Is it possible that you can suffer, that the hereticks should hold them for impious, and condemn those that the faith of the church testifies to reign in the heavens with Jesus Christ, and have command and authority upon all principalities and empires of the earth? Behold how they tender you the hand of this truly happy inheritance, to conduct you safe and sound at the court of the catholic king, and that desire to bring you back again into the lap of the Roman church; beseeching, with unspeakable sighs and groans, the God of all mercy for your sal. vation, and do tender you the arms of the apostolical charity, to embrace you with all christian affection; you that are her desired son, in shewing you the happy hope of the kingdom of heaven. And indeed you cannot give a greater consolation to all the people of the Christian estates, than to put the Prince of the apostles in possesion of your most noble island, whose authority hath been held so long in the kingdom of Great Britain, for the defence of kingdoms, and for a divine oracle, which will easily arrive, and that without difficulty, if you open your heart to the Lord that knocks, upon which depends all the happiness of that kingdom. It is of our great charity that we cherish the praises of the royal name; and that which makes us desire that you and your royal father might be stiled with the names of deliverers, and restorers of the ancient and paternal religion of Great Britain, which we hope for, trusting in the providence of God, in whose hands are the hearts of kings, and who causeth the people of the earth to receive healing, to whom we will al ways labour, with all our power, to render you gracious and favourable: In the interim, take notice, by these letters, of the care of our charity, which is none other than to procure your happiness; and it will never grieve us to have written them, if the reading of them stir but the least spark of the catholick faith, in the heart of so great prince, who we wish to be filled with long continuance of joy, and flourishing in the glory of all virtues. Given at Rome, in the Palace of St. Peter, the 20th of April, 1623, in the third Year of our Popedom. Pope Gregory the Fifteenth having wrote the foregoing letter to the Prince of Wales, it was presented to him by the Nuncio of his holiness in Spain, he being accompanied with the Italian Lords that then were in the court. The Prince of Wales, having received this letter, made the following answer, which was after published. Most Holy Father, I RECEIVED the dispatch from your holiness, with great content; and with that respect, which the piety and care, wherewith your ho liness writes, doth require: It was an unspeakable pleasure to me, to read the generous exploits of the kings, my predecessors; in whose memory, posterity hath not given those praises and elogies of honour, as were due to them: I do believe, that your holiness hath set their ex amples before my eyes, to the end, that I might imitate them in all my actions; for, in truth, they have often exposed their estates and lives for the exaltation of the holy chair; and the courage, with which they have assaulted the enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ, hath not been less, than the care and thought which I have, to the end, that the peace and intelligence, which hath hitherto been wanting in Christendom, might be bound with a true and strong concord; for, as the common enemy of the peace watcheth always to put hatred and dissension amongst christian princes; so I believe that the glory of God requires that we should endeavour to unite them: And I do not esteem it a greater honour to be descended from so great princes, than to imitate them, in the zeal of their piety, in which it helps me very much to have known the mind and will of our thrice honoured lord and father, and the holy intentions of his catholick Majesty, to give a happy concurrence to so laudable a design; for it grieves him extremely to see the great evils, that grow from the division of christian princes, which the wisdom of your holiness foresaw, when it judged the marriage which you pleased to design, between the Infanta of Spain and myself, to be necessary to procure so great a good; for it is very certain, that I shall never be so extremely affectionate to any thing in the world, as to endeavour alliance with a prince, that hath the same apprehension of the true religion with myself: Therefore, I intreat your holiness to believe, that I have been always very far from encouraging novelties, or to be a part of any faction against the catholick, apostolick Roman religion: But, on the contrary, I have sought all occasions, to take away the suspicion, that might rest upon me, and that I will employ myself for the time to come, to have but one religion, and one faith, seeing that we all believe in one Jesus Christ. Having resolved in myself, to spare nothing that I have in the world, and to suffer all manner of discommodities, even to the hazarding of my estate and life, for a thing so pleasing unto God: It rests only, that I thank your holiness, that you have been pleased to afford me the leave; and I pray God to give you a blessed health, and his glory, after so much pains, which your holiness takes in his church. Signed, CHARLES STUART. N. B. These are translations of the two Letters contained in the THE PETITION OF THE GENTLEMEN AND STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. Offered to both Houses, upon Wednesday, being the fifth day of January, 1642; upon the arrival of that news to them, of the bishops late imprisonment. With their appeal to his most excellent majesty. Printed at London, for John Greensmith, 1642. Quarto, containing eight pages. Humbly and plainly sheweth, TH HAT, if the very front of our requests be assaulted with a refusal, before we further declare, we, in all humility and observancy, desire not to be admitted; so may we happily ease ourselves of a danger to be bold where we ought, although not where we may; Yet, if we may be heard to those (we mean yourselves) whose ears cannot and (we dare say) must not, to any whatsoever just requests, we again, as in our former prostration, thus desire you, and, if the expression be more humble, beg of you: First, not to believe this in itself fictitious, humoursome, affronting, and, if not presumptuous, uno cætera diximus, those epithets which we know, but, if not know, wish, from yourselves, are not undeservedly, nor unjustly, nor illegally sent forth against those, who, according to your loss, your too much abused patience (heaven grant a speedier execution to your commands) daily, hourly, abuse, Et Regem et Regnum. Secondly, although we are not vox ipsa academiæ, nor all regentmasters in the cause, yet we hope the liberal sciences may be as prevalent as the mechanical, intruding, not with swords, but knees, which had not yet been bended, but in this alone our impetration. Now, our, most honoured senates, may we now, with what a too tedious preamble lulled you, now again awake you. We, the gentlemen and students of the university of Cambridge, do utterly, from our hearts, shoot back those arrows of aspersion newly cast npon us to be seducers. 240 THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE'S PETITION, &c... To be seducers is an easy matter, you'll say, if sophistry, with her fallacies, may intitle us. But we have sucked better milk from the tears of our mother; our mother, who never yet was more dejected, yet, from the dust, may ride upon the clouds, and in her due time shine, nay outshine the female conquest in the Revelation. The pillars of the mother is the church, you know it all, who Christians are, are those Incarcerati, those who, like Joseph in the pit, or St. Peter with the jailor; those who, with St. Paul, may pray to be let down by a basket (pardon our interruption) may the whole and holy assembly be pleased too, our meaning was good, although the fault of that omission was pardoned before the reiteration. Again, your supplicants, whó, if without guns or feathers, or those, whose reasons are far lighter than their feathers. (Give us leave, yet without musquet-shot, we beseech you, to jog you by the elbow, a term-phrase or adagy, meanly given, if you are given to cavil.) Meanly, that is indifferently; but what need we fear a verbal answer, where too many real are so near at hand? Pro aris et focis was the Romans empress, pro focis for a King, pro aris for a temple, so on their very hearths they did adore a Majesty; so knew a King which way to go to St. Paul's Cathedral, which way to the Exchange. Again, we are ready with our lives and bloods to present all collegiate chapels, if that they lay in our power, as well in interioribus quam exterioribus, not acknowledging more or less divine service, than with what, as in former times our more primitive Christians did, with erected bodies, and drawn weapons, stand to the doxology creed, and responsals to the church. All this we protest, and have hitherto really professed in these too much to be lamented times, although our warrant, so far as we can read, was allowed of by Edward the Sixth, Separata Maria continuatum usque ad annum et tempus vicesimum septimum Caroli Regis. To whose Majesty, whose person, whose religion we appeal to. To his Majesty as God's vicegerent, to his person as God's representative image, to his religion as God himself alone. By this only consequence, Ubi Religio Ibi Templum, Templum Deme, Demus Deum; A DISCOURSE + CONCERNING THE SUCCESS OF FORMER PARLIAMENTS. Imprinted at London, 1642. Quarto, containing fourteen pages. SIR, HAVE, according to my small ability, and the shortness of time, fulfilled your command, in sending to you this brief and plain discourse concerning the ancient opinions and esteem of English parlia ments (for that was all which your desired) without any reflection upon the proceedings of this present parliament: Accept it only as a plain piece of common talk, which I would have delivered, had I been present with you: Such discourses need no dress of rhetorick. The constitution of our English monarchy is by wise men esteemed one of the best in Europe, as well for the strength and honour of the prince, as the security and freedom of the people; and the basis, on which both are founded, is the convenience of that great council the high court of parliament. Without which neither can the prince enjoy that honour and felicity, which Philip de Commines, a foreigner, so much admires, where he delivers what advantages the Kings of England have by that representative body of their people, by whose assistance in any action they can neither want means, or lose reputation. Nor, on the other side, can the people have any possibility of pleading their own rights and liberties. For, in the interim between parliaments, the people are too scattered and confused a body, to appear in vindication of their proper interests; and by too long absence of such assemblies they would lose all: For (as Junius observes) Populus Authoritatem suam tacitè non utendo admittit; sic plerumque accidit ut quod omnes curare tenentur curet nemo, quod omnibus commissum est, nemo sibi commendatum putet. The people insensibly lose their power for want of using it for so it happens, that what all should look after, no man does; what is committed to all, no man thinks his own charge. And in that interim it happens, that those Optimates Regni (as he speaks) who under the prince are intrusted with government, meaning counsellors, judges, and other great magistrates, either through fear, flattery, or private corruption, do often betray the people's rights to the prince, • Vide the 238th article in the Catalogue of Pamphlets in the Harleian Library, |