An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) — John Shaqi
An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661)Evelyn, John
History
An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661)
Evelyn, John
Charles II, King of England, 1630-1685 -- Early works to 1800; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1649-1660 -- Pamphlets
But behold the scean is again changed, not by the Royall party, the Common
Enemy, or a forreign power; but by the despicable _Rumpe_ of a Parliament,
which that _Mountebanke_ had formerly serv'd himself of, and had rais'd
him to that pitch, and investiture: But see withall, how soon these
triflers and puppets of policy are blown away, with all their pack of
modells and childish _Chimaeras_, nothing remaining of them but their
Coffine, guarded by the Souldiers at Westminster; but which is yet lesse
empty then the heads of those Polititians, which so lately seemed to fill
it.
For the rest, I despise to blot paper with a recitall of those wretched
_Interludes, Farces and Fantasms_, which appear'd in the severall
intervalls; because they were nothing but the effects of an extream
gyddiness, and unparallel'd levity. Yet these are those various
despensations and providences in your journey to that _holy land_ of
purchases and profits, to which you have from time to time appeal'd for
the justification of your proceedings, whilst they were, indeed, no other
then the manifest judgments of God upon your rebellion and your ambition:
I say nothing of your hypocriticall fasts, and pretended humiliations,
previous to the succeeding plots, and supposititious Revelations, that
_the godly might fall into the hands of your Captains_, because they were
bugbears, and became ridiculous even to the common people.
And now _Sr._ if you please, let us begin to set down the product and
survey the successe of your party and after all these faces and vertigo's
tell me ingenuously, if the single chastisment which is fallen upon one
afflicted man, and his loyall subjects, distressed by the common event of
war, want of treasure, the seizure of his Fleet, forcing him from his
City, and all the disadvantages that a perfidious people could imagine;
but in fine the crowning him with a glorious _Martyrdome_ for the Church
of God and the liberty of his people (for which his blood doth yet cry
aloud for vengeance) be comparable to the confusion which you (that have
been the conquerours) have suffered, and the slavery which you are like to
leave to the posterities which will be born but to curse you, and to groan
under the pressures which you bequeath to your own flesh & blood? For to
what a condition you have already reduced this once flourishing kingdom,
since all has been your own, let the intolerable oppressions, taxes,
Excises, sequestrations confiscations, plunders, customes, decimations,
not to mention the plate, even to very thimbles and the bodkins (for even
to these did your avarice descend) and other booties, speak. All this
dissipated and squandred away, to gratifie a few covetous and ambitious
wretches, whose appetites are as deep as hell, and as insatiable as the
grave; as if (as the Wise-man speaks) _our time here were but a market for
gain_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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