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gracious lord and governor, to the abundant sorrow of our relenting hearts, to whose empty chair we now bow in all reverence, in token of our duty and obedience. For we now too well (O Lords) understand that we have grievously sinned, which hath made your honours give us up a spoil unto robbers, viz. your committees, sequestrators, excisemen, and pursuivants; besides your several instruments of torments, distinguished by the various names of Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels, Majors, Captains, Quarter-masters, and a certain sort of putredinous vermin, that you use to line hedges withal, vulgarly called Dragoons, Troopers, and the like, O Lords; these, besides your continual taxes, collections, assessments, and the like; a burthen that breaks our backs and very hearts, which continually follow one on the neck of another, besides your excises on our very flesh and apparel, with every particular belonging to our trade and livelihoods; our wives, our daughters, our sons, our houses, our beds, our apparel, our horses, our hay, our beeves, our muttons, our lambs, our pigs, our geese, our capons, and the rest of our goods are forced from us, upon free quarters, as they call it; and we poor wretched and languishing wretches, amounting to the number of millions of millions, being sufficiently humbled by all these plagues and punishments (cry to your honours for redress) besides the large portion of our bloods, which from the earth cries unto your honours, even as Abel's did unto heaven; so we to you mighty Lords; we therefore humbly pray and beseech you, that your honours would be graciously pleased (in your omnipotent power) to raise to life again, but to half a dozen thousand poor widows, their dear husbands, and many fatherless children, now in a languishing condition, will for ever magnify your honours for the same; or else your honours must expect the cry of the widow to heaven against you, the curse of the fatherless, and the cry of the earth, which already begins to vomit up that blood in your faces, which so rebelliously and unchristianly you have stained her's withal; she hath yet been a place of pleasure unto you, yielding no contagious air to infect you with those consuming diseases, that now reign amongst your honours, besides so many sorrows, distractions, disorders or passions, that visit your honours' consciences; all earthly creatures have been obedient unto you, mighty Lords. Finally, she hath yielded all things to your contentment, and nothing to your annoyance: We beseech you therefore consider the present miseries of our bodies, as hunger, thirst, nakedness, want of our limbs, deformities, sickness and mortality; the troubles of our minds, as fancies, fears, perplexities, anguishes, and other imperfections; likewise the general scourges that are amongst us, as plagues, wars, and a thousand other hazardous calamities: Look but into our hospitals, we beseech you, and see lazars, cancers, fistulas, ulcers, and rottings, with wolves, sores, and festered carbuncles, frenzies, palsies, lethargies, falling-sicknesses, and lunaries. On the other side, we beseech you to consider the infirmities of our minds; the furious rages, envies, rancours, and corrosives; the unplacable sorrows and desperate passions; the continual hell-torments, and remorse of conscience (for our late forced rebellion against our king) and infinite other sprightish fits and agonies you have brought upon us. Consider, how you have made us incur the heavy displea

sure of the most just and christian prince* that ever reigned in this kingdom; the malice and enmity of our equals; the contempt, ignominy, and reproach of all nations; the continual mocks and scoffs we receive of our inferiors; the fraud and treachery of all sorts and degrees; our frequent molestations by plunderings, sequestrations, loss of goods, limbs, liberties, friends, wives, and children. Consider what intolerable usage hath been to divers people, since the beginning of these unnatural wars,persecuted by the rage and fury of you,who would be called Christians, but indeed the worst of tyrants: What spoiling of our goods, shedding of our bloods, oppressing of innocents, persecution of godly and orthodox ministers †, that the world was not worthy of, as reverend Armagh, Westfield, Featly, Shute, and divers other learned and holy men; in whose places what a litter of foxes have you put into God's vineyard, who root up the tender vines thereof; a crew of such vipers, that are not worth so much as the naming? what deflowering of virgins, abusing of matrons, compulsion unto wickedness and rebellion, and terrifying from all virtue and christian obedience? what inconveniences and miseries have ensued by these unnatural and bloody wars? what alteration of estates and religion, subversion of three flourishing kingdoms, slaughtering of his Majesty's subjects, destroying of cities, and confusion of all order? That it is almost incredible, that so many and so strange calamities could befall so happy a people, as we lately were, in so short a space. We humbly beseech you to consider these our just plaints, and speedily let us enjoy our king, our religion, our laws, our just liberties and estates, lest the anger of the Lord take harness, and arm all the creatures to the revenge of his enemies. He shall put on justice for his breast-plate, and shall take for his helmet certain judgment. He shall take equity as an impregnable buckler, he shall sharpen his dreadful wrath into a spear, and the world shall fight with him against such senseless persons. His throws of thunderbolts shall go directly, and shall be driven, as it were, from a well-bended bow, and shall hit at a certain place. Against them shall the spirit of might stand, and, like a whirlwind, shall divide them, and shall bring all the land of their iniquity to a desart, and shall overthrow the seats of the mighty.

These are shrewd items, high and mighty Lords, and may cause you to peach one another still, and charge thorough and thorough, as well as round, yet the silly Commons will hardly be gulled so; they hope to recover their wits again, and will now listen to his Majesty, as once they might have done and have preserved their now lost estates. The twentieth part, divided amongst so many sharers, comes but to a very little: Waller's might come to some twelve butter-firkins full of gold. John Pym, that lousy esquire, might have been a second Cræsus, had he lived, and Charles his son, a very Dives, in spight of Lincoln'sInn Pump; but he fears no peaching now, nor Hambden, nor Strowd, nor Stapleton neither; their charge will hardly be drawn up till Doomsday in the afternoon, and then the city shall receive their debts on the

K. Charles I.

↑ See a list of these ministers so persecuted and ejected, in Vol. 7.

As seven years.

publick faith, and learn more wit: by which time plundering will be out of request, and Sir Politick-would-be's, those great statists, that draw all into their own coffers, and cry with the devil, ‘All is mine,' will then find to their costs, that their accompts are already cast up, and their reckoning upon the paying: In the mean time, whilst thieves fall out, true folks may come by their goods. Therefore, as the Psalmist saith, Gladius ipsorum intret in corda eorum, i. e. Let their own swords enter into their own hearts, and let their destruction arise from themselves; let them dig their own graves; let them (as they have already) cut off those anchors, that should preserve themselves from shipwreck; let them, like inraged dogs, break their teeth on that stone that is flung at them, not so much as looking at the hand that flings it; whilst we miserable wretches, in this vassalage and servility, are daily oppressed with so many incessant afflictions, worse than an Egyptian bondage, we may cry out with the Israelites, Ingemiscentes propter opera vociferari, i. e. lamenting our intolerable slavery, cry out unto God, from whom (and not from your Pharaoh-like honours) we must expect deliverance. Amen.

Then let the parties, if they find no redress, turn unto the House of Commons, and say, as followeth :

WE humbly beseech you, the knights and burgesses, chosen and put in trust by your several countries, to redress our grievances (not to make us new grievances, to cure our maladies, not, in a desperate madness, to kill us instead of curing us) to keep us from robbing, not to rob us yourselves. That you would, with the eye of compassion, look upon our manifold miseries, before recited, in supplication to the Lords. We must acknowledge and confess, that you have done the part of a body without a head *; and taken great pains, though but to little purpose, in pulling down crosses off the churches, and steeples, and breaking glass-windows, whilst ye have erected greater crosses in our religion and estates, that makes (at this time) the glased windows of our eyes to overflow. You have taken mickle pains, in making votes, orders, and ordinances, yet we never the better, but rather worse and worse; whilst you are divided amongst yourselves, you have divided our inheritance; and divided the King from his royal spouse, children, and parliament, and would have divided him from his honour and coronation-oath; divided the souls from our bodies as well as our shoes; divided religion into a thousand sects, schisms, heresies, and blasphemies, even against the Persons in the Sacred Trinity: And now will you leave us in this mist of errors and calamities, and every one take shipping, as lately Waller, Stapleton, Nichols, and many others? which increaseth our fears, that you will give but an ill account of so many of our lives, so much of our estates,&c.&c,&c. you may guess what I mean. You may give losers leave (through lamentable experience) to speak, though I believe to little purpose; therefore, vale, our trust is in the Lord, &c.

• Forasmuch as the House of Commons represents the body of the nation, which are the people, over whom the King only is the head,

Here let all the people sing Psalm xliii. Judge and revenge, &c. And then, facing about to Henry the Seventh's Chapel, let all the people rehearse the articles of their new reformed faith; and after say, as folLoweth :

MOST holy fathers, whether universal, national, provincial, consistorial, classical synodians, whose learned consultations, pious debates, sacred conclusions, spiritual decrees, evangelical counsels, infallible divinity, hath cost us so many thousand pounds, for the space of almost these five years, to compose the two tables of the law and the gospel, the ordinance for tithes, and the directory; we magnify your sanctity, we adore your holy reformation, and highly commend your unerring spirits, for the great pains you have taken in your several sciences of equivocations, mental reservations, false glosses, comments, paraphrases, expositions, opinions, and judgments, that for a long time have cheated and deluded us; for your pious zeal and affection for the cause, in setting us on to kill one another, and freely to venture all, all but the tenths, tithes, offerings, and oblations; those are yours jure divino; besides all the fat benefices and goodly revenues that belong unto you, besides the four shillings a day, and the fees of your classical courts, and the ten groats for drinking a Sundays. We beseech ye, by all these, pray against the plaguy diseases your hypocrisy hath brought upon the two houses of parliament, and the whole kingdom, by heresy, poverty, impeachments, banishments, and the like, Amen.

Then let the people sing the forty-first Psalm, and so depart.

THE

ARRAIGNMENT AND ACQUITTAL

OF

SIR EDWARD MOSELY, BARONET,

Indited at the King's-Bench Bar for a Rape upon the body of Mrs. Anne Swinnerton.

Taken by a reporter there present, who heard all the circumstances thereof, whereof this is a true copy.

London, printed by E. H. for W. L. 1647. Quarto, containing twelve pages. This trial was taken the twenty-eighth day of January in the twenty-third Year of King Charles, Anno Dom. 1647.

IIR Edward Mosely, Baronet, indicted for felony and rape, upon the body of one Anne Swinnerton (wife to one Mr. Swinnerton, a gentleman of Gray's-Inn.) This trial was taken, the twenty-eighth day of January in the twenty-third year of King Charles, Anno Dom. 1647, before Mr. Justice Bacon, and Mr. Justice Rolls, in Hilary Term, in Banco Regis.

First, Sir Edward Mosely appeared at the bar, and pleaded not guilty. Then Mr. Swinnerton and his wife appeared to give evidence. Then the Court demanded of Mr. Swinnerton, what council he had ready to open the indictment; Mr. Swinnerton answered, that there had been such tampering with him and his witnesses to stop the prosecution, that he could get no lawyers to open his wife's case. The court asked him whether he had spoken with any lawyers to be of his council; he said he had, but none would undertake it, only Mr. Cooke had promised him that he would open the indictment for him, but he appears not; so that, by the tampering of Sir Edward Mosely, Mr. Lowder, Mr. William Stanley, Mr. Blore, Mr. Brownnell, and twenty more, none would assist him in maintaining of the indictment. These gentlemen, beforenamed, appeared in court, and did not deny, but that they did use what means they could, in a fair way, to put up the business betwixt Sir Edward Mosely and Mrs. Swinnerton, which they conceived they might lawfully do, believing it could not possibly be a rape, having had intelligence of some former passages in it. Then the court said, Mr. Swinnerton, if you had desired council, the court would have assigned you council. Then Mr. Swinnerton proceeded with his evidence, saying, coming home to my chamber, about six of the clock in April, 1647, I found Sir Edward Mosely came rushing out of my chamber, and I, entering, saw my wife thrown upon the ground, with all her cloaths torn, the bed cloaths torn, and hanging half way upon the ground, my wife crying and wringing her hands, with her cloaths all torn off her head, and her wrist sprained, Sir Edward Mosely having thrown her violently upon the ground; whereupon, seeing her in this condition, I asked her what was the matter; she said Sir Edward Mosely had ravished her. Mr. Swinnerton further informed the court, that Sir Edward Mosely, two or three days before he did the rape, said that he would ravish my wife, though he were sure to be hanged for it. Then Mrs. Swinnerton began her evidence, saying, Upon my oath here I swear, that he said he would force me to my bed; and then he swore, God damn him, he would lie with me, though he were sure to die for it: Then he takes me, and carries me to a narrow place, betwixt the wall of the bed, and, with his hands, forced my hands behind me, and lay with me, whether I would or no. Then Sir Edward Mosely interrupted her, saying, Did not your husband come to the chamber-door at that time you pretended you were ravished, and knocked at the door, and I would have opened the door for him; whereupon you said it is my husband, let the drunken sot stay without, and would not suffer me to open the door, and asked her whether she did not say so? She said it was false. Then the court demanded of Mr. Swinnerton, what he said to his wife, when he found her in this manner. Mr. Swinnerton answered, I said, if she were ravished, as she said she was, she must take her oath of it, and indict him for it; and, if she did not, he must believe that she had played the whore with him, and he would turn her off, and live no more with her, and she should be Sir Edward Mosely's whore altogether: but, said he, being desirous to be further satisfied in the business, I often sought for Sir Edward Mosely, but could not find him, for he had fled away from his chamber.

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