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PRELIMINARY

DISCOURSE

ON THE

CIVIL WAR AND USURPATION.

THERE is no portion of British History which has so often exercised the pens of our most eminent writers, as that period which is comprehended between the accession of James I. to the throne of England, on the death of the glorious Elizabeth, in 1603, and the expulsion of his grandson James II. in 1688. It was an era fruitful in great men and great events; and to the noble exertions of our ancestors in those times, particularly at the revolution, we are indebted for that well-poised constitution which we enjoy at the present day, and which may safely be pronounced, if not the best system of government, at least, the most entire system of liberty that was ever known amongst mankind.

The object of this preliminary discourse is, to present the reader with such a picture of the civil war and usurpation, as will enable him to judge more accurately of the value of the poem which follows. “Human works,” Dr. Johnson observes, in his critique on Butler, "are not easily found without a perishable part. Of the ancient poets every reader feels the my. thology tedious and oppressive. Of Hudibras, the manners being founded on opinions, are temporary and Local, and therefore become every day less intelligible

and less striking. What Cicero says of philosophy is true likewise of wit and humour, that time effaces the fictions of opinion, and confirms the determinations of Nature. Such manners as depend upon standing regulations and general passions are co-extended with the race of man; but those modifications of life, and peculiarities of practice, which are the progeny of error and perverseness, or, at best, of some accidental influence or transient persuasion, must perish with their parents.

"Much, therefore, of that humour which transported the last century with merriment is lost to us, who do not know the sour solemnity, the sullen superstition, the gloomy moroseness, and the stubborn scruples of the ancient Puritans; or if we knew them, derive our information only from books or from tradition, have never had them before our eyes, and cannot but by recollection and study understand the lines in which they are satirised. It is scarcely possible, in the regularity and composure of the present time, to image the tumuit of absurdity, and clamour of contradiction, that perplexed and disturbed both public and private quiet, in that age when subordination was broken, and awe was hissed away; when any unsettled innovator, who could hatch a half-formed notion, produced it to the public; when every man might become a preacher, and almost every preacher could collect a congregation."

To furnish the reader with an image of those times, and to enable him to enter with a truer relish into those scenes of extravagance of fanaticism, which Butler so inimitably describes, it is necessary for us to take a cursory view of the state of England at the period when the first prince of the house of Stuart mounted its throne. Elizabeth, during the long course of her reign, had carried the glory of the English name to the highest pitch of renown. Firm, politic, and sagacious, reigning in the hearts of her people, and commanding them rather through the influence of their affections than the dread of her authority, she was

equally the delight of her subjects and the terror of her enemies. Of a very different character was her successor. Ungracious, reserved, and prodigal, full of high notions of the kingly power, and impatient of the least restraint on his prerogative, he soon became odious to his subjects at home, and the timidity of his disposition rendered him contemptible to his enemies abroad. James, at his very first meeting with Parliament, disgusted his new subjects. He made a long harangue, expatiating upon the happiness of the nation in his accession to the throne; explaining his sentiments of religion, and enforcing his maxims of government. "It was a cold, tedious, diffuse oration, (says Smollet,) stuffed with pedantic conceits, culled and studied for the occasion; and formed a natural picture of his own disposition and character, the strongest features of which were his sublime notion of the prerogative, his aversion to the Puritans, his tenderness towards the Roman Catholics, and his vanity and self-importance. Instead of that admiration with which he hoped to inspire his audience, he met with little else than disapprobation and contempt. The members were offended at the expressions he used in favour of the Roman Catholics, whom he promised to meet half way in the road of reformation; the Puritans were incensed to find themselves represented by the King as a sect of republicans, that ought not to be tolerated in a monarchical government; and the nation in general were disgusted at his comparing Scotland with England, as one equal half of the island, which he wished to see united under the same religion, laws, and government."

Mrs. Hutchinson, an accurate observer, and faithful recorder of the civil war, in her excellent Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, speaking of the government of James, says, "The honour, wealth, and glory of the nation, wherein Queen Elizabeth left it, were soon prodigally wasted by this thriftless heir; the nobility of the land utterly debased by setting honours to public

sale*, and conferring them on persons that had neither blood nor merit fit to wear, nor estates to bear up their titles, but were fain to invent projects to pillage the people, and pick their pockets, for the maintenance of vice and lewdness."

But the grand cause of difference between James and his subjects, and that which, in the reign of his son, led to the subversion of the monarchy, was the difference of their religious principles. The King was suspected of a secret attachment to popery, which, while he had not the courage to avow, led him to be a strenuous supporter of the discipline and ceremonies of the church of England. There was no class of people whom James detested so much as the Puritans. The Scotch Presbyterians had thwarted him on many occasions; they had treated his person with indecent familiarity, and his power with disrespect; and the republican spirit by which they were animated could not but be extremely odious to a prince who prided himself in cherishing the most arbitrary maxims of absolute monarchy.

Soon after his accession to the English throne, a con ference was held at Hampton Court, between the churchTM

* Sir Anthony Weldon, in his Court and Character of King James, gives us the following instance of the baseness of the courtiers at the accession of James. "Sir Roger Aston (the King's barber) presenting himself before the council, being but a plain untutored man, being asked how he did, and courted by all the Lords, lighted upon this happy reply; "Even, my Lords, like a poor man, wandering above forty years in a wilderness and barren soil, am now arrived at the land of promise." This man was afterwards made gentleman of the bed-chamber, master of the wardrobe, and invested with such honours and offices as he was capable of; but had you seen how the Lords did vie courtesies to this poor gentleman, striving who should engross that commodity by the largest bounty, you could not but have condemned them of much baseness."

person,

anen and dissenters, where the King appeared in not as a judge, but with all the zeal of a warm partisan, and mingled in the debates with great eagerness. His chancellor exclaimed that he had often heard the priesthood was united to royalty, but he was now convinced of that truth by the learned arguments of his majesty. Archbishop Whitgift carried his flattery still higher, in declaring, he was persuaded that the King spoke from the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

"And now," says Mrs. Hutchinson," the King had apon his heart the dealings both of England and Scot land with his mother, and harboured a secret desire of revenge upon the godly of both nations, yet had not the courage to assert bis resentment like a prince, but employed a wicked cunning he was master of, and called kingcraft, to undermine what he durst not openly oppose, the true religion. This was fenced with the liberty of the people, and so linked together, that it was impossible to make them slaves till they were brought to be idolaters of royalty and glorious lust, and as impossible to make them adore these gods while they continued loyal to the government of Jesus Christ. The payment of civil obedience to the King and the laws of the realm satisfied not; if any durst dispute his impositions in the worship of God, he was presently reckoned among the seditious and disturbers of the public peace, and accordingly persecuted: if any were grieved at the dishonour of the kingdom, or the griping of the poor, or the unjust oppressions of the subject, by a thousand ways, invented to maintain the riots of the courtiers, and the swarms of needy Scots the King had brought in to devour, like locusts, the plenty of this land, he was a Puritan: if any, out of mere morality and civil honesty, discountenanced the abominations of those days, he was a Puritan, however he conformed to their superstitious worship: if any showed favour to any godly, honest person, kept them company, relieved them in want, or protected them against violent or unjust oppression, he was a Puritan: if any gentleman in

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