pests of the Age , openly published , that the Rebellion in Ireland began by his knowledge and connivance , and by that means they laid all those Massacres and Murthers which were there most barbarously committed , at His Majesties door , and by heightning the Infamous actions of the Rebells there , with the most aggravating Circumstances of Inhumanity and Cruelty , whilst they secretly insinuated the King to be concerned in them , they certainly robbed him of the Hearts and Hands , the Allegiance and Affections of his Subjects .

I cannot therefore but esteem it a Duty which common humanity challenges from all mankind , to indeavour the vindication of the injured and oppressed ; but I look upon my self as under the severest Obligations of Christianity , Conscience , Truth and Justice , to clear the Reputation of this Royal Sufferer , from the horrible Detractions , Slanders , and Calumnies , with which those brutish Rebels did not only blemish his Life and Actions , but have most barbarously persecuted his Innocent Memory , indeavouring therefore to make him appear Criminal , that their hands which were died in his Sacred Blood might appear less Guilty . And I shall esteem it a very singular Honor , and the greatest Glory of my life , that Providence has given me the opportunity to be in some measure Instrumental toward the fulfilling of that prophetick Passage in his incomparable Book , 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cap. 15. where he hath these words concerning the Jealousies raised , and Scandals cast upon him by his Enemies .

For Mine Honour , I am well assured , that as Mine Innocency is clear before God in point of any Calumnies they Object ; so My Reputation shall like the Sun ( after Owles and Bats have had their freedom in the Night and darker times ) rise , and recover it self to such a Degree of Splendor , as those Ferab Birds shall be grieved to behold , and unable to bear ; for never were any Princes more Glorious then those whom God hath suffered to be tried in the Fornace of Afflictions by their injurious Subjects .

I am very sensible , that in pursuing the Historical Account of the Irish Rebellion , I shall have the management of a very difficult Province , there being a sort of People , who think there can be no Hyperbolies in aggravating the blackness of the Irish Rebellion , though at the same time they think every little reflection too hard and sharp , that touches upon the English Rebellion . And if a Writer cannot devest himself not only of the Humanity of a just and generous Heathen , but of the Charity of a good Christian , he shall be pursued with the odious Reproaches of a Favourer of Popery ; and therefore I must avow my Resolution to be honestly to follow the Conduct of Truth , without the least declining on any hand to the best of my Understanding and Information ; and in order to that Procedure , though I think , and upon all occasions shall indeavour to make it appear , that the Rebellion of the Irish was a most Horrid and Treasonable Defection from their Duty and Loyalty , and carried on with most barbarous and unexampled Cruelty ; yet I shall not exactly follow the steps of some other Pens , who have undertaken to give an account of the Transaction of the Affairs of that time ; since to me it is evident that they have not dealt fairly , neither with the King nor Loyal Party , nor indeed with Truth her self ; but have concealed some things and palliated others , which in Justice they ought not to have done ; and whatever opinion others may have of such half-faced Historians , I cannot conceive but that even the Cause of Protestancy which these Persons pretend so much to Patronize , does extremely suffer by their manifest Partiality .

There is not any one particular which hath been Exaggerated with more vehemence then the Cruelty of the Rebels , by Sir John Temple , Dr. Borlase , and others ; and doubtless their Cruelty was strange and barbarous ; but then on the other side there is not the least mention of any Cruelty exercised upon the Irish , or of the hard measure they received from some of the Board in Ireland , who were of the Parliamentarian Faction , and Scottish Religion , which rendred them desperate , and made the Rebellion Universal ; they take no notice of the Severities of the Provost Martials , nor of the Barbarism of the Soldiers to the Irish , which was such , that I have heard a Relation of my own , who was a Captain in that Service , Relate , that no manner of Compassion or Discrimination was shewed either to Age or Sex , but that the little Children were promiscuously Sufferers with the Guilty , and that if any who had some grains of Compassion reprehended the Soldiers for this unchristian Inhumanity , they would scoffingly reply , Why ? Nits will be Lice , and so would dispatch them : And certainly as to acknowledge an undeniable Truth , does in no manner Excuse the barbarous Cruelty of the Rebels ; so to deny or smother Matters of Fact , so easily to be proved , even by many Protestants still alive , has given the Papists the advantage to bring into Question , especially in Foreign Courts and Countries , the truth of all those inhumane Cruelties which are charged upon them by such Writers as are found Guilty of such manifest Partiality .

It is most evident that the Lords Justices , Parsons and Borlase , did by their Authority Command many things , which did not only Exasperate but render the Irish Desperate , as will appear by several of their own Letters , and publick Acts of State ; and that in the first Eruption of the Rebellion , they had a greater Eye to the Forfeitures of the Rebels Estates , then to use such means as might by the hopes of Pardon induce the better sort of the Nobility , Gentry , and Freeholders to hear Reason , and to come in and submit themselves to His Majesties mercy , though they had express direction from the King and the Two Houses so to do ; and it is no less notorious , that Sir John Temple in writing his History was bound by Confederacy to assert the proceedings of the then Lords Justices : and I cannot find him high in Reputation with the prevailing Usurpers of the Parliamentarian Faction , and by them impowered as a Commissioner to impose upon the Protestant Subjects of Ireland , that Traiterous , Disloyal and Detestable Solemn League and Covenant , which was a direct Oath of Confederacy , not only against , but purposely to Ruin and Destroy the King , the Church , and the Loyal Party ; I cannot observe his Book to be Printed in London by publick Allowance in the Year 1646 , at a time when no Books were licensed but such as made Court to the prevailing Faction of the Usurpers , or which might be helpful to support their Calumnies against His Majesty , especially as to the Irish Rebellion ; I cannot find him decrying the Cessation of 1643 without too just a suspition of his Integrity , and that his Biass was too strong to that Party , to which he was a Confederate , to expect from him an account of those Affairs , without the apparent Guilt of prejudice and partiality .

The late Earl of Orrery cannot escape the like suspition with any Person , that considers him Exercising the Talent of his Eloquence , in perswading the notorious Rebel Cromwel to Establish his Usurpation , by fixing the Royal Diadem , the Imperial Crown of these Realms upon his infamous Head ; nor is it possible to look upon him as an impartial Writer , who in the blackest of times , rendred himself by his Services to the Usurper so notoriously Conspicuous to the Three Kingdoms ; being , during that gloomy Scene of our Gracious Sovereign's Banishment , Lord President of Munster in Ireland , President of the Council of Scotland , and in England a Lord of the other House in one of the Usurpers mock-Parliaments ; and to instance in another of his Titles , thô not so Illustrious , he was Agent for the Fanatiques Established by Cromwel in the Estates of the Irish , who , repenting of their folly , had served His Majesty against the English Rebels , at that time when he writ that Treatise which is so warmly answered by Peter Walch .

As for Dr. Borlase , besides the nearness of his Relation to one of the Lords Justices , and his being openly and avowedly a favourer of the Faction , and the Men and Actions of those times ; he is an Author of such strange inconsistency , that his Book is rather a Paradox then a History ; and it must needs be so , for , I know not by what accident , the Copy of a Manuscript , written by the Right Honorable the late Earl of Clarendon , happening to fall into his hands , he has very unartfully blended it with his own rough and unpolished heap of Matter ; so that his Book looks like a curious Imbroidery sowed with coarse thread upon a piece of Sackwebb : And truly had he no other Crime but that of a Plagiary , it is such a sort of Theft to steal the Child of anothers Brain , that may very well render him suspected not to be overstockt with Honesty and Justice , so necessary to the Reputation of an unblemished Historian ; but it is far more unpardonable , to castrate the Lawful Issue of another Man's Pen , and thereby disable it from propagating Truth , and to teach it to speak a Language which the Parent never intended : And yet this is the exact Case of Dr. Borlase's History , in which he has taken great Pains , to expunge some , and alter many Passages , which he thought were too poignant against his Favourites , or spoke too much in Vindication of his late Majesty , and his Ministers , as in divers particulars hereafter the Reader will observe .