Everywhere disgrace and disaster to our country; the French Huguenots cursing our Court for encouraging them to insurrection, and then sending ships against them to Rochelle (though, thank Heaven! scarcely one of our brave sailors would bear arms against their Protestant brethren--officers and men deserting in a body when they discovered against whom they had been treacherously sold to fight); our own fisheries on the east coast sold to the Hollanders, and the capture of one of our Indiamen by Dutch ships; the Barbary corsairs landing on the coast near Plymouth, and kidnapping our countrymen and countrywomen from their village homes, to sell them as slaves to the Moors in Africa; the King of Spain, the very pillar of Popery and persecution, the sworn foe of our religion and our race from the days of the Armada, permitted to recruit for his armies in Ireland; the Government, with Wentworth (traitor to liberty) and Archbishop Laud at the head of it, weak as scorched tow to chastise our enemies abroad, yet armed with scorpions against every defender of our ancient rights at home. The decision but lately given by the judges against the brave and good Mr. Hampden as to ship money, placing our fortunes at the mercy of the Court, who chiefly valued them as meant wherewith to destroy our liberties; Justice Berkeley declaring from the judgment-seat that Lex was not Rex, but that Rex was Lex; thirty-one monopolies sold, thus making nearly every article of consumption at once dear and bad. The sweeping, steady pressure of Lord Strafford's (Mr. Wentworth) "Thorough" wrought into a vexation for every housewife in the kingdom, by the king's petty monopolies. The heavy links of Wentworth's imperious despotism, filed and twisted by Archbishop Laud's petty tyrannies into needles wherewith to torture tender consciences, and wiry ligatures wherewith to tie and bind every limb. "Regulations as to the colours and cutting of vestments, worthy (Aunt Dorothy said) of a court tailor, enforced by cruelties minute and persevering enough for a malignant witch." Dark stories, too, of private wrong, wrought by Wentworth in Ireland, worthy of the basest days of the Roman emperors; tales of royal forests arbitrarily extended from six miles to sixty, to the ruin of hundreds of gentlemen and peasants; disgraceful news of faith broken with Dutch and French refugees welcome to the heart of England since the days of Elizabeth, made secure with rights confirmed to them by James and by King Charles himself, now forbidden by Archbishop Laud to worship God in the way for which their fathers had suffered banishment and loss of all things,--driven to seek another home in Holland, and in their second exile ruining the flourishing town of Ipswich, where they had lived, and carrying over the cloth-trade which was the support of our eastern counties to our rivals the Dutch.