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