Dissolve and Deface the Lawes of Charity and of humane Society. There be two Swords amongst Christians; the Spirituall, and Temporall; And both have their due Office and place in the maintenance of Religion. But we may not take up the Third sword, which is Mahomets Sword, or like unto it; That is, to propagate Religion by Warrs, or by Sanguinary Persecutions, to force Consciences; except it be in the cases of Overt Scandall, Blasphemy, or Intermixture of practize, against the State; Much lesse to Nourish Seditions; to Authorize Conspiracies and Rebellions; To put the Sword into the Peoples Hands; And the like; Tending to the Subversion of all Government, which is the Ordinance of God. For this is but to dash the first Table against the Second; 19 And so to consider Men as Christians, as we forget that they are Men. Lucretius the Poet, when he beheld the Act of Agamemnon, that could endure the Sacrificing of his owne Daughter, exclaimed;

Tantum relligio potuit suadere malorum.1

For

What would he have said, if he had knowne of the Massacre in France,2 or the Powder Treason of England? He would have beene Seven times more Epicure and Atheist then he was. as the Temporall Sword is to bee drawne with great circumspection in cases of Religion; So it is a thing Monstrous, to put into the hands of the Common People. Let that bee left unto the Anabaptists and other Furies. It was great Blasphemy, when the Devill said; I will ascend, and bee like the Highest; 20 But it is greater Blasphemy to personate God, and bring him in saying; I will descend, and be like the Prince of Darknesse; And what is it better to make the cause of Religion to descend to the cruell and execrable Actions of Murthering Princes, Butchery of People, and Subversion of States and Governments? Surely, this is to bringe Downe the Holy Ghost, in stead of the Likenesse of a Dove, in the Shape of a Vulture, or Raven: And to set out of the Barke of a Christian Church a Flagge of a Barque of Pirats and

Assassins. Therefore it is most necessary that the Church by Doctrine and Decree; Princes by their Sword; And all Learnings, both Christian and Morall, as by their Mercury Rod; Doe Damne and send to Hell, for ever, those Facts and Opinions, tending to the Support of the same; As hath beene already in good part done. Surely in Counsels Concerning Religion, that Counsel of the Apostle would be prefixed; Ira hominis non implet justiciam Dei. And it was a notable Observation of a wise Father, And no lesse ingenuously confessed, That those which held and perswaded pressure of Consciences, were commonly interessed therein themselves for their owne ends.

IV.

2. THE HISTORY OF KING HENRY VII.

[Written about 1621.]

THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF KING HENRY THE SEVENTH.

AFTER that Richard, the third of that name, King in fact only, but tyrant both in title and regiment,1 and so commonly termed and reputed in all times since, was, by the divine revenge favouring the design of an exiled man, overthrown and slain at Bosworthfield; there succeeded in the kingdom the earl of Richmond, thenceforth styled Henry the seventh. The King, immediately after the victory, as one that had been bred under a devout mother, and was in his nature a great observer of religious forms, caused Te Deum laudamus to be solemnly sung in the presence of the whole army upon the place, and was himself with general applause and great cries of joy, in a kind of military election or recognition, saluted King. Meanwhile the body of Richard, after many indignities and reproaches, the diriges 2 and obsequies of the common people towards tyrants, was obscurely buried. For though the King of his nobleness gave charge unto the friars of Leicester to see an honourable interment to be given to it, yet the religious people themselves, being not free from the humours of the vulgar, neglected it; wherein nevertheless they did not then incur any man's blame or censure: no man thinking any ignominy or contumely unworthy of him that had been the executioner of King Henry the sixth, that innocent Prince, with his own hands; the contriver of the death of the duke of Clarence his brother; the murderer of his two nephews, one of them his lawful King in the present, and the other in the future, failing of him, and vehemently

1

government.

2 funeral hymns, hence dirges.

suspected to have been the impoisoner of his wife, thereby to make vacant his bed for a marriage within the degrees forbidden. And although he were a Prince in military virtue approved, jealous of the honour of the English nation, and likewise a good lawmaker, for the ease and solace of the common people; yet his cruelties and parricides, in the opinion of all men, weighed down his virtues and merits; and, in the opinion of wise men, even those virtues themselves were conceived to be rather feigned and affected things to serve his ambition, than true qualities ingenerate in his judgment or nature. And therefore it was noted by men of great understanding, who seeing his after-acts, looked back upon his former proceedings, that even in the time of King Edward his brother he was not without secret trains and mines to turn envy and hatred upon his brother's government; as having an expectation and a kind of divination, that the King, by reason of his many disorders, could not be of long life, but was like to leave his sons of tender years; and then he knew well how easy a step it was from the place of a protector and first Prince of the blood to the crown. And that out of this deep root of ambition it sprung, that as well at the treaty of peace that passed between Edward the fourth and Lewis the eleventh of France, concluded by interview of both Kings at Piqueny, as upon all other occasions, Richard, then duke of Gloucester, stood ever upon the side of honour, raising his own reputation to the disadvantage of the King his brother, and drawing the eyes of all, especially of the nobles and soldiers, upon himself; as if the King, by his voluptuous life and mean marriage, were become effeminate and less sensible of honour and reason of state than was fit for a King. And as for the politic and wholesome laws which were enacted in his time, they were interpreted to be but the brocage of an usurper, thereby to woo and win the hearts of the people, as being conscious to himself that the true obligations of sovereignty in him failed, and were wanting. But King Henry, in the very entrance of his

8 in 1475.

4 mean practices.

reign, and the instant of time when the kingdom was cast into his arms, met with a point of great difficulty, and knotty to solve, able to trouble and confound the wisest King in the newness of his estate; and so much the more, because it could not endure a deliberation, but must be at once deliberated and determined. There were fallen to his lot, and concurrent in his person, three several titles to the imperial crown. The first, the title of the lady Elizabeth, with whom, by precedent pact with the party that brought him in, he was to marry. The second, the ancient and long disputed title, both by plea and arms, of the house of Lancaster, to which he was inheritor in his own person. The third, the title of the sword or conquest, for that he came in by victory of battle, and that the king in possession was slain in the field. The first of these was fairest, and most likely to give contentment to the people, who by two and twenty years reign of King Edward the fourth had been fully made capable of the clearness of the title of the white rose or house of York; and, by the mild and plausible reign of the same King toward his latter time, were become affectionate to that line. But then it lay plain before his eyes, that if he relied upon that title, he could be but a King at courtesy, and have rather a matrimonial than a regal power; the right remaining in his Queen, upon whose decease, either with issue or without issue, he was to give place and be removed. And though he should obtain by parliament to be continued, yet he knew there was a very great difference between a King that holdeth his crown by a civil act of estates, and one that holdeth it originally by the law of nature and descent of blood. Neither wanted there even at that time secret rumours and whisperings, which afterwards gathered strength, and turned to great troubles, that the two young sons of King Edward the fourth, or one of them, which were said to be destroyed in the Tower, were not indeed murdered, but conveyed secretly away, and were yet living: which, if it had been true, had prevented the title of the lady Elizabeth.

5 agreement.