after he had put to his helping hand, then he had his prayer granted. Nor must we think so of providence, that we must think ourselves nothing. Plotonus in Theod. de Providentia Dei, fol. 98. O that men would seriously consider, that a more pernicious tenet to the Kings themselves cannot be hatched, for the subjects will continually be suspicious of their princes, and so will never love them truly, so long as Kings nourish their basilisks. Arist, Rhet. Lib. vii. For what more hopes can we have of Kings than of popes, unless God would by his extraordinary means enlighten them? We have read into what exorbitances popes, (tho' grave and learned men, have run unto, by reason they bolstered up themselves by this tenet, of being answerable to none but God, till at last they were reduced to censure by the council of Basil. All that can be pretended in reason, why we should not resist evil princes, is, because that civil wars will follow, and so there will be greater bloodshed: I answer, we do usually remember evils better than benefits, for the one is written in marble, the other in sand. It happens so sometimes; but sure I am, that, after their removals, the next three or four successors will be more cautelous, and so will their friends be that shall take their parts.. Caligula and Nero died without revenge, and in good time, or else, I think, they would not have left a senator. Observe but the princes that succeeded Nero, until you come to Domitian, and you shall find the Romans were not weary of them, and likewise after Domitian again. But here my pen shall stop, and we will leave the lawyer in good hopes, to get the cause against the tyrant, for, if the council will not judge, yet the tyrant will judge himself; for, when he judged by the law, he is judged by his own word; for, by his word and will, it was made when he was King; but, if this will not serve, his law books the lawyer will burn, and he will never study more, unless in the court. Tyrannicarum Crudelitatum Exempla. Astulphus in Offcina. Hist. Lib. iii. cap. 6.

THE

CHARACTER OF AN OXFORD INCENDIARY.

Printed for Robert White, in 1643. Quarto, containing eight pages.

ΑΝ

N Oxford incendiary is a court salamander, whose proper element is fire: An Englishman, yet lives by antiperistasis to his native climate, and turns our northern temperate into the torrid zone. All antient philosophers are by him confuted, having made one region more of fire than they dreamed of; nor is it any wonder, seeing he creates new prodigies every day.

I suppose him lineally descended from St. George's fiery dragon and, if you please to inquire of Doctor Heylin, he may chance to make good the heraldry. But, whosoever was the sire, mother he hath none that I can hear of; nor do I believe that nature, our common mother, will own the monster. For his name, you may, if you please, make bold with Ovid, and call him Phaeton, for he rules the chariot of the sun, and, having gotten the reins in his own hand, hurries all into combustion; yet the desperate wretch cares not, so he may work a metamorphosis upon the nation, or mingle his own with the kingdom's ashes.

His birth-place I take to be Mount Etna; there Empedocles acted the man-midwife, and delivered him out at the tonnels. If the pope want a leiger for purgatory, none can fit him better; he being of a constitution and religion suitable to the service.

But his employment must be altogether at home, else the deluded fraternity will grow chill in their designs here; and to them there's no sport without a fire drake, or an Ignis Fatuus.

To be a little more plain; an Oxford incendiary is the excrement of ill-governed monarchy; the vast volume of treason wrapped up in an epitome; one that feeds the vulture prerogative with the carcase of the commonwealth, that it may disgorge into his own coffers; and makes a mule, to say no worse of Majesty, to carry him through all his own private designs against the publick.

Yet, notwithstanding his proper sphere is the court, there he shines a bright constellation of royal favour, though the whole kingdom beside take him for a prodigious comet, and behold him with the same countenance as they did that in the year 1618. Nor is it without reason, when the meanest prognosticator cries, that he portends the ruin of some great princes. Upon his influence depends the almanack of treason, exactly calculated for the several meridians of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland; for from thence you may judge of all eclipses between King and parliament, or tell what weather will be in Great Britain the whole year following.

Thus Jupiter and Mars, meeting in conjunction at York, with a direful aspect threatened misery to the nation; though it produced no effect, till an interposition of malignants at Shrewsbury, and an oblique course of Venus from Holland, bade us expect a deluge of blood.

Indeed it may serve for Great Britain and Ireland, with very little' (or no) difference; for the tragedy and actors are the same, only the scenes are several, the better to dress out the plot, and make it seem more intricate: Thus the rare Irish commission was begotten of English parents, when the Earl of Antrim was made a godfather to the design; though Ormond had rather forfeit his honour and conscience, than say they were English hands which cut the protestants throats with an Irish knife.

But this is not all, the train of gunpowder reaches to Scotland; and there they light matches to blow up the fidelity of that nation: Which not taking effect upon the heads, then squib-cracks are tied to the very breech of Thule, to set fire on the highland wilderness; for in such

barren places is their harvest: Rare vipers! who thrive best out of the sun-shine, in the dark caves of barbarism and ignorance.

But stand off, or provide an antidote: The most prodigious serpent comes crawling this way; some monstrous African or American, for sure it is not of the British brood; yet every cavalier carries it in his bosom, like a tame snake: It is the commission of array, a very flying dragon hatched in a conventicle of spit-fires; an illegitimate by-blow to supplant the militia. It was spawned at Whitehall; there the cockbrained crew ingendered with their master's female understanding: At York it became an egg, O that it had then been crushed! But afterwards, scarce pen-feathered, it ventured a flight toward Hull; yet fell short, and was sore bruised. Notwithstanding this, it crept to Nottingham; and there, in hope of recovery, voided a standard with a declaration or two, evident symptoms of a bloody flux at hand.

But the leeches, not able to draw blood there, betook themselves westward toward Wales; and then fell to sucking at the nether postern of the kingdom: It was time then to cast the water of the state, and purge out the excrements of the body politick.

Now the game begins; room for the Roman actors: Here the bishops rack themselves in a pulpit, vomiting up daggers, like Hocus, to amaze the people; doctrine cannon-proof, and let the devil make application, so he can convert all to his Majesty's use. If the pope be commander in chief, it is but reason they should be major-generals; and for inferior officers, deans and arch-deacons the only colonels; prebends lieutenant-colonels; big-bellied parsons majors; vicars captains; curates ensigns: And for the rest, they cannot be wanting, when there are whole swarms of the same breed of caterpillars in both universities.

These are spaniels to the incendiary in hope of preferment: He leads them in couples, breeds them to fetch and carry after his own humour, and to be at the word of command: But the sport is, to see a dog handle a drum-stick; yet these docile creatures will do it, and beat up their drums in all churches and chapels, to alarm the people against reformation and the parliament. This black brigade are of the same lineage with the incendiary, he hugs them as his white boy: And to say the truth, there is not a hair's difference between them; the chief of the prelatical clergy being the principal, if not the only fire-men: And therefore it cannot be amiss to present them in the first rank of tragedians, seeing our scene is the precious university of Oxford.

As the prologue before the play, enter Canterbury, the pope's pigmy-champion, the meritorious traitor, the catholick demi-culvering, the Reverend Granado; who lived to set all on fire, yet escaped the martyrdom of hanging to be quenched upon a scaffold; whereas the other kind of death had been more suitable to his life, having always been a pendant in the ear of Majesty. This is he that took water lately at the tower, being bound for the Red Sea; but that, for his presumption in comparing himself with Christ and his apostles, and threatening Charon with the star-chamber, he over-turned the ferry-boat, and let him drop into purgatory: Thus it is to quarrel with a waterman. A broom, a broom; sweep the stage: Here comes religion in slip

shoes and sandals; mistress novelty's gentleman-usher clad in robes of antiquity; the bell-man of the Jewish temple; Aaron in the last edition; Wren turned robin-redbreast, as gay as the bird of Paradise, with his man Pocklynton at his heels: These two, like lightning and thunder, never parted; two diocesan exorcists, that conjured away all godly ministers by bell, book, and candle: Their charms were strong, that nothing could lay them but a parliament, the kingdom's antidote.

Now single out Pocklynton from his master, and couple with him Heylin, two of Canterbury's prime beagles, and as famous as his breed of Smyrna cats. These two held a conspiracy against the sabbath; helped to rear up an altar, with the title of Christianum, set up the ten commandments over it, where they might plainly read themselves sabbath-breakers and idolaters; and yet continued to worship both it and the candlesticks, committing fornication with gold and timber. Nor is this all; Heylin can shew more tricks than one for a bishoprick: To make good the Roman calendar, he will prove St. George a real saint; and then upon this sandy foundation creates an imaginary honour to the most honourable order of the garter; as if the protestant nobility of this kingdom would be taken with Romish gewgaws, or pleased with such trifling fetches: Yet believe me, as the times went, it was a politick fetch for preferment.

And now we talk of preferment, enter Owen Glendour on horse back, Brute's cousin-german, and the top of her kindred, Welch. Williams, the prelate of York: This is the pepper-nosed Caliph, that snuffs, huffs, and puffs ingratitude at the parliament, though they freed him from prison, and put his adversary in his room. Tell him of reformation, and you transform him to a turkycock: A jack-a-lent, made of a red herring and a leek, will not more inflame him, than the name of presbytery: Some kind heart take this incendiary and cool him, or vexation will consume him to ashes.

But I wonder how it comes to pass, that Armagh should be ranked here: The case stood otherwise once; nay, he ebbed so far from his archiepiscopal dignity, as to turn lecturer, and so brought himself into a possibility of heaven, till the old man began to doat upon the world again. I cannot tell to what I may attribute his apostasy; to his climate, or his conscience; his country, or his religion, or both; yet we have found him a right Irishman, and a second Spalato.

It is a rare mystery, that this pageant should be so persecuted by the rebels, as to fly for his life out of Ireland, and yet be able to digest -them and their councils at Oxford. But, was it ever seen, that a bishop would be out with any that were in at the court? This is the prelates heaven; there they are all parallel; though distant in their ends, as in the circumference, yet united in the center: Give their ambition line enough, and you may decoy them whither you please: Thus our quondam Saint Patrick slipped into the bog at Oxford.

I should have done with them now, but that I find another in over head and ears; I mean the brewer in Pontificalibus, Duppa the formal dray-horse, that carries about holy-water in rundlets, to furnish the court, camp, and university: Davis the barber shaves his Majesty

with the very same for there needs no wash-balls, when the exorcism scours beyond soap-suds. This is he that puts down Gunter in his firework protestations against the protestant religion; and then, in his Majesty's name, charges them upon the people. For the same purpose also, he frames inchanted prayers for Christ-church chapel; and so makes the organs, at once, pipe out impiety against heaven, and treason against the state. God bless Prince Charles, for this is his tutor: He cries to him, when you pray, say thus; but what? A Pater noster or two, with a little collect and litany, after the tradition of his fathers; from which, my litany shall be, Good Lord deliver him.

But if you would know him better, let Stewart, the ghost of Arminius, appear, to bring in the catastrophe. These two are brothers, both having the whore of Babylon for their mother; and the sons of Pelagius by heretical adoption. The foundation of old Rome, saith history, was laid in blood; and these Romuli take the same course to be founders of new Rome here in England: The name of peace puts them into a fit of the cholick; it stings like a Tarantula, for nothing will cure them but the musick of war.

Now sound aloud: Avaunt ye black-coats, the court-pageants are entering; Strafford without a head: But, let him pass for a dumb show; the tyrant hath had his exit already by order of parliament.

Who comes next? What, Henrietta Maria! Sure our incendiary is an hermaphrodite, and admits of both sexes: The Irish rebels call her their generalissima; what she willed they acted: She set them on work, and they pay themselyes their wages out of the protestants estates. Because the pope is turned out of doors, she makes the fatal sisters and furies of her privy-council, and proceeds so meritoriously manful, that Kenelm Digby consults now with his holiness, to have her set in the rubrick, by the name of St. Nemesis in breeches. How many breeding fits hath she had since the coming over of Madam -Beldam? And no sooner delivered of one plot, but, within the month, a conception of another, I wonder at Neptune's rage against these two, mother and daughter, for they never crossed the sea but a tempest followed; which shews, that they were not of the Halcyon brood.

But the flame rises not high enough yet; therefore hasten away the two bellows-menders from Holland; Rupert and Maurice, Simeon and Levi: A miracle, that a phenix should bring forth two such vipers! If this be too bold, know that the game is begun, and then all fellows at football: But I spare them, though they are so unnatural, as not to spare that nation which bred them up.

Next, enter a gentleman in disguise, newly landed out of the ship called Providence; Ahitophel junior, with store of Sampson's foxes and firebrands: Pull off his vizard, and his name is George Digby. This is the beardless Solon; Lycurgus newly whipped out of longcoats into the privy-council; Treachery's man-midwife, and Machiavel's catamite; for by him were spawned those desperate aphorisms and positions, of his Majesty's wandering from his parliament. What we wonder at in the rest, is natural to him, being a native Spaniard, to have an antipathy to the weal of our nation; for an atheist, that hath neither religion, nor conscience to sway him, follows the constitution, and