[Page] DENSELL HOLLIS Esq HIS SPEECH At the delivery of the PROTESTATION to the Lords of the upper House of Parliament. 4. May, 1641. Wherein is set forth the reasons that moved the House of Commons to make the said Protestation. Together with a short narration of the severall grievances of the Kingdome.

Printed, for I. A. 1641.

Densell Hollis Esq his Speech at the de­very of the Protestation to the Lords, May the fourth. 1641.

My Lords,

THe Knights, Citizens and Burgesses of the House of Commons, having taken into their consideration the present estate and condition of this Kingdome, they find it surrounded with varietie of pernitious dangers, and destructive designs, practises and plots, against the well being of it, and some of those designs, hatched within our own bowels, and Viper­like working our owne destruction.

[Page 4] They finde Iesuits and Prests conspiring with ill Ministers of State, to destroy our Reli­gion, they finde ill Ministers conioyn'd toge­ther to sobvert our Lawes and liberties. They finde obstructions of Iustice, which is the life­blood of every State, and having a free pas­sage from the Soveraigne power where it is primarily seated as the life-blood in the heart, and there derived from the several Iudicatories, or through so many veines, into all the parts of this great collective Body, doth give warmth and motion, to every part & member, which is nourished and inlivened by it. But being once precluded stoppd, and reared as the particular must of necessity faint and languish, so must the whole frame of Government be dissolved.

And consequently Soveraignty it selfe (which as the heart in the bo [...], is pri [...]um movens, & ultimum moriens, must dye and perish in the generall dissolution, and all things as in the beginning in antiquum Ch [...]os.)

My Lords,

They find the property of the Subiect inva­ded and violated, his estate rent from him by illegall taxations, Monopolies and proiects al­most upon every thing that is for the use of man, not onely upon superfluities but neces­saries: and that to enrich the Vermine and Caterpillers of the Land, and impoverish good [Page 5] Subiects, to take the meat from the Children, and give it to Dogges.

My Lords, If the Commons finde these things, they conceive they must needes bee ill Counsels that have brought us into this condi­tion.

These Counsels have put all into a Combu­stion, have discouraged the hearts of all true English men; and brought two Armies into our bowels, which is the Vulture upon Prome­theus, eates through, and sucks and gnawes our very hearts out.

Hic Dolor, sed ubi Mediei [...]a?

Heretofore Parliaments were the Catholicall, the balme of Gilead, which healed our wounds, restored our spirits, and made up the breaches of the Land.

But of late yeares they have [...] like the fig-tree in the Gospell, without efficacy, with­out fruit, onely destructive to their perticular members, who discharged [...] [...] and con­sciences no way beneficiall to the Common-wealth. Nobis exi [...]iale, nec Reipublico [...]. As hee said in Tacitus, being taken away still as Elias was with a whirle-wind, ne [...]r comming to any maturity, or to their naturall end where­as they should be like the bl [...]ssed old man, who dieth, plenus dierum, in a full age after hee had fought a good fight, and ourcome all his ene­mies, [Page 6] Or as the shocke of wheat, which com­meth in due season to fill our Granaries with corne, uphold our lives with the staffe of bread, for Parliaments are our prius quotidianus, our true bread, all other waies are but Quelkachoes which yeeld no true nourishment, bread, nor good blood.

The very Parliament which hath sate so long, hath but beat the ayre, and strive against the streame, I may truly say the wind and tide, hath still beene against us. The same ill Counsell which first raised the storme, and almost ship­wrackt the Cummon-wealth, they still conti­nue, they blow strong like the East wind, that brought the Locusts over their Counsels, crosse our designes, cast difficulties in our way, hinder our proceedings, and make all that we do to be fruitlesse and ineffectuall: They make us not masters of our businesse, and so not ma­sters of many, which have beene the great busi­nesse of this Parliament, that we might pay the Armies, according to our promises and en­gagements.

For my Lords, our not effecting of the good things which we had undertaken, for the good of the Church and of the Common-wealth; hath wounded our reputation, and taken off from our credit.

Is it not time then, my Lords, that we should unite and concentrate our selves, in regard of [Page 7] this Anteperistasis, of hurtfull and malicious in­tentions and practices against us.

My Lords, it is most agreeable to nature, and I am sure most agreeable to reason, in re­spect of the present coniuncture of our affairs, for one maine Engine by which our enemies worke our mischiefe, is by infusing an opinion & beleef into the world, that we are not united among our selves. But like Sampsons Foxes, we draw severall waies, and tend to severall ends.

To defeat the Counsels of these Achitophels, which would involve us. Our Religion, our being, our Lawes, our liberties, all that can be neere and deere unto an honest soule, in one universall and generall desolation, to defeat I say, the Counsels of evill Achitophels, the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, of the House of Commons (knowing themselves to be spe­cially entrusted with the preservation of the whole, and in their Conscience are perswaded that the dangers are so eminent, as they wil admit of no delay) have thought fit to declare their united affections by entring into an assosciati­on amongst themselves and by making a so­lemne protestation and vow unto their God, that they wil unanimously endevour to oppose and prevent the Counsells and Counsellours which have brough upon us all these miseries and the feares of greater, to prevent the ends and bring the Authors of them to condigne [Page 8] punishment and thereby discharge themselves, better before God and man.

The Protestation your Lordships shall have read unto you, together with the ground and reasone which have induced the House of Commons to make it, which are prefixed before it by way of Preamble. Then the Protestation was read by Mr. Maynard.

FINIS.

This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal. The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.