in a Declaration, not fully three months before,¹ did avow all they had done to have beene for hys Maties greatnesse, honor, and support; and, a little after, that they had beene ever careful! not to have desired any thing might weaken the Crowne, eyther in just promt or usefull power, and who, ye 31 of December,² affirmed themselves ready to spend the last drop of their blood to mayntayn hys Crowne and Royall person in greatnesse and glory,nowto tell hym they will dispose of the strength of ye kingdome without hym, when certaynly no more usefull power can pertayn to Maty, then not to have a people punished by a law to wcll he assents not, nor any thing more against the honor and greatness of a Monarch then to deprive hym thus of the Protection he owes hys subjects. On these considerations, I know, many held it a thing of dangerous consequence to have men punisht by orders of ys Howses interpreted by themselves, wcl1 thing I myself afterward had a sufficient experyment of.
   20. And from hynce the Royalists will have the rise of our miseries to have sprung; as, not taking that Prince to beegin ye war that first arms hymself, but he that doth (and persists in it) the first so apparent injury as the other can have no possible way of redressing it but force, nor any means to maynteyn himself and his but war. Now if it were ye right of the King, nothing to bee ligatory wtilout hys assent, hys subjects to have no law imposed on them but such Acts as hymself gives way to, and the howses would the contrary, enforcing men to raise arms on a pretence of a necessity wch it was not easy to find, the kingdome wthout an enemy abroad, in firme peace at home, no styr imaginable, unless from the papist (as they suggested),³ whose number and depressions made them seeme rather contemptible
   ¹   Collect, of Orders, p. 16.—T.
    ²   Ibid. p. 44.—T.
    ³   Collect, of Orders, torn. i. p. 97.—T.