Great Britain -- History -- Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
The eldest sits upon the throne, his place by birthright
and descent,
“Pacatumque regit Patriis virtutibus orbem;”
upon which throne long may he sit, and reign in peace. That by his just
government, the enemies of ours, the true Protestant Church, of that
glorious martyr, our late sovereign, and of his royal posterity, may be
either absolutely converted, or utterly confounded.
If any shall now ask thee why this narrative was not sooner published,
as neerer to the times wherein the things were acted, he hath the
reason for it in the former lines; which will the more clearly appear
unto his apprehension, if he shall perpend how much cruelty is
requisite to the maintenance of rebellion; and how great care is
necessary in the supporters, to obviate and divert the smallest things
that tend to the unblinding of the people; so that it needs will
follow, that they must have accounted this amongst the great
obstructions to their sales of his majestie’s lands, the devil not
joining with them in the security; and greater to the pulling down the
royal pallaces, when their chapmen should conceit the devil would haunt
them in their houses, for building with so ill got materials; as no
doubt but that he hath, so numerous and confident are the relations
made of the same, though scarce any so totally remarkeable as this, (if
it be not that others have been more concealed,) in regard of the
strange circumstances as long continuances, but especially the number
of persons together, to whom all things were so visibly both seen and
done, so that surely it exceeds any other; for the devils thus
manifesting themselves, it appears evidently that there are such things
as devils, to persecute the wicked in this world as in the next.
Now, if to these were added the diverse reall phantasms seen at
Whitehall in Cromwell’s times, which caused him to keep such mighty
guards in and about his bedchamber, and yet so oft to change his
lodgings; if those things done at St. James’, where the devil so joal’d
the centinels against the sides of the queen’s chappell doors, that
some of them fell sick upon it; and others, not, taking warning by it,
kild one outright, whom they buried in the place; and all other such
dreadful things, those that inhabited the royal houses have been
affrighted with.
And if to these were likewise added, a relation of all those regicides
and their abettors the devil hath entered into, as he did the
Gadarenes’ swine, with so many more of them who hath fallen mad, and
dyed in hideous forms of such distractions, that which hath been of
this within these 12 last years in England, (should all of this nature,
our chronicles do tell, with all the superstitious monks have writ, be
put together,) would make the greater volume, and of more strange
occurrents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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