[Illustration: Ace of Clubs. A Free state or a tolleration for all sort of Villany.] [Illustration: Ace of Spades. Bradsha^w, the Iaylor and y^e Hangman keepers of the Liberty of England.] [Illustration: Ace of Diamonds. The High Court of Iustice or Olivers slaughter house.] 1. Ace of Hearts _Cromwell, Ireton and Hudson all in y^e same boate._ In 1650, Cromwell was named Commander-in-Chief in Ireland; Ireton, his son-in-law, his deputy; and Hewson or Huson (here misprinted Hudson) governor of Dublin. In the plate they are sailing away from the sun of loyalty towards the night of treason. The portrait of Cromwell at the stern is not to be mistaken. Next to him is Hewson distinguished from Ireton by his older features. 2. Ace of Clubs _A Free State or a Toleration for all sorts of Villany._ In the _Mystery of the Good Old Cause_* (London 1660) a Royalist attack on the leading members of the Long Parliament, the author says of the Roundheads, "Their pretences were no doubt the most specious and plausible that could be imagined,... but, alas! never were these things more pretended to, and less in reality designed; greatness, wealth and command were the inducements of the most hypocritical persons in the world to profane the name of God ... to murder many innocent persons ... to ruin many noble families, etc., ... but let destruction be the reward of our destroyers, let the prey be torn out of their teeth, let the blood they have shed fall upon their own heads, and let their names be detested and infamous to all posterity!" * Reprinted by the Aungervyle Society. Second Series. 3. Ace of Spades. _Bradshaw, the jaylor and y^e hangman, keepers of the liberty of England._ Bradshaw was appointed president of the High Court of Justice in 1648, a year "of reproach and infamy above all years which had passed before it; a year of the highest dissimulation and hypocrisy, of the deepest villany and most bloody treasons, that any nation was ever cursed with or under: a year, in which the memory of all transactions ought to be erased from all records, lest, by the success of it, atheism, infidelity and rebellion, should be propagated in the world." (_Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_, vol. iii. p. 154, Oxford 1726, folio). He was born in 1586, died in 1659, and his body exhumed and hung in chains at the Restoration. He was a cousin of Milton, who has written a Eulogy of him in his _Second Defense of the People of England_. 4. Ace of Diamonds. _The High Court of Justice or Oliver's Slaughter-House._