Meanwhile a calm retreat is best, But discontent (if not supprest) Will breed disloyaltie; This is the constant note I sing, I have been faithful to the King, And so shall ever be. London, printed for Robert Crofts, at the Crown, in Chancery Lane, 1661. A RELATION. Of Ten grand infamous Traytors, who, for their horrid murder and detestable villany against our late soveraigne Lord King Charles the First, that ever blessed martyr, were arraigned, tryed, and executed in the moneth of October, 1660, which in perpetuity will be had in remembrance unto the world’s end. This is one of the Six Ballads of the Restoration found in a trunk, and sent by Sir W. C. Trevelyan to the British Museum. “No measure threw more disgrace on the Restoration,” says Mr Wright, “than the prosecution of the regicides; and the heartless and sanguinary manner in which it was conducted tended more than any other circumstance to open the eyes of the people to the real character of the government to which they had been betrayed.” Pepys observes on the 20th Oct., “A bloody week this and the last have been; there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered.” The tune is “Come let us drinke, the time invites.” HEE that can impose a thing, And shew forth a reason For what was done against the King, From the palace to the prison; Let him here with me recite, For my pen is bent to write The horrid facts of treason. Since there is no learned scribe Nor arithmaticion Ever able to decide The usurp’d base ambition, Which in truth I shall declare, Traytors here which lately were, Who wanted a phisitian. For the grand disease that bred Nature could not weane it; From the foot unto the head, Was putrefacted treason in it; Doctors could no cure give, Which made the squire then beleeve That he must first begin it. And the phisick did compose, Within a pound of reason; First to take away the cause, Then to purge away the treason, With a dosse of hemp made up, Wrought as thickly as a rope, And given them in due season. The doctors did prescribe at last To give ’um this potation, A vomit or a single cast, Well deserved, in purgation; After that to lay them downe, And bleed a veine in every one, As traytors of the nation. So when first the physicke wrought, The thirteenth of October, {101} The patient on a sledge was brought, Like a rebell and a rover, To the execution tree; Where with much dexterity Was gently turned over. THE SECOND PART. To the same tune. MONDAY was the fifteenth day, As Carew then did follow, {102} Of whom all men I thinke might say In tyranny did deeply wallow; Traytor proved unto the King, Which made him on the gallowes swing, And all the people hallow.