The court of this king [James I] was a nursery
of lust and intemperance; he had brought
in with him a company of poor Scots, who,
coming into this plentiful kingdom, were
surfeited with riots and debaucheries, and
got all the riches of the land only to cast
away. The honor, wealth, and glory of the
nation, wherein Queen Elizabeth left it,
were soon prodigally wasted by this thriftless
heir; and the nobility of the land was utterly
debased by setting honors to public sale,
and conferring them on persons that had neither
blood nor merit fit to wear, nor estates
to bear up their titles, but were fain to
invent projects to pill
>> note 2 the
people, and pick their purses for the maintenance
of vice and lewdness. The generality of
the gentry of the land soon learned the
court fashion, and every great house in
the country became a sty of uncleanness.
To keep the people in their deplorable
security, till vengeance overtook them,
they were entertained with masks, stage
plays, and various sorts of ruder sports.
They began murder, incest, adultery, drunkenness,
swearing, fornication, and all sort of
ribaldry, to be no concealed but countenanced
vices, because they held such conformity
with the court example. * * *
As the fire is most fervent in a frosty
season, so the general apostasy from holiness,
if I may so call it, and defection to lewdness,
stirred up sorrow, indignation, and fear,
in all that retained any love of God in the
land, whether ministers or people; the ministers
warned the people of the approaching judgments
of God, which could not be expected but to
follow such high provocations; God in his
mercy sent his prophets into all corners
of the land, to preach repentance, and cry
out against the ingratitude of England, who
thus requited so many rich mercies that no
nation could ever boast of more; and by these
a few were everywhere converted and established
in faith and holiness; but at court they
were hated, disgraced, and reviled, and in
scorned had the name of Puritan fixed upon
them. * * *
The king had upon his heart the dealings
both of England and Scotland with his mother,
>> note 3 and
harbored a secret desire of revenge upon
the godly in both nations, yet had not
courage enough to assert his resentment
like a prince, but employed a wicked cunning
he was master of, and called king-craft,
to undermine what he durst not openly oppose — the
true religion; this was fenced with the
liberty of the people, and so linked together,
that it was impossible to make them slaves,
till they were brought to be idolaters
of royalty and glorious lust; and as impossible
to make them adore these gods, while they
continued loyal to the government of Jesus
Christ. The payment of civil obedience
to the king and the laws of the land satisfied
not; if any durst dispute his impositions
in the worship of God, he was presently
reckoned among the seditious and disturbers
of the public peace, and accordingly persecuted;
if any were grieved at the dishonor of
the kingdom, or the griping of the poor,
or the unjust oppressions of the subject,
by a thousand ways, invented to maintain
the riots of the courtiers, and the swarms
of needy Scots the king had brought in
to devour like locusts the plenty of this
land, he was a puritan; if any, out of
mere morality and civic honesty, discountenanced
the abominations of those days, he was
a puritan, however he conformed to their
superstitious worship; if any showed favor
to any godly honest persons, kept them
in company, relieved them in want, or protected
them against violent or unjust oppression,
he was a puritan: in short, all that crossed
the views of the needy courtiers, the proud
encroaching priests, the thievish projectors,
the lewd nobility and gentry — whoever
was zealous for God's glory or worship,
could not endure blasphemous oaths, ribald
conversation, profane scoffs, sabbath breaking,
derision of the word of God, and the like — whoever
could endure a sermon, modest habit or
conversation, or anything good — all
these were puritans; and if puritans, then
enemies of the king and his government,
seditious, factious, hypocrites, ambitious
disturbers of the public peace, and finally,
the pest of the kingdom. Such false logic
did the children of darkness use to argue
with against the hated children of light,
whom they branded besides as an illiterate,
morose, melancholy, discontented, crazed
sort of men, not fit for human conversation,
as such they made them not only the sport
of the pulpit, which was become but a more
solemn sort of stage, but every stage,
and every table, and every puppet-play,
belched forth profane scoffs upon them,
the drunkards made them their songs, and
all fiddlers and mimics learned to abuse
them, as finding it the most gameful way
of fooling. Thus the two factions in those
days grew up to great heights and enmities
one against the other.
The face of the court was much changed in
the change of the king, for King Charles
was temperate, chaste, and serious; so that
the fools and bawds, mimics and catamites,
of the former court, grew out of fashion;
and the nobility and courtiers, who did not
quite abandon their debaucheries, yet so
reverenced the king as to retire into corners
to practice them. Men of learning and ingenuity
in all arts were in esteem, and received
encouragement from the king, who was a most
excellent judge and a great lover of paintings,
carvings, gravings, and many other ingenuities,
less offensive than the bawdry and profane
abusive wit which was the only exercise of
the other court. But, as in the primitive
times, it is observed that the best emperors
were some of them stirred up by Satan to
be the bitterest persecutors of the church,
so this king was a worse encroacher upon
the civil and spiritual liberties of his
people by far than his father. He married
a papist, a French lady,
>> note 4 of
a haughty spirit, and a great wit and beauty,
to whom he became a most uxorious husband.
By this means the court was replenished
with papists, and many who hoped to advance
themselves by the change, turned to that
religion. All the papists in the kingdom
were favored, and, by the king's example,
matched into the best families; the puritans
were more than ever discountenanced and
persecuted, insomuch that many of them
chose to abandon their native country,
and leave their dearest relations, to retire
into any foreign soil or plantation, where
they might, amidst all outward inconveniences,
enjoy the free exercise of God's worship.
Such as could not flee were tormented in
the bishops' courts, fined, whipped,
pilloried, imprisoned, and suffered to
enjoy no rest, so that death was better
than life to them; and notwithstanding
their patient sufferance of all these things,
yet was not the king satisfied till the
whole land was reduced to perfect slavery.
* * *
The example of the French king was propounded
to him, and he thought himself no monarch
so long as his will was confined to the bounds
of any law; but knowing that the people of
England were not pliable to an arbitrary
rule, he plotted to subdue them to his yoke
by a foreign force, and till he could effect
it, made no conscience of granting anything
to the people, which he resolved should not
oblige him longer than it served his turn;
for he was a prince that had nothing of faith
or truth, justice or generosity, in him.
He was the most obstinate person in his self-will
that ever was, and so bent upon being an
absolute, uncontrollable sovereign, that
he was resolved either to be such a king
or none. His firm adherence to prelacy was
not for conscience of one religion more than
another, for it was his principle that an
honest man might be saved in any profession;
but he had a mistaken principle that kingly
government in the state could not stand without
episcopal government in the church; and therefore,
as the bishops flattered him with preaching
up his sovereign prerogative, and inveighing
against the puritans as factious and disloyal,
so he protected them in their pomp and pride,
and insolent practices against all the godly
and sober people of the land. * * * But above
all these the king had another instigator
of his own violent purpose, more powerful
than all the rest, and that was the queen,
who, grown out of her childhood, began to
turn her mind from those vain extravagancies
she lived in at first, to those which did
less become her, and was more fatal to the
kingdom; which is never in any place happy
where the hands which were made only for
distaffs affect the management of scepters. — If
any one object the fresh example of Queen
Elizabeth, let them remember that the felicity
of her reign was the effect of her submission
to her masculine and wise counselors; but
wherever male princes are so effeminate as
to suffer women of foreign birth and different
religions to intermeddle with affairs of
state, it is always found to produce sad
desolations; and it hath been observed that
a French queen never brought any happiness
to England.