the duty he owes to his generation, and to mankind, to endeavour, by all rational means, to free the world of this pest. Let not other nations have the occasion to think so meanly of us, as if we resolved to sit still and have our ears bored, or that any discouragements or disappointments can ever make us desist from attempting our liberty, till we have purchased it, either by this monster's death, or by our own. Our nation is not yet so barren of virtue, that we want noble examples to follow amongst ourselves. The brave Sindercomb hath shewed as great a mind as any old Rome could boast of; and, had he lived there, his name had been registered with Brutus and Cato, and he had had his statues as well as they.

But I will not have so sinister an opinion of ourselves (as little generosity of slavery hath left us) as to think so great a virtue can want its monuments even amongst us. Certainly in every virtuous mind there are statues reared to Sindercomb. Whenever we read the elogies of those that have died for their country; when we admire those great examples of magnanimity, that have tired tyrant's cruelties; when we extol their constancy, whom neither bribes nor terrors could make betray their friends; it is then we erect Sindercomb statues, and en. grave him monuments; where all that can be said of a great and noble mind, we justly make an epitaph for him; and, though the tyrant caused him to be smothered, lest the people should hinder an open murder, yet he will never be able either to smother his memory, or his own villainy. His poison was but a poor and common device to impose only on those that understood not tyrants practices, and are unacquainted, if any be, with his cruelties and falshoods. He may therefore, if he please, take away the stake from Sindercomb's grave, and, if he have a mind it should be known how he died, let him send thither the pillows and feather beds with which Barkstead and his hangman smothered him. But to conclude, let not this monster think himself the more secure that he hath suppressed one great spirit ; * he may be confident that Longus post illum sequitur ordo idem peten. tium decus.

His

There is a great roll behind, even of those that are in his own mus. ter-rolls, and are ambitious of the name of the deliverers of their country; and they know what the action is that will purchase it. bed, his table, is not secure, and he stands in need of other guards to defend him against his own. Death and destruction pursue him where ever he goes; they follow him every where, like his fellow travellers, and at last they will come upon him like armed men. Darkness is hid in his secret places, a fire not blown shall consume 'him; it shall go ill with him that is left in his tabernacle. He shall 'flee from the iron weapon, and a bow of steel shall strike him through; because he hath oppressed and forsaken the poor; because ' he hath violently taken away the house which he builded not;' We may be confident, and so may he, that e're long all this shall be accomplished: For the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the

And what may Cecil and Toop expect for their treachery and perjury!

joy of the hypocrite but for a moment. Though his Excellency * 6 mount up to the heavens, and his head reacheth unto the clouds, yet ' he shall perish like his own dung. They that have seen him shall 6 say, where is he?'

Courteous Reader,

POSTSCRIPT.

EXPECT another sheet or two of paper of this subject, if I escape the tyrant's hands, although he gets (in the interim) the crown upon his head; which he hath, underhand, put his confederates on to petition his acceptance thereof.

DISCOVERY AND CONFESSION,

Made in the Time of his Sickness in the Tower.

WITH ALLOWANCE.

London, printed for R. Lee, without Bishopsgate, 1689. Folio, containing two pages.

THE dreadful apprehension of a future being, to a soul so ill

prepared, and the terrors of conscience under the visitation of heaven, are of that sad weight, that no thought can imagine, but his that groans under it. When I turn my eyes inward, I can look upon myself, as no other than the unhappiest of men, loaded with infamy, misery, imprisonment, and almost despair, but, above all, with the universal hatred of a kingdom; so universal, that I stand the very center of shame, whilst every tongue that reviles, each eye that loaths, and every finger that points, seems to terminate in miserable me, Such is my hard fate, and such my serious reflexions, that I believe, had my faults been ten-fold greater than they are, it was impossible for me to disoblige mankind, in all my exalted glory, but half so much as I have pleased them in my fall: So naturally lovely, in the English eyes, does the distress and ruin of tottering greatness look, where they seem but just.

But all these accumulated calamities are but my lightest burthen; for, alas! how justly, and more sadly mad, I cry out with falling Wolsey, Had I served my God with half that zeal I served my king, he would not have left me thus wretched.' Wretched indeed! when my weakness of body calls me to consider, how near I may stand to that tribunal, before which the proudest of

* He hath now left that title for Highness, and will shortly leave that for King.

earthly judges, potentates, and princes tremble. The summons from that terrible judge is such an alarm, that what would I do, if possible, to soften that almighty justice, that stands armed against me? Could the confession of my crimes make the least part of their atonement, how happy should I think myself in un. bosoming my whole soul, even to my secretest and minutest thoughts? The sense of which makes me borrow from my pains these few favourable, though distracted minutes, to use that candour and openness, before I leave the world, that may reconcile it, if possible, amongst all its odium and aversion, to, at least, one chari. table thought of me.

But, alas! before I come to the sad narrative of those numerous ills I have committed; before I launch down into that deep torrent, my aking heart and sad remembrance lead me up to the fatal fountain. head, from whence they took their rise; and there, to my confusion, I am forced to acknowledge, my crimes are scarce so black, as the polluted source they sprung from. For, whereas ambition, interest, honours, those smiling court-beams, the common ignes fatui, are those gaudier snares, that mislead the wandering steps of other offending statesmen; I cannot but shamefully confess, that a viler and sootier coal, rancour and malice, warped me crooked.

The two famous occasions of my rising spleen, and bitterness of spirit, proceeded from the parliament's bringing me upon my knees for my abhorring of petitions; and, next, the City of London's turning me out of my recordership.

The anger, the rage, the spight I conceived at this double disgrace and affront, was the first accursed gall that poisoned me; a resent. ment that struck me so deep, and so cankered every faculty of my soul, that what is it I did not study, contrive, and plot to be re tenged? I profess, in the agony of my thought, I was a hundred times not only thinking, but resolving, if no other means, to turn wizard, to wreak my malice upon my enemies, had my small belief (heaven forgive me) of either a God or a devil, persuaded me there was any such creature as a witch, or such an art as sorcery.

As for that damned town of London, not Cataline, against Old Rome, was half so sworn a foe, as I, against that insolent proud city. Really and sincerely, I could willingly and heartily, out of my own pocket, though I sold my last rag in the world, have been myself at the charge of a new monument, so I had had but the pleasure of a second same occasion of building it. Nay, verily, I envied the fate of the old Erostratus, and that more modern worthy, Hubart; and could have wished my own name, though at the price of his destiny, engraven in the very room of that wisely rased-out inscription, on so glorious occasion.

It was then, alas! edged and enraged with a mortal hate, and an avowed vengeance against that accursed and detested city, and more detested parliaments, with two such meritorious qualifications. I applied myself to the once great Coleman's greater master, at that time an early, and indeed almost governing pilot at the helm; both in. fallible recommendations to entitle me to the highest hopes of the

most exalted honours. In short, I entered, listed, and swore myself engineer general under that leading hero's banners; and how hugged, and how embraced, my succeeding almost deluge of good fortune, glories, and preferments, will sufficiently testify.

And, though the world has sometimes wondered, at so sudden a rise, as, in little more than seven years, to mount from a Finsbury petty-fogger, to a Lord High-Chancellor of England; from bawling at a hedge-court-bar for a five shillings fee, to sit equity-driver, with ten-thousand pounds per annum, besides presents and bribes un. accountable, honestly gotten. But, alas! to rectify the mistakes of mankind, and suppress their astonishment at so unprecedented an advance, I must assure them, that as no history affords a parallel of such a crown-favourite as myself; so no age ever yielded such a true crown-drudge neither, to deserve those favours. Alas! my darling fortune moved not half so rapid, as my dearer counsels drove; and all the caresses of my glory were thought but the poorest mead and reward of those services that gained them.

But, to recite my fatal particulars. Upon my first entrance (as I was saying) of engineer-general, our first great attack was against the charter of London; and, to the honour of my premier effort, what by our terrible dead-doing quo warranto, my own invented battering ram, planted against them at Westminster, and the Towerhill guns removed, and mounted against them on the Tower battlements; we soon reduced that imperious town, to almost as intire a subjection and vassalage, as our own hearts, and our Roman friends, could wish.

Next, for these prerogative-crampers, those checkmates of crowns, called parliaments, there our triumph was absolute; we prorogued or dissolved, and danced them from pillar to post, from Westminster to Oxford, &c. at pleasure; and heaven knows, with timely, prudent, and wise care, to hush their too impudently inquisitive curiosity into our Coleman's packets, our Le Chaise and Lewis intrigues, and the rest of our Popish plots and cabals; and all, God knows, little enough to keep our cloven foot undiscovered.

Flushed with such prosperous success, even in my infant mischiefs, what was it that I either staggered or shrunk at? My temptations so allured me, my rewards so dazzled me, and my felicity so hardened me, that moderation, reluctance, or humanity, were only so many manacles and shackles, that my impatient soul threw off with disdain.

Who, alas! but I, with so much unrelenting and pitiless barbarity, triumphed in the blood of those poor miserable western wretches; and sanguined my very ermins in their gore, till even the air, with the noisomeness of their carcasses, stunk almost as much, if possible, as the very name of Jefferies their butcher? Yes, and I acted by the commissioning vengeance that sent me thither, to inform the heretick enemies of Rome, how much their blood tickles when it streams; and to let them know by the sample of my hand, how keen is a Popish edge tool.

Was it not I too, that with so much cunning and artifice, and by so many rhetorical high-treason flourishes, wheedled poor Cornish to a gibbet, and Russel to a scaffold? Yes, and it was a master-piece! to give the trembling world a timely warning what Protestant zeal must trust to, when Popish malice is pleased to be angry; and to convince how easily can a jesuitical engine wire-draw guilt, where Popish rancour is resolved to destroy.

Who dissolved all the charters, and new-garbelled all the corporations, but Jefferies? And why, but to prepare them to understand that, what with our quo warranto's, and the rest of our modelling tools, we were resolved, at last, to have parliaments a la-mode de Paree, and their dragoon-reformers too, soon after.

Who invented that insnaring command to the bishops, of reading the declaration, and put their refusal to the stretch of high misdemeanor, if not high treason, but the chancellor? And why, think you, but to satisfy them what Romish eye sores are the Protestant lawn-sleeves; and that they shall want neither justles nor stumbling blocks to trip their heels up, and their heads off too, when they stand in our way?

Who but the great Jefferies, in defiance of the very fundamentals of human society, the original laws of nature, and to the face of Magna Charta itself, got the Bishop of London silenced and suspended, without so much as that universal and common right, sacred even amongst heathens and infidels, viz. the privilege of making either plea or defence, condemned, untried, and unheard? Yes, I did it; to instruct the world what feeble cobweb-lawn are the bonds of justice, law, liberty, common-right, &c. in the hands of an imperial Popish Sampson Agonistes?

Was it not I too, by my ecclesiastick, high-commission supremacy, not only against the statutes and customs of the university, but the positive laws of the land, turned Maudlin-College into a seminary of Jesuits, and, in spight of that bulwark of the Church of England, the act of uniformity, converted a collegiate chapel, into a masshouse? And by the same justice, might not every collegiate, cathe. dral, and parochial church have had the same conversion? And both the fountains of religion and learning, the mother universities, been deprived of all her Protestant sous, and re-peopled with the whole race of St. Omer, and Salamanca ?

Who did all this? The Chancellor! yes, and he saved the Church of England, and the whole English liberty, by it. The nation was lulled into so profound a sleep, that they wanted such thunderclaps, and such a Boanerges, to awaken them from their lethargy.

With these serious reflexions, that these rapid and violent motions of the Romish cause, are, and have been the destruction of it; who has been the Protestants champion, but I? Who has pulled off the vizor from the scarlet whore, and exposed the painted Babylon prostitute, but I? And if I drove like Jehu, it was only to the confusion of a Jezabel. Who called in the deliverer of our church and laws, that second Hannibal, that mighty Nassau, but Jefferies? Who has re-mounted the sinking glory of our temples, till their