THE CASE 

                           OF THE 

                        COMMONWEALTH 

                             OF 

                          ENGLAND, 

                           STATED:



                             OR,



               The Equity, Utility, and Necessity of a 

              Submission to the Present GOVERNMENT. 

         Cleared out of monuments both sacred and civil against 

           all the scruples and pretenses of the opposite parties,



                 viz., Royalists  Presbyterians

                       Scots      Levellers



        Wherein is discovered severally the vanity of their designs 

           together with the improbability of their success and 

         inconveniences which must follow should either of them 

            take effect to the extreme prejudice of the nation.



                         Two PARTS



     With a discourse of the excellency of a FREE STATE above a KINGLY

                         GOVERNMENT.



                 By MARCHAMONT NEDHAM, Gent.



                           Salustius 

   Incredibile est memoratu, quantum adepta libertate, in brevi Romana

                        civitas creverit. 



                   Fr. Guicciard. Histor. lib. 10 

     Liberae civitates deo summopere placent; eo quod in iis, magis 

     quam in alio genere rerumpub. commune bonum conservetur, 

    jus suum cuique aequaliter distribuatur, civium animi vehementius

  ad virtutem & laudem accendantur, religio colatur, sacra peragantur.







                        To the Reader



PERHAPS thou art of an opinion contrary to what is here written. I 

confess that for a time I myself was so too, till some causes made me 

reflect with an impartial eye upon the affairs of this new government.



Hereupon, beginning seriously to search into the nature of it with the 

many pleas and objections made against it, and supposing those learned 

men who wrote before these times were most likely to speak truth as 

being uninterested in our affairs and unconcerned in the controversy, I 

took a view of their reasons and judgments; and from thence made so many 

collections, that putting them in order and comparing all together, they 

soon made a conquest over me and my opinion.



I know the high talkers, the lighter & censorious part of people, will 

shoot many a bitter arrow to wound my reputation and charge me with 

levity and inconstancy because I am not obstinate like themselves 

against conscience, right reason, necessity, the custom of all nations, 

and the peace of our own. But this sort of men I reckon inter bruta 

animantia,[1] among whom to do well is to hear ill; who usually speak 

amiss of those things that they do not or will not understand. From 

them, therefore, I appeal to the great tribunal, where it is known I 

have in this dealt faithfully, and to the more sober intelligences, here 

below, with whom these papers must needs find the more free 

entertainment because free from partiality and the least tincture of 

faction.



And that they may be the fitter to walk abroad in the world, I have 

divided them into two parts and accommodated them with a method suitable 

to those two parties whereof the world consists, viz., the conscientious 

man and the worldling. The former will approve nothing but what is just 

and equitable, and therefore I have labored to satisfy him (as I have 

done myself) touching the justice of submission. The latter will embrace 

anything, so it make for his profit, and therefore I have shown him the 

inconveniences and dangers that will follow his opposition of a 

settlement. Now, though the other should continue obstinate in their 

erroneous pretenses, yet of this latter sort I dare promise myself an 

abundance of proselytes, the greater part of the world being led more by 

appetites of convenience and commodity than the dictates of conscience. 

And it is a more current way of persuasion by telling men what will be 

profitable and convenient for them to do than what they ought to do.



But prithee read and then do what thou list. I have only one word more 

and that is to our modern Pharisee, the conscientious pretender and 

principal disturber of the public peace. If he will not be convinced by 

so clear testimonies but raise more dust about our ears to amaze the 

people, it must be concluded that all this noise of church reformation, 

conscience, and covenant is a mere malicious design to drive on a 

faction for the casting down of our present governors, that they may set 

up themselves in the seat of authority. Farewell and be wise. Being 

convinced of the truth of these things, I conceive myself obliged to 

show others the same way of satisfaction.



[1] Among the brute animals.







                 The Contents of the First Part



                           Chapter 1



That Governments Have Their Revolutions and Fatal Periods



                           Chapter 2



That the Power of the Sword Is, and Ever Hath Been, the Foundation of 

All Titles to Government



                           Chapter 3



That Nonsubmission to Government Justly Deprives Men of the Benefit of 

Its Protection



                           Chapter 4



That a Government Erected by a Prevailing Part of the People Is As Valid 

de jure As If It Had the Ratifying Consent of the Whole



                           Chapter 5



That the Oath of Allegiance and Covenant Are No Justifiable Grounds to 

Raise a New War in, or against, the Commonwealth of England



The intent of the first part is to prove the necessity and equity: of 

the second, to manifest the utility and benefit of a submission.







                         CHAPTER I



That Governments Have Their Revolutions and Fatal Periods



THE best of preachers, Solomon, taking the world for his text found no 

other application could be made of it than this, that "all under the sun 

is vanity."[1] And this he proveth, as did the wisest of philosophers, 

by the perpetual rotation of all things in a circle from "generation to 

corruption."[2] Inest rebus cunctis quidam velut orbis, &c. "There is," 

saith Tacitus, "as it were a wheeling of all things and a revolution of 

manners as well as times."[3] Nor are the huge bodies of commonwealths 

exempted from the same fate with plants, brutes, men, and other petty 

individuals;[4] and this by a certain destiny or decree of nature, who 

in all her productions makes the second moment of their perfection the 

first toward their dissolution.[5] This was observed to our purpose in 

the present case by the master of Roman eloquence, Idipsum a Platone, 

philosophiaque didici, naturales esse conversiones rerumpub. ut eae tum 

a principibus teneantur, tum a populo, tum a singulis.[6] "I have 

learned," saith he, "out of Plato's[7] philosophy that commonweals are 

altered by turns into the several forms of government: aristocracy, 

democracy, and monarchy." Nor can any reason be given for it besides 

those rapid hurricanes of fatal necessity which blow upon our affairs 

from all points of the compass:



              Sicut variae nascentibus —

          contingunt pueris animae, sic urbibus affert 

          hora, diesque mum, cum primum moenia surgunt,



          aut genium, aut fatum.[8]



          Certum est & inevitabile fatum, 

          quod — ratio vincere nulla potest;[9] quodque 

          — omnia certo fine gubernat.



          Sic omnia verti 

          cernimus, atque alias assumere pondera gentes; 

          concidere has.[10]



The English of all is that as men are born into the world with souls, so 

cities have a fate or genius given them at the first founding of their 

walls;[11] and this fate is so sure and inevitable that no reason or wit 

of man can conquer it, but it directs all things to the appointed 

end.[12] Now that you may understand what fate is, Minucius Felix[13] 

calls it quod de unoquoque nostrum fatus est Deus, "that which God hath 

spoken or determined concerning every man."[14] "It is," saith Seneca, 

"that Providence which pulls down one kingdom or government and sets up 

another; nor is this done leisurely and by degrees, but it hurls the 

powers of the world on a sudden from the highest pinnacle of glory to 

nothing."[15] Hence it is, saith the same author almost in the language 

of Scripture, that "a kingdom is translated from one family to another, 

the causes whereof are locked up in the cabinet of the deity"[16] though 

Holy Writ hath left the main cause of such changes upon record, viz., 

the wickedness and injustice of rulers. It is the weight of sin which 

causeth those fatal circumvolutions[17] in the vast frame of the world. 

All things being as changeable as the moon and in a perpetual flux and 

reflux like the tides that follow her motion; so that what hath been is 

that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun.



It was the weight of sin which sunk the old world in a deluge and hath 

been the occasion, no doubt, of all succeeding alterations by permission 

of Divine Providence, Who leaves the men of the world to the fulfilling 

of their lusts that He may accomplish His own fatalities or decrees by 

an execution of vengeance.[18] Hence it comes to pass that the best 

established and mightiest governments of the world have been but 

temporary. Witness the four great monarchies: the Assyrian, the Persian, 

the Grecian, and the Roman. And the time or age of a government hath by 

some been reputed for the most part five hundred years.[19] As for 

example, the Assyrian Empire lasted five hundred twenty years, till it 

was ruined by the Medes and Persians.[20]



The Athenian, from their first king, Cecrops, to Codrus, the last, 

continued four hundred ninety years, and then it was translated to a 

popular government.[21]



The Lacedaemonian commonwealth flourished much about the same number of 

years from the time of their founder, Lycurgus, to the days of Alexander 

the Great, under whom it fell.[22]



The Roman was governed by consuls about five hundred years too, from the 

expulsion of their kings till it was reduced again into a monarchy by 

Augustus.[23]



After Augustus, it stood in this form about five hundred years more 

under emperors, till Valentinian, the last emperor of the West, was 

slain at Rome; at which time the Empire was rent in pieces. The Vandals, 

under the conduct of Gensaricus,[24] possessed themselves first of 

France, then of Spain, at length of Africk,[25] and in Italy, of Rome 

itself. The Scots and English shook off the imperial yoke in Britain. 

The Burgundians and Franks seized part of France; the Goths another part 

of it and part of Italy, the country of Aquitaine with the seats of the 

ancient Cantabrians and Celtiberians in Spain; whilst the Lombards laid 

hold on Gallia Cisalpina. By which means the emperors had no certain 

power in the West after the time of Valentinian; so that relinquishing 

Rome, the old imperial city, they erected an exarchate at Ravenna, which 

was soon destroyed likewise by the Lombards.[26]



Now, though five hundred years be reputed the usual period of 

governments, yet some have not attained above half the number. As the 

Persian monarchy, which from Cyrus, the first, to Darius, the last, 

flourished no longer than about two hundred and thirty years.[27]



The Grecian, having completed two hundred and fifty after many 

strugglings and bloody bickerings betwixt the competitors, was divided 

into the several kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria, Pontus, and Egypt.



The kingly government of the Romans was abolished near the one hundred 

and fiftieth year after its institution.[28]



The Lombards domineered in Italy two hundred and forty years till they 

were subdued by Charlemagne and their last king, Desiderius, banished 

with his wife and children.



But this is not all. I can tell you of many royal families and famous 

governments that have had their fatal periods in a very short revolution 

of time, not exceeding one hundred years. As in the one hundredth year 

after the empire of Augustus, the Roman government came into the hands 

of princes that were strangers, as Nerva, Trajan, Adrian,[29] by nation 

Spaniards.[30]



In the year of Our Lord 200, Artaxerxes[31] erected a new kingdom of the 

Persians out of the ruins of the Parthians.



In the year 300, the Roman Empire was committed to the tutelage of 

princes Christian, as Constantius and Constantine the Great.[32]



Anno Domino 400 divers new kingdoms were raised out of the ashes of the 

Empire, enflamed by divisions, viz., in Italy, France, Spain, Africk, 

Asia, and England.



Anno 500 the western part of the Roman Empire was extinct until the time 

of Charlemagne and swallowed up at Constantinople in the Grecian.[33]



I could reckon up many more of these short-lived governments. But this 

may suffice to show that sooner or later they all have their fatal 

periods;[34] their crowns are laid in the dust,[35] and their glories 

buried in the grave of oblivion. No wonder then if our English monarchy, 

having arrived to almost six hundred years since the Conquest, should 

now, according to the common fate of all other governments, resign up 

her interest to some other power, family, or form. The late commotions 

and contests betwixt King and Parliament were as so many sharp fits and 

feverish distempers which, by a kind of antiperistasis,[36] are ever 

most violent in old age upon the approaching instants of dissolution. 

The corruption of the old form hath proved the generation of another 

which is already settled in a way visible and most substantial before 

all the world; so that 'tis not to be doubted but, in despite of 

opposition, it will have a season of continuance as others have had 

according to the proportion of time allotted by Divine Providence.[37] 

And this I am the more apt to believe in regard of its confirmation by a 

continued series of many signal victories and successes to the envy of 

all opposers and amazement of the world. Besides, I suppose it cannot be 

exemplified in history that ever kings were suddenly readmitted after 

they had been once expelled out of a nation. If any one case of this 

kind may be produced, there are an hundred to the contrary. So that if 

it be considered likewise how the worm works in many parts of Europe to 

cast off the regal yoke, especially in France, Scotland, Ireland, and 

other places, it must needs be as much madness to strive against the 

stream for the upholding of a power cast down by the Almighty, as it was 

for the old sons of earth to heap up mountains against heaven. And when 

all is done, we shall find it but labor in vain,[38] that we have but 

fortified castles in the air against fatal necessity to maintain a 

fantasy of pretended loyalty; the consequence whereof will be that at 

length in cool blood we may have leisure to consider how foolishly we 

have hazarded our lives and fortunes and sacrificed the lives of others 

with the common good and peace of the nation for the satisfying of an 

opiniated humor.







[1] MN: Ecclesiastes cap. I.



[2] MN: Continua est rebus generatio & corrupio. Arist. De gen. & corr. 

lib. 12. cap. 10. [Aristotle (384-322 B.C., Greek philosopher), De 

generatione et corruptione, bk. ii, chap, x.]



[3] MN: 3 Annal. [Tacitus (55?-after 117, Roman historian), Annales, bk. 

iii, chap. lv.]



[4] MN: Cents eunt cuncta temporibus. Nasci debent, crescere, & 

extingui. Seneca Consol. ad Hel. ["All things happen at appointed times. 

There is a time for being born, for growing, and for dying." Seneca (4 

B.C.-A.D. 65, Roman statesman and philosopher), Ad Lucilium epistulae 

morales, no. 71.]



[5] MN: Numma rebus crescendi posuere modum. Lucan. ["Such is the limit 

of growth decreed by heaven." Lucan (39-65, Roman poet), De bello 

civili, bk. i, 11. 81-82.]



[6] MN: Cic. De divin. [Cicero (106-43 B.C., Roman statesman, orator, 

and author), De divinatione, bk. ii, chap, ii.] 



[7] MN: Numeri fatales, vel periodi. Plat. ["Fatal numbers or periods." 

Plato (427?-347 B.C., Greek philosopher), The Republic, bk. viii, chaps, 

ii-iii.]



[8] MN: Prudent, lib. post, in Sym. [Prudentius (348-fl. 400, Roman 

poet), Contra orationem Symmachi, bk. ii, 11. 71-74.]



[9] MN: Ovid. [Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 17?, Roman poet), Tristia, bk. iii, 

chap, vi.]



[10] MN: Ovid Metam. [Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. xv, 11. 420-22.]



[11] MN: De fato vide Lips. Polit. 1. I. c. 4. & 1. 6. c. 2. & in notis 

ad lib. I. Polit. cap. 4. ["Concerning fate see" Justus Lipsius (1547-

1606, Flemish Catholic humanist and political theorist), Politicorum 

sive Civilis doctrinae (Amsterdam, 1632), bk. I, chap, iv; bk. VI, chap, 

ii; and Ad libros politicorum notae, bk. I, chap. iv., in Politicorum 

sive Civilis doctrinae (Amsterdam, 1632).]



[12] MN: Clapmar. 124. [Arnold Clapmar (1574-1604, German historian), De 

arcanis rerumpublicarum (Amsterdam, 1644), bk. III, chap, vii.]



[13] Minucius Felix (fl. 2d or 3d century A.D., Roman Christian 

apologist), Octavius, chap, xxxvi.



[14] MN: Vide Richter Axiom. pol. a pag. I. usque ad 50. [See Gregor 

Richter (1560-1624, German theologian), Axiomatum politicorum (Gorlitz, 

1604), pp. 1-50.]



[15] MN: Senec. 2 Nat. quaest. [Seneca, Quaestiones naturales, Preface 

to bk. iii.]



[16] MN: Epist. 92. [Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, no. 92. This 

passage not in letter cited.] 



[17] Revolutions or gyrations.



[18] MN: Besold. 309. [Christoph Besold (1577-1638, German jurist), 

Synopsis politicae doctrinae (Amsterdam, 1643), bk. IV, chap, i.]



[19] MN: Peucerus De divinat. gen. fol. m. 30. & Gregor. Richter. Axiom, 

polit. I. & Qeconom. 5. cum multis aliis. [Kaspar Peucer (1525-1602, 

German physician and Protestant theologian), Commentarius de praecipuis 

generibus divinationum (Wittenberg, 1572), p. 22; Gregor Richter, 

Axiomatum politicorum, pp. 1-6, with many others.]



[20] MN: Herod. [Herodotus (5th century B.C., Greek historian), History, 

bk. i, chap, xcv.]



[21] MN: Isocr. Symm. [Isocrates (436-338 B.C., Athenian orator). 

Reference apparently to Symmachus.] 



[22] MN: Idem.



[23] MN: Numerus quingentesimus est fatalis. Ultra quingentos annos non 

durum regna, ut ostendunt historiae omnium temperum. Peucer. in lect. 

Chron. Ann. 70. & 1569. ["The number 500 is fatal. Kingdoms do not 

endure beyond 500 years, as the histories of all ages demonstrate." 

These quotations apparently extracted from Kaspar Peucer in Gregor 

Richter, Axiomatum politicorum, p. 2.]



[24] Genseric or Gaiseric (d. 477, king of the Vandals).



[25] Africa.



[26] MN: lllud est ab antiquissima memoria preditum; civitates omnes 

anno quingentesimo converti, aut everti. Bodin, lib. 4. De republ. cap. 

2. ["This has been proclaimed since most ancient time; all states have 

been transformed or overturned in their 500th year." Jean Bodin (1530-

96, French political theorist), Les six livres de la republique (Paris, 

1576), bk. IV, chap. ii.]



[27] MN: Etsi periodus fatalis regnorum & rerumpublicarum, plerumque 

congruat ad annos quingentos; tamen multa regna circa medium hujus 

periodi defecerunt. Strigel. I. Reg. 15. Peucer. De divin. p. 20. 

["Although the fatal period of kingdoms and republics frequently 

coincides with a span of 500 years, many kingdoms disappear around the 

mid-point of that period." Victorinus Strigel (1524-69, German 

Protestant theologian). Reference not clear, but a similar passage 

appears in Strigel's Scholae historicae (Neustadt, 1586), pp. 39-40. But 

Nedham may have taken the reference and citation from Gregor Richter, 

Axiomatum politicorum, p. 9, as well as the reference and quotation from 

Kaspar Peucer which Richter included on p. 8.]



[28] MN: Hoc est, anno ab V.C. 244. ["That is, in the 244th year after 

the founding of Rome."]



[29] Hadrian (76-138, Roman emperor).



[30] MN: V.P. Greg. lib. 21. De repub. cap. 5. & Greg. Richt. in Axiom. 

pol. [Pierre Grégoire (1540-97?, French Catholic jurist), De republica 

(Leiden, 1609), bk. XXI, chap. v, and Gregor Richter, Axiomatum 

politicorum, pp. 1-6.]



[31] Variant name of Ardashir I (226?-240, king of Persia).



[32] MN: Annos 100. est fatalis principibus familiis. Matthias 

Christianas in specul. 171. vide Richt. in Axio. oec. 23. ["One hundred 

years is fatal for princely houses." Christianus Matthiae (1584-1655, 

German Protestant theologian and historian). See Gregor Richter, 

Axiomatum politicorum, p. 5.]



[33] MN: The Empire hath been usually translated from family to family 

at the end of the one hundredth year. Ibid.



[34] MN: Centesimas periodos fatales esse regnis, & regiis stirpibus, 

ostendens historiarum monumenta. Peu. in Orat. de miraculosa Stella. 

["The records of history show that periods of 100 years are fatal to 

kingdoms and to royal families." The reference and quotation of Kaspar 

Peucer were apparently taken by Nedham from Gregor Richter, Axiomatum 

politicorum, p. 11.]



[35] In the original text, the words "in the dust" read "the in dust."



[36] Reaction aroused against any action.



[37] MN: Irriti sum conatus humani. Vide Richter. 684. ["Mortal efforts 

are vain." See Gregor Richter, Axiomatum politicorum, p. 684.]



[38] MN: Nulla vis humana vel virtus, meruisse unquam potuit, ut quod 

praescripsit fatalis ordo, non fiat. Ammian. lib. 23. ["No mortal force 

or power can ever prevent the accomplishment of divine decree." Ammianus 

Marcellinus (ca. 330-ca. 395, Roman historian of the Roman Empire), 

Rerum gestarum qui de XXXI supersunt libri XVIII, bk. xxiii.]







                        CHAPTER 2



That the Power of the Sword Is, and Ever Hath Been, the Foundation of 

All Titles to Government



TO CLEAR this, we need do no more but take a review of those governments 

mentioned in the former chapter in their rise and revolutions. The 

world, after the Flood, in time grew more populous and more exceeding 

vicious, being inclined to rapine, ambition, &c., so that, the pater 

familiar way of government being insufficient to correct those grand 

enormities, there was need of someone more potent than the rest that 

might restrain them by force.[1] Upon which ground it was that Nimrod, 

first of all men, complotted a new and arbitrary way of government, 

backing it with power by a party of his own, that those crimes which 

could not be cured by persuasion might be cut off by compulsion and 

that, by a power seated in his own sword and will, he might oppose the 

willfullness of others. But he, afterward abusing this power by 

stretching his own will too far over other men's wills to the prejudice 

of their well-being and oppression of the church, became the first 

tyrant in the world and therefore was called a mighty hunter, as having 

used his power to no other end but to lay the foundations of idolatry 

and tyranny.[2]



Thus you see the power of the sword to be the original of the first 

monarchy and indeed the first political form of government that ever 

was. For the maintenance whereof, he fortified himself in the lofty 

Tower of Babel, the beginning of the Babylonian or Assyrian government; 

which last name it took under Ninus and from him continued in a 

succession of thirty-six kings down to Sardanapalus who was overcome in 

battle by a conspiracy of his captains; among whom Arbaces, the Governor 

of Media, being chief, reigned in his stead & by his sword translated 

the title into his own family from the Assyrians to the Medes;[3] with 

whom it continued in a succession of nine princes till the sword made 

King Astyages give a surrender to Cyrus the Persian;[4] the last of 

whose successors, Darius,[5] yielded it up upon the same terms to 

Alexander the Great who erected the grand monarchy of the Grecians. King 

Philip, the father of this Alexander,[6] was confined at first within 

the narrow compass of Macedonia, too narrow for his ambition; and 

therefore by fomenting quarrels betwixt the Thebans, Phocians, 

Lacedaemonians, and Athenians he found means to undermine them one after 

another and by his sword made way for a title through those petty 

commonweals to the monarchy of Greece;[7] which, being improved the same 

way by his son to the dominion of the whole world, was lost again to the 

Romans by King Perseus, the last of the Macedonians; all whose glories, 

with those of his predecessors, served in the end only to aggravate his 

misfortunes and magnify the triumphs of a Roman consul. But the title to 

that of Macedonia and the other provinces had been lost from the family 

of Alexander above one hundred and fifty years before; it being 

immediately upon his death bandied by the great men of his army, and his 

mother, wives, and children slain by Cassander; who with Antigonus, 

Seleucus, and Ptolemy, having by conquest rid their hands of all other 

competitors, shared the empire between themselves, Cassander reigning in 

Macedonia, Antigonus in Asia, Seleucus in Syria, and Ptolemy in Egypt; 

all whose successors successively resigned their titles, as did Perseus 

the successor of Cassander, to the sword of the Romans.



If we look to the original of the Romans, we find Romulus and his 

successors founding a kingdom upon the ruins of their kindred, friends, 

and neighbors. Next, the kingly title gained by the sword and subtility 

was the same way derived to divers of the seven kings and at length 

extinguished in Tarquin by the sword of the Senate; wherewith they 

drave[8] and kept him out of his dominions and made a title to those 

also of other nations so far that in the end they entitled themselves 

"Lords of the Whole Earth"; and so continued, till Caesar, wresting the 

sword out of their hands, became master both of it and them. Most of the 

successors of Caesar likewise made way by the sword to the imperial 

chair: as Augustus by the ruin of Lepidus and conquest of Antony; 

Claudius, Nero, and most of the rest by policy, murder, and the favor of 

the soldiery. At length, the sword divided the Empire into East and 

West, and in the same manner likewise each of them suffered many titular 

subdivisions till new titles were raised in the West by the sword of the 

Goths and Vandals, in the East by the Turks and Saracens.



If this be not obvious enough out of profane histories, take a view of 

those in Holy Writ where you shall find the sword the only disposer and 

dispenser of titles to commonweals and kingdoms. We find Jacob, on his 

deathbed, bequeathing one portion to Joseph above the rest of his 

brethren; and that was a parcel which he took out of the hand of the 

Amorite with his sword and with his bow;[9] unto which parcel the 

Scripture mentions not any title that Jacob had but by his sword. And as 

for the title which his posterity had unto the Land of Canaan, though it 

were allotted them by divine promise and dispensation, yet as to the eye 

of the world they were to lay claim and take possession by the power of 

the sword; and so accordingly they received commission to ratify their 

title by a conquest of the Canaanites, after which, jure gentium,[10] it 

became forever unquestionable.



In the history of the kings of Israel, we read that most of their titles 

have been founded upon powerful usurpation. Such was that of Jeroboam 

who, though the kingdom were designed to him by a declaration from 

heaven in the mouth of the prophet, erred notwithstanding in his 

overspeedy invading the sovereignty by force; and that act of his is 

branded with the black character of rebellion. Yet being thus gotten 

into the throne, God would not suffer him to be disturbed, saying the 

"thing was from Him," that is, by His permission.[11] And so he that was 

a traitor in rebellion, being once invested by a mere permissive act of 

Providence, came to have a positive right to the prejudice of him that 

was his sovereign and to the exercise of jurisdiction over those that 

had been of late his fellow subjects.



After Jeroboam, reigned his son Nadab, who was conquered and slain in 

battle at Gibbethon by Baasha; who with his sword settled the crown upon 

his own head;[12] which was worn afterward by his son Elah till he 

likewise was slain and the crown by force of arms usurped by Zimri; from 

whom also it was snatched in the same manner by Omri; who died peaceably 

and left the succession to his son Ahab without the least scruple all 

this while on the people's part in point of submission and obedience to 

these usurped powers.[13] Add to these usurpations that of 

Nebuchadnezzar over the holy city which he took by force of arms and 

carried away many of the Jews with their King Jehoiakim[14 ]into 

captivity to Babylon;[15] an action as full of injustice and cruelty as 

most that we read of. Yet, Nebuchadnezzar being once in possession by 

conquest, his title became right and good as may appear by the report 

given concerning Zedekiah, the successor of Jehoiakim, of whom it is 

said that he rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar; which implies an 

investiture of right in Nebuchadnezzar by the sword or else that 

resistance of Zedekiah could not be called rebellion.[16]



To come a little nearer and give you a sight of this truth in modern 

practices it will be very convenient a little to examine the rights and 

titles of present princes to their several principalities within 

Christendom; whom if we trace up to their originals, we shall find to 

have no other dependence than upon the sword. What pretense had 

Ferdinand the Spaniard to seize upon the kingdom of Navarre but only to 

satisfy the spleen of Pope Julius II and his own ambition against the 

French? For which cause to make his way the easier he set upon John 

Albret unawares and forced him with his queen and children quite out of 

his dominions; which he afterward held in possession and brought the 

people under his allegiance.[17]



In the same manner Philip the Second, with an army under the command of 

the Duke of Alva, set upon Don Antonio, King of Portugal, and after he 

had subdued the kingdom, laid claim to the crown as his own by right; 

which he and his successors held till that now of late, in the reign of 

Philip the Fourth, it was recovered again by the sword of Don John of 

Braganza. Fair titles to the succession were pretended on both sides; 

but if either have the better this way, it must be Don John as being 

descended from Edward, a third son, whereas the Spaniard descends from 

Elizabeth, the youngest daughter of Emmanuel, King of Portugal. Yet it 

seems possession hath hitherto been held the best title, and the 

Portugals, having of late outed the Spaniard, made bold to stop his 

mouth with this answer: "That his predecessor Philip II had no right to 

the crown, it being contrary to their fundamental laws that any 

foreigner should succeed in the kingdom. And that it was lawful for a 

kingdom oppressed by arms, by arms again to recover its ancient 

liberty."[18] Which is enough to show that the Spaniard neither had, nor 

hath, any title beside his sword to lay claim to the kingdom of 

Portugal. 



That Aragon was fairly annexed to the crown of Castile by the marriage 

of Ferdinand and Isabella cannot be denied. Yet it is notorious to all 

the world that the Spaniard hath, since this union, usurped much more in 

Aragon by force than his predecessors enjoyed before by right and dealt 

no otherwise with that kingdom than if it were his by conquest, 

exercising an absolute tyranny therein as well as other his 

dominions.[19] To this end, he abolished the ancient and most excellent 

constitution of that eminent office called the Justice of Aragon; 

whereto some one person was chosen by the vote of the people, who in 

most cases had a power to control the king. This was so great an eyesore 

to Philip the Second that, as Petrus Matthaeus[20] saith, he numbered 

these among the most glorious of his actions: that he had lessened the 

power of the Aragonians, deprived them of their greatest privileges, and 

demolished that grand office called "the justice," the bulwark of their 

liberty. So that what title the Spaniard now hath to tyrannize in Aragon 

is founded only upon force and usurpation. If we turn our eyes likewise 

upon his other dominions in America and those here in Europe, as Sicily, 

Naples, Milan, Flanders, etc., his title stands in all upon the same 

terms, viz., a possession by the power of the sword.



And this is just as much right as his kinsman the Emperor had to lay 

claim to the kingdom of Bohemia and afterward to seize upon the 

Palatinate;[21] Bohemia being an elective kingdom that had power of 

themselves to choose whom they pleased for king, and so made choice of 

the Prince Elector Frederick, whom the Emperor made bold to drive out of 

that and his own country by force of arms because he accepted of the 

election. And not only so, but after Frederick was dead, prosecuted the 

war to the prejudice of his heir, the present Prince Elector, whom he 

hath constrained to quit his dignity of the first electorship and resign 

it with the best part of his dominions upon hard terms to the Duke of 

Bavaria;[22] so that what title the Emperor hath to Bohemia, and the 

Duke to the rest, is derived rather from the sword of Mars than the 

scepter of Jove by right of succession.[23]



This act of violence against the Prince Elector gave an alarm to the 

other protestant princes of Germany to defend their estates by arms from 

the encroachments of the Emperor; and therefore, to avoid the 

inconveniences of emulation between themselves, they made choice of the 

Swede to be their chief; who, moved partly by the common interest of 

religion, but especially for several injuries done him by the Emperor, 

as may be read in that king's manifesto, undertook the war and with his 

sword hath carved out a title to many fair countries and privileges 

within the Empire.[24]



What title have the Swiss, the Hollanders, Geneva, &c., to their liberty 

but the sword? On the other side what title have the Medicis to domineer 

over the free states of Florence and Sienna to the utter ruin of their 

liberties but only force? Whereby Cosmus,[25] introducing an absolute 

tyranny under the name of duke, made himself more than a king and in 

emulation of the Muscovite glorified his successors with the style of 

Great Dukes of Tuscany.[26]



How the Pope's temporal power, which was once so small, in Italy came to 

be thus considerable is easily known if we take an account of the 

actions of Alexander the Sixth, who, of all the popes that ever were, 

showed what a pope was able to do with money and arms; and having a mind 

to make his son, Caesar Borgia, a prince in Italy, he taught him how to 

make use of the French forces to build himself a fortune in Romania [27] 

upon the ruin of the barons of that country.[28] And though the Pope's 

intent thereby was not to enlarge the church dominions but to make his 

son great, yet after his son's death, it turned to the church's 

advantage; the succeeding pope seizing upon all as heir of Borgia's 

usurpations, founded upon blood and treachery. After this pope, 

succeeded Julius, who finding the church thus made great, the barons of 

Rome quite extinct, and their parties worn out by Alexander's 

persecutions, found also the way open for heaping up moneys never 

practiced before Alexander's time. Wherewith acquiring forces, he 

endeavored to make himself master also of Bolonia,[29] to extinguish the 

Venetians, and chase the French out of Italy; in most of which designs 

he gained happy success. And thus you see how His Holiness himself came 

by a title to his temporal possessions; yet, as among the Jews none but 

the high priest might enter the sanctum sanctorum, so the Roman high 

priest, that none might presume to enter upon his territories, hath ever 

since gilded these magna latrocinia, these "great robberies," with the 

fair title of Saint Peter's Patrimony; so that having entailed it on 

himself first by the sword of Peter, it hath been the easier ever since 

by virtue of the keys to lock the right owners out of possession.



Out of Italy, let us pass into France; and there we find Charles the 

Seventh who, when his title to the crown was adjudged in Parlement less 

valid than that of the Queen of England, "appealed to his sword" as the 

only protector and patron of titles.[30] Of this truth the realm of 

France is a most sad example at this day, where the tyranny of their 

kings is founded and preserved by force, not only upon the shoulders of 

the peasant but on the destruction of their ancient princes and the 

majesty of Parlement; which retains not so much as a shadow of their old 

liberty. What is become of the duchies of Normandy, Brittany, Aquitaine, 

Burgundy, &c.? What title had the French kings to those countries, till 

they wormed and worried out the right owners by force of arms? What 

claim had they to this absolute domination over parlements but 

tyrannical usurpation? Yet Lewis the Eleventh[31] gloried in the action 

as if the fleurs-de-lis never flourished so well as when they were 

watered with the blood and tears of the people.[32] For, according to 

the ancient constitution, that kingdom retained a mixture of 

aristocratical power; so that the then supreme court of Parlement at 

Paris had a principal share in the government and nothing was imposed on 

the people but by the consent of their deputies. But now, having been 

mined out of their authority by the powerful encroachments of their 

kings and being overawed by armed powers held continually in pay for the 

purpose, their authority is defunct and their common interest in the 

affairs of the public translated into a private Cornell d'État, which 

depends upon the mere will of the king. And so the Parlement of Paris, 

which was once the supreme council, having surrendered its title to the 

sword of the king, serves now only for a petty court of judicature and a 

mere mock show of majesty.[33] Thus we see the French king's title to 

what he holds at home; and if we look abroad, he hath but the same right 

to what he got in Catalonia and Flanders. And yet we must needs say it 

is as good every jot as that of the Spaniard whose best plea is that his 

thieveries there have been of a longer prescription. And upon the same 

terms, of late years they have both lain at catch[34] for the duchy of 

Savoy and several parcels of Germany.[35] Here likewise, I might sift 

the title of the family of Oldenburg (the stock of the late king) to the 

crown of Denmark, and of Denmark itself to the duchy of Holstein; but to 

bring this discourse to a period I shall draw nearer home and make it as 

clearly appear likewise that the power of the sword ever hath been the 

foundation of all titles to government in England both before and since 

the Norman Conquest. First, the sword of Caesar triumphed over the 

liberties of poor Britons and gave the Romans here a title to their 

dominion.[36] Afterward, their liberty returning again when the Roman 

Empire fell to pieces, a new title was settled by the sword of our 

progenitors, the Saxons; who submitted for a time upon the same terms 

also to the Danes till the Saxons, impatient of the yoke, outacted by 

way of precedent the Parisian massacre or Sicilian Vespers and made use 

of their knives instead of their swords to recover their own title 

against the Danish tyranny.[37] Now if in these national revolutions of 

government I should examine those also of the regal families, we cannot 

from any examples produce more pregnant instances concerning the 

transitions of title from family to family merely upon the account of 

the sword. But I waive those and will take a view of our own affairs at 

a less remote distance and see whether William the Conqueror translated 

the government upon any better terms into the hands of the Normans.



And upon examination it appears he had no better title to England than 

the rest before-mentioned had at first to their several countries or 

than his predecessor Rollo had to Normandy itself.[38] For about one 

hundred and twenty years before, it happened that this Rollo issued in 

the head of a barbarous rout[39] out of Denmark and Norway: first into 

the duchies of Frize[40] and Renault;[41] afterward he seated himself by 

force in the possession of Rohan;[42] in a short time of all Normandy 

and missed but little of the conquest of Paris.



From him this William was the sixth Duke of Normandy; who, though a 

bastard, legitimated his title by the success of several battles against 

six or seven of his competitors more clear in blood than himself; by 

which means having secured his claim at home, he became the more 

confident to tempt his fortune with a design upon England. As for any 

right to the crown, he had none save a frivolous testamentary title, 

pretending that it was bequeathed to him by the last will of his 

kinsman, King Edward the Confessor; upon which pretense he betook 

himself to arms and with a collection of forces out of Normandy, France, 

Flanders, and other countries, landing in Sussex, he gave battle at 

Hastings and established himself a title by conquest upon the 

destruction of King Harold and of the laws and liberties of the nation, 

as may be seen in all our chronicles.[43]



After him his sons, the two succeeding kings William Rufus and Henry the 

First, made good their succession by the sword against Robert, their 

elder brother, as did King Stephen, a stranger, against Maud[44] the 

Empress, the right heir of that Henry. Next to Stephen succeeded Henry 

the Second, the son of Maud, who as heir of his predecessors' way of 

usurpation quartered the arms of England with the lordship of Ireland by 

the sword; as his successor, Edward the First, by the same means, 

cemented the principality of Wales to the kingdom of England with the 

blood of Leoline[45] and his brother David, the last of the Welsh 

princes. Next, Edward the Second was forced by arms to surrender his 

right to his son, Edward the Third; whose grandchild, Richard the 

Second, was in like manner by force of arms deprived by Henry of 

Lancaster; whose son, Henry the Fifth, made good not only that title but 

carved out a new one with his sword to the crown of France in defiance 

of the Salic constitution;[46] and left it so confirmed unto his son, 

Henry the Sixth, that he was crowned King of France at Paris and so 

continued till, fortune turning, his title was canceled there by the 

sword of the French as it was likewise in England by that of Edward the 

Fourth; whose son, Edward the Fifth, left the crown in the bloody hands 

of Richard the Third; from whence it was wrested by Henry the 

Seventh.[47] This Henry, from whom the late King derived his claim, came 

in with an army and, as one hath well observed, by mere power was made 

king in the army and by the army; so that in the very field where he got 

the victory, the crown was set upon his head, and there he gave 

knighthood to many of his commanders. Upon this foundation of military 

power he got himself afterward solemnly crowned at Westminster. And soon 

after, upon authority thus gotten, he called a parliament and in that 

parliament was the crown entailed upon him and his heirs. Thus both his 

crown and his parliament were founded upon power. As for any just title, 

he could have none. For he descended from a bastard of John of Gaunt, 

which though legitimated for common inheritances, yet expressly was 

excluded from succession to the crown. And for his wife's title, that 

came in after his kingship and his parliament, which had settled the 

crown before upon him and his heirs. And he was so far from exercising 

authority in her right that her name is not used in any laws as Queen 

Mary's was both before and after her marriage with the Spanish King.



Now having made it evident out of the histories of all times, our own 

and other nations', that the power of the sword ever hath been the 

foundation of titles to government, it is as clear likewise out of the 

same histories that the people never presumed to spurn at those powers, 

but (for public peace and quiet) paid a patient submission to them under 

their various revolutions. But it were vain to raise more dust out of 

the cobwebs of antiquity in so limpid a case, confirmed by the practices 

of all nations. Look nearer our own times into the wars of Germany and 

those betwixt the French and Spanish of late time in Catalonia and 

Flanders. One while, you might have seen the same town under the power 

of the Emperor, another while, under the Swede; this year under the 

French, the next under the Spaniard. And upon every new alteration, 

without scruple, paying a new allegiance and submission and never so 

much as blamed for it by the divines of their own or any other nation. 

Moreover, none can deny but that as Henry the Seventh and the rest 

before-mentioned came into this kingdom by mere power, without title of 

inheritance, so the whole body of this nation, as one observes, swore 

fealty and allegiance to them and obeyed them whilst they ruled; yea, 

doth yield subjection to their laws at this very day. And the learned in 

the laws do continually plead, judge, justify, and condemn according to 

those laws. So that herein the very voice of the nation, with one 

consent, seems to speak aloud: That those whose title is supposed 

unlawful and founded merely upon force, yet being possessed of 

authority, may lawfully be obeyed. Nor may they only, but they must;[48] 

else by the judgment of civilians[49] such as refuse may be punished as 

seditious and traitorous, the victors being ever allowed, jure gentium, 

to use all means for securing what they have gotten and to exercise a 

right of dominion over the conquered party. Whosoever therefore shall 

refuse submission to an established government upon pretense of 

conscience in regard of former allegiances, oaths, and covenants, or 

upon supposition that it is by the sword unlawfully erected, deserves 

none but the character of peevish, and a man obstinate against the 

reason and custom of the whole world. Let his pretense be what it will, 

resistance, in the eye of the law of nations, is treason; and if he will 

needs perish in the flames of his own phrenetic zeal, he can at the best 

be reckoned but the madman's saint and the fool's martyr.



Nescio an Anticyram ratio illi destinet omnem.[50]







[1] MN: Vide Pererium supra Genesin. [See Benito Pereira (ca. 1535-1610, 

Spanish Jesuit theologian), Commentariorum et disputatlonum in Genesim 

(Cologne, 1622), bk. XV, chap. x.]



[2] MN: Gen. cap. 10. [Gen. 10:8-9.]



[3] MN: Vide Justinum, & alias. [See Justin (fl. 3d century A.D., Roman 

historian) and others.]



[4] Cyrus the Great (d. 529 B.C., king of Persia).



[5] Darius III (d. 330 B.C., king of Persia).



[6] Philip II (382-336 B.C., king of Macedon).



[7] MN: Veluti, e specula quadam, libertati omnium insidiatus, dum 

contentiones civitatum alit, auxilium inferionbus ferendo, victos 

pariter victoresque subire regiam servitutem coegit. Just. lib. 8. 

["Like a spy from his watchtower he laid in wait for a fit occasion to 

surprise them of their liberty, which he purposed to effect by feeding 

the fires of contention between city and city by lending aid to the 

weaker. And so he compelled both the conquered and the conquerors to 

submit to his royal service." Justin, Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum 

Pompei Trogi, bk. viii.]



[8] Drove.



[9] MN: Gen. 48. v. 22.



[10] By the laws of nations.



[11] MN: I Kings 12. 24.



[12] MN: I Kings 15. 27.



[13] MN: Cap. 16. [I Kings 16.]



[14] I.e., Jehoiachin, the son of Jehoiakim.



[15] MN: 2 Chron. c. 36. [II Chron. 36:5-13.]



[16] MN: Ver. 13. [II Chron. 36:13.]



[17] MN: Vide Anto. Nebrissensem De bello Navarriensi. [See Elio Antonio 

de Nebrija (1444?-1522, Spanish humanist grammarian), Rerum a Fernando 

et Elisabe Hispaniarum felicissimis regibus gestarum decades duae, 

necnon belli Navariensis libri duo (Granada, 1545), fol. 73v.-86v.]



[18] MN: Vide Autorem Lusitaniae liberatae. [See Antonio de Sousa de 

Macedo (1606-82, Portuguese historian), Lusitania liberata ab injusto 

Castellanorum (London, 1645), bk. I, chap. xii; bk. II, chaps. i-vii; 

bk. III, chap. i.]



[19] MN: Covaruv. Pr. quaest. I. [Diego de Covarrubias y Leyva (1512-77, 

Spanish theologian), Practicarum quaestionum de fide et authoritate 

publici instrument, chap. i in Opera omnia (Leiden, 1606).]



[20] Pierre Matthieu (1563-1621, French historian). Not clear to which 

of Matthieu's works Nedham refers.



[21] MN: Ut patet ex aurea bulla Caroli IV. c. 17. ["As may be seen from 

the Golden Bull of Charles IV." Charles IV (1316-78, Holy Roman 

Emperor). The Golden Bull was issued in 1356. See K. Zeumer, Die Goldene 

Bulle Kaiser Karls IV (Weimar, 1908), vol. II, chaps. i, vii.]



[22] MN: See Instrumentum pacis. [A reference to the Peace of 

Westphalia, 1648.]



[23] MN: Feuda Germanica, praecipue dignitatum illustrium, ex provisions 

legis fundamentalis, & consuetudine perpetuae observantiae, ita ad 

liberos & agnatos pertinent, ut nec crimine laesae majestatis 

confiscari, nec bello justo, in praejudicium liberorum amitti possint. 

ut aiunt J. C. Germani. ["German fiefs, especially those held by 

illustrious dignitaries, belong by provision of fundamental law and 

through the observance of immemorial custom to the children and 

relatives, so that they may not be lost to the prejudice of the children 

either through confiscation for a crime of lese majesty nor in a just 

war, as the German jurisconsolts say."]



[24] MN: See Instrument. pacis. [Refers to Peace of Westphalia, 1648.]



[25] Cosimo I dé Medici (1519-74, grand duke of Tuscany).



[26] MN: Plenum regnum est in Florentino ducatu; quale plerumque 

subsequitur armis oppressam libertatem. Besold. in Synopsi. cap. 4. 

["There is full sovereignty in the Florentine duchy; in such manner it 

often ensues that liberty is overwhelmed by arms." Besold, Synopsis 

politicae doctrinae, bk. I, chap. iv.]



[27] Romagna.



[28] MN: Nic. Mach. De principe. c. 11. [Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527, 

Italian statesman and political theorist), Il principe (Rome, 1532), 

chap. xi.]



[29] Bologna.



[30] MN: Ad mucronem gladii sui appellavit. Girard. l. 21. Pasquier. 5. 

cap. 7. [References are to Bernard de Girard, seigneur du Haillan 

(1535?-1610, French Catholic historian), and to Etienne Pasquier (1529-

1615, French Catholic jurist), but it is not clear to which of their 

works Nedham is referring.]



[31] MN: Jactitare solebat, sua potissimum opera effectum fuisse, ut 

regnum Gallicanum quasi ex tutela, ad plenam pubertatem fuerit redactum. 

Besoldus In Synopsi. c. 4. ["He was accustomed to say that it had come 

about chiefly by his own effort that the kingdom of France was restored 

from tutelage, as it were, to full maturity." Besold, Synopsis politicae 

doctrinae, bk. I, chap. iv.]



[32] MN: Lehmann. 2. cap. 4. [Perhaps a reference to Christoph Lehmann 

(1570?-1638, German historian), Chronica der Freyen Reichs Statt Speyr 

(Frankfort, 1612), bk. II, chap. iv.]



[33] MN: Senatus Parisiensis in judicum curiam transmutatus. Besold. 

[Besold, Synopsis politicae doctrinae.]



[34] On the watch for an opportunity of seizing.



[35] MN: See Maluezzi, in The Events of the Spanish Monarchy. [Virgilio 

Malvezzi (1599-1654, Italian diplomat and historian), The Chief Events 

of the Monarchy of Spain (London, 1647).] 



[36] MN: Caesar in Comment. [Julius Caesar (102-44 B.C., Roman statesman 

and writer), De bello Gallico, bk. v.] 



[37] MN: See the English Chron. [English Chronicles.]



[38] MN: Histor. Norman. [André Duchesne (1584-1640, French historian), 

Historiae Normannorum scriptores antiqui (Paris, 1619).]



[39] Band.



[40] Friesland.



[41] Hainaut.



[42] Rouen.



[43] MN: Norman, ille spurius, Guilhelmus dictus, Anglicanum regnum vi 

occupavit; legesque tulit, nullas acepit. Besoldus in Synopsi. lib. I. 

cap. 4. ["A Norman, that bastard called William, seized the kingdom of 

England by force. He proposed laws but he accepted none." Besold, 

Synopsis politicae doctrinae, bk. I, chap. iv.] 



[44] Matilda (1102-67, queen of England).



[45] Llewelyn ap Gruffydd (d. 1282, prince of Wales).



[46] The alleged fundamental law of the French monarchy, by which 

females were excluded from succession to the crown.



[47] MN: See the Chronicles.



[48] MN: Vide Grotium, De jure belli, l. 3. cap. 15. Bello ut alia 

acquiri possum, ita & jus imperantis, &c. [See Hugo Grotius (1583-1645, 

Dutch jurist and statesman), De jure belli et pacis (Paris, 1625), bk. 

III, chap. xv. "As other things may be acquired in a just war, so also 

imperial authority."]



[49] Writers on civil law as distinguished from common law or canon law.



[50] MN: Horat. [Horace (65-8 B.C., Roman poet and satirist), "I rather 

think wisdom would assign to them all Anticyra." Satyrae, bk. ii, satire 

3, 1. 83. Anticyra was famous in antiquity as a place which produced 

hellebore or poisonous plants.]







                        CHAPTER 3



That Nonsubmission to Government Justly Deprives Men of the Benefit of 

Its Protection



IF AT any time it seem good to the wise disposer of states and kingdoms 

(who puts down one and sets up another) to permit the expulsion of such 

as were formerly in possession and admit others in their places, it 

cannot in reason be expected that those which refuse obedience to their 

authority should receive the benefit of protection; and that for several 

considerations.



First, because protection implies a return of obedience and friendship 

from the persons protected to those that protect them. Otherwise they 

put themselves into the condition of enemies, and by the law of nations, 

which indulges a liberty unto all that are in power to provide for their 

own security, they may be handled as public enemies and outlaws. 

Wherefore in this case so little of protection is due to them that they 

may be punished as traitors by some shameful execution. And it appears 

out of Grotius, in case of nonsubmission to new lords after a victory, 

the throats of every refuser are wholly at their mercy; and all this, de 

jure.[1]



Secondly, there being a necessity of some government at all times for 

the maintenance of civil conversation[2] and to avoid confusion, 

therefore such as will not submit, because they cannot have such a 

governor as themselves like, are in some sense mere anarchists and 

destroy the two main ends of all civil communion. The first whereof 

Aristotle sets down to be public safety, in relation whereunto each 

member of the commonwealth is concerned to have a care of the whole.[3] 

The second is public equity, for the administration of justice, 

encouragement of virtue, and punishment of vice, without which it's 

impossible to enjoy peace or happiness. Where this humor reigns, there 

those two can never be secured nor any political eutaxy,[4] good order, 

or tranquillity maintained, which is the very soul of government. For as 

much as, say the civilians, the essence of a commonweal consists ratione 

imperandi & parendi; in imperil & subjectionis recta ordinatione, "in a 

due course of commanding and obeying, rule and subjection." From whence, 

say they, we may conclude, regere & subjici, that "rule and subjection" 

are founded upon the law both of God and nature and they must needs be 

transgressors against both that upon any pretense whatsoever shall 

refuse to obey those powers that are set over them and open a gap to 

confusion, ipsa tyrannide deteriorem, "of far worse consequence than any 

tyrannical usurpation."[5]



Thirdly, private and particular persons have no right to question how 

those came by their power that are in authority over them. For if that 

were once admitted, there would be no end of disputes in the world 

touching titles. It is ground enough for the submission of particular 

persons in things of political equity that those which have gotten the 

power are irresistible and able to force it if they refuse. For, as 

touching this case, saith the most excellent Grotius, "Private persons 

ought not to take upon them to meddle with these controversies in point 

of title, but rather to follow them that are in possession."[6] For all 

power is from God; and our Saviour told Pilate the power that he had was 

given him from above, though all the world knows that Pilate was but a 

deputy governor and, in a civil acceptation,[7] received his power from 

Caesar, who was an usurper. To this accords that of Bodinus, I, De 

repub., cap. 6, who saith that "all governments are lawful in respect of 

the first cause, viz., God; but on the other side, if we regard 

secondary causes, all governments have had their beginning and 

foundation upon force and violence."[8] Now since all commanding powers 

hold their supremacy from God, and that by the law of nations, they have 

a right to exercise their power over those whom they hold in possession. 

Therefore by the law of God, which damns resistance against those 

powers,[9] and by the same law of nations, they which refuse submission 

to those powers (be they just or unjust by the way of acquisition) may 

be justly deprived of their possessions and protection.



To those testimonies before cited, let me add one more, to conclude, out 

of Bocerus.[10] Contra rempublicam quamcunque, superiorem non 

recognoscentem, si quis aliquid moliatur; is, ut criminis majestatis 

reus puniatur: Non quidem ex lege Julia; sed jure gentibus communi, quod 

cujuslibet imperantis tuetur majestatem. "If any man attempt ought[11] 

against any commonwealth whatsoever that acknowledges no superior, he 

may be punished as guilty of treason. And this by the custom and law of 

nations which provides for the authority and safety of all that are in 

power." Now saith the same author, "If any person will not acknowledge 

nor submit to those that rule the commonwealth, it is to be presumed 

that he hath some design in hand to their prejudice, and he may be 

punished accordingly." Which punishment, the crime being treason, 

amounts to loss of life as well as possession and protection.[12]







[1] MN: De jure belli, lib. 3. cap. 20. [Grotius, De jure belli, bk. 

III, chap. xx.]



[2] Society, intercourse.



[3] MN: 3. Polit. cap. 4. I Polit. cap. 2 & lib. 2. c. 4. & 6. 

[Aristotle, Politics, bk. iii, chap. iv; bk. i, chap. ii; bk. ii, chaps. 

iv, vi.]



[4] Good order or management.



[5] MN: Arist. I. Polit. cap. 5. Bellarm. De laicis, cap. 5. Molina. De 

jure & just. Tract. 2. dist. 26. [Aristotle, Politics, bk. i, chap. v; 

Roberto Bellarmino (1542-1621, Italian cardinal and Jesuit theologian), 

in Opera omnia (Cologne, 1617-20), vol. II, pt. II, bk. III, chap. v; 

Luis de Molina (1535-1600, Spanish Jesuit theologian), De justitia et 

jure (Mainz, 1614), vol. I, Tract. II, Disput. xxvi.]



[6] MN: Indicium sibi privatus sumere non debet, sed possessionem sequi. 

lib. I. c. 4. [Grotius, De jure belli, bk. I, chap. iv.]



[7] The sense in which a word is accepted.



[8] MN: Respectu primae causae omnia imperia legitima esse concedo; sed 

si quaeras de causis intermediis, &c. [Bodin, Les six livres de la 

république, bk. I, chap. vi.] 



[9] MN: Rom. 13.



[10] MN: Tract. de majest. cap. I. [Heinrich Bocer (1561-1630, German 

jurist), Tractatus compendiosus de crimine majestatis (Tübingen, 1608), 

chap. i. Passage referred to by Nedham not found.]



[11] Aught, anything.



[12] MN: De regalibus, cap. 3. num. 307. [Bocer, Tractatus de regalibus 

(Tübingen, 1608), chap. iii, no. 307. Passage referred to by Nedham not 

found although chapter iii on the subject.]







                        CHAPTER 4



That a Government Erected by a Prevailing Part of the People Is As Valid 

de jure As If It Had the Ratifying Consent of the Whole



SINCE after the miserable confusions of a civil war there is in the end 

a necessity of some settlement, it cannot in reason be imagined (when 

the controversy is decided by the sword) that the conquerors should, as 

to the manner of settlement, submit to the will of the conquered party, 

though more in number than themselves; nor are they obliged to settle 

the government again according to the former laws and constitutions but 

may, in this case, use such means as nature instructs them in and erect 

such a form as they themselves conceive most convenient for their own 

preservation.[1] To this truth we have the testimony of the most learned 

Grotius, which I will set down at large. In bello civili, scripta quidem 

jura, id est civilia, non valent; at valent non scripta, id est, quae 

natura dictat, aut gentium consensus constituit. "In a civil war," saith 

he, "written laws, that is, the established laws of a nation, are of no 

force, but those only which are not written, that is, which are 

agreeable to the dictates of nature, or the law & custom of nations."[2] 

And "then that only is law," saith he, "which shall be declared by the 

prevailing party." Jus dicitur esse id quod validiori placuit, ut 

intelligamus fine suo carere jus, nisi vires ministras habeat. "That 

only which it pleaseth the stronger party to enact is said to be law, 

since it cannot accomplish the outward end of a law, except it be 

attended by force to constrain obedience."[3] Hence came it, saith the 

Florentine Secretary,[4] that "all the prophets that were armed, 

prevailed; but those that were unarmed were too weak. And therefore it 

behooves all legislators to be so provided, that if the people will not 

be ruled, they may compel them by force." "Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and 

Romulus would never have been able long to continue the authority of 

their laws had they been without arms at command."[5] And Solon himself, 

the great Athenian lawgiver, declares he could never have established 

his laws at Athens had he not had power to second them; and that all 

those great matters which he effected in founding a commonwealth he did,



          'Omou~ bi/hn te ki/ di/khn sunarmo/sav



"by coupling law and force, making authority and power walk hand in hand 

together."[6]



Moreover, as to the late contest betwixt king and Parliament, Grotius 

speaks very home[7] to justify the Parliament's late proceedings in 

positive terms.[8] Si rex partem habeat summi imperii, partem alteram 

populus aut senatus, regi in partem non suam involanti, vis justa opponi 

poterit, quia eatenus imperium non habet. Quod ubi sit, potest rex etiam 

suam imperii partem belli jure amittere; that is in English, "If the 

authority be divided betwixt a king and his people in Parliament, so 

that the king hath one part, the people another; the king offering to 

encroach upon that part which is none of his may lawfully be opposed by 

force of arms because he exceeds the bounds of his authority. And not 

only so, but he may lose his own part likewise by the 'law of arms.'"[9] 

From whence I plainly infer that if a king may thus, by right of war, 

lose his share and interest in authority and power, being conquered, 

then on the other side, by right of war, the whole must needs reside in 

that part of the people which prevailed over him, there being no middle 

power to make any claim.[10] And so the consequence is clear likewise 

that the whole right of kingly authority being by military decision 

resolved into the prevailing party, what government soever it pleases 

them next to erect is as valid de jure as if it had the consent of the 

whole body of the people.



These premises thus laid upon a sure ground show the weakness of his who 

wrote that so much magnified pamphlet entitled An Exercitation 

Concerning Usurped Powers, &c.[11] For the design of that gilded 

structure, raised upon the sandy foundation of a false hypothesis, is 

obliquely to charge the present powers in England as usurpers, though he 

have laid the scene in America. To this purpose, he spends his first 

chapter; where, telling what usurpation is, he defines it "an intrusion 

into the seat of authority without any lawful right, title, or calling" 

and insinuates it to the prejudice of the present governors, as if they 

were guilty of this intrusion without right or title. In applying this 

he first allegeth that the right and title to government is in a king, 

lords, & commons, co-ordinate in power, not in the commons alone. This 

indeed was true till the king, as I showed before, lost his title by 

right of war and until the lords likewise lost theirs by compliance with 

the enemies and invaders of the nation, for which cause they themselves 

also, by right of war, forfeited all their interests and privileges, as 

enemies; and so the whole authority devolved naturally into the hands of 

the commons.



But here the exercitator[12] objects also that the present governors 

have usurped over the majority of the House of Commons in that they were 

thrust out of the House by force. But, for answer, since by the equity 

of all laws accessories are punishable as well as those that are 

principal in the crime, therefore by the same right of war the secluded 

members also, in adhering to the conquered party, even after the 

victory, and favoring the invaders, were justly deprived of their 

interest; and the supreme authority descended lawfully to those members 

that had the courage to assert their freedoms, secure their own 

interest, themselves, and their adherents from future inconveniences, 

and take the forfeiture of those prerogatives and privileges of the 

king, lords, and secluded commons as heirs apparent by the law of arms 

and custom of nations to an investiture in the whole supremacy.[13]



One objection more he hath: How that "a calling from the people being 

necessary and essential to a humanely constituted magistracy," our 

present governors ought to have such a call; but not having it, they are 

therefore concluded guilty of usurpation. This is the sum of the 

objection, though not syllogistically deciphered. To which I answer: 1. 

That if only a call from the people constitute a lawful magistracy, then 

there hath very rarely ever been any lawful magistracy in the world, nor 

among us long before and since the Conquest. The proof of this may be 

confirmed by a review of those instances set down before in the second 

chapter where it is evident that all the world over most princes came 

into the seat of authority not only without a call but absolutely 

against the wills of the people; and so, many of them exercise the 

sovereignty to this very day. And particularly here in England most of 

our own kings reigned without any call, but made way by their swords; 

there being of those twenty-five princes that have kinged it among us, 

not above half a dozen that came to the crown in an orderly succession 

either by lineal or collateral title. And not any one of those half 

dozen but laid claim to it by virtue of their predecessors' usurpations 

without any call from the people; only in the investiture they had their 

consent because out of a love of public peace none would, or out of fear 

none durst, offer to question their titles. Now, if the former part of 

this objection were true, that a call were the only essential 

constituting a lawful government, then it would follow that, as all the 

world, so we and our ancestors have lived and paid obedience for the 

most part under an unlawful magistracy, which sure[14] no sober man will 

affirm. But if any will be so mad as to say it, I only propound to him 

this sober query: Why we may not now as lawfully submit to the present 

magistracy, in case it were unlawful, as our ancestors did heretofore to 

theirs for the public peace of the nation?



2. As to the assumptive part of this objection which insinuates that our 

present governors have no call or consent of the people, I answer that 

if by the consent be meant the consent of the body of the people, or of 

the major part of their representatives, this may hold requisite in a 

state not divided by civil war, but at peace within itself, where it is 

most consonant to reason that in case there be occasion to elect a 

supreme magistrate or magistrates, the election should be carried by the 

greater number of voices in such manner as voices are usually given in 

that state. But now in a civil war the case is altered when the 

controversy touching government is decided by the sword. For, ipso 

facto, the sword creates a title for him, or those, that bear it and 

installs them with a new majesty of empire, abolishing the old. Because, 

as the civilians say, "The ancient majesty of a state or commonweal 

continues no longer if it be changed either by a greater power or by 

consent of the people."[15] Where, you see, force and power is put 

in[16] equal balance with popular consent in relation to change of 

government. And as if it were the best pedigree of supremacy, they 

define the supreme authority to be that "which holds claim from God and 

the sword; and therefore is also as it were the author of its own 

original without dependence on any other; so that," say they, "every 

commonwealth, be it never so small, which acknowledged! no superior but 

God and the sword hath a right of majesty or political supremacy." 

Camman. Disput. de juribus majest. I. Thes. 70. 75. &c.[17] To this 

accords that of Grotius before recited, "that as in war all other things 

fall to the conquerors by way of acquisition, so likewise a right to 

govern the people and even that right also which the people themselves 

have to government." So that what government soever it pleases them to 

erect, the people having lost their right of election to them, must be 

as valid, de jure, as if it had the people's consent.[18] But as in this 

case there is no need of their express positive consent to justify a new 

government, so a tacit or implied consent is sufficient; which consent, 

as one saith well, is the very dictate of nature or common reason 

because it is better to have some justice than none at all; and there is 

a necessity of some coercive power or government lest all be left to 

disorder, violence, and confusion, which none, even of the conquered 

party, can be so unnatural as to desire. And therefore saith Suarez, 

"They do tacitly consent that justice be administered by the conquerors 

because it is a less evil to be governed by them than altogether to want 

due coaction and direction."[19]



Now, ere I conclude this chapter, I must needs wipe away one 

objection[20] very frequent in the mouths of many: that this 

transmission of title by right of war holds good when nation is engaged 

against nation, but in one single nation within itself it cannot; 

because, say they, it seems unreasonable that a nation should challenge 

a conquest over itself.



To this I answer[21] that warlike acquisitions hold as good in civil 

divisions within the same nation as in war betwixt nation and nation. 

For where a nation is engaged in a civil war and divided into parties, 

the eye of the law of nations looks not on them as one nation, but as 

two, according to that of Grotius:[22] In regno diviso, gens una, pro 

tempore, quasi duae gentens habentur, "In a divided state one nation 

during the time of its national divisions is esteemed as two nations"; 

so that what pre-eminence nation may gain over nation by right of 

foreign war, the same may be obtained likewise by one part of a nation 

against the other by right of civil war. And what the foreign conqueror 

may do in changing the government, abolishing old laws and establishing 

new, the same may be done also by the civil victor for his own security.



Thus by all the premises it is undeniably evident, in a way of 

application, that the present prevailing party in England have a right 

and just title to be our governors; and that this new government erected 

by them, to the subversion of the old, is as valid, de jure, as if it 

had the ratifying consent of the whole body of the people. Nor can they 

in any sense be counted usurpers, as is most irrationally intimated by 

the slight exercitator.







[1] MN: Necessitas summa reducit res ad merum jus naturae. Grotius De 

jure belli. I. 2. c. 6. ["Highest necessity reduces things to mere law 

of nature." Grotius, De jure belli, bk. II, chap. vi.]



[2] MN: Grotius, inter prolegomena, De jure belli. [Grotius, De jure 

belli, "Prolegomena."]



[3] MN: Grotius Ibid.



[4] MN: Nic. Mach. De principe, cap. 6. [Machiavelli, Il principe, chap. 

vi.]



[5] MN: See Grotius ib.



[6] MN: Vim jusque parilis copulans vincli jugo.



[7] To the point.



[8] MN: Grot. lib. I. c. 4. [Grotius, De jure belli, bk. I, chap. iv.]



[9] MN: Jure belli.



[10] MN: Eventus belli, velut aequus judex, unde ius stabat, victoriam 

dedit, Livius. 21. ["The result of the war, like an impartial judge, 

granted the victory to those who had the right." Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17, 

Roman historian), Ab urbe condita, bk. xxi, chap. x.]



[11] Edward Gee (1613-60, English Presbyterian divine), An Exercitation 

Concerning Usurped Powers (n.p., 1650).



[12] I.e., Edward Gee, author of An Exercitation.



[13] MN: Si qui jure suo uti non possunt, eorum jus accrescit 

praesentibus. Grotius De jure belli, lib. 2. c. 5. ["If any are unable 

to use their vote, their right falls to those present." Grotius, De jure 

belli, bk. II, chap. v.]



[14] Certainly.



[15] MN: Majestatem realem durare constat, quamdiu, vel vi majore, vel 

omnium quorum interest consensu, non mutatur. Besold. De majest. cap. I. 

[Besold, Synopsis politicae doctrinae, bk. I, chap. i.]



[16] In the text the positions of "in" and "is" are reversed. 



[17] MN: Dicitur vero summa, quiet non alium nisi deum & gladium 

recognoscit; atque ideo suae originis quasi author existit. &c. 

Arnisaeus De majest. cap. I. [Henning Arnisaeus (d. 1636, German 

physician and political theorist), De jure majestatis libri tres 

(Strasbourg, 1635), bk. I, chap. i.]



[18] MN: Bello ut alia acquiri possunt, ita & jus imperantis in populum, 

& jus quod in imperio habet ipse populus. Grot. De jure belli. 1. 3. c. 

15. [Grotius, De jure belli, bk. III, chap. xv.]



[19] MN: Lib. de legib. 3. cap. 10. [Francisco Suarez (1548-1617, 

Spanish Jesuit theologian), Tractatus de legibus, ac Deo legislatore 

(Lyon, 1619), bk. III, chap. x.]



[20] MN: Object.



[21] MN: Answ.



[22] MN: In Tractat. de legatis. [Grotius, De jure belli, bk. II, chap. 

xviii.]







                        CHAPTER 5



That the Oath of Allegiance and Covenant Are No Justifiable Grounds to 

Raise a New War in, or against, the Commonwealth of England



HAVING in the former chapters cleared the right and equity of the 

present government, in point of title, from the slanderous character of 

usurpation, I shall in the next place descend to examine the vain 

fancies of such as refuse a submission thereto upon pretense of 

conscience in regard of former obligations. These people are represented 

unto us under the ordinary notions of Royalists and Presbyterians: the 

former pleading the Oath of Allegiance; the latter, the Solemn League 

and Covenant, as a ground for their refusal.



As for the Oath of Allegiance: in a word, allegiance is but a political 

tie for politic ends, grounded upon political considerations; and 

therefore, being politically determined, when those considerations are 

altered by new circumstances (be it in relation to Caesar or the Senate) 

the old allegiance is extinct and must give place to a new. The same 

description may serve likewise for the Covenant. For even that part of 

it which relates most to religion will be found wrapped up altogether in 

matters of discipline and church polity to serve politic ends and 

interests, if the actions of our English and Scotch Presbyters may be 

admitted as a comment upon the text. I grant, both those oaths are 

religious acts as they are solemnized with the invocation of God as a 

witness. But as all actions are qualified from their principal end, so 

the main end of those oaths being obedience to the prince in order to 

the good of the public, they are of a political nature. And when such an 

alteration of affairs shall happen as extinguishes his title, I conceive 

we are not obliged, in this case, to pay him that submission which by 

oath we promised but ought rather to swear a new one to those that 

succeed him in the government.



For in promissory state oaths, as these two are, it is granted by all 

that there lurk several tacit conditions inseparable from the nature of 

all oaths and engagements and which are, as it were, the life and soul 

of the obligation. These tacit conditions, or, as Dr. Sanderson[1] calls 

them, "suppositions," are set down by divers authors, which I shall 

orderly apply to the matter in question. One tacit condition annexed to 

every oath is, "That the words of it be duly interpreted in a fair and 

equitable construction, not wresting it out of hatred or affection to 

any party."[2] This condition hath been but ill observed by the Scots 

and others in relation to their Covenant, who will not admit any 

construction but what may serve only to advance their own designs and 

heap hatred upon others. Witness their pleading for it in an absolute 

sense, or their own sense, when as[3] the principal parts of it are 

limited by express conditions, viz., that part which concerns the 

maintenance of the king and the privileges of Parliament is 

circumscribed with this clause "in" (or no otherwise than in order to) 

"the preservation of religion and liberty." And the other which relates 

to religion is as to manner of reformation qualified with another 

clause, viz., "according to the word of God." So that the old statu quo 

of king and Parliament was sworn to in a sense but secondary and 

subordinate, to show that the usual privileges of both might be quitted 

if they proved inconsistent with religion and liberty; as also that any 

reformation might be exploded to make way for one more consonant to the 

Word. And certainly if the present presbyterian whipsters [4] knew any 

other way more probable to advance their Kirk dominion than by making a 

pretended plea for prerogative a stalking-horse to the design, I believe 

both king and lords had been left long since to "God's blessing and the 

warm sun," as they say, in despair of any comfort from the Kirk's 

benediction. It seems now to me likewise that they added this clause, 

"according to the Word," not out of any love to a real reforming, but 

only that they might have a plea for the pulling down of episcopacy to 

introduce another form more suitable to their own ambitious ends, since 

that form that they contend for is as little consonant to the Word as 

the other, because they take little thence besides the bare name of 

presbytery to patch up a reformation. These things the world must needs 

believe of them till they lay aside their self-designings and admit of 

an equitable interpretation of the Covenant in the limitations expressed 

or according to that latitudo prudentialis, "the prudential latitude," 

spoken of by Dr. Sanderson, which ought to be considered in all oaths 

when the sense and meaning of them is in question. For, as we ought by 

all means to beware that we give not ourselves too great a liberty of 

interpretation to the end that we may shake off the obligation of an 

oath, "so none ought to fasten such a sense upon an oath, or any part of 

it, for their own profit or commodity which any other pious and prudent 

man, indifferent and uninterested in the business, would not collect and 

conclude out of the words of the oath."[5]



Moreover, if we did grant the Scots their own interpretation, yet it can 

be of small consequence to their ends, since the Covenant itself is 

extinct by reason of the breach first made by themselves. Let Grotius 

determine this truth, who lib. 2. cap. 15. saith, Si pars una foedus 

violaverit, poterit altera a foedere discedere: nam capita foederis 

singula conditionis vim habent. "If one party break a covenant, the 

other is no longer bound to it. For each particular head of a covenant 

carries with it the force of a condition,"[6] which condition in 

relation to the Covenanters is that either of them observe it with 

fidelity to each other. But the Scots have been so far from observing, 

that the whole nation have been involved in the breach of it by dividing 

the King from the people, the people from each other, and at length by a 

perfidious national invasion. So that, except they can show us some new 

foundation whereon that breach is repaired, the Covenant must needs be 

defunct in point of obligation. For, saith the same author, Foedus 

tacite renovatum intelligi non debet: Non enim facile praesumitur nova 

obligatio, nisi ex actibus qui nullam aliam interpretationem 

recipiunt.[7] "A covenant, being once at an end, cannot be supposed to 

be renewed tacitly. For a new obligation is not easily to be presumed, 

but by such acts as declare it and admit no other construction." 

Therefore, till the Scots and their partisans can produce evidences of a 

renovation of the Covenant by positive acts of state, they must of 

necessity grant that all Covenant obligations & relations are expired 

between the two nations of England & Scotland.



A second tacit condition latent in oaths promissory is expressed in 

these words out of the divinity of the Stoics by Seneca.[8] Tunc fidem 

fallam, & inconstantiae crimen audiam, si cum omnia eadem sint, quae 

erant promittente me, non praestitero promissum: Alioqui, quicquid 

mutatur libertatem facit de integro consulendi, & fidem meam liberat. 

"Then," saith he, "let me be accused of falsehood and inconstancy, if 

when all things remain the same as they were at the time that I 

promised, I shall not then perform my promise. Otherwise, any alteration 

whatsoever leaves me wholly at liberty and freeth me from my 

engagement." And a little after saith he, "Affairs ought to be in the 

same condition they were when thou didst promise to bind thee to the 

performance."[9] And in his thirty-ninth chapter he becomes more 

particular and saith, "In all promises do lurk these tacit conditions or 

exceptions, si potero, if I am able, si debeo, if I ought, si haec ita 

erunt, if things continue as they now are. If you require the 

performance of my promise, bring affairs into the same posture that they 

were in when I made it. But if any new alteration happen, why dost thou 

wonder, my condition being otherwise than it was when I promised, that I 

am changed in my intentions? Render things the same, and I am still the 

same."[10]



And that this holds good in Christian divinity, as well as Stoical, 

appears out of the afore-mentioned Doctor,[11] whose doctrine is 

equivalent and his terms convertible with those of Seneca, declaring 

that all promises have these tacit conditions, suppositions, or 

exceptions. Si Deus permiserit, "if God permit," which answers to 

Seneca's si potero; quoad licet, "as far as lawfully I may," which 

answers to his si debeo, rebus sic stantibus, "as long as things thus 

stand," which answers to his si haec ita erunt. According to which 

several suppositions in order, I shall examine both the Oaths of 

Allegiance and Covenant and prove their nonobligation.



First,[12] no man that enters into an oath or covenant can be so stupid 

as to promise the performance of anything without this tacit reservation 

within his own soul, that he will do it if "God permit him"; considering 

we can do nothing without Him, Who exerciseth His wisdom and sovereignty 

in the disposition of all human affairs, according to that of the 

Apostle James who bids us say, "If the Lord will, we will do this or 

that."[13] If so, then having sworn in the oaths before-mentioned to 

continue true and faithful to the King and his heirs, &c., it cannot be 

meant otherwise than with this clause, "If God please to permit their 

continuance in the government." But we plainly see God is not pleased to 

permit their continuance, since all men will confess that, at least, by 

a permissive act of Providence, another form of government is erected 

quite contrary to the old. Therefore if we consider the Oath of 

Allegiance and Covenant according to this first supposition, they are 

now of no force and obligation. But it may serve to satisfy a private 

man's conscience if in times past he have done his utmost to perform the 

duties required by those oaths during the former establishment. "The 

reason is," saith the same Doctor, "because seeing all things are 

subjected to Divine Providence and pleasure and that it is not in the 

power of any man to regulate all accidents which happen in the future, 

therefore he that hath used his whole endeavor to perform what he 

promised hath paid his allegiance and fulfilled the intent of his oath, 

the obligation ceasing when things cannot possibly be effected," as the 

Doctor saith, ex impossibilitate facti. Praelect. 2. sect. 12.[14]



2. As concerning the Doctor's quoad licet,[15] the second tacit 

condition or exception, it is to be presumed no man swears to anything 

but with this reservation, "as far as lawfully he may." If so, then in 

case it so happen that we cannot lawfully act in prosecution of those 

things which we have sworn to, our obligation ceaseth ex impossibilitate 

juris; as in the former, by an "impossibility of power" in us to effect 

what we were obliged unto, so in this, by an "impossibility of right" in 

us to act in order thereunto. For saith he, that is said to be 

impossible by an impossibility of right which a man hath no lawful power 

to endeavor. But as to the restoration of kingly government now that 

another is established (by as good a title, I have proved, as ever the 

kingly was), I would fain know what right or lawful power any private 

man hath, and which way he can ground it upon the Oath of Allegiance and 

Covenant, to endeavor the destruction of the new form of government and 

a restitution of the old. For private persons have no right to question 

those that are in power and "are no competent judges in controversies of 

that nature, nor ought they to meddle with them, but," as Grotius saith, 

"rather follow possession."[16] Yea, put case they were unlawfully 

possessed, usurpers, invaders, and tyrants, yet the same author saith, 

privato vi dejicere summi imperii invasorem non licet. "It is not lawful 

for any private person to endeavor the thrusting them out by force."[17]



Nor is this founded only upon human reason but also upon Scripture. That 

place in the 13th to the Romans,[18] "There is no power but of God; the 

powers that be are ordained of God," is sufficient to convince every 

private conscience of the necessity of submission. That is, to submit to 

them so far as not to presume to dispute how they came by their power; 

and this course is most agreeable to the sense of all expositors, the 

practice of all times, and the voice even of natural reason, since the 

opening of a gap to question supreme powers and touch the tender eye of 

their authority would let out all into confusion, tumult following 

tumult, like billow upon billow, till the world were overwhelmed with a 

sea of miseries and distractions.



But, some may object,[19] if there be such a necessity of submission to 

supreme powers without questioning them, how then can this Parliament be 

justified in having questioned the King at their first sitting for 

divers of his actions? I answer,[20] there is a difference betwixt 

supreme power and the exercise of it. The controversy was not at first 

concerning his right of government, but the abuse of it by way of 

maladministration, in defense of which abuses he took arms; and so by 

the law of arms losing his right, as is proved before, the power 

descended to those that are now in possession, whose right we ought no 

more to question than at first we did his, their power deriving as 

natural a pedigree from heaven as his did and being as legally confirmed 

by the law of arms and nations as ever that was which he held from his 

predecessors. Now, in that the 13th to the Romans commands a submission 

and obedience in general terms, it is not meant to all powers in the 

arbitrary exercise of their power in time of peace but to all supreme 

powers in point of title, be it settled upon them by right of war,[21] 

inheritance, or any other way. And to support this exposition, give me 

leave here to introduce two of the main pillars of reformation, Bucer 

and Calvin, men famous in their generations, whose testimonies may serve 

once for all touching that so much controverted chapter to the Romans. 

"The Apostle," saith Calvin upon the place, "seems here to go about to 

take away the frivolous curiosity of men, who use often to inquire by 

what right those which have command did get their authority. But it 

ought to suffice us that they are in pre-eminence. For they did not get 

up to this height by their own strength but are set over us by the hand 

of God."[22] And saith Bucer also, on the same place, "When a question 

is made whom we should obey, it must not be regarded what he is that 

exerciseth the power, or by what right or wrong he hath invaded the 

power, or in what form he dispense it, but only if he have power. For, 

if any man doth excel in power, it is now out of doubt that he hath 

received that power from God. Wherefore, without all exception, thou 

must yield thyself up to him and heartily obey him."[23]



Seeing now all supreme powers are of God and that the Apostle commands 

subjection to them, but damns resistance, it is clear then, as to our 

case here in England, that we owe submission to the present governors 

and that no private man hath any warrant out of the Word to satisfy his 

conscience in the lawfulness of such actions as tend to disturb or 

thrust them out of possession. Therefore, according to this second 

supposition of the Doctor, no oath being of force to bind the conscience 

farther than a man may lawfully act, it follows evidently, the case thus 

standing, that the old allegiance is canceled and we bound to admit a 

new; and that both it and the Covenant have now no influence at all over 

us, but are utterly void and of none effect.



3. The third tacit condition or supposition implied in all oaths is, 

saith the Doctor, rebus sic stantibus,[24] "as long as things continue 

thus," it being to be presumed that when I swear to perform anything, I 

do it with this tacit reservation, if I be not hindered by an alteration 

of affairs. But if such an alteration happen that neither the same 

persons nor things are in being which I swore to maintain, my oath is at 

an end and the obligation ceaseth; which now is our very case here in 

England, the government being changed and new governors set over us. For 

this, the learned Grotius hath one instance very pertinent to our 

purpose. "An oath," saith he, "binds a man no longer if the quality or 

condition of the person to whom he swore be altered. As for example, if 

he that was a magistrate cease to be a magistrate."[25] In evidence 

whereof the same author allegeth a saying of Caesar's to the soldiers of 

Domitius, when Domitius was a prisoner. They were unwilling to serve 

Caesar because of the military oath they had taken for the other. But to 

take away this scruple, saith Caesar to them, Sacramento quidem vos 

tenere qui potuit, quum projectis fascibus & deposito imperio, privatus 

& captus ipse in alienam venisset potestatem? "How can he hold you bound 

by oath any longer, being outed of his authority and command, remaining 

a private man, and a prisoner, under the power of another?" Alas, "your 

oath ended together with his authority."[26]



Thus also according to this third supposition of the Doctor's, it is 

plainly to be inferred that since affairs of state stand not now in 

England as they were when we took the Oath of Allegiance, or the 

Covenant, but a new government is erected, therefore our obligation to 

the former is totally extinguished. And if the obligation be extinct, as 

I have proved in the several particulars before-mentioned, then the 

consequence is as plain: That neither of those oaths can be a ground 

sufficient to justify any Royalist or Presbyterian in denying a 

submission to the present government, or to raise a new war within the 

nation.







[1] MN: Sanders. De jura praelect. 2. sect. 1. [Robert Sanderson (1587-

1663, English cleric, later bishop of Lincoln), De juramemi promissorii 

obligatione praelectiones septem (London, 1647), pp. 28-30.]



[2] MN: Idem in sect. 8. [Ibid., pp. 41-44.]



[3] At a time at which, when.



[4] Insignificant or contemptible persons.



[5] MN: Sanders, ibid, neve sensum aliquem juramento a nobis praestito, 

aut ejus alicui parti affingamus, proprii Commodi aut utilitatis causa, 

quem non quivis vir alius pius & prudens (qui est liberioris judicii, 

utpote cuja nihil interest) ex ipsis verbis facile eliceret. [Sanderson, 

De juramenti promissorii, pp. 43, 45.]



[6] Grotius, De jure belli, bk. II, chap. xv.



[7] MN: Grotius ubi supra.



[8] MN: Seneca lib. 4. De beneficiis, c. 36. [Seneca, De beneficiis, bk. 

iv, chap. xxxv.]



[9] MN: Omnia debent esse eadem quae fuerint cum promitteres, ut 

promittentis fidem teneas. [Ibid.]



[10] MN: Si aliquid intervenit novi, quid miraris cum conditio 

promittentis mutata sit, mutatum esse consilium? [Ibid., bk. iv, chap. 

xxxix.]



[11] MN: Sanders. Prae. lect. 2. sect. 10. [Sanderson, De juramenti 

promissorii, pp. 46-49.]



[12] MN: I. Si Deus permiserit.



[13] MN: James 4. [Jas. 4:15.]



[14] MN: Quia cum omnia divinae Providentiae & voluntati subsint, nec 

sit in cujusvis hominis potestate omnes futuros casus praestare; qui 

fecit quod in se fuit ut adimpleret quod promiserat, juramenti fidem 

exoluit. Rei impossibilis nulla est obligatio. Sanders. Ibid. 

[Sanderson, De juramenti promissorii, pp. 47, 51-53.]



[15] MN: 2. Quoad licet. [Ibid., p. 48.]



[16] MN: Grot. De jure belli. l. I. c. 4. [Grotius, De jure belli, bk. 

I, chap. iv.]



[17] MN: Ibid.



[18] Rom. 13:1.



[19] MN: Object.



[20] MN: Answ.



[21] MN: Potestates apud Ammianum aliosque dicuntur, penes quos sunt 

jura militaria. Arnold. Clapmar. De jure imperii. lib. I. cap. 10. 

["They are called supreme authorities by Ammianus [Marcellinus] and 

others who hold the military power." Clapmar, De arcanis 

rerumpublicarum, bk. I, chap. x.]



[22] MN: Videtur Apostolus voluisse tollere frivolam hominum 

curiositatem, &c. Calv. in Rom. cap. 13. [Jean Calvin (1509-64, French 

Protestant leader at Geneva), Commentaires ... sur le Nouveau Testament 

(Paris, 1854-55), III, 228.]



[23] MN: Quum quaeritur cm parendum, non est spectandum qualis sit qui 

potestatem exercet, nec quo jure, vel injuria, quis potestatem 

invaserit. Bucer. in Rom. 13. [Martin Butzer (1491-1551, German 

Protestant theologian), Metaphrasis et enarratio in epist. D. Pauli 

apostoli ad romanos (Basel, 1562), pp. 564-65.]



[24] MN: 3. Rebus sic stantibus. [Sanderson, De juramenti promissorii.]



[25] MN: Non tenebittir, si cesset qualitas sub qua alicui juravit; ut 

si magistratus desinat esse magistratus. Grot. lib. 2. cap. 13. De jure 

belli. [Grotius, De jure belli, bk. II, chap. xiii.]



[26] MN: Sacramentum capitis diminutione sublatum. Ibid.







                          PART II



HAVING in the former part, as I think, fully manifested the necessity 

and equity, my design in the next is to show the utility and benefit of 

a submission. This I shall do by stating the nature of the designs of 

the several parties claiming an interest in this nation, viz., 

Royalists, Scots, Presbyterians, Levellers, as they stand in opposition 

to the present government and would each of them introduce a new form of 

their own. And that you may the better understand them and their 

affairs, I shall in a plain method, for the more easy conviction, 

proceed upon these particulars.



First, the great improbability of effecting their designs.



Secondly, the grand inconveniences which must needs follow, in case 

either of them be effected, to the prejudice of the whole nation.



Thirdly, the excellency of a free state or commonwealth as it is now 

established in England, and what happiness we may reap thereby.



After I have handled the two former, as they hold relation to the 

several parties, I shall bring up the rear with the third by way of 

conclusion.







                        CHAPTER 1



Concerning the Royal Party



THE Royalists are of two sorts. First, such as adhere to the Prince out 

of necessity. Secondly, such as adhere to him out of humor. The former 

are those who, being hopeless of a return or of the recovery of their 

fortunes by way of reconcilement, are constrained to run any hazard 

abroad with the head of their party and turn every stone to overturn the 

present powers here in England that they may set up themselves. The 

latter sort of Royalists are such as, though they served heretofore 

under the royal standard, yet through the favor of the Parliament, have 

regained possession of their estates. And therefore, being reinvested 

with their fortunes, they are loath as yet to attend the Prince in 

person though they follow him with their wishes and would be glad to 

embrace any design underhand or perhaps, when time serves, appear here 

again in the field to make way for his advancement. These may, not 

improperly, be called humorous royalists because they have only an 

obstinate and vainglorious humor for the ground of their behavior 

without any respect of advantage to themselves, but are ridden by the 

other to carry on the high-royal design of particular persons, and ran a 

new hazard of their own. To restore the single family of a prince, 

suppressed by the Almighty, they seem willing to venture the destruction 

of all their own families and to serve the ends of certain persons about 

him, men whose fortunes are desperate. They are apt to fool themselves 

into the loss of their own, as they must needs do if the Prince miscarry 

in his enterprise; whereas if he should carry it with success, they will 

be then where they were. They can be but masters of what they have 

already. The high ranters and fugitives are they that will be looked on 

at court. Those bellwethers of royalty will bear away the bell of 

preferment whilst the poor country-royalists (both gentry and yeomen) 

shall be glad to drudge and plow to pay those yet unknown taxations 

which must needs be collected to satisfy the forlorn brethren of the 

sword, the many younger brothers, and strangers which will come in with 

the grandees in hope to purchase a fortune by squeezing the public.



All which being considered, it is a wonder to see how they feed 

themselves with fantasies, who pretend in this nation to the restitution 

of royalty; how their eyes are dazzled with that sun which seems to rise 

upon their party, supposing the golden age must needs return again with 

him and that he will climb up to the meridian in spite of all 

opposition! But to give them a cooler for these conceits, I shall more 

particularly, according to the method before-propounded, show first the 

improbability of success in the new royal designs, and then the grand 

inconveniences that would follow such a success, that all mistaken 

persons may see how far they wander (to the hazard of themselves) out of 

that way which leads to the future happiness of this nation.



As to the improbability of the Prince's success in his design: first, he 

is like to have but a slender supply of foreign aids. For the affairs of 

Christendom are at this time so disposed that some princes want leisure, 

others, ability, to assist him. And divers there are which refrain for 

particular reasons of state. The Spaniard hath other fish to fry, 

keeping a serious eye upon France and lying at catch against Portugal. 

Besides, there are several reasons, not fit here to mention, which may 

dispose him rather to embrace the amity of this Commonwealth as it is 

now established; and whereof there is some hope, were there no other 

ground, in that he hath given our agent a friendly reception.



So likewise hath the King of Portugal, too, another agent, and how far 

he is from neglecting our friendship may appear by his demeanor toward 

our fleet in the port of Lisbon, where he hath given them the like 

freedom and entertainment as he doth to Rupert, carrying himself 

indifferently between both though he seem a little to incline somewhat 

more toward Rupert; not out of any good will, but only in regard of his 

pre-engagement to that party.



The King of France hath his hands full enough at home so that he hath 

little list[1] or leisure to mind affairs abroad; being jealous not only 

of the Spaniard, but even of his own subjects by reason of their regret 

at the insupportable taxes, the discontents and bandyings of his 

parlements in the several provinces, and the partisans of the imprisoned 

princes; all which seem to threaten, if not the monarchy itself yet, the 

family of the monarch.



Denmark hath hitherto given but a cool acknowledgment of so near an 

alliance, having been at the best but a retiring place for Montrose, 

seconding this with some other slight superficial courtesies, one of the 

best of which was to rid their hands of their guest by lending him a few 

bottoms;[2 ]first, to seek his better fortune in Swethland,[3] and then 

to waft him and his forlorn hope toward their long homes[4] into 

Scotland.



Some such trivial supplies likewise may be expected from the Swede with 

a few complements from the Emperor and German princes, their jealousies 

of each other not permitting them to spare their forces. For whosoever 

considers the delays and shifts made by the Emperor and his party in 

performing the Articles of Peace, and on the other side the resolution 

of the Swede and that party to have them fully performed (together with 

those heartburnings among them which break out often into flames in 

every corner), may easily imagine the peace of Germany is not long-

lived, and therefore that neither of those princes will part with many 

of their soldiery.



The Hollanders esteem it a safe way to conform themselves ever to the 

prevailing party in England, having reason above all others to prize the 

friendship and amity of the English nation. And though some common 

courtesies are expressed there to the Prince by way of entertainment, 

yet these are done rather to comply with the desires of the Prince of 

Orange than out of any inclination or affection to the royal party; 

whereas the sense of the States Provincial (and in them the meaning of 

the whole people) is to preserve a strict correspondence with the 

Commonwealth of England. Nor do they relish those close combinations 

between the Prince of Orange and his brother; fearing so great an 

alliance may dispose Orange to aspire and establish a greater interest 

of his own than is meet for a member of a republic if monarchy come to 

its height again in England. Which they ought by no means to desire, but 

rather that England should continue as it is; not only for the former 

reason, but also for that such a neighborhood would be concerned in 

reason to admit them into a nearer friendship & complication of 

interests than ever they can hope from a monarchy.



Those things being considered, the Prince hath small hope of success in 

regard of any considerable supplies from foreign princes.



Secondly, put case he can, by the help of the many fugitive English, the 

Scots, and supplies drained out of the dregs of several countries, make 

shift to patch up an army or two to try his fortune; yet 'tis ten to one 

but they ruin his design. For, first, the introducing of foreigners will 

soon alienate the affections of the English as experience hath proved in 

all times. Secondly, Auxiliatores conducti ex diversis locis, nec 

disciplina inter se, nec affectione consentiunt.[5] "Mercenary 

auxiliaries that are collected out of several nations seldom agree 

either in discipline or affection." The reason of this is given by the 

same author. For, saith he, since the "customs of nations are diverse, 

therefore men of several countries, differing both in habit and manners, 

cannot long continue together without discovering an antipathy or 

contrariety in their natures, even to the ruin of that party with whom 

they are engaged."



To pass by the testimonies of many other statesmen, we have two very 

pertinent ones afforded us out of our own affairs: witness that 

emulation discovered between the Scots and English in the Hamiltonian 

invasion; and also, of late, between the English and Irish under Ormonde 

in Ireland, whereupon the English chose rather to join with the 

Parliament party than continue any longer engaged with the Irish. 

Lastly, those foreign mercenaries will, upon the least misfortune of 

war, desert the Prince and take up arms under the Parliament. For, as 

saith Patritius, "The faith of mercenaries depends upon fortune, and if 

she turn to the adverse party, thither they follow and incline their 

hopes and affections."[6] Yea, so little trust is to be given to these 

mercenaries that notwithstanding their condition be good, yet, saith 

another, "They are easily corrupted with money and, with rewards and 

promises of better pay, bought over to any other party, respecting gain 

much more than the cause of their engagement."[7] Judge then how the 

Prince is like to thrive with his foreign auxiliaries, if he shall have 

any, either in England or Scotland. For the reason of these things holds 

good in one nation as well as another.



Thirdly, since it appears how small success he is like to have by the 

aids of other princes, let us see whether he have any better hopes by 

foreign aid out of Scotland or Ireland to make a conquest of England. As 

for Ireland, he hath but poor expectations thence since the Lord 

Lieutenant hath swept away those adversaries with the besom[8] of 

vengeance and made way by a continued chain of miraculous successes to 

shackle that rebellious nation; and doubt not ere long to bind their 

princes with chains and their nobles with links of iron since every 

month[9] brings in fresh laurels of victory to their terror and 

amazement. But Ireland being given for lost, let us see next whether the 

Royalists are like to receive any more comfort from Scotland. It's an 

old saying nullum bonum ex aquilone, "no good comes out of the North." 

And, of all others, Royalists should be the least apt to believe any 

benefit to come out of that nation from whence proceeded the ruin and 

destruction of the late King and all their party; nor can they hope much 

better of them in time to come. For, first, they adhere to the Prince 

not out of any love to his interest but only in hope to settle their own 

upon his shoulders; and therefore if they can make a better bargain 

elsewhere, they will cast him off or, if he be in their power, sell him 

off as they did his father upon the first occasion. What else can he 

expect from a party whose interest was first founded upon the ruin of 

his great-grandmother, continued and augmented to the perpetual vexation 

of his grandfather, and at length prosecuted to the destruction of his 

father? Secondly, it is impossible to reconcile the two parties, royal 

and presbyterian; even as impossible (King James was wont to say) as to 

reconcile God and the devil. Thirdly, if they cannot be reconciled or 

stand together, then whatsoever agreement may be made, it will be but 

from the teeth outward. Nor can there be an union betwixt them upon any 

design but in the prosecution thereof they will mind the advancement of 

their several interests; which must make them jealous of each other, 

divided and partial in their counsels, and cause the inward rancor to 

break out to the prejudice and utter ruin of the whole engagement. 

Fourthly, let the Scots invade us again upon the royal or what score 

else they please, they will never be endured; especially in the northern 

parts, having heretofore by their perfidious and tyrannical behavior 

fixed an odious impression upon the spirits of the people and quickened 

the old antipathy betwixt the two nations. So that if the Prince come in 

with them, or by them, he will fare never the better, but much worse, 

for their sakes or their company. Lastly, they come, if they dare come, 

a most nasty, lousy, beaten generation against one of the most generous, 

best-accomplished, and most victorious armies in Christendom — an army 

that must needs be dishonored by such an enemy from whom never credit 

nor advantage is to be gotten. Yet it is meet they should be chastised 

since the Almighty, out of love to the future peace of our nation, seems 

to decree that Belial[10] and Dagan,[11] Montrose and the Kirk with her 

worthies should be sent after Hamilton. This indeed would be a fair step 

to reformation by setting out the corruption of that country which 

sticks like a scab upon the fair body of this fortunate island.



Now in the last place to conclude this particular touching the 

improbability of the Prince's success, since he hath little ground to 

hope for any by the assistance of other nations, let us examine what 

hope he hath from our own. Several reasons may be given to the contrary: 

as first, the people's hatred of foreigners and their fear of that 

plague, universal free-quarter,[12] with their averseness to war, having 

tasted some time of the sweets of peace. And though they are sensible of 

some necessary burdens, yet considering another war will increase new 

ones, more exorbitant, every man would be content with things as they 

are. For the common people, as the poet saith,



     Duas tantum res anxius optat, panem, & circenses[13]



will be satisfied with bread and quietness rather than hazard their ease 

and security to serve the ambition of others.



Secondly, they will be the less apt to engage in any new insurrections 

and parties since the last thrived so ill, to the prejudice and shame of 

all the undertakers. Examples make men wise; and though many of them 

escaped without punishment in regard this government was not then 

declared, yet now that it is established and laws are made to defend it 

against all that offend in time to come, men will beware, I suppose, how 

they meddle since they can expect nothing less after another war than 

the punishment of traitors.[14]



Thirdly, put case the counties were resolved upon new insurrections. Yet 

what can be done by unwieldy bodies of raw men taken from the streets, 

the plow, or the harrows, rude and unacquainted with military discipline 

against a well-disciplined army of old soldiers? Consider what became of 

those vast numbers in Kent, Essex, &c., with what ease they were 

dispersed and how soon they vanished into nothing!



Fourthly, it is not like that the gentry, men of estates, will stir in 

any considerable number to hazard their possessions, being yet scarce 

warm in them, after a purchase made upon dear rates of composition. But 

if any are so mad as to venture on new designs, they might do well to 

consider how hard a matter it is to carry them on without discovery, 

seeing the state hath a party and friends in all countries and 

corporations. Besides, if they could carry it so close as to bring any 

petty design into action, yet they cannot but be snapped and nipped in 

the bud, the militia being so well-settled and a party ready in arms in 

every county. Now all these parcels of discourse being well-weighed 

together, I leave every man's intellect to make the conclusion what 

slender probability of success there is by the assistance of foreigners 

or natives in the present royal design against England.



Having thus in the former part of this chapter shown the improbability 

of success in the new royal enterprise, which were enough to wean wise 

men from engaging upon that score, I shall, according to the method 

propounded, in the next place state those grand inconveniences which 

would unavoidably follow to the prejudice of the whole nation in case 

the Royalists should proceed with success to the ruin of this 

government. The very consideration whereof should, methinks, be 

sufficient to startle all understanding men from wishing well to that 

party.



First, since there can be no medium of reconcilement betwixt our present 

governors and the son of the late King, it is granted by all that if 

ever he come into possession, it must be by conquest and the power of 

the sword. If so, then he will be as absolute as was William the 

Conqueror, and we all must be in the same slavish condition as our 

forefathers were under the tyranny of that Norman bastard. That 

government which heretofore was called monarchical will then be exactly 

tyrannical according to that saying of prudent Cicero in one of his 

epistles, Ex victoria cum multa mala, tum certe Tyrannis existit.[15] 

"As many other mischiefs, so certainly a tyranny ever follows a 

conquest." And therefore it was that when Henry,[16] the son of Maud the 

Empress, contended for the crown by arms against King Stephen and was 

like to prevail, the Estates of the realm wrought an accommodation 

betwixt them upon this ground because "they conceived it dangerous for 

them and the whole state to have a young prince get the mastery by his 

sword." For princes ever improve such kinds of victory to an advantage 

over the people, and success makes them cruel: witness the savage 

proceedings of Edward the Second[17] against his lords after he had 

overthrown them in battle in the northern parts, executing their persons 

and confiscating their estates as traitors; so that he is noted in our 

chronicles to be the first of all our kings after the Conquest who, to 

prosecute his revenge, gave a precedent of butchering the bodies of the 

English by beheading and quartering. This may be enough to show that to 

bring any prince into possession by the sword is to instate him in a 

tyranny.



Secondly, though the Prince of himself should not be inclined to 

tyranny, yet his followers, having a power over him, will soon persuade 

him to it. Nam legitimum regnum convertitur in tyrannidem, aut 

dominatum, cum aulopoliticis (qui plerunque odio prosecuuntur 

libertatem) facile aurem praebet princeps.[18] "For," saith one, "a 

well-regulated government is soon changed into a tyrannical domination 

when a prince gives ear to court politicians who, for the most part, are 

enemies to liberty." And as to our present case Machiavel speaks very 

aptly, that a nation which hath cast off the yoke of tyranny or 

kingship, for in his language they are both the same thing, and newly 

obtained their liberty, must look to have all those for enemies that 

were familiars and retainers to the king or tyrant. Who, having lost 

their preferments, will never rest but seek all occasions to re-

establish themselves upon the ruins of liberty and to aspire again unto 

a tyranny; that exercising an arbitrary power, they may take more sharp 

revenge against all those that dare but pretend unto liberty.[19]



Thirdly, seeing that as things thus stand, to have a king again invested 

by the power of his own sword were all one as to have a tyrant erected 

with an arbitrary power to do what he list, it will not be amiss to take 

a view of the effects and consequences of tyranny. As, first, a 

trampling of all laws under foot.[20] Secondly, using all sorts of 

cruelties and rapine.[21] Hence it is that Cato called a king, 

carnivorum animal, "a ravenous creature";[22] and by Homer in the first 

of his Iliads?[23] a king is called, DhmoboroV basileuV, "a devourer of 

the people," so that no man's life or estate is in safety if they have a 

mind to bereave them of either; and for this purpose, Tacitus[24] saith, 

they always keep false accusations and witnesses in lavender.[25] 

Thirdly, no good man can live safe by them nor any man that is eminent 

for valor or virtue;[26] according to that of the tragedian Seneca,



Servare cives principi & patriae graves, claro tumentes genere, quae 

dementia est?[27]



Who acting the part of a tyrant saith, "It is a madness to preserve 

great persons when they once grow burdensome to their prince and 

country." Thus Tarquin taught his son Lucius to secure his tyranny by 

striking off the heads of those poppies in his garden which grew higher 

than their fellows; whereupon his ingenious son gave the world to 

understand, as well as himself, what his father's meaning was when 

afterward he destroyed all the principal men among the Gabines by force, 

treachery, and false accusations. No matter whether things be justly 

done or not, for a tyrant's maxims are such as this out of Lucian,[28]



     Sceptrorum vis tota perit, si pendere justa incipit.



"That prince's scepter is not worth a rush who stands upon justice and 

honesty." Caesar hath left it upon record of himself, as Thucydides hath 

of Euphemus, and Euripides of Eteocles: that "all laws may be violated 

to make way to a domination";[29] that "a man may be wicked to obtain or 

maintain an absolute sovereignty";[30] that "a prince ought to account 

nothing unjust which is profitable."[31] To which may be added one more 

out of Seneca, that "where a prince hath no power to do ought but what 

is just, he reigns but by courtesy."[32] These are the usual rules by 

which tyrants steer their courses. And therefore it concerns all men to 

forbear their assistance to any that endeavor to resettle a king by the 

power of the sword lest he seat himself as a conqueror and so slip into 

an absolute tyranny. For it is seldom that kings forbear an arbitrary 

power if they can by any means usurp it over the people. And though 

there may sometimes happen a good king that will not make use of it to 

their prejudice, yet even then the people are not safe because, saith 

Sallust, it is in his power to be wicked if he please.[33]



Fourthly, if he come in by the sword, there will be no act of 

oblivion[34] passed beforehand. And if he gain possession, it is a 

question then whether he will grant any afterward; or if for fashion 

sake he do grant one, how far it shall extend and whether it may not be 

eluded to make way for revenge against particular persons who perhaps 

little dream of an inquisition for past offenses, as being of the 

moderate sort of offenders against the regal person and prerogative. All 

these quaeres are well worthy every man's consideration since revenge is 

esteemed inter arcana imperii,[35] one of the special mysteries in the 

cabinet counsels of royalty. For with them, as Tacitus saith, ultio in 

quaestu habetur, "revenge is counted great gain" and prized as the prime 

jewel of a crown. It is so sweet a morsel that even the best of kings 

could not refrain it;[36] as may be seen in the practices of David and 

Solomon.[37] We read how David pardoned Shimei for a time, and he seemed 

so earnest in the doing it that one would have thought the offense 

should never have been remembered. Also how he forbore to revenge 

himself upon Joab all his own days. Yet being to die, he gives charge to 

his son Solomon not to let them escape unpunished but that he should 

"bring their hoar heads unto the grave with blood," which afterward upon 

slight occasions was executed accordingly.[38] So Solomon himself 

likewise, though he forgave his competitor and brother, Adonijah, and 

bade him go to his house in peace,[39] yet he lay at catch still for 

some new occasion to be revenged. And therefore for a petty passion of 

love toward the Shunammite lady, in demanding her to be his wife, poor 

Adonijah was laid to sleep with his fathers. In our own chronicles we 

find also how that when Henry the Third had in the end gained the better 

by his sword over the Earl of Leicester and the people, he meditated 

nothing but revenge against all that had opposed him; razing the castles 

of his barons, confiscating their estates, and taking forfeiture of the 

charters of many corporations, especially of the Londoners whom he 

spitefully vexed ever after in body and purse upon every 

opportunity.[40] So likewise Richard the Second, because the Londoners 

were not willing to back him in his irregularities but had appeared 

cross to his designs, watched every way to be revenged on them; and upon 

a slight occasion of a tumult in the city, which nevertheless the mayor 

soon suppressed, he deprived them of the best part of their privileges 

and put them to the expense of no less than £20,000, a fine, 

considerable sum in those days of antiquity to be added to that 

invaluable loss of their liberties for so poor a matter as a petty 

tumult about a quarrel with a bishop's servant. But when kings have been 

disobliged by any city or persons, by hook or crook sooner or later they 

shall feel their displeasure.[41] And therefore Machiavel adviseth never 

to trust them. For whosoever, saith he, thinks by new courtesies to take 

out of their minds the remembrance of old injuries, is extremely 

deceived.[42]



Fifthly, if kings are thus revengeful, then what may we expect but the 

fatal consequences of that humor? It is an old saying,



          Regnabit sanguine multo, 

          ad regnum quisquis venit ab exilio,



that is, "his reign will be very bloody that comes from banishment to a 

kingdom." Whereof they shall be first sensible that have opposed his 

interest; and such are all those in this nation that have appeared for 

the Parliament against the encroachments of the prerogative. Nor let 

them flatter themselves that they shall escape better than others 

because they never opposed this Prince's person. It will be ground 

sufficient for his hatred that they bandied[43] against his father and 

the prerogative to which he is heir. Nor is it likely he will forget the 

observation made by one of his chaplains[44] in a sermon before him at 

The Hague; how that the Presbyterians held his father by the hair and 

the Independents cut off his head. Nor is it to be supposed that we 

should have many parliaments hereafter. For besides the provocations 

given by Parliament, it is against the nature of kings to love 

parliaments or assemblies of their people.[45] And it was left as a 

legacy by King James to his family in his Basilikon doron that his 

successors should neglect parliaments as much as might be. So that 

consider how this Prince is engaged not only by the interest of the 

crown, his particular personal interest of revenge, but also by the 

precepts of his grandfather and the common inclination of all monarchs, 

and we may easily imagine what will become of parliaments and parliament 

patriots if ever he get possession.



Sixthly, whereas many now adhere to him in their hearts in hope they 

shall be eased of excise and taxes, &c., if he be restored, they are 

exceedingly mistaken. I remember a passage out of the stories of France 

[46] that the Duke of Orleans, having upon a difference betwixt him and 

the King, laid a tax upon some of the provinces by their own consent to 

maintain his army. Afterward, allured with fair promises, they inclined 

the Duke to accord with the King, hoping to be eased of the imposition. 

But they fell short of their desires, for that which they had 

voluntarily imposed upon themselves was settled upon them per force by 

the King when he once had them in possession. And so that tax which was 

called the gabelle continues upon them to this very day as a token of 

their folly. Now, let us not flatter ourselves here in England that we 

shall fare any better in point of excise or other payments upon the 

Prince's restitution. If now we have burdens, we must then look to have 

furrows made upon our backs. If now we are through necessity put to 

endure a few whips, we shall then of set purpose be chastised with 

scorpions. It is not an excise or an army that we shall escape, but be 

visited with whole legions of foreign desperadoes which must be fed with 

greater payments than ever, and God knows when we shall be rid of them 

if the Prince settle upon their shoulders. Consider how many hungry 

Scots gape after this "gude land"; who with those of other nations must 

be satisfied out of the purses of our own whilst those that are their 

leaders will be gratified with this, that, and the other man's lands and 

possessions. And that this insinuation is no fiction but well-grounded 

upon precedents out of our own histories, in the practices of our kings, 

may appear by the proceedings of the Conqueror, who, being forced to 

extraordinary courses to satisfy his foreign soldiery, made bold so 

frequently with the estates of his subjects that the great lords of the 

kingdom, fearing it would come to their turns at last to part with their 

possessions, by way of prevention fled out of the land, some into 

Scotland, some into Denmark and other parts to try if by aid from abroad 

they might recover themselves and their fortunes again at home. But by 

this means they happened to lose all so much the sooner; for, 

miscarrying in the design, their estates were possessed and their 

offices supplied by the Norman favorites. Thus also, King Stephen, 

himself being a foreigner and relying most upon foreign arms to preserve 

him in possession, was constrained to take the same course for the 

satisfaction of his foreign auxiliaries, which consisted most of 

Flemings and Picards whom he especially trusted in his greatest actions, 

neglecting and oppressing the English. Thus did Henry the Third also in 

his wars with the barons; against whom, bringing in foreigners, he for 

reward invested them with others' lands and honors and laid heavy 

impositions besides upon the whole kingdom to make them satisfaction. 

And in those variations of fortune between the two houses of York and 

Lancaster; as often as either of them had occasion to make use of 

foreign arms to assert their titles, the estates of the adverse party 

and the purses of the people were sure to go to wrack for the pay of the 

soldiery. From hence then it appears that if the Prince put himself in 

possession by arms, we shall be so far that way from any ease of our 

burdens that they will be doubled and trebled, yea, and tenfold upon us.



Lastly, the Prince's confederation with the Scots and our English 

Presbyters, were there no other reason, might be enough to terrify any 

ingeniously minded people from giving their assistance, be they 

Royalists or not. For if the Kirk be able to bind the Prince to hard 

conditions and prove, like the sons of Zeruiah, too strong for him so 

that his interest bow to theirs, then instead of a regal (which is more 

tolerable), we must all stoop to the intolerable yoke of a presbyterian 

tyranny that will prove a plague upon the consciences, bodies, and 

purses of this free nation. The Scots by this means will effect their 

design upon us by stretching their covenant union to an equality of 

interest with us in our own affairs. And the English grandees of that 

party will seat themselves again in the House and exclude all others, or 

else a new Parliament shall be called of persons of their own faction. 

So that if they should carry the day, all the comfort we shall have by 

casting off the present governors will be only that we shall have these 

furious jockeys for our riders. Things, perhaps, shall be in the old 

statu quo as they were when the late King was at Holdenby;[47] whose son 

must then lay his scepter at the footstool of the Kirk or else they will 

restore him by leisure, as they did his father, into the exercise of 

royalty. By which means we should be brought again, as far as ever we 

were, from a condition of settlement and the Commonwealth reduced to 

ashes by endless combustions. On the other side, put case the Prince 

have the better end of the staff of the Presbyters, they relying upon 

his courtesy as well as the rest of the people. Then in case he carry 

the day, they and all are at his mercy and no bar will be in the way to 

hinder him from an ascent unto an unlimited power. So that you plainly 

see this present combination of Royalists and Presbyters, whichsoever of 

them be most prevalent, must of necessity put the nation in hazard 

between Scylla and Charybdis; that we cannot choose but fall into one of 

the pernicious gulfs, either of presbyterian or monarchical tyranny.



All these particulars being seriously considered, how improbable it is 

in the first place that the Prince should go on with success in his 

design, and then what miserable inconveniences must needs follow such a 

success in case he prevail, not only to the prejudice of any one party, 

but of all. I may undeniably conclude that all mistaken Royalists, as 

well as others, who live now under the protection of the present 

government are concerned out of necessity and in respect to their own 

well-being and benefit to wish well thereunto rather than prosecute the 

private interest of a single family and of a few fugitives, its 

dependents, to the hazard of their own families, with the peace and 

happiness of their native country.







[1] Desire.



[2] Ships.



[3] Sweden.



[4] Graves.



[5] MN: Petr. Greg. Tolos. lib. II. De repub. cap. 3. pag. 656. 

[Grégoire, De republica, bk. XI, chap. iii, pp. 297-301.]



[6] MN: Mercenarii militis fides ex fortunes pendet: qua inclinante ad 

hostes, ipsi etiam spem atque animum eo inclinant. Francisc. Patrit. 

lib. 9. De reg. tit. 15. [Francesco Patrizi (1413-94, bishop of Gaeta), 

De regno et regis institutione (Strasbourg, 1608), bk. IX, tit. xv.]



[7] MN: Solent plus lucrum quam causam sequi bellandi: Et ha factle ab 

hostibus, vel majore stipendio, vel donis, corrumpi possunt. Petr. Greg. 

Tolos. ubi supra. [Grégoire, De republica, bk. XI, chap. iii, p. 297.]



[8] Broom.



[9] Wing N376 reads mouth, evidently a printer's error.



[10] Satan.



[11] Babylonian deity.



[12] The obligation of having to provide free board and lodging for 

troops.



[13] MN: Juvenal. ["The populace strongly desires just two things — 

bread and games." Juvenal (60?-140?, Roman poet and satirist), Satyrae, 

no. 10.]



[14] MN: See the new Acts of Treason, and the Act for establishing an 

High Court of Justice. [Presumably Nedham is referring here to the 

Treason Act of May 14, 1649, and to the creation of a new High Court of 

Justice, March 26, 1650.]



[15] MN: Cic. Ad Att. 7. epist. 5. [Cicero, Epistolae ad Atticum, bk. 

vii, letter no. 5.]



[16] MN: He was afterwards King, by the name of Henry 2. See Daniel in 

the life of King Stephen. [Samuel Daniel (1562-1619, English poet and 

historian), The Collection of the History of England (London, 1626), p. 

66.]



[17] MN: Daniel, in Edw. the Second. [Ibid., pp. 179-80.]



[18] MN: Besold. in cap. De morbis rerumpub. p. 312. [Besold, Synopsis 

politicae doctrinae, bk. IV, chap. i.] 



[19] MN: Mach. De repub. l. I. c. 16. [Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la 

prima deca di Tito Livio (Florence, 1531), bk. I, chap. xvi.]



[20] MN: Leges opprimit timor. Sen. Herc. Fur. ["Fear oppresses law." 

Seneca, Hercules Furens, 1. 253.]



[21] MN: (a) Auferre, trucidare, rapere. Tac. in Agric. ["To steal, to 

slaughter, to plunder." Tacitus, Agricola, para, xxx.]



[22] MN: (b) Plutarch in Vita Catonis. [Plutarch (46?-120, Greek 

biographer and moralist), Lives, section on Marcus Cato.]



[23] Homer (fl. 850 B.C. or earlier, Greek epic poet), Iliad, bk. i, 1. 

231.



[24] MN: (c) Delatores per praemia eliciunt. Tacit. Annal. 4. ["The 

informers were lured with rewards." Tacitus, Annales, bk. iv, chap. 

xxx.]



[25] To lay aside carefully for future use.



[26] MN: (d) Boni quam mali suspectiores sunt, semperque aliena virtus 

formidolosa est. Salust. Nec minus periculum ex magna fama, quam ex 

mala. Tacit. Agric. ["The good are held in greater suspicion than the 

bad, and the merit of others is always fraught with danger." Sallust 

(86-34 B.C., Roman historian), Bellum Catilinae, chap. vii. "Good report 

was as dangerous as bad." Tacitus, Agricola, para. v.] 



[27] Seneca, Octavia, 11. 495-96.



[28] Lucian (ca. 120-ca. 200, Greek satirist).



[29] MN: Regni causa jus violandum esse.



[30] MN: Regni causa sceleratum esse.



[31] MN: Principi nihil est injustum quod fructuosum.



[32] MN: Ubi honesta tantum dominanti licent, precario regnatur.



[33] MN: Quamvis bonus atque clemens sit, qui plus potest, tamen quia 

malo esse licet, formidatur. Salust. Ad Caes. ["However good and 

merciful one may be, one who has more power is nevertheless feared since 

it is lawful for him to be evil." Sallust, Ad Caesarem senem de re 

publica oratio, sec. i.]



[34] An act granting a general pardon for political offenses.



[35] Among the secrets of sovereignty.



[36] MN: Dulce malum vindicia. ["Revenge is an agreeable evil."]



[37] MN: 2 Sam. 19. 18. [II Sam. 18 & 19.]



[38] MN: 1 Kings 2.



[39] MN: Ibid.



[40] MN: Daniel. [Daniel, The Collection of the History of England, p. 

153.]



[41] MN: Ibidem. [I.e., John Trussell, A Continuation of the History of 

England Beginning Where Samuel Daniel ... Ended (London, 1636), p. 19, 

misnumbered 17.]



[42] MN: Mach. De prin. [Machiavelli, Il principe, chap. v.]



[43] Banded together.



[44] MN: Dr. Crighton. [Robert Creighton (1593-1672, chaplain to Charles 

I and Charles II, later bishop of Bath and Wells).]



[45] MN: Monarchae non amant ordinum conventus crebriores. Besold. De 

simulachris rerumpub. [Besold, Synopsis politicae doctrinae, bk. II, 

chap. ix.]



[46] MN: Du Serres. [Probably a reference to Jean de Serres (ca. 1540-

98, French historian).]



[47] Holmby House.







                        CHAPTER 2



Concerning the Scots



I AM sorry I must waste paper upon this nation, but seeing they make 

themselves considerable by being troublesome, it will not be amiss to 

sound the depth of their present design; which that I may the better do, 

give me leave to trace them in their encroachments from the first to the 

last upon the English nation. Not to mention those of elder date, let us 

begin with King James who being a native Scot, out of love to his 

countrymen, or rather to himself that he might keep them quiet by 

stopping their mouths with the sweet morsels of England, was pleased to 

admit many of them into his court, then into his Council, and to be 

partakers of honors and offices equal to the best of our English. His 

son, the late King, knowing danger might come of discontent out of the 

northern corner, followed the same course that his father took to oblige 

them; holding them in pension, giving access to all beggars with such 

fair entertainment that most of them stayed here and not returned empty. 

This heaping of favors upon some stirred up the appetites and emulation 

of others; who seeing themselves neglected and not like to share in any 

of these enjoyments by the favor of the King, bethought them of another 

way to make themselves as considerable as the rest of their countrymen 

and gain an interest with the English. Seeing they could not thrive with 

the court, they would try what they could do without it.



Hereupon, being men of power in their own country, they became most 

zealous assertors of the presbyterian discipline against the episcopal; 

by which means they gained the friendship of all the religious party in 

England, then persecuted by the bishops who were at court the only 

favorites. Hereupon these leaders of the Scottish Presbyterians, 

beginning to grow active and forward in establishing their own form at 

home and also to propagate it abroad by encouraging their friends, gave 

such an alarm to the bishops that they, to cross the design, fell foul 

upon all of the opinion here in England. And not only so, but pressed 

the King to establish an episcopal uniformity in both kingdoms, even in 

Scotland as well as England. The forcing of this upon the Scots was a 

cause of the commotions in that kingdom. Whereupon a war ensued betwixt 

the King and them through the instigation of the bishops; which was soon 

ended to the advantage of the Scots in money and credit and to the 

dishonor of the King and the episcopal party.



This happy success wrought a very reverend opinion of them in the hearts 

of the well-affected party in England, who stood for the purity of 

religion and a liberty of conscience against episcopal power and 

innovations as also for the laws and liberties of the nation invaded by 

the prerogative. And for redress of these things, the King was 

necessitated to call a Parliament; who, not obtaining such relief of 

grievances as they expected by reason of a corrupt council of bishops 

and others about the King which alienated him from his great council, 

the Parliament, and afterward caused him to break out into a war against 

them, were constrained likewise to take arms in defense of our 

liberties. Hereupon recourse was had to the Scots for their assistance; 

who having the same enemies at court and being equally involved in the 

same common danger, it was supposed they were concerned in reason to 

join with the Parliament without any dispute or scruple. But they, 

considering now was the time to make their markets,[1] if ever, and 

their own interest as much English as might be, came not off so roundly 

as was hoped but fell to bartering like hucksters; and no bargain would 

be, forsooth, without a covenant. They would not join except they might 

be in a manner all one with us, and this union must be sealed with that 

Solemn League and Covenant. What their meaning was therein, we shall 

know by and by, by taking a view of their actions ever since, which are 

the most sure interpreters. Yet even at that time, "some men had their 

eyes in their heads, and many objections were made at divers expressions 

in the Covenant, and many desires for explanation of some articles more 

fully."[2] But the Scots standing stiff upon their own terms, and no 

conjunction like to be obtained without the Covenant, and the necessity 

of the Parliament's affairs admitting no delay, we were glad to take it 

as it was offered without further question or demurrer.



It was no sooner taken here at London, but immediately everyone began to 

make his advantage (through the multitude & ambiguity of expressions) 

and by it to promote his several interest; as if it had been made to 

engage unto a particular party, not to unite two nations in a common 

interest. But above all, the Scots, having had the honor of this 

invention, conceived themselves much injured by any that denied them the 

prerogative of making an interpretation; and in matter of religion urged 

their own discipline as the only pattern to reform the church by; and 

their plea had been fair enough out of the Covenant could they have 

proved it to be "according to the Word of God," which clause was most 

luckily inserted. Notwithstanding all the reasons to the contrary, the 

Scottish model was still pressed. The Scot was willing to ride, and, 

having (as he thought) the Englishman fast bridled with a Covenant, he 

began to switch and spur. The throne of the Kirk was the stalking-horse 

to catch geese; and if that could have been settled, then there had been 

no denying them whatsoever they would ask. They would have seated 

themselves surely in this fat soil. There would have been no removing 

them out of our councils whereof the necessity of our affairs had made 

them members and partakers. For had the Kirk interest been once 

confirmed among us, then, by virtue of that authority which they use to 

control the civil power, the Parliament must have been subservient to 

all their ends. And since it would have concerned the English clergy (to 

make their party strong and maintain correspondencies for their own 

preservation) to have gratified their Scottish founders in all their 

desires, the Scots might easily have translated the covenant union to as 

good as an absolute national union by gaining a joint interest with us 

in our affairs forever, and consequently in all the profits, great 

offices, councils, and concernments of this nation.



Now whether this were their design or not in the Covenant ab origine, I 

shall not determine; but let it be judged by their insolent behavior 

here among us after they were admitted to our councils. And therefore in 

the next place I shall examine their proceedings which most evidently 

represent them in their intentions. It sufficed them not, after they 

were come in, that they had an equal power with us in public affairs, in 

the Committee of both Kingdoms at Derby House (which was willingly 

allowed them for a time, so far as concerned the common cause of both 

nations in prosecuting the war), but driving a powerful party in both 

Houses, they took upon them to meddle with matters relating to the 

future peace and settlement of this nation, distinct from their own, and 

to provide for an equal interest with us therein. The first most notable 

evidence of this (though there had been many before) was discovered at 

the Uxbridge Treaty; where, propositions of both Houses for peace being 

presented to the King, it was found the Scots had so far provided for 

themselves by their party in the Houses that in time to come the 

ordering of the English militia, the power of making war and peace, and 

all other prerogatives of government were to be administered by a 

proportionable number of Scots as well as English — a thing so 

ridiculous and an encroachment so palpable that the King himself in one 

of his answers took notice of it and said he was not so much an enemy to 

the English nation as to sign those propositions; or somewhat (I am 

sure) to this purpose.



A second evidence or discovery of their encroachments was made upon 

their delivering in divers papers to the Parliament, at several times, 

wherein they disputed their claim and ventured their logic upon the 

letter of the Covenant to prove an interest in disposal of matters 

merely relating to our welfare; which they reinforced afterward with new 

recruits of argument when the King came into their army.



But not knowing well how to maintain their arguments, they were 

contented for that time to quit them, and their king too, upon such 

terms as are notorious to all the world; who being at length reduced 

under the power of the Parliament and Army, propositions of peace were 

sent to him at Hampton Court. Wherein no such provision being made for 

the Scottish interest as was in those at Uxbridge, their commissioners 

here protested against them, accused the Parliament of breach of 

covenant, and complained highly in one of their declarations that they 

should be so neglected. This may serve as a third evidence of their 

covenant design of encroachment. Whereto may be added one more, when the 

King was at Carisbrooke Castle; whither the commissioners of Parliament 

were no sooner arrived with propositions again but the Scots 

commissioners were at hand and for the same reason protested furiously 

against them. By which insolent demeanors and expressions from time to 

time and crying up the Covenant for their defense, it is clear enough 

what their intentions were when they urged it upon us; and that 

notwithstanding all the specious pretenses of brotherly love, their 

design in it hitherto hath been only to screw themselves into an equal 

interest with us in this nation.



Having smelt out their project thus far, give me leave to trace them on 

to the end as briefly as may be. The royal party being totally 

suppressed, and so no further occasion to make use of the Scottish army, 

the Parliament, with some difficulty, made shift to send them home into 

their own kingdom. But being defeated of their aims and expectations, 

they could not so rest. Having failed of their ends by pretending for 

Parliament, they resolved next to try what they could do upon the King's 

score, and so the grandees turned the tables in hope of an aftergame by 

closing with Hamilton upon the royal account; not doubting but if they 

gained the day this way, to recompense their travails with much more 

advantage. The Covenant, like a nose of wax apt to be turned any way, 

served this enterprise every jot as well as the former though the design 

were different from what it was, the great ones not caring much what 

became of the Kirk interest since they had agreed for the security of 

their own; which must needs have been very considerable if they could 

have redeemed the King and restored him into the condition of an 

absolute monarch. Therefore the Kirk, seeing themselves left thus in the 

lurch, thundered out their curses amain[3] upon that hypocritical 

engagement, as destructive to the Covenant.



But the grandees, being at a loss in this likewise upon Hamilton's 

defeat and followed home to their own doors by the brave English army, 

were glad to cry peccavi[4] to the Kirk, and also to our English 

commanders whom they dismissed with many promises of fair carriage for 

the future. Within a while after, a new door of hope being opened to 

them by the supposed succession of the late King's son, they, to 

ingratiate with him, proclaim him their King. And here, the grandees and 

the Kirk, joining hands again, become friends and offer their service 

for his restitution upon terms of the Covenant, which is their plea now 

at this very day. So that the Covenant, which was pretended to be framed 

at first for the preservation of this Parliament and the liberties of 

the people against the usurpations of regal power, is, now that the 

Scots can serve their design no longer that way, become the ground of 

their present combination with the Prince and their presbyterian 

brethren in England for the destruction of our liberties. Being resolved 

this way, since they have failed in all the rest, to try whether they 

can accomplish their profane projects through the Covenant by 

insinuating themselves into places of honor, profit, and power; that 

they may domineer in the possessions, as their pharisaical priests would 

over the consciences, of the English.



Thus having made way in discovering what the design of the Scots ever 

hath been and is at this instant under the fair covert of the Covenant, 

certainly no man that is master of an English spirit but will abhor the 

hypocritical pretenses and encroachments of that perfidious nation. And 

therefore, now that all men may beware how they be drawn into an 

engagement with them, I shall, according to my way, manifest first the 

improbability of their success and then the inconveniences which must 

necessarily follow in case their design be successfully effected.



First, as to the improbability of success, consider by way of comparison 

the great difference between the English and Scottish soldiery. Ours are 

heightened with extraordinary pay, bravely accomplished strong horse, 

well-disciplined veteran soldiers, better-spirited by reason of a more 

generous education; and to all these add the advantage of being 

Englishmen and the reputation of having been so long victorious. Let 

these considerations be laid in the balance against the Scots; fresh 

men, for the main, newly raised; a people of far less generous souls, 

poor in body, pay, and other accommodations, save what they have 

purchased by progging[5] here in England. Judge then in reason what 

these are able to do against so brave an army that contemns and scorns 

them as having beaten them with a handful, in comparison of their 

numbers, home to their own doors; an army that to all worldly advantages 

hath hitherto had a special protection from heaven, God having sealed 

them for his own by many miraculous victories and successes to the 

wonder of the whole world.



Secondly, consider that our English army are all of a nation, natives 

and unanimous, especially upon the appearance of any invaders; whereas 

the Scottish will be made up of divers factions, Royalists and 

Presbyterians, that come in pursuance of different ends. Which for the 

time that they continue together must needs be a cause of many 

confusions and partialities of counsels to the prejudice of their 

enterprises and proceedings; a spring of perpetual emulations that will 

soon untwist the confederacy so that in short time they must fall 

asunder like a rope of sand and the private soldiery be disposed to 

entertain thoughts of some new engagement to the ruin of the first.



Thirdly, we shall not only be provided for them here, if they dare be so 

unworthy as to invade us, but 'tis like this Commonwealth may find work 

for them at home and to cure their madness divert the humor with 

phlebotomy[6] by way of revulsion.



Fourthly, it is like they will be far from running much hazard to gain 

success unto the design. For if they prove a little unfortunate, the 

humor will alter; one good beating will make them understand there is 

another way of interest and thriving than under the wings of royalty. It 

may chance to make them remember, because they cannot forget, how long 

they have lived without a king in Scotland, while the grandees and the 

Kirk did all, and that the English have dealt more ingenuously to have 

no king than a presbyterian mock king. One rout, with this 

consideration, puts them presently into the humor of a republic as well 

as England. And then they will have no more work to do but to raise the 

market and get chapmen[7] for their King to put him off handsomely, that 

they may pay their army and go home again like Scots.



Lastly, the Scots, having no just ground of a war against England, can 

hardly be prosperous in the attempt. The Covenant can be none, being 

extinct, as I have proved in the former part of this treatise; besides, 

I shall add one reason more. It cannot in common sense be supposed to 

have been intended as an eternal obligation, binding both nations 

forever, or to bind the English nation with an implicit faith to 

whatsoever the Scots should expound to be righteous and necessary to be 

done here forever by way of government. But it appears intended only for 

a certain time for the prosecution of certain ends which were common to 

both nations as affairs then stood; and therefore, being of a transient 

nature because those ends by the alteration of time and other 

circumstances are found either not possible or inconvenient, the 

obligation expires of itself. This being the state of the Covenant, 

neither the Scots nor any other party can found a war upon it in reason 

or justice. If so, then having no other ground for a war but 

covetousness, emulation, and ambition, which as I showed in the preamble 

of this chapter have been cloaked under the Covenant, in all their 

engagements the hand of heaven will assuredly be against them for their 

unchristian practices, as may appear by these examples following.



First, the Athenians, carried on with covetousness, emulation, and a 

desire to possess themselves of the riches of the Lacedaemonians, were 

the author of the Peloponnesian War;[8] the consequence whereof was that 

it ended with the subversion of their city walls and the miserable 

slavery of their people. The same end likewise had the Carthaginians for 

moving an ambitious war against the Romans by the instigation of 

Hannibal; as also had the Thebans for their unjust invading the 

Macedonians.[9]



It is observable likewise how that Babylonian Queen and virago,[10] as 

Diodorus Siculus[11] tells us, being greedy after the wealth of the 

Indians, invaded them by an unjust war in hope to make a conquest; but 

the issue was that she was forced to fly home again most shamefully for 

the safety of her life. Thus Xerxes, invading Greece with a world of men 

and ships, was in the end glad of a poor fishing boat to get home out of 

Europe to a worse destiny in Asia, being slain immediately after his 

return by his uncle, Artabanus.[12] Upon the like occasion Cyrus lost 

his army and his life; and to quench his bloodthirsty humor his head was 

cut off and cast into a hogshead filled with blood by the Scythian 

Queen. Thus likewise Mark Antony, not content with half the empire of 

the world, invading his partner Octavius for the whole, lost all; and, 

being taken alive at mercy, laid violent hands on himself to prevent the 

fury of the conqueror. Thus Crassus, another Roman, being of the Scotch 

religion, a sacred hunger after gold, invaded the Parthians without 

cause against the advice of the Senate; in which expedition he lost his 

army and life. And the Parthians, considering what he came for, poured 

molten gold into his mouth in triumph and mockery.[13]



To these examples out of profane history, let me add a few out of the 

sacred. You may read, 2 Kings 15, how Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, 

made an impious invasive war against Hezekiah, King of Judah; the 

consequence whereof was the confusion of his army and revenge followed 

him to his own home so close at the heels that it was executed upon him 

by his own sons while he was at his superstitious devotion in the midst 

of his idols. Nor have wicked princes only been punished for invading 

the good, but you may read also that the good have had ill success in 

invading the bad. Thus good Josiah, a most religious prince, warring 

without cause against Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt, received his death's 

wound at Megiddo, and after his death, the same King Pharaoh, to right 

himself of the injury done him by Josiah, waged war and, by God's 

permission subduing the land, made the whole nation tributary and took 

King Jehoahaz, the son of Josiah, and carried him prisoner into 

Egypt.[14]



Also, another good king of Judah, by name Amaziah, provoking Joash, a 

wicked king of Israel, without cause to battle, was utterly routed, the 

city of Jerusalem taken, the walls demolished, the temple spoiled, and 

Amaziah himself carried away prisoner to show how much the Lord of hosts 

and God of battle is displeased with unjust wars, that He will not 

prosper them, though made by His own people against the wicked that are 

His enemies.[15]



But there is one example more which methinks is very pertinent to our 

purpose; and that is of Ishbosheth, the son of King Saul, who laying 

claim to the kingdom after his father by prerogative of succession, made 

war against David who was chosen king by God's own appointment.[16] But 

to show that hereditary succession is no plea to justice, a war against 

the powers that are ordained by Him, He placed marks of displeasure 

against all that took part with Ishbosheth so that in the end Ishbosheth 

had his head struck off by some commanders of his own party and brought 

to David. Now, I leave this unto those that list to make the 

application. And withal they may do well to consider how the Spaniard 

prospered in '88 in his invasion against England; how ill he hath 

thrived ever in his attempts against the Hollander. And as for the 

Scots, I suppose that as it concerns them to consider the sad example of 

the late Hamiltonian invasion, so they and their adherents may learn 

from all these together that God will never prosper them if they proceed 

in their unrighteous combination.



Having shown the improbability of the Scots success, I shall in the next 

place discover the great inconveniences and hazards that our nation must 

needs undergo in case it should happen.



First, it being evident that their design in urging the Covenant upon us 

hath been to insinuate themselves into an equal interest with us in our 

own nation, it is to be supposed that having hitherto been defeated of 

their long-expected prey, they come now to prosecute it with the greater 

appetite. And it is to be presumed they will not serve their king with 

the Covenant at an easier rate than they intended it should have cost 

the Parliament.



Secondly, it is to be feared this so much desired interest of theirs 

may, if opportunities fall out right for their turns, be driven on 

farther by the sword than yet we are aware of. A national union hath 

been whispered often among them heretofore, and there's no doubt but 

they will bid high for it if ever they have occasion. And then it must 

needs be a very fine world when we are confounded with a miscellany of 

Scottish and English; when Scots shall be competitors with us in point 

of privilege; vie wealth with us in our own possessions, honors, and 

dignities; and either impose new laws upon us or alter the old as may 

make most for their advantage.



Thirdly, that these things may be is probable enough since, their king 

having no other rewards to give them, it is impossible he should satisfy 

the grandees and leaders any other way than by promising large 

accessions of interest with other men's honors and possessions; even 

those men's, perhaps, that are the moderate sort of transgressors. For 

in such cases, it is usual to stretch all offenses upon the rack to 

supply the necessities of the conqueror; and then if this happen, 'tis 

like a Scotch Covenanter's stomach will allow no distinction betwixt 

Presbyter and Independent but may digest the estate of an English 

Covenanter without so much as a scruple of regret or compassion.



Lastly, it is a very great wonder, since the present stage play of the 

Covenant and the actors are brought on this side the curtain and we know 

what they are, through all their disguise, and what they aim at, that 

yet many of our English should be so stupid as to be led away with their 

cheats and pretenses for a king and reformation. Also, since it is 

evident that their chief leaders and sticklers[17] gape only after 

profit and preferment and, according to the custom of all foreigners in 

arms, will make no difference between friend and foe so they may satisfy 

their covetous and ambitious ends; since the whole people likewise must 

of necessity be harassed with innumerable taxes to pay the rabble of 

their soldiery, certainly no true English heart can be so degenerous[18] 

as to forward or countenance them in their invading this nation.



Now for a conclusion to the whole, that these particulars may appear 

more solid than mere insinuations, give me leave to confirm them by many 

authentic examples; it being an ordinary case in the world that 

commonwealths and kingdoms have been oppressed often by those foreigners 

that came or were invited in as friends to give their assistance.[19] 

Here, before I proceed, let me call to mind a story of the hedgehog in 

the fable who being almost dead with cold chanced to light upon a fox's 

kennel; where, asking for entertainment, the fox, more compassionate 

than wise, grants his request. But the hedgehog, as soon as he recovered 

warmth, began to bristle and prick the fox; who, complaining of his 

unworthy carriage, the hedgehog made answer that if he found him 

troublesome, he might leave him and seek a new lodging. I shall make no 

application but leave those that would entertain the Scots as their 

friends to consider whether they should find more courtesy from them if 

they had power here than the fox did from the hedgehog, or than other 

nations have had from the friendly pretenses of foreign auxiliaries.



Concerning this, there are several precedents. The Macedonians, being 

invited by the Thebans to assist them against the Phocians, made a shift 

not only to seat themselves among the Thebans, but under the conduct of 

King Philip made way to the conquest of all Greece.[20] So the Persians 

coming as friends to aid one party in a civil division in Caria, 

suppressed both and deprived that commonwealth of its liberty.[21] And 

the Carthaginians, in the first Punic War, received more prejudice from 

the Celtae, their confederates and brethren in covenant, than from the 

Romans, their enemies.



The Goths and Vandals, being invited by the Emperor Theodosius for his 

assistance, deprived him of Italy and Spain.[22] Afterward the 

Longbeards or Lombards, being called in by Narses against the Goths, 

seated themselves for above 200 years in that part of Italy which from 

them was called Lombardy.



A quarrel happening between the two Saracen sultans of Persia and 

Babylon, the Persian called in the Turks, under the conduct of their 

captain Tangrolipix[23] out of Scythia, who seated themselves first in a 

part of his dominions.[24]



In the chronicles of Judah, we read how King Ahaz invited Tiglath-

pileser, King of Assyria, to his assistance against the Edomites; who, 

coming as a friend, did him exceeding prejudice and laid a design then 

for the conquest of Jerusalem, which was afterward effected.[25] 

Josephus tells us likewise how that Pompey, being called to assist 

Hyrcanus in the recovery of the kingdom of Judea out of the hands of his 

younger brother Aristobulus, took occasion hereby to reduce it under the 

Roman obedience.[26]



In the time of the Emperor Frederick III, the princes of Italy being in 

contention, the Pope called in the Spaniard and several other princes to 

compose the quarrel;[27] which being done, a new one arose betwixt the 

auxiliary princes for the lordship of Italy, but the Spaniard drave away 

the rest and made bold to keep possession for himself. Thus likewise the 

Spaniards, being invited into Sicily and Naples to free them from the 

French, did indeed expel the French but possessed both kingdoms 

themselves. On the other side, a controversy arising between Lewis and 

John Sforza for the Duchy of Milan, John called in the Spaniards to his 

party, and Lewis the French. But the French, driving out John and the 

Spaniards, made themselves at that time masters of the dukedom and 

carried their friend Lewis away prisoner into France.



Thus in old time our ancestors the Saxons, being called in by Vortigern 

the British King to assist him against the invasions of the Picts and 

Scots, turned their arms against the Britons and, driving them into 

Wales, transmitted the possession of this island to us, their 

posterity.[28] So the Scots likewise, as Bodin saith, being called in to 

the assistance of the Picts against the Britons, possessed themselves of 

the best part of that kingdom, which they hold at this day.[29]



And now I would know of the admirers of the Scottish nation what 

assurance they can have that in case the Scots come in hither, with 

their King upon their shoulders and their fine flourishes of pretended 

friendship, what assurance they can have that they shall not serve us 

the same sauce as their ancestors did the Picts, and as ours did the 

Britons, or as others did other nations whom they oppressed under as 

glorious pretenses, in case they should get the power in their hands? 

Especially since of late time they have made so many palpable 

discoveries of encroachment upon the English nation.



Seeing therefore that their covenant cause appears a cause for 

intrenchment upon our national interest rather than for religion or 

monarchy, I may reasonably conclude that it concerns all parties 

whatsoever (if not for the improbability of their success and the 

miseries that would follow it, yet out of a detestation of their design) 

to abhor them in their invasion.







[1] To bargain.



[2] MN: See The Grand Case of Conscience Concerning the Engagement, 

Stated, &c. [The Grand Case of Conscience Concerning the Engagement 

Stated & Resolved (London, 1650), p. 4.]



[3] Violently.



[4] I have sinned.



[5] Soliciting, foraging.



[6] Drawing of blood.



[7] Merchants.



[8] MN: Strig. in Chron. part 2. p. 186. [Strigel, Scholae historicae, 

p. 186.]



[9] MN: Peucer. in lect. Chron. d. 18. lul. An. 73. [Reference not 

found.]



[10] MN: Semiramis. [In Assyrian legend, the wife of Ninus, the founder 

of Nineveh.]



[11] MN: Diod. Sic. Rerum antiq. l. 2. c. 5. [Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st 

century B.C., Greek historian), Bibliotheca historica, bk. ii, chaps. 

xvi-xix.]



[12] MN: Bella injusta infelices successus, tristes, & tragicos exitus 

semper habent. Strig. 2. Reg. 14. p. 187. ["Unjust wars always have 

unhappy results, sad and tragic consequences." Strigel. Reference not 

clear. Xerxes was killed not by the Artabanus who was his uncle, but by 

his vizier who had the same name.]



[13] MN: Philip. Chron. Tom. I. Epist. per Peuc. edit. pag. 248. 

[Perhaps a reference to Johann Carion (1499-1537, German historian), 

Chronicon Carionis ... a Philippo Melanthone et Casparo Peucero (Lyon, 

1576).]



[14] MN: 2 Chron. 35.



[15] MN: 2 Kings 14.



[16] MN: 2 Sam. chap. 2, 3, & 4.



[17] Partisans.



[18] Degenerate.



[19] MN: Ab istis exercitibus, quos defendendi mi causae attraxerunt, 

evertuntur. Peucer. [Reference to Peucer not clear.] Auxiliatores, ut 

solet fieri, postea fiunt domini. Strigel. 2 Paralip. 28. ["Those who 

come to aid usually become afterward the masters." The reference to 

Strigel's commentary on II Chron. 28 is not clear.]



[20] MN: Justin. [Justin, Epitoma historiarum Philippicarum Pompei 

Trogi, bk. viii.]



[21] MN: Xenoph. lib. 7. [Xenophon (434?-355? B.C., Greek historian), 

Cyropaedia, bk. vii, chap. iv.]



[22] MN: Pezel. part. 4. pag. 613. [Christoph Pezel (1539-1604, German 

Protestant theologian), Mellificium historicum (Frankfurt, 1649), pp. 

406-31.]



[23] Togrul Beg (d. 1063?, Seljuk ruler).



[24] MN: Circa annum Christi 870. Chytraeus in Apocalyp. cap. 9. [David 

Chytraeus (1530-1600, German Protestant theologian), Explicatio 

Apocalypsis loannis (Wittenberg, 1564), chap. ix.]



[25] MN: 2 Chron. 28.



[26] MN: Josephus De bello Jud. lib. I. c. 12. [Flavius Josephus (37?-

100?, Jewish historian), The Jewish War, bk. i, secs. 131-54.]



[27] MN: In Chron. Phil. lib. 5. [See above, note 13.]



[28] MN: Sam. Daniel. [Daniel, The Collection of the History of England, 

p. 6.]



[29] MN: Joh. Bodinus lib. 5. cap. 5. [Bodin, Les six livres de la 

république, bk. V, chap. v.]







                        CHAPTER 3



Concerning the English Presbyterians



WHENCE it was and for what ends presbytery was first brought into this 

nation is not here to be disputed. But if we grant the intentions of its 

first fautors[1] to be pure in the fountain, yet it appears polluted in 

the streams by the corruption of their successors. For, as the primitive 

pretenses of it were high and glorious in the innocence of its cradle, 

so being grown up to a full stature, it hath, after the manner of all 

other things that participate of worldly mixtures, in time contracted so 

many adulterations of worldly interest that it hath lost the beauty 

which it once appeared to have and serves every sophister as a cloak to 

cover his ambitious design.



But since it is arrived, notwithstanding, to such a height in the 

opinions of many as to be cried up for the only pattern of government 

under the Gospel, this is to be imputed to the blind zeal of those that 

are led and the deceitfulness of the leaders rather than to the 

intention of its learned founder, Mr. Calvin. For it doth not appear 

that ever he stretched his model so far as the necessity and 

universality of a divine right, but seems only to have hewn part of the 

building out of the rock of the Scriptures and pieced up the residue by 

politic and prudential rules such as he conceived might sound nearest 

the text and serve most conveniently to cement the disjointed members of 

the then broken and tumultuous commonwealth of Geneva into an entire and 

well-compacted body.



It was no sooner licked into form there but, as it is the fate of all 

things new, it began to be much extolled and admired; and the fame 

thereof, spreading in England as well as other parts, wrought in many of 

our countrymen an itching desire to go thither and instruct themselves 

in the nature and customs of the government. Where, of spectators, they 

soon became proselytes and, returning home with new affections, looked 

with an eye of disdain upon the bishops; as if themselves had indeed 

found out the pattern in the Mount because forsooth the words 

presbytery, elder, deacon, & assembly, &c., sound more gospellike than 

diocese, churchwarden, archdeacon, and high commission, &c. With these 

terms,[2] the ordinary sort of religious persons, not able to see 

through this shell of words into the kernel or substance of the 

business, were easily led to a belief of high matters; whereas this new 

form, like the Trojan horse, brought an army of mischiefs in the belly 

of it, which were never so fully discovered as till this Parliament. For 

immediately after that the episcopal form was abolished here, as corrupt 

and antichristian, the chief sticklers of the presbyterian clergy began 

to show their teeth and, sitting in an assembly cheek by jowl with the 

Parliament, intermeddled with their affairs, labored to twist their 

church discipline with the interest of state, claimed in their open 

pleas, discourses, and their confession of faith a power in themselves 

distinct from the civil, and demanded the voting of this in both Houses 

as jure divino[3] that so the Parliament might forever cut the throat of 

their own authority and magistracy.



These and many other pranks they played in hope to erect their intended 

domination. And though being often required, they were as little able as 

the bishops to show their pedigree from the Apostles or to derive the 

lineaments of their form from the body of the Scripture; yet they 

pressed it on still and wanted not their party in Parliament with the 

assistance of the Scots, whose interest it was, to second them. And here 

it might be wondered that so many knowing men and of able parts should 

prove so degenerous as to prostitute themselves and the majesty of the 

nation to serve the ambitious ends of a few priests; but that they had 

their ends in it, too, and were willing to follow the example of the 

Scottish grandees by gratifying the new clergy in the form of a national 

church with accruements of worldly pomp and power, the better to support 

their own in the states.



For this cause it was that they stooped so unworthily to the design of 

the Scots and the clergy; and being all of them combined in interest, 

they were in a manner necessitated to countenance and comply with each 

other in their mutual encroachments to the dishonor of our nation, the 

debasing of parliaments, and the extreme hazard of the liberty of our 

souls and bodies. All which being considered, you may see how 

exceedingly we are obliged to our present governors that they strove so 

mightily against the stream to prevent them all in their several 

designings; and what necessity lay upon them to expel that corrupt 

interest out of Parliament and to follow the counsel of the poet "in 

cutting off a rotten part" for the preservation of the whole "by the 

power of the sword."[4] By reason of this necessary and magnanimous act 

it is that they have made themselves so many enemies in the presbyterian 

party. For the Scots being defeated of their English interest, the 

secluded members of their hopes and privileges, and the clergy of their 

Kirk domination, incline all immediately to face about to the Prince and 

to hedge in him and his interest with their own as well as they can in 

hope of private revenge and a recovery without any regard at all to the 

good and peace of the public. Then gentlemen, if they prevail, ye will 

be but in the old posture again as you were; yea, and far worse than you 

were since all those church usurpations, which were then but in design, 

must needs be confirmed by a new alteration.



For this cause it is there are so many presbyterian jugglings in 

private, such murmurings abroad, and so many mutinies in the pulpit; 

such well-acted lamentations for the glory of the Kirk and the loss of 

their Diana,[5] that every prayer is a stratagem, most sermons mere 

plots against the state and upon their hearers. Thus the nature of their 

design being discovered, give me leave in the next place to manifest the 

vanity of their hopes; that if men will not forbear for shame of its 

hypocrisy, they may yet in consideration of the many sad consequents 

which may follow.



As to the improbability of their success, first, our English 

Presbyterians are very inconsiderable now in England because above three 

parts in four are fallen off since they were able to see through the 

pretenses of the grandees of their party; so that the small remainder 

can do little of themselves and all their hope leans upon Scotland, that 

bruised reed.



Secondly, as their party is but small of itself, so there is small 

likelihood of an increase because all the rest of this nation are 

opposite to them and their ways, being either Commonwealth's-men or 

Royalists. And though they use all endeavors to draw in the royal party 

to their own, yet it can never be effected, by reason that the old 

antipathy will revive upon every little occasion. For the Royalists look 

upon them still as the authors of their misery; and the Prince, who is 

head of that party, though he may feed them with fair promises, can 

never cordially embrace them, being the old enemies of his family. Nor 

will he count them any whit the less guilty for their hypocritical 

protesting against the death of his father. For they reduced him 

diminutione capitis[6] into the condition of a captive. They spoiled him 

as a king before others executed him as a private man. They deprived him 

of his earthly crown and kept him languishing; whereas his own party say 

others were more courteous in sending him to an heavenly.[7] In short, I 

affirm that the present powers have done nothing now in altering the 

government but what was done in effect before, or must have been done by 

the presbyterian party.



Thirdly, but suppose, what in reason cannot be supposed, that the Prince 

could forget old injuries and that the necessities of the chief of his 

party should bring down their stomachs to a compliance with presbytery; 

yet the main body of that party will never comply in a course so 

destructive to every man's interest of conscience and liberty, nor 

venture their lives and estates to establish a faction which they 

believe to aspire toward an intolerable tyranny over magistrates and 

people.



Lastly, the Presbyterians themselves may do well to consider what 

success they are like to have in their union with a prince whose 

interest is already declared to be revenged for the ruin of his father. 

Though they laid him not down upon the block, yet they brought him to 

the scaffold; and when time serves, the philosopher's maxim will prove 

good logic at court, Qui vult media ad finem, vult etiam & ipsum finem. 

"He that wills the means conducing to the end, wills also the end 

itself."[8] Ergo, will the courtiers say, since the Presbyterians put 

such courses in practice as tended to the King's ruin, they certainly 

intended it and are as guilty as others.



But to illustrate this a little, give me leave to close up this 

particular with a notable example.[9] It happened that Clearchus, the 

tyrant of Heraclea, was by a conspiracy of the grandees driven out of 

his dominions, they hoping when he was gone to have all power in their 

own hands. But there started up a party of the people which prevented 

them and settled the state in a condition of liberty and freedom. 

Hereupon the grandees, in disdain and revenge against this new party, 

conspired against the commonwealth and brought back Clearchus into 

possession. The tyrant being thus restored, instead of gratifying them 

that had a hand in his restitution, consulted to satisfy both his own 

revenge upon them for having opposed him at first and also the 

discontents of the people against them for their having deprived them of 

their late liberty. And therefore all the reward they received for 

bringing him back was that he sentenced them all to a most shameful 

execution. This is the story, and now I leave those Presbyterians that 

dream of high success in bringing back the Prince to make application.



As for the inconveniences which the presbyterian design would bring upon 

the whole nation, guess at them by these particulars following.



I shall pass by those inconveniences which must ensue their combination 

with the Scots, having sufficiently mentioned them in the former 

chapter, and consider those only that would follow the establishment of 

their presbyterial discipline. First, besides the many mischiefs it 

would bring upon the nation in general, the Royalists, of all others, 

can receive no content in it, being absolutely destructive to regal 

dignity. It never was embraced yet by any one nation in a national form 

but by Scotland. "This," as one hath observed,[10] "was done during the 

minority of King James when the lords and clergy, ruling all as they 

listed, at length parted stakes (though the clergy then got and still 

hold the better), that when he came to age, he found the fable of 

Ixion's Juno moralized upon himself. For as he embraced a cloud instead 

of a goddess, so the King, when he thought to grasp his scepter, laid 

hold on a manacle which kept his hands so fast during his abode there 

that he could never act but what they pleased to let him, according to 

their own directory of Kirk and state. And in process of time this heat 

of presbytery proved such an hectic[11] in the body politic of Scotland 

that the substance of kingly power was utterly consumed and nothing 

left, as we see at this day, but the bare bones, the very skeleton of a 

monarchy. Witness the absolute power exercised by their Parliament and 

the General Assembly of the kirkmen; but especially of this latter, 

which, like to the rod of Aaron, is in such a budding, thriving 

condition that it hath devoured the rod of Moses as his did those of the 

magicians of Egypt and proves a scourge to the magistracy and people."



Secondly, the difference betwixt the present powers and them is only 

this: that they would not have a king so much as in name; the 

Presbyterians would have no more but the name of king, a scarecrow of 

royalty. The state in downright terms have declared themselves free; the 

other pretend to maintain the monarchical form, yet actually destroy the 

very fundamentals of monarchy. And now I would fain know of the deluded 

Royalist which of the two deals most ingenuously; and if the Presbyters 

take place, wherein he can conceive his party will receive any advance 

or advantage. For besides that this mad discipline destroys bishops and 

clips the wings of regality, it will intrench also upon the lawyers, 

curb the gentry in their own lordships by a strange way of parochial 

tyranny, and bring all people into the condition of mere galley slaves 

while the blind priests sit at the stern and their hackney 

dependants,[12] the elders, hold an oar in every boat.



For thirdly, were those priests seated here, as they are in Scotland, in 

a sure succession, then as it hath been long since observed in 

print,[13] a correspondence being cherished between a clergy of the same 

garb and humor in both countries, they might finely toss thunderbolts of 

excommunication on both sides to gratify each other and so be able to 

terrify all persons that dare be averse in either nation and promote 

such only to places of honor and profit whose poorer spirits will 

vassalize their genius to serve the ends of their Kirk domination. In 

hope of this it is that we have so much bawling about the Covenant. And 

rather than fail of it, oh, how they pant after the Scots, who cannot 

choose but laugh in their sleeves at them to see them drive on the work 

at the peril of their necks; the new Scottish combination being, as I 

have shown, but a fresh onset to the first design of encroaching upon 

English interest and the maintaining of a faction here to serve the aims 

of Scotland and the ambition of a few Scottified English (some 

particular grandees among the laity and obscure rabbis[14] of the 

clergy) who are content to share dominion with the Scots. And so they 

may do that care not though they betray the whole commonwealth and state 

of the nation.



Fourthly, it being clear that the plot of presbytery is carried on 

merely for these unworthy ends, what madness is it for any men that 

pretend wisdom to hazard themselves and their fortunes, to draw on the 

guilt of innocent blood by embroiling their countrymen only to serve a 

faction whose practices (when they are invested with power) will be, as 

they ever have been, to make them share with others in the common 

calamity at present and entail slavery upon their posterity forever.



Fifthly, that I may give you a little more light in these things, 

consider that the reason why the presbytery contended for is so 

destructive of liberty is because of the popish trick taken up by the 

presbyterian priests in drawing all secular affairs "within the compass 

of their spiritual jurisdiction."[15] And this they do by means of that 

awe wherein they pretend to hold the consciences of the magistrate and 

people, the one being liable as well as the other by suspensions and 

excommunications to be exploded at pleasure as scandalous sinners. This 

appears by that large extent of their authority in judging of scandalous 

sins which reaches almost to every action of human life. So that all the 

people besides their favorites, from the counselor to the beggar, must 

at every turn stoop like asses to be ridden by them and their arbitrary 

assemblies.



Lastly, the settling of presbytery in such a mode would erect a power 

ecclesiastical distinct from that of the civil. For it is a maxim among 

all Presbyters, and we find it pleaded for at large in the confession of 

faith set forth by the Assembly of Divines, that there ought to be a 

jurisdiction in the church, that is, in their way of discipline, 

distinct from the civil. Which tenet of distinction must needs be the 

same, in effect, with that of the Church of Rome's supremacy; seeing 

those which plead now for a power without the civil will not be long 

before they arrive to such a height of presumption as to act above it or 

against it in pursuance of their own designs. It will be impossible to 

keep such a church discipline within its limits in any commonwealth 

which makes the same persons civil subjects and ecclesiastical 

superiors. To pass by many other examples of the strange inconvenience 

of that discipline in this one particular, I shall only produce one of 

late memory about the engagement of Hamilton; who, as I signified in the 

preamble of the former chapter, preparing to invade this nation without 

the Kirk's approbation, was by them opposed and all his party also in 

Parliament, which were the major vote. And after he had gotten as 

authentic an authority as that nation was conceived able to give him for 

his design, yet notwithstanding, the Assembly, because they saw the 

grandees had deserted them and left the Kirk interest in the lurch,[16] 

protested against Hamilton's proceedings and in him against the 

authority of Parliament whereby he was enabled, cursing him and his 

adherents.



Now therefore, considering what the nature and design of their 

presbytery is, what small success its abettors are like to find, and 

what mischievous inconveniences must unavoidably follow it, I leave 

every reasonable man within the closet of his own soul and conscience to 

make a conclusion: whether he ought not rather to engage with the 

Commonwealth than with this unreasonable party.







[1] Partisans.



[2] MN: Maxima pars vulgi capitur ambagibus. ["Most people are deceived 

by circumlocutions."]



[3] By divine law.



[4] MN: Immedicablle vulnus ense recidendum eft. Ovid. [Ovid, 

Metamorphoses, bk. i, 11. 190-91.]



[5] Source of gain.



[6] By forfeiture of civil rights.



[7] MN: See the Irish Bishop's sermon at The Hague, in print. [Henry 

Leslie (1580-1661, bishop of Down and Connor), The Martyrdom of King 

Charles (The Hague, 1649).]



[8] MN: Beda. Axiom. ex Aristotele. [Bede (673-735, English scholar, 

historian, and theologian), Axiomata philosophica (Geneva, 1631), p. 

264.]



[9] MN: This story is recorded by Machiavel, in his first book De repub. 

[Machiavelli, Discorsi, bk. I, chap. xvi]



[10] MN: See the Case of the Kingdom Stated. Anno 1647. [Nedham, The 

Case of the Kingdom Stated (London, 1647), pp. 2-3.]



[11] A fever which accompanies consumption.



[12] Doing or ready to do work for hire, hireling.



[13] MN: See the Case of the Kingdom, ut supra.



[14] Those whose learning, authority, or office is comparable to that of 

a Jewish rabbi (a term frequently used contemptuously).



[15] MN: In ordine ad spiritualia.



[16] MN: Not out of any good will toward England, but because their 

discipline was not like to be set up here, if Hamilton had prevailed.







                        CHAPTER 4



Concerning the Levellers



WHAT these people aim at and how they would settle is as hard for me to 

determine as in what point of the compass the wind will sit next, since 

they are every jot as giddy and rapid in their motions. Yea, the very 

settlement which they pretend to would, were their desires granted, put 

the Commonwealth into an utter impossibility of settling, as I shall 

prove by and by when I come to particulars. In the meantime, that you 

may know what they are and how they came to be distinguished by this 

title, give me leave to trace them from their original and manifest how 

they were divided in affection from the Parliament. Which appears to be 

occasioned only by a mere misinterpretation or mistake of some passages 

in divers declarations of the Parliament and Army touching the liberties 

of the people; wherein they professed that the complete settlement of 

the liberties and peace of the nation is that blessing of God, than 

which, of all worldly things, nothing is more dear and precious in their 

thoughts. From this and the like expressions a certain sort of men of 

busy pates and that have a mind to seem somebody immediately took upon 

them to frame such comments and chimeras of liberty as might fit their 

own ends and fantasies; and in time disseminated such strange principles 

of pretended freedom among the common sort of soldiery and people that 

it became evident to all the world they sought not liberty but 

licentiousness.



And the first time that they began to appear considerable in view was in 

the year 1647 when that memorable contest happened betwixt the Army and 

the corrupt party then prevalent in both Houses and the city. At which 

time, though they did good service in helping to reduce the one and 

purge the other, yet no sooner had the Parliament recovered itself into 

a state of innocence and freedom and begun to act in such a way as they 

conceived necessary to establish the liberties of the nation but these 

men made bold to carp at their proceedings and cry out against them and 

the superior officers of the Army as perfidious and betrayers of the 

public interest; because themselves, a hotheaded rabble and the meanest 

of the people, might not have it settled after their own humor.



From whence it appears the first cause of the difference between the 

Parliament and them was their bold and impudent behavior in presuming to 

direct their wisdom what to do and taking upon them, dictator-like, to 

define what is liberty, and what not, and how it ought to be 

established; as if themselves alone were infallible and the only 

champions of universal freedom, and the Parliament such as either 

regarded it not or sought its destruction. And notwithstanding that they 

have manifested their great wisdom, courage, and care ever since in 

carrying on the work of freedom to this height wherein we now see it to 

the absolute confutation of these men's calumnies, yet their restless 

spirits proceed still in the same violent course, having of late in a 

presumptuous manner presented a mutinous, scandalous remonstrance, which 

nevertheless they call an "humble petition," to the Parliament; wherein 

they take advantage by the present necessities of the Commonwealth to 

slander them in their proceedings as oppressors of that liberty which 

they so zealously maintain and for the necessary defense whereof they 

are constrained to continue divers payments upon the people, at present, 

to purchase ease in the future.



Having thus discovered the vanity of their quarrel, in the next place 

give me leave to show what their design is. And this they profess (in 

that pamphlet called the Agreement of the People,[1] set forth May 1, 

1649) to be a popular form, or a government by the people, as the only 

preservative of peace and liberty, wherein it is required "that the 

supreme authority of England and the territories therewith incorporate 

may reside henceforward in a representative of the people consisting of 

four hundred persons and no more; whereto all of twenty-one years and 

upwards are allowed a right to choose and be chosen members except 

servants and vagabonds." And because all persons have an equality of 

right to choose and be chosen without respect of birth, quality, or 

wealth, all orders of men being leveled in this particular, therefore 

the promoters of this way are not improperly called "Levellers." So that 

this term of leveling is equivalent with Aristotle's 'Isonomi/a, which 

is translated aequalitas juris, the "equality of right" before 

mentioned.[2] And the same author saith, this plea for "equality of 

right" in government at length introduceth a claim for "equality of 

estates," and the making of such laws as the agrarian laws[3] enacted by 

the popular boutefeus[4] in Rome whereby it was made criminal for any 

man to grow richer than ordinary. But of this, more anon.



Now therefore, since it appears how injurious their calumnies are and 

how perilous their design is to the Parliament and Commonwealth, I 

suppose it were time lost to stand [5] to prove the improbability of 

their success, seeing all persons of credit and fortune are concerned to 

abhor and detest this wild project. And though the four champions made 

proclamation in the head of their Agreement[6] that "according to the 

nature of truth, it hath made its own way into the understanding and 

taken root in the hearts and affections of most men," yet you must know 

these men they speak of are only the rude multitude who understand no 

more of the business than that it may prove a hopeful way to mend their 

own out of other men's fortunes and satisfy their natural appetites of 

covetousness and revenge upon the honorable and wealthy. In 

consideration whereof, I come next to give you a more exact and lively 

draft of the manifold, miserable inconveniences of that government (or 

rather confusion) so earnestly contended for by the leveling party.



First, such a democratic or popular form that puts the whole multitude 

into an equal exercise of the supreme authority, under pretense of 

maintaining liberty, is in the judgment of all statesmen the greatest 

enemy of liberty. For the multitude is so brutish that, as the Emperor 

Claudius said, they are ever in the extremes of kindness or cruelty;[7] 

being void of reason and hurried on with an unbridled violence in all 

their actions, trampling down all respects of things sacred and civil to 

make way for that their liberty, which Clapmarius calls a most dissolute 

licentiousness or a license to do even what they list[8] according to 

that of the lyric,



     In vitium libertas excidit, & vim dignam lege regi,



"when liberty becomes the greatest vice and degenerates into violence." 

Such a liberty as this is recorded by Tacitus to have been among the 

Parthians, "an uncertain, loose kind of people living rather without 

government than in liberty";[9] or as Sallust speaks of the aborigines, 

"a rude sort of men without laws, without government, free and 

dissolute."[10] And Livy tells you how things were come to that "pass in 

the popular state of Rome that no regard was had either to the senate, 

or magistracy, or military discipline, or to the laws and customs of 

their ancestors."[11] When affairs are in this condition, then, as 

Aristotle saith, Mera Dhmokrati/a est extrema tyrannis, "mere democracy, 

or liberty, is extreme tyranny"; and, as Besoldus, plebs 

perniciosissimus fit tyrannus, "the people becomes a most pernicious 

tyrant." Hence it is, saith Guicciardin, Histor. lib. 2,[12] very 

pertinently to our purpose, that "many times when a people have got 

loose from the yoke of a tyranny or kingly government out of a desire of 

liberty, they proceed from one extreme to another" & sese, nisi 

retineantur, in effraenatam licentiam praecipitant; quae quidem & ipsa, 

jure tyrannis potest appellari, "and except they be restrained, run 

headlong to licentiousness; which also may be rightly called a tyranny." 

To which accords that of Peucerus, who most excellently describes the 

effects of it in these words: "The study of popular air, applause, and 

humor is a madness no whit inferior to tyranny itself.[13] Those which 

seek after it, as leaders of the people, become far more cruel and 

mischievous than single tyrants can be. For single tyrants are the less 

able to do mischief because they are constrained to stand in fear of 

others, but the furious multitude, fearing no colors,[14] are hurried on 

like a torrent and bear down all the banks of opposition." So that, as 

Clapmarius[15] saith, "reckon up those flagitious[16] enormities of 

kingly government together — as breach of faith, violation of things 

sacred, depriving men of their possessions, with all the acts of 

injustice and cruelty — and they abound much more in a mere popular 

state," or leveling popularity, "than any other." And therefore, Bodin 

concludes, since it is the highroad "to licentiousness and tyranny, it 

is justly condemned by all wise men of the world."[17]



Secondly, nor is it only a mere tyranny in itself, but so far 

destructive of a free state, especially a free state newly erected, that 

it soon causes a change of it into the form of a regal tyranny.[18] 

According to that maxim of politicians, facilis est transitus a regimine 

democratico ad monarchicum, "the passage is quick and easy from a mere 

popularity to monarchy." And that because of those discontents, 

emulations, and tumults which arise continually among them and whereby 

their leaders so tire them out that in a little time they willingly 

yield themselves under the yoke of any one person who seems willing and 

able to deliver and ease them by a settlement.[19] Thus Rome, that 

stately mistress of the world who disdained to stoop under victorious 

Caesar, falling afterward into popular divisions and discords more 

fierce than ever, soon grew weary and willing to bow her neck under 

Augustus.[20] Plutarch compares those popular tumults to the pangs of a 

woman in travail,[21] calling them 'Odi/nav reipub; "the pains of a 

commonwealth that must needs bring forth into the world some great 

kingdom or tyranny."[22] Now the person invested after this manner is 

usually some one of their leaders; who, by soothing and carrying them on 

upon high and glorious pretenses of liberty, gains so much confidence 

and power among them that in the end he bereaves them of liberty to 

disturb him or themselves any further. Thus, and by such arts as these, 

Julius Caesar first erected the imperial tyranny at Rome, as Pisistratus 

likewise made himself absolute at Athens and Dionysius the tyrant at 

Syracusa;[23] who pretending themselves great patrons of liberty stirred 

the people up against the Senate and counselors of state as enemies to 

that liberty whereof they were indeed the only keepers. And it is not to 

their leaders alone that they expose the public liberty, but oftentimes 

to those out of whose hands it was first recovered. Thus Agathocles the 

tyrant of Sicily, Periander, and several others have by this means, 

after they had been expelled, regained a possession. And therefore it 

cannot be improper here to return the language of our Levellers in their 

late petition home to themselves; that since they and divers others 

disaffected persons are so unwilling to embrace the Commonwealth in its 

present state and true condition of liberty, they are to be reckoned the 

only causers of those taxes and other inconveniences now lying upon us. 

Whereas if they would unite, as they ought, our burdens would be 

inconsiderable because the royal and foreign confederates would have the 

less confidence to assail us and force these necessities upon us, were 

we once free from those divisions, distractions, and dissatisfactions 

which Presbyters and Levellers occasion here among us.



Thirdly, it cannot but be sad to consider what tumults and combustions 

must needs happen every year by reason of those prodigious multitudes 

that are admitted to make choice of the persons to be entrusted in the 

representative.



And though there be one clause in the Agreement which seems to provide 

against riots at every choosing of the members, yet it is impossible to 

devise any means to prevent those inconveniences which will arise in a 

self-opinionated multitude upon such an occasion; wherein they all 

conceive themselves to have an equal interest and power, and touching 

which it can hardly be expected any conclusion can be made till from 

arguments they proceed to cuffs, and so, in the end, the club carry the 

election.[24]



Fourthly, it hath ever been the custom in these mere popular forms for 

the most part to make choice of the lowest of the people,[25] such whose 

persons are held in admiration by the rest of their fellows and like to 

satisfy them in all their phrenetic humors; a lively, sad example 

whereof we have in the popular state of Athens where they chose such 

persons to participate of the supreme authority as would countenance 

them and share with them in slaying or condemning the richer sort and 

then seizing upon their possessions, plundering their houses, and many 

more such fine effects of leveling liberty.[26] Hence it is they shift 

and change their governors so often, rejecting at every new election 

such as they have found averse to their licentious ways, as enemies of 

liberty, under pretense of putting better in their places; that is, such 

as indulge them in these and the like courses.[27]



Fifthly, by this means, unlearned, ignorant persons, neither of learning 

nor fortune, being put in authority, the Commonwealth cannot remain safe 

either in peace or war; for through covetousness and private necessity 

they will exercise rapine and injustice in time of peace and, by reason 

of their ignorance in the affairs of government, the state must needs 

run a hazard in time of war or any other public extremity. Here, let me 

call to mind a passage of the Romans, mentioned by Aquinas;[28] among 

whom it happened that two persons being chosen by the Consuls for the 

government of Spain, they were after the election found fault with; the 

one being very poor, the other accused of being covetous. And when it 

had been long debated which of them should be entrusted, at length 

Scipio, to end the controversy, stood up and concluded neither, because 

persons so qualified must needs be corrupt in their government and ever 

sucking the body politic like leeches wheresoever they can lay hold. Yet 

such persons as these, poor and unexpert in affairs, if they are 

busybodies and have a nimble faculty of prating, are usually adored by 

the vulgar as the only statesmen.



Sixthly, it is ordinary with the grand demagogues or leaders of the 

people to make sale of elections and all offices of judicature, honor, 

and authority. And upon these terms they many times admit the better 

sort into places of power and turn them out again at pleasure. So that, 

as Plato and Plutarch say, "mere popularity is no government, but is, as 

it were, a market wherein all offices of government are exposed to 

sale."[29] And he ordinarily gains the best bargain of authority that 

hath the longest purse and most powerful tongue to persuade the clerks 

of the market;[30] whereby it is to be supposed on the other side that 

the purchasers will see themselves no losers, it being a matter of 

course that such as buy authority should sell justice.



Seventhly, the plea of our Levellers for yearly representatives, with 

this caution that no man shall be chosen a member of two representatives 

together and that in the intervals we may be governed by a committee of 

their own members without a standing council of state, is very 

irrational. For what understanding can a succession of mean and new-

elected persons have of the public affairs so as to manage them with 

skill and advantage in so short a time, seeing it is use and experience 

that fits a man for the carriage of grand concernments of state? We find 

in the Roman state, when it was most popular, that the multitude were 

never so mad as to cast off (though they took upon them now and then to 

control) the Senate, which was their standing council and without which 

no commonwealth can continue of any long standing. And therefore it is 

that, rather than such a council of state should be wanting, Aristotle 

adviseth us to entrust them with affairs altogether, they having all 

those advantages of observation, custom, and experience which cannot be 

expected from a tumultuary succession of raw and unexpert statists.[31] 

As for example we read in what a flourishing condition the commonwealth 

of Athens continued as long as affairs were ordered by that famous 

council, the Areopagites; and no sooner did the power come into the 

hands of the people but afterward all turned to confusion.[32] It were 

much to be wondered that the state of Rome stood so long in a popular 

form, but that we know it was also underpropped by the wisdom and 

authority of the Senate and had many eminent pillars to support it: as 

Menenius Agrippa, Furius Camillus, Papirius Cursor, Fabius Maximus, Cato 

Censor, Marcus Scaurus, and Pompey; upon whose virtues its subsistence 

depended and not upon those tumultuary sots, the many. Thus likewise the 

popular state of the Thebans subsisted a while by the singular wisdom 

and valor of Pelopidas and Epaminondas, who were no sooner gone but the 

popularity sunk of itself and came to nothing.[33] How much safer, then, 

must it needs be for the people of this nation to leave the succession 

of representatives and the form of a council in the future, with the 

time and manner of their constitution and rules for election, to be 

ordered by the wisdom and discretion of Parliament than after the humor 

of some obscure persons whose knowledge and interest in the public 

matters is no whit comparable to theirs and therefore not to be valued 

in competition with them for the ordering of such affairs as so highly 

concern the good and peace of the public.



Eighthly, this popular form is the only enemy of true generosity and 

virtue. For how much the more excellent any man hath approved himself 

either in conduct or counsel, so much the more he is suspected, hated, 

and calumniated by the ungrateful multitude. In the popular state of 

Rome, they had lex repetundarum,[34] a law whereby the multitude were 

enabled to call all public magistrates and officers to account, a course 

seeming plausible enough in itself. But hence proceeded those liberae 

accusationes whereby the people, having liberty to accuse magistrates, 

proceeded to calumniations[35] and continually vexed with false and 

unreasonable charges even those who had been most faithful and done very 

famous services for the commonwealth, just as our Levellers now exclaim 

against the Parliament and would, if they might, rage against them about 

public accounts, as appears by their old Agreement and their late 

petition; the consequence whereof would be that in the end they should 

be ostracized and receive an oyster shell or an olive leaf in recompense 

of all their labors.[36]



Thus the most famous captain Alcibiades, having done many services for 

the Athenian populacy, was only for a petty misfortune, and no other 

cause, in managing the war of Sicily called home and banished both from 

his command and country. At length, being sent for home again, he made 

them victorious over their enemies, the Lacedaemonians; yet 

notwithstanding so great merits, he was upon another turn of popular air 

for a misfortune in Asia sent the second time into banishment by those 

levelers.



So likewise another famous Athenian captain, Themistocles, received no 

other reward than banishment for all his meritorious achievements.[37] 

And Miltiades, who erected the Grecian trophies in Persia and asserted 

the liberties of Greece against all their enemies, was used far worse, 

being kept a prisoner all his life; and after his death they not only 

neglected to give him burial but, to stretch their ingratitude yet 

further, condemned his son, Cimon, to a perpetual imprisonment. In like 

manner they used Phocion, the most deserving of all the Athenian 

commanders, but with much more cruelty. For they murdered him with their 

own hands and afterward denied him burial. Whereupon, Bodinus, relating 

the story out of Plutarch, makes this observation, that when the 

multitude begin to insult against the most deserving men, they run 

beyond all shame and reason.



Nor was it thus only in Greece, but we find the same humor also among 

the Roman levelers, whereof that illustrious family of the Scipios was a 

sad example. For Scipio Major, he that for his famous exploits against 

Carthage was surnamed Africanus, having rescued Rome from the brink of 

destruction and freed her from the fear of that pernicious rival, was at 

his return home so afflicted and vexed with injurious calumnies of the 

unthankful rabble that for quietness sake he spent his days in a 

voluntary exile and at his death commanded such an epitaph[38] to be 

fixed upon his monument as might testify to aftertimes the great 

ingratitude of his people. They accused his brother also, surnamed 

Asiaticus, of defrauding the commonwealth and kept him a prisoner. In 

the same manner they calumniated likewise the most meritorious Scipio 

Nasica; so that to decline the popular fury he departed with the good 

will and consent of the Senate, as employed by them upon an embassy to 

Pergamus[39] from whence he never returned. By this it appears then that 

all generous spirits are concerned in reason to abhor the leveling way 

of government.



Ninthly, Aristotle saith where this leveling, popular form is erected 

there "is a necessity that all persons who are become eminent or potent, 

either by fortune, or virtue, should receive many high and heinous 

injuries from the vulgar."[40] And Tacitus gives the reason why it was 

thus in the Roman state; "because," saith he, "the common rabble have a 

kind of inveterate, hereditary hatred against the more noble and worthy 

persons,"[41] especially such as are councilors of state, as appears by 

their frequent calumniating the senators; punishing them sometimes with 

banishment, as they did Furius and many others, and often with 

unreasonable fines, as they did C. Dempronius, Q. Pomponius, and 

Virginius, &c.[42] And all this for the most part without any cause but 

merely to exercise their spleen, which takes the same course of enmity 

likewise against all that are wealthy, be they high or low. For it is 

reckoned, inter arcana, a prime mystery of "popular government to use 

all private tricks and ways of milking and gelding the purses of the 

rich."[43] Nor is that alone sufficient, but they fly out ever and anon 

into violence; and from plundering they proceed to that flat leveling of 

estates as is evident by those Licinian and agrarian laws made by the 

populacy of Rome whereby it was provided that no man should grow too 

rich nor be master of above fifty acres of land. And touching this, 

there is an insolent passage recorded by Livy how that when the Senate 

seemed unwilling to permit the division of certain lands among the 

common sort, the tribunes, or ringleaders of the people, asked the 

Senators "how they durst possess more than fifty acres apiece yet find 

fault with a division made of two apiece to the people!"[44] And the 

same author tells us so many quarrels and tumults arose about division 

of lands that the Senate knew not which way to prevent them till they 

disburdened the commonwealth by sending forth colonies and satisfying 

them with lands in the remote parts of Italy and other places.



Lastly, from leveling they proceed to introduce an absolute community. 

And though neither the Athenian nor Roman levelers ever arrived to this 

high pitch of madness, yet we see there is a new faction started up out 

of ours known by the name of Diggers. Who, upon this ground that God is 

our common father, the earth our common mother, and that the original of 

propriety[45] was men's pride and covetousness, have framed a new plea 

for a return of all men ad tuguria;[46] that like the old Parthians, 

Scythian nomads, and other wild barbarians, we might renounce towns and 

cities, live at rovers,[47] and enjoy all in common.



Now for a conclusion, all these considerations being put together, you 

may easily spell what Leveller is, what the meaning is of those zealous 

pretenders to liberty and freedom, and what their pretense may come to, 

it being the ready road to all licentiousness, mischief, mere anarchy, 

and confusion; which whosoever follows may stay long enough ere he see 

the performance of those glorious promises set forth in their late 

petition, wherein the people are made to believe fine things. But I 

leave them to judge whether this be the way to sit down securely under 

their own vines, under the glorious administration of justice and 

righteousness.



Odi profanum vulgum, & arceo. Horat.[48]







[1] MN: See the Agreement of the People. ["An Agreement of the Free 

People of England," Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution, ed. 

Don M. Wolfe (New York, 1944), pp. 400-410.]



[2] MN: 6 Polit. cap. 2. [Aristotle, Politics, bk. vi, chap. ii.]



[3] MN: Indeque frequentantur agrariae leges; quae prohibent, me quis 

nimis dives efficiatur. Besold. in Synops. De democr. ["Since then, 

agrarian laws are become frequent, which prohibit anyone from becoming 

too rich." Besold, Synopsis politicae doctrinae, bk. I, chap. viii.]



[4] Incendiaries.



[5] Stay, stop.



[6] MN: See the Preamble of the Agreement. ["An Agreement of the Free 

People of England," Leveller Manifestoes, p. 401.]



[7] MN: Plebs ut prona in misericordiam, ita immodica in saevitiam. 

["The multitude, inclined on the one hand to kindness and on the other, 

unbridled in ferocity."]



[8] MN: Clap. De arcan. dom. pop. [Clapmar, De arcanis rerumpublicarum, 

bk. V. chap. xix.]



[9] MN: Incerti nimirum, solutique & magis sine dominio, quam in 

libertate. 2. Annal. [Tacitus, Annales, bk. ii, chap. iv.]



[10] MN: Genus hominum agreste, sine legibus, sine imperio, liberum, 

atque solutum. Salust. [Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, chap. vi.]



[11] MN: Quoniam ea demum libertas Romae est, non senatum, non 

magistratus, non leges, non mores majorum, non instituta patrum, non 

disciplinam vereri militiae. Liv. l. 5. [Livy, Ab urbe condita, bk. v, 

chap. vi.]



[12] Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540, Italian historian), Historiarum 

sui temporis (Basel, 1566), bk. II. [Historia di Italia.]



[13] MN: Tales longe sunt crudeliores, et longe plus nocent quam soli 

tyranni, &c.



[14] Fearing no foe.



[15] MN: Clapm. De flag. dom. cap. 19. [Clapmar, De arcanis 

rerumpublicarum, bk. V, chap. xix.]



[16] Infamous.



[17] MN: Omnium prope judicia vapulat; eo quod inibi licentia pro 

libertate habeatur. Bodin. 6. cap. 4. [Bodin, Les six livres de la 

republique, bk. VI, chap. iv.]



[18] MN: Petr. Gregor. 5. De repub. cap. 3. [Grégoire, De republica, bk. 

V, chap. iii.]



[19] MN: Componi non possunt, nisi imperio ad unum devoluto. Clapm. De 

arc. imp. 1. 2. cap. 14. [Clapmar, De arcanis rerumpublicarum, bk. II, 

chap. xiv.]



[20] MN: Eam rempublicam discordiis civilibus fessam, nomine principis, 

sub imperium accepit. Tacit. Ann. I. [Tacitus, Annales, bk. i, chap. i.]



[21] Labor.



[22] MN: Tumultas populares parturiunt regnum.



[23] Syracuse.



[24] MN: Scinditur incertum studia in contraria vulgus. ["The uncertain 

multitude is agitated by contrary desires."]



[25] MN: Contzen. I. Polit. cap. 20. [Adam Contzen (1575-1635, German 

Jesuit theologian and historian), Politicorum libri decem. (Mainz, 

[1620]), bk. I, chap. xx.]



[26] MN: Greg. Tolos. l. 4. De repub. c. 3. [Grégoire, De republica, bk. 

IV, chap. iii.]



[27] MN: Plebs rectores meliores vocat eos, qui magis ei indulgeat. 

Idem. ["The people call them better governors who may indulge them 

more."]



[28] MN: Aquin. De regim. princ. l. 4. cap. 15. [St. Thomas Aquinas 

(1225?-74, Italian theologian), De regimine principum, bk. IV, chap. 

xv.]



[29] MN: Dhmorati/a a#kratov, ou/ politei/a a/lla/ pa/ntwn po/lion 

politei/wn. Plato.



[30] MN: Ex favore & pretio, populus distribuebat magistratus. Polyb. 6. 

Histor. a pr. paruta. I. disc. ["The people bestowed the magistracy 

through favor and bribery." Polybius (205?-125? B.C., Greek historian), 

The Histories, bk. vi, no. lvi.]



[31] MN: Summa rerum sit penes paucos, qui antecellunt reliquos virtute 

& sapientia. Polit. I. ["Let the supreme power be in the hands of the 

few who are superior to the rest in virtue and wisdom." Aristotle, 

Politics, bk. vii, chap. iii.]



[32] MN: Thucydides l. 2. pag. 63. [Thucydides (472?-400? B.C., Greek 

historian), History of the Peloponnesian War, bk. ii, chap. lxv; bk. 

viii, chaps. xvi-xcviii.]



[33] MN: Bodinus. 6. De repub. cap. 4. [Bodin, Les six livres de la 

république, bk. VI, chap. iv.]



[34] MN: Lex repetundarum. [A Roman law concerning extortion in 

government.]



[35] MN: Liberae accusationes, & calumniationes. ["Unrestrained 

accusations and malicious charges."]



[36] MN: Ostracismus used at Athens, as Petalismus elsewhere; when the 

people banished any eminent man, the sentence was written either upon 

the shell of a fish, or an olive leaf. Arist. 3 Polit. c. 13. 

[Aristotle, Politics, bk. iii, chap. viii.]



[37] MN: Phil. Camerar. Cent. 2. Oper. succis. cap. 51. [Philipp 

Camerarius (1537-1624, German jurist), Operae ... meditationes 

historicae auctiores (Frankfurt, 1618-24), pt. II, chap. li.]



[38] MN: Ingrata patria, ne ossa quidem mea habes. ["Ungrateful native 

land, you have not even my bones."]



[39] Pergamum.



[40] MN: Ubi imperium plebis est, ibi patricios ac nobiles, multis 

magnisque injuriis, affici necesse est. Arist. 3. Polit. cap. 7. 

[Aristotle, Politics, bk. iii, chap. vii.]



[41] MN: Inveratissimum fuit in rep. Romana odium plebis adversus 

patricios. Tacit. [Tacitus.]



[42] MN: Livius. lib. 4. & 5. [Livy, Ab urbe condita, bks. iv, v.]



[43] MN: Clapm. De arcan. l. 2. c. 13. [Clapmar, De arcanis 

rerumpublicarum, bk. II, chap. xiii.]



[44] MN: Auderentne postulare, ut cum bina jugera agri plebi 

divideremur, ipsis plus quinquaginta jugera habere liceret? Liv. l. 10. 

[Livy, op. cit., bk. vi, chap. xxxvi.]



[45] Property.



[46] To peasant cottages.



[47] Without definite aim.



[48] "I hate the common crowd and keep them far away," Horace, Carmina, 

bk. iii, Ode I, l. 1.







                        CHAPTER 5



A Discourse of the Excellency of a Free State above a Kingly Government



HAVING in the former chapters stated the designs and given an account of 

those grand inconveniences which of necessity will ensue a success of 

the opposite parties, this next discourse must needs be very pertinent 

by way of conclusion to manifest the excellency of the present 

government, which they all endeavor to destroy. And though there needed 

no other argument to prove it and recommend it to the world than this, 

that it is the only bank which preserves us from the inundations of 

tyranny on the one side and confusion on the other,[1] yet it wants not 

of itself those many advantages above all other forms which render it 

most convenient to promote the peace, wealth, and honor of the English 

nation.



Yet it is a wonder to see how lightly men prize this invaluable jewel of 

liberty which hath cost the Commonwealth so much blood and treasure; 

trampling the precious pearl under their feet like swine so that the 

Parliament meet now with as many difficulties to preserve, as ever they 

had to purchase, it. But for this there are two special reasons which 

may be collected out of the Florentine's subtile discourses upon 

Livy;[2] who compares such as have been educated under a monarchy or 

tyranny to those beasts which have been caged or cooped up all their 

lives in a den where they seem to live in as much pleasure as other 

beasts that are abroad, and if they be let loose, yet they will return 

in again because they know not how to value or use their liberty. So 

strong an impression is made likewise by education and custom from the 

cradle, even upon men that are endued with reasonable souls, that they 

choose to live in those places and customs of government under which 

they have been bred rather than submit to better which might make more 

for their content and advantage. Hence it is that those poor slaves 

under the Turk, Persian, Tartar, Muscovite, Russian, French, and 

Spaniard, with other Eastern, Northern, and Western tyrants are so 

enamored of their chains that they admire their own condition above all 

others, and, like the Indians, adore the devil which torments them 

because they are ignorant of a better deity to protect them.



But besides education and custom under another form, there is second 

reason why men are so degenerous in spirit as to vassalize themselves 

and neglect the maintenance of their liberty. And that is, a general 

corruption and depravation of manners by luxurious courses when a nation 

is even swallowed up with riot and luxury; so that, being slaves to 

their own lusts, they become the more easily enslaved unto the lusts of 

another. The truth of this may be observed in the variation of the Roman 

state, which in its primitive innocence was so sensible of liberty that 

when Brutus and Collatinus had once expelled the Tarquins, the people 

almost readily joined with them as one man in defense of their freedom; 

yea, they were so zealous of it for a long time that no relations or 

considerations whatsoever of former merits could avail with them to 

spare those that attempted ought against it.[3] For when the sons of 

Brutus were found guilty of a conspiracy to bring back the Tarquinian 

family, they condemned them to death; and their own father was as 

forward as any to bring them to execution. So the famous Manlius 

likewise, to whom Rome owed both herself and liberty, being by him 

preserved against the Gauls in the greatest extremity, was 

notwithstanding, upon a discovery of his afterintent to surprise their 

liberty, thrown headlong down the Tarpeian Rock within view of the 

Capitol which he had so nobly defended. By which actions you may 

perceive that when Rome was in its pure estate, virtue begat a desire of 

liberty, and this desire begat in them an extraordinary courage and 

resolution to defend it; which three walked a long time hand in hand 

together and were the causes that the first founders of their freedom 

had so little difficulty in maintaining themselves against those 

invasions which happened afterward by the Tarquins and their royal 

confederates. But in process of time, when the Romans had lost that 

ancient virtue which purchased their liberty and an empire over the 

world, being softened in their manners and conquered by their vices 

whose dominions they had conquered, they soon bowed under the yoke of 

imperial tyranny. And though there appeared afterward some sparks of 

ancient courage and love of liberty among them when they took off Caesar 

himself, Caligula, Nero, and in the end rid themselves quite of that 

tyrannical stock of the Caesars, yet, I say, because those sparks were 

kindled only in a few of the more noble souls and the generality corrupt 

and degenerate from their old virtue, therefore such heroic minds as 

endeavored could by no means engage them to assert their liberty.



It is observable also in all times the Northern and more manly people 

that have no acquaintance with luxurious diets and apparel, nor care 

much to obtain them, nor to taste of those melting enchantments of more 

wanton nations, are endued with a greater courage and sense of liberty; 

whereas those people that inhabit the delicate parts of the world, as in 

Asia and other countries where civility hath degenerated into 

effeminacy, they ever have lived and do for the most part continue in 

miserable slavery at the will of imperious tyrants. And if at any time 

there have happened worthy resolutions in virtuous spirits to recover 

their freedom, they have for the most part failed in the enterprise by 

reason of the corruption of their party which causeth men at length to 

decline the common cause through pusillanimity, faction, treachery, or 

apostasy; being more superstitiously inclinable to adore the greatness 

of a tyrant than really affectionate to the worth of liberty. For this 

cause it was that in elder time the people of Naples, Milan, and 

Florence lost their freedoms as soon as they had gotten it.[4] And of 

late also the Neapolitans failed in their attempt, being a soft, 

effeminate people, easily bribed and courted out of their design with 

Spanish gold and complement; whereas the Swiss, Hollanders, and divers 

other hardy people stuck close to their leaders, and by their constancy, 

industry, and zeal of liberty accomplished the work.



By which parcel of discourse we may collect whence it is that our 

present governors meet with so many difficulties and oppositions from 

their own countrymen here in England, viz., by reason of our former 

education under a monarchy with the general debaucheries of all sorts of 

people which render them admirers of the pomp of tyranny and enemies to 

that freedom which hath been so dearly purchased. They are lovers of 

vanity more than of themselves or their country, humorous,[5] and led 

with an admiration of old customs to their own hazard rather than they 

will steer a new and reasonable course of far more convenience and 

commodity. So that if the Commonwealth had not a party of its own 

throughout the nation, men of valor and virtue, free from those 

corruptions of excess and riot, and sensible of liberty, it were then in 

reason to be expected they could not long maintain their station. But 

being supported by counselors, grave, serious, abstemious, and vigilant, 

and by a soldiery whose valiant commanders are severe and strict in 

discipline, both moral and military, when I consider this with the many 

other advantages which their enemies have not, their foundation seems to 

me impregnable and prompts me to this omen, that being every way 

qualified like those Roman spirits of old, they will be courted and 

confirmed by the Roman fortune.[6]



For shame or fear then, if not for love, let men forbear an opposition 

and consider what an honor it is to be in the list of that party which 

have ennobled themselves by their own virtue and the love of liberty. 

For as Cato saith in Plutarch, even the greatest kings or tyrants are 

much inferior to those that are eminent in free states and 

commonweals;[7] nor were those mighty monarchs of old worthy to be 

compared with Epaminondas, Pericles, Themistocles, Marcus Curtius, 

Hamilcar Barca, &c., and other excellent captains in free states which 

purchased themselves a fame in defense of their liberties. And though 

now the very name of liberty is grown odious or ridiculous among us, it 

having been a stranger a long time in these parts, yet in ancient time 

nations were wont to reckon themselves so much the more noble if they 

were free from the yoke of regal tyranny; which was the cause why there 

were then so many free states in all parts of the world. In our country 

here, before the time that Caesar's tyranny took place, there was no 

such thing as monarchy. For the same Caesar tells us how the Britons 

were divided into so many several states; relates how Cassivelaunus was, 

by the common council of the nation, elected in this their public danger 

to have the principal administration of the state with the business of 

war and afterward how the several cities sent their hostages unto 

him.[8] Whereby we perceive it was of old no monarchy but, like to the 

Gauls with whom it was then one also in religion, divided into 

provincial regiments without any entire rule or combination; only in 

case of common peril by invasion, &c., they were wont to choose a 

commander in chief, much like the dictator chosen by the Romans upon the 

like occasion.[9] And now we see all the Western world, lately 

discovered, to be, and generally all other countries are, in puris 

naturalibus, "in their first and most innocent condition," settled in 

the same form before they come to be enslaved either by so predominant 

power from abroad or someone among themselves more potent and ambitious 

than his neighbors. And such was the state heretofore not only of our 

nation but of Gaul, Spain, Germany, and all the west parts of Europe 

before the Romans did by strength and cunning unlock their liberties. 

And such as were then termed kings were but as their generals in war, 

without any other great jurisdiction.



If we reflect likewise upon the ancient state of Italy, we find no other 

forms of government but those of free states and commonweals, as the 

Tuscans, Romans, Samnites, and many others.[10] Nor is there any mention 

made of kings in Italy besides those of the Romans and Porsena. 

Concerning the ruin of whose family, though histories are silent, yet we 

read that Tuscany, whereof Porsena was king, became afterward a free 

state and continued so zealous of liberty ever after and such haters of 

monarchy that they denied the Veiians their assistance against the 

Romans for no other reason but because those Veiians had made choice of 

a king to protect them in their necessity; saying that they scorned to 

join with those men who had subjected themselves to the government of a 

single person.



Nor is it only a mere gallantry of spirit which incites men to the love 

of freedom; but experience tells us it is the most commodious and 

profitable way of government, conducing to the enlargement of a nation 

every way in wealth and dominion. "It is incredible to be told," saith 

Sallust, "how exceedingly the Roman commonwealth increased in a short 

time after they had obtained their liberty."[11] And Guicciardin affirms 

that "free states are most pleasing to God because that in them more 

regard is had to the common good, more care for impartial distribution 

of justice to every man, and the minds of men are more inflamed with the 

love of glory and virtue and become much more zealous in the love of 

religion than in any other form of government whatsoever."[12] It is 

wonderful to consider how mightily the Athenians were augmented both in 

wealth and power in the space of one hundred years after they had freed 

themselves from the tyranny of Pisistratus, but the Romans arrived to 

such a height as was beyond all imagination after the expulsion of their 

kings. Nor do these things happen without special reason, forasmuch as 

it is usual in free states to be more tender of the public in all their 

decrees than of particulars, whereas the case is otherwise in a 

monarchy; because in this form the prince's pleasure usually weighs down 

all considerations of the common good. And hence it is that a nation 

hath no sooner lost its liberty and stooped under the yoke of an 

usurper, but it immediately loseth its former luster; the body fills 

with ill humors and may swell in title but cannot thrive either in 

dominion or riches according to that proportion which it formerly 

enjoyed, because all new acquisitions are appropriated as the prince's 

peculiar and in no wise conduce to the ease and benefit of the public.



It is observable likewise in the course of hereditary monarchies that 

though a nation may have some respite and recruit[13] now and then by 

the virtue and valor of a prince, yet this is very rare. And when it 

doth happen, it usually lasts no longer than his life because his 

successor, for the most part, proves more weak or vicious than himself 

was virtuous. For, as Dantes[14] the Italian poet saith,



     Non sicut in ramos ex imo stipite succus influit, in liberos sic

     orta parentibus ipsis descendit virtus.



"Virtue is not transmitted from father to son as the sap of a tree is 

from the root to the branches." Virtue is lost in the descent and comes 

not by traduction.[15] Therefore, Machiavel saith, not he that placeth a 

virtuous government in his own hands or family and governs well during 

his natural life, but he that establisheth a lasting form for the 

people's constant security is most to be commended.[16] It is recorded 

in history that the hereditary course of government was so odious to the 

Hungarians that when Ferdinand the First, King of the Romans, laid claim 

to that crown as heir in his wife's right, they chose rather to make a 

league with the Turk than subject their state to the inconveniences of 

an hereditary succession.[17] 



     Regibus est aliis, potiundi jure paterno 

     certa fides, sceptrumque patris novus accipit haeres. 

     Nos, quibus est melior libertas, jure vetuste, 

     orba suo quoties vacat inclyta principe sedes, 

     quodlibet arbitrium statuendi regis habemus.[18]



The German poet Gunther, who reduced much of policy into poetry, in 

these verses commends the fashion of his own country; that since they 

had accepted the regal or imperial form of government, they were 

accustomed to trust their own judgments in making choice of their 

emperor rather than receive him blindly from the hand of chance or 

fortune. Nor do I find any that think a monarchy tolerable otherwise 

than upon terms of election, except it be Lipsius and such partial 

penmen as himself who were held in pension or relation by hereditary 

tyrants. For besides that common reason dissuades men from taking 

governors at adventure[19] without respect of wisdom or virtue, so if we 

take a view of the miserable events of it in all histories, it must 

needs deter men from the love of such a succession. And therefore the 

argument usually brought in defense of it, that it is the only way to 

prevent the inconveniences of an interregnum where the heir is 

uncertain, is of no validity; since it hath caused ten thousand times 

more bloody disputes between pretenders in point of title than ever 

happened in those interregnal controversies which have risen betwixt 

competitors by way of election. Witness the tedious, fatal bickerings 

which happened in France and other nations among princes of the blood 

and here in England between the two houses of York and Lancaster. It is 

observed also out of the ancient Roman history that all those emperors 

which ruled by right of inheritance proved most of them no better than 

savage beasts and all of them wicked except Titus;[20] but such as were 

advanced by election approved themselves noble and virtuous, as you may 

see in those five that succeeded Nerva to Marcus. And no sooner did the 

Empire return again into a course of inheritance but it ran to a loss 

and at length to the ruin of its glory and greatness.



But to waive this digression touching hereditary and elective 

monarchies, I affirm that neither of them are to be compared with a free 

state nor to be admitted, unless it be the latter by way of election and 

then only in case of extreme necessity; as the Roman commonwealth was 

wont now and then to create their temporary dictators,[21] into whose 

single hands they transmitted the whole power of ordering affairs, in 

time of urgent and imminent danger to avoid the inconvenience of delay 

which might be occasioned through the variety of opinions and 

multiplicity of counsels. However elective kings are found fault with 

because they usually practice such sleights that in a short time the 

government which they received for their own lives becomes entailed upon 

their families.



It is to be considered also that the kingly are not much less 

destructive than the leveling, popular tyrannies to gallant and worthy 

men.



     Sors ista tyrannis 

     convenit; invideant Claris, fortesque trucidem.[22]



Nor is it the worse sort of kings or tyrants only that hate brave and 

deserving persons, but even the most moderate and those that seem to be 

the best-conditioned become jealous and distasteful, supposing the fame 

and gallantry of their subjects detracts from their own estimation. And 

therefore they usually consult which way to dishonor or destroy them, by 

which means men are terrified from the love of glory and virtue. 

Demosthenes tells us Philip the Macedonian was so full of vainglory that 

he would arrogate the worthy deeds of his friends and other men to 

himself and make them seem to be his own. And he ever hated those 

commanders and governors which were victorious and successful more than 

such as were either careless or unfortunate.[23] His son Alexander was 

of the same humor too. For "when Antipater had gained a victory which he 

intended himself to have had the honor of, he could not forbear to utter 

his indignation, reckoning himself injured by the merits of his subject 

and servant."[24] And at another time he caused Parmenio to be put to 

death for no other cause but because he hated him, being suspicious of 

his extraordinary merits. Thus the Emperor Vespasian likewise behaved 

himself toward the General Antonius, by whose means Rome was secured for 

him against Vitellius and the imperial diadem placed on his head; which 

was no sooner done but Vespasian, instead of a reward, cashiered him of 

his command and all other employment whatsoever so that sinking under 

the burden of his own despair and the other's ingratitude, he lived not 

long after. In like manner Alphonsus Albuquerquius,[25] after he had 

brought most part of the East Indies under the obedience of his master 

the King of Portugal, was sent for home; and, outed of his command, died 

for mere grief and sorrow. Nor did Consalvus the Great or Ferdinando 

Cortese[26] fare any better for all their services.[27] Consalvus,[28] 

after he had driven the French out of the Kingdom of Naples and subdued 

it to Ferdinand of Aragon, was by him at his coming to Naples put out of 

his command and carried into Spain in little better condition than a 

prisoner, where his heart broke for grief immediately. How miserable 

then is the condition of the most generous spirits under tyrannous 

royalty, wherein princes count themselves disobliged by the bravest 

actions of their subjects! And Tacitus tells of one of the Caesars upon 

the like occasion, "that he conceived it prejudicial to his own honor 

and fortune and supposed himself insufficient to recompense 

extraordinary merits. For good turns seem then only acceptable to 

princes when they may be easily requited; otherwise they return hatred 

instead of thanks."[29] Cominaeus[30] also reports it from Lewis of 

France his own mouth, that he much more loved those whom himself had 

obliged by bounty and courtesy than such as had obliged him by their 

deserts.



Yea, so dangerous a thing is virtue in princes' courts that it is as 

much as a man's life is worth to be commended for it. And to this 

purpose we have a story in Polybius, lib. 6, how that one Apelles, being 

enemy to Aratus a favorite of King Philip the Macedonian, took occasion 

to extol him most highly to the King as a person admired by all for his 

many rare and incomparable virtues; knowing this was the way to bring 

him out of the King's favor;[31] which was, saith one, a new way of 

revenge, and it took effect to the destruction of Aratus. For after 

awhile he became so much disrelished that the King gave him a dose in 

convenient season which rid him away by a lingering sickness. And Aratus 

so well understood how the case was with him that when his friend 

Cephalon came to visit him in his chamber and asked how it came to pass 

that he spit blood? "O Cephalon," said he, "these are the rewards of 

kingly friendship and acquaintance."[32] Our own histories and our 

neighbors of France might furnish us with instances enough of the same 

nature; but at home here, look no further than Harry the Eighth, and we 

find him ever and anon bedabbled with the blood of the most deserving 

persons, as well as most of his predecessors. What persecution hath 

happened since is notorious to all of the meanest reading and 

observation. So that seeing it appears there is as little security for 

the bravest spirits in a regal as in a popular tyranny, certainly all 

persons of generous thoughts and resolutions are much more concerned to 

dislike it and apply themselves to the love of a free state. It being 

concluded by Aristotle the best of governments and is by experience 

known to be most conducing to the advancement of a nation every way in 

honor, profit, and dominion; having ever produced many more excellent 

heroes than any other form upon the stage of action, as is evident in 

the Grecian, Roman, and modern stories.



But one great argument of exception, I perceive among some, against this 

government is because men are permitted the freedom of their souls and 

consciences in the profession of religion. This they conceive 

inconsistent with the public peace; that no state can be of continuance 

with such a toleration, and that it is [not] [33] agreeable to the Word 

of God. To the latter part of this assertion, I answer that prudent 

toleration of opinions in matter of religion could never be proved yet 

by any of our Episcoparians and Presbyterians, in all their writings, to 

be repugnant to the Word; being as far to seek this way as they are to 

convince us of the sacred necessity of a national uniformity. Several 

instances there are to show how this Commonwealth hath punished those 

wild pretenders that profess manifest libertinism and blasphemy, many of 

whom at this day are in custody. And as long as these ill weeds are 

rooted out of the garden of the church, the wholesome, tender plants 

will thrive in beauty and virtue under their several measures and 

dispensations.



And that variety of opinions can be no way destructive of public peace, 

as is pretended, is evident by the customs of other nations, both 

heathen and Christian. The Egyptians have now among them no less than 

four several sects,[34] differing in doctrine and discipline and all 

derived from the superstition of Mahomet. Yet their great pontiffs and 

priests live in amity together, void of hatred and strife, and the 

common people also behave themselves accordingly without brawling or 

enmity. And it is usual for the more learned sort of them to dispute 

with each other and defend the opinions of their party; which they are 

allowed to do with all liberty so long as they fly not out into language 

against any of the four doctors who were the first patrons of those 

opinions. Wherein, if any chance to offend, they are punished by fine 

and imprisonment.



Lipsius tells us that in the Isle of Japan there are no less than nine 

religions, every man being at liberty to profess which he please.[35] So 

that in the same house you might see the husband of one religion, the 

wife of another, the son of a third, and yet no heartburning nor 

difference among them to the disturbance of the family. The Turk, we 

see, also allows an equal liberty to Christians and Jews, yet his empire 

hath long continued firm and peaceable, notwithstanding the variety of 

opinions tolerated among those of his own sect and others. The case is 

the same likewise in several Christian dominions; as Poland, 

Transylvania, Hungary, and even in the Protestant dominions in Germany. 

Yet the experiment is brought nearer home to us by our neighbors, the 

States of Holland; who by a prudent toleration of several professions 

have established themselves in such a measure of peace, plenty, and 

liberty as is not to be equaled by any of the nations round about them. 

And the reasons why those nations continue in peace, notwithstanding 

their difference in religious opinions, are confessed by the same 

Lipsius, a great Roman Catholic, to be these. First, because the prince 

and he that is the high priest among them carry themselves with the same 

aspect upon all, giving no countenance to one more than another. 

Secondly, because they severely punish such as offer to disturb their 

neighbors about any matter relating to religion. Thirdly, because they 

suffer not that religion to be evil spoken of which is publicly 

professed by the prince or state. Whereby it is implied that a 

toleration of different opinions in religion can be no prejudice to the 

peace of a nation so long as these rules are observed, but rather a 

grand preservative of public quiet; whereas persecutions for matter of 

religion have ever been all the world over the great incentives of 

sedition. And since it is of unavoidable necessity that while the world 

stands there will be divisions of opinion, certainly such a course must 

needs be most rational which shall provide ways of remedy against such 

inconveniences as may follow them rather than inventions of torture and 

torment to thwart and stifle them; because the understandings of men can 

no more be compelled, than their wills, to approve what they like not. 

So that from hence it appears plainly the great pretenders of national 

uniformity in religion, those high, imperious, uniformity mongers that 

would have men take measure of all opinions by their own, are the 

greatest disturbers of states and kingdoms; and seem of the same humor 

with the tyrant Mezentius who, if his guests were too long for his bed, 

cut them shorter and if they happened to be too short, he had engines of 

torture to stretch them longer, being resolved to fit them all to his 

own measure and humor.



Several other objections there are against this new government in the 

mouths of many people, but they are founded upon outward sense more than 

inward reason. They raise arguments from those things which are the 

effects of present necessity and not of the nature of the government 

itself. Whereas if men would unanimously join in an establishment, no 

such necessity would be. But as now, so always, all alterations of 

government, though for the better, have been declaimed against by the 

more ignorant sort of people, supposing those burdens will remain 

forever which governors are constrained to lay upon them for present 

subsistence and security. Yet hath been ever observed likewise that the 

more willing and forward people have been to settle in peace under a new 

government, the sooner they have been eased of all their grievances and 

pressures; according to that saying of Curtius, Obsequio mitigantur 

imperia.[36] And therefore in this case, Cicero adviseth "all men that 

would be safe to submit unto necessity."[37]



Whence is it that taxes continue but from absolute necessity? And this 

necessity is much augmented by the peevish humors of people; who 

remaining unsettled, give cause of jealousy to the state and of hope to 

their enemies, so that they are forced to keep up an army for security. 

When things stand thus, Tacitus affirms "there can be neither peace nor 

security without armies, nor armies without pay, nor pay without 

taxes.[38] And therefore," saith he, "they aim at a destruction of the 

government that would take away those profits whereby the commonwealth 

is supported."[39] From whence, by the way, may be collected what the 

meaning of our Levellers is in demanding a present release of all taxes 

and payments. And whereas great complaint is made against the 

imprisoning men in unusual ways and trying them by extraordinary courts 

and commissions of justice, know that of Tacitus takes place ever upon 

extraordinary occasions. Magna exempla semper habent aliquid ex iniquo, 

quod tamen adversus singulos Militate publica rependitur. "Great 

examples are not tied strictly to the rule; and though some particulars 

suffer by swerving from it, yet recompense is made in that profit which 

redounds to the good and safety of the public."[40] For it cannot in 

reason be presumed that such ordinary proceedings as are used in times 

of peace can be sufficient to secure a commonwealth "during the 

necessities of war, at which time laws use to be silent."[41] And those 

courses are judged most equitable[42] and have ever been allowed so by 

all states and statesmen which are dictated by common reason and 

prudence for their necessary preservation. To this accords that of Queen 

Dido in Vergil: 



     Res durae, & regni novitas, me talia cogunt moliri.[43]



And that of Hercules in the Tragedian:



     Quod civibus tenere te invitis scias, strictus tuetur ensis.[44]



Therefore if men will not submit and settle but keep the state by their 

obstinacy under the necessities of war, they must, if they plot or 

attempt anything against them, expect such proceedings and consequences 

as attend the sword when it is drawn. But would they close cordially in 

affection and be resolved once to settle in opposition to all invaders 

and intruders and let the Commonwealth have leave to take breath a 

little in the possession of a firm peace, then they would soon find the 

rivulets of a free state much more pleasing than the troubled ocean of 

kingly tyranny; begetting fertility and verdure, as they run along, in 

all the meadows and reviving those pastures which royalty was wont to 

drown and swallow. Had they but once tasted the sweets of peace and 

liberty both together, they would soon be of the opinion of 

Herodotus[45] and Demosthenes that there is no difference between king 

and tyrant and become as zealous as the ancient Romans were in defense 

of their freedom. And though this discourse may sound like that 

concerning the joys of heaven in the ears of ordinary people, as of 

blessings afar off, yet since it is in your power to hasten them, why 

stand ye off and delay? Ye may, if you please, by an unanimous obedience 

quickly open the fountains of future happiness that justice may run down 

as a mighty stream in the channel of the laws, and righteousness and 

peace embrace each other.



          Seneca in Herc. Fur.



          Si aeterna semper odia mortales gerant, 

          nec caeptus unquam cedat ex animis furor, 

          sed arma faelix teneat, infaelix paret; 

          nihil relinquent bella. Tum vastis ager 

          squallebit arvis, subdita tectis face 

          altus sepultas obruet gentes cinis. 

          Pacem reduci velle, victori expedit, 

          victo necesse est.[46]







[1] MN: If this government be destroyed, we must expect a regal, or a 

presbyterian, or a popular tyranny.



[2] MN: Mach. De repub. l. I. c. 16. 17. & 18. [Machiavelli, Discorsi, 

bk. I, chaps. xvi-xviii.]



[3] MN: Florus. [Floras (fl. beginning of 2d century A.D., Roman 

historian), Epitome rerum Romanarum, bk. i, chaps. ii-iii.]



[4] MN: Mach. l. I. c. 17. De repub. [Machiavelli, Discorsi, bk. I, 

chap. xvii.]



[5] Capricious.



[6] MN: Eis fuit domi industria, foris justum imperium, animus in 

consulendo liber; neque libidini, neque delicto obnoxius. Salustius. 

["They had industry at home, a just rule abroad, in counsel an 

independent spirit subject neither to passion nor to crime." Sallust, 

Bellum. Catilinae, chap. lii.]



[7] MN: De Catone in sua condone ad Romanos consules, ["Concerning Cato 

in his speech to the Roman consuls." Plutarch, Lives, section on Marcus 

Cato.]



[8] MN: Caesar. Comment, lib. 5. [Caesar, De bello Gallico, bk. v, 

chaps. xi-xxii.l



[9] MN: Sam. Daniel. Of the State of Britain. [Daniel, The Collection of 

the History of England, p. 2.]



[10] MN: Mach. lib. 2. cap. 2. [Machiavelli, Discorsi, bk. II, chap. 

ii.]



[11] MN: Incredibile est memoratus quantum adepta libertate, in brevi 

Romana civitas creverit. Salust. [Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, chap. vii. 

The quotation also appears on the title page.]



[12] MN: De summopere placent; eo quod in us, magis quam in alio genere 

rerumpublicarum, commune bonum conservetur, jus suum cuique aequaliter 

distribuatur, civium animi vehementius ad virtutem, &c. Fr. Guicciard. 

lib. 10. Hist. [Guicciardini, Historiarum, bk. X, p. 352. The quotation 

also appears on the title page.]



[13] Renewal of strength.



[14] Dante Alighieri (1265-1321, Italian poet). The passage is evidently 

from Dante's La divina comedia, "Purgatorio," canto 7, 11. 121-23, but 

is inexact. Nedham probably copied it from a Latin translation of 

Machiavelli's Discorsi, i.e., Disputationum, de republica (Montbéliard, 

1591), bk. I, chap. xi, p. 67.



[15] Transmission by generation to offspring.



[16] MN: Lib. De repub. 2. cap. 11. [Machiavelli, Discorsi, bk. I, chap. 

xi.]



[17] MN: Tam obstinate jus suum urserunt, ut Turcicae perfidiae se 

committere maluerint, quam sceptris haereditariis eum potiri. Besold. De 

successione regia. cap. 5. [Besold, Synopsis politicae doctrinae, bk. I, 

chap. v.]



[18] MN: Gunt. lib. I. [Gunther, of Pairis (fl. 1200, German poet), De 

rebus gestis Imp. Caes. Friderici Primi (Tubingen, 1598), pp. 8-9.]



[19] At hazard.



[20] MN: Mach. De repub. cap. x. [Machiavelli, Discorsi, bk. I, chap. 

x.]



[21] MN: Dictator was a king pro tempore. 



[22] MN: Claud. 6 Consol. Honor. ["Such a fate befits tyrants. Let them 

envy the famous and slaughter the brave." Claudian (fl. 400, Latin 

poet), Panegyricus de quarto consulatu Honorii augusti, 11. 290-91.]



[23] MN: Orat. ad epist. Philippi. [Demosthenes (385?-322 B.C., Athenian 

orator), Answer to Philip's Letter.]



[24] MN: Curtius. l. 6. Suae demptum glorias existimans quicquid 

cecisset alienae. [Curtius Rufus (fl. ca. A.D. 50, Roman historian), 

Historia Alexandri Magni, bk. vi, chap. i.]



[25] Affonso de Albuquerque (1453-1515, Portuguese viceroy in India).



[26] Hernando Cortés (1485-1547, Spanish conqueror of Mexico).



[27] MN: Sepulveda. Comm. ad Arist. polit. 3. c. 9. [Juan Gines de 

Sepulveda (1490-1573, Spanish theologian and historian), tr., 

Aristotelis de republica libri VIII (Paris, 1548), bk. III, chap. ix.]



[28] Gonzalo de Córdoba (1453-1515, Spanish general).



[29] MN: Destrui per haec fortunam suam Caesar, imparemque tanto merito 

rebatur. Nam beneficia usque eo laeta sunt, dum videntur posse exolvi: 

Ubi multum antevenere, pro gratia odium redditur. Tacit. Annal. 4. 

[Tacitus, Annales, bk. iv, chap. xviii.] 



[30] Philippe de Comines (1445?-1511, French historian).



[31] Polybius, The Histories, bk. iv. Apelles was an enemy to Aratus and 

tried to destroy him but in a different way (see chaps. lxxxii-lxxxvi). 

Apelles tried to use the method described by Nedham to ruin Taurion (see 

chap. lxxxvii).



[32] MN: Tau~t' e0stin, w} Kefa/lwn, e(pi/xeira th~v turannikh~v 

fili/av. Plutarch in Arato. [Plutarch, Lives, section on Aratus.]



[33] The omission of not in the text was evidently a printer's error.



[34] MN: Joh. Leo. lib. 8. [Joannes Leo Africanus (fl. 16th century, 

Arab geographer), Africae descriptio (Leiden, 1632), bk. VIII.]



[35] MN: Lips. lib. adversus Dialogist. [Lipsius, De una religione 

adversus dialogistam liber, pp. 22-23, in Politicorum sive Civilis 

doctrinae (Amsterdam, 1632).]



[36] MN: Curt. apud Alex. lib. 8. ["Commands are made mild by 

obedience." Curtius Rufus, Historia Alexandri Magni, bk. viii, chap. 

viii.]



[37] MN: Omnes intelligant, salvi esse velint, necessitati esse 

parendum. Cic. De offic. lib. 2. [Cicero, De officiis, bk. ii, chap. 

xxi.]



[38] MN: Tac. Hist. 4. [Tacitus, Historiae, bk. iv, chap. lxxiv.]



[39] MN: Dissolutionem imperii decent, si fructus quibus republica 

sustinetur, diminuantur.



[40] MN: Tac. Annal. 14. [Tacitus, Annales, bk. xiv, chap. xliv.]



[41] MN: Inter arma silent leges.



[42] Text reads "most and equitable"; the inclusion of and was probably 

a printer's error.



[43] MN: Aeneid. I. ["Stern necessity and the newness of my kingdom 

force me to do such hard deeds." Vergil (70-19 B.C., Roman poet), 

Aeneid, bk. i, 11. 563-64.]



[44] MN: Seneca. ["What thou knowest thou holdest against the citizens' 

will, the unsheathed sword must maintain." Seneca, Hercules Furens, 11. 

343-44.]



[45] MN: See Axiom. polit. Rich. 57. p. 152. [Richter, Axiomatum 

politicorum, p. 152.]



[46] "If men should bear eternal hatred and if furious rage, once 

arisen, should never pass from our hearts and the conqueror should cling 

to arms and the vanquished prepare them, wars will leave nothing. Then 

the fields of the ravaged farms will lie untilled, the torch will be put 

to homes, and thick ashes will cover over the buried nations. To wish 

for a return of peace is advantageous for the victor, but for the 

vanquished it is indispensable." Seneca, Hercules Furens, 11. 362-69.







     An Appendix Added out of Salmasius and Mr. Hobbes[1]



NOTWITHSTANDING that I have already in the former part of this treatise 

sufficiently proved these two particulars, viz., "that the power of the 

sword gives title to government," and that "governors thus invested 

(though perhaps unlawfully) may, and must be lawfully obeyed," yet being 

to appear in the world with a second impression and in regard of the 

present controversy touching government hangs upon these two hinges, I 

thought meet to fasten them more surely upon the reader and drive the 

nails home to the head by inserting some additions which I have 

collected out of Salmasius, his Defensio regia,[2] and out of Mr. 

Hobbes, his late book De corpore politico.[3] Not that I esteem their 

authorities any whit more authentic than those which I have already 

alleged, but only in regard of the great reputation allowed unto those 

books by the two parties, presbyterian and royal. And I suppose no man 

may triumph or cry a victory more honorably than myself if I can foil 

our adversaries with weapons of their own approbation. Wherefore I 

commend the whole to the consideration of those hot-livered gentlemen 

which call themselves the nonsubscribers of Cheshire, Lancashire, and 

the parts adjoining; who may, if they please, find a fair return here 

for all their malicious expressions and matter enough whereby to frame 

answers to their own futilous[4] objections.



How fairly the sword transmitted a title to our present governors and 

how lawfully they stand possessed is cleared in the first part of this 

treatise in particular. But the only drift at present is to determine 

the point of power in general and of submission and obedience to such a 

power, though it had been unlawfully gained. And now to the purpose.



Of the Power of the Sword in Point of Title, According to the Opinion of 

Salmasius in His Defensio regia



Page 188 and 189 he saith "people usually submit to the will and 

pleasure of others in a twofold manner and yield to be governed by them 

either by force and constraint after victory or voluntarily by their own 

consent."[5] Both these ways they are conceived to quit their own power 

and transfer it irrevocably to him, or them, that take them into 

protection. And though such as are subdued by arms lose their power by 

force, yet, being necessitated to yield submission to the victor, he is 

supposed to rule over them by their own consent. Moreover, it is to be 

observed that in this case not all those which yield to the conditions 

of an unjust peace imposed by the enemies but those only that bare[6] 

arms are understood to be the conquered party. And because the rest that 

never bare arms are constrained to follow the fortune of the other, 

therefore, for the settling of a firm peace, there follows a necessity 

of such a compact or agreement (though it seem somewhat unjust) that the 

conquerors should give law and become lords to them all as the conquered 

party. Therefore when Augustus had deprived the Romans of their liberty 

by force of arms, the people, seeing him in a condition to impose what 

laws he pleased upon them, framed a law royal; whereby they resigned up 

all power into his hands, when they could no longer resist him, and took 

an oath of allegiance as you may read there at large.



And this he illustrates, page 191, by a simile: that as in the case of a 

rape by the old law, if a woman had once desired to marry a man and it 

had happened afterward that he took her away from her friends by force 

and ravished her, she was no less his lawful wife than if she had been 

given to him by her parents. The marriage also became as lawful, though 

she were forced, if she gave consent to it after the rape. So likewise 

the same may be said of him, or them, who hold a government over men by 

force after a victory.[7] For as much as by that consent of the people 

which the people can no longer deny, the power of governing is 

established in the conquerors' hands and becomes no less lawful than if 

the people had consigned it to them of their own accord. 



Page 195. Quod armis quaeritur, transit in ejus dominium qui acquisivit, 

&c. "Whatsoever is sought by force of arms falls of right into his power 

who hath made himself master." Hence it was that whenever such as were 

overcome in war sought to change or cast off their new lords and masters 

by rebellion, being proved guilty of the fact, they were either 

imprisoned or hanged.[8] For, saith he, page 197, it is evident even by 

the light of natural reason that such as are subdued ought ever to 

remain subject to the subduers because they had quarter given by the 

conqueror when "by the law of arms it was in his election to destroy or 

save them."[9] And therefore they are bound in consideration of his 

favor and protection to serve and obey him faithfully.



Page 228 he saith that at this day there is no commonwealth or kingdom 

extant in Europe, Asia, or Africa that can lay claim to any other 

beginning and increase of their greatness. And page 198 he saith that if 

the transferring and holding of governments on this manner by way of 

purchase and possession were not allowable, then it would follow there 

are no lawful ones now in the world since there are very few, or none at 

all, that had any other beginning.[10] Thus Alexander the Great carried 

away the Empire from the Persians. After his death his great captains by 

force converted the several provinces under their command into so many 

kingdoms which in time were swallowed up by the Roman Empire. At length, 

likewise, the Roman was divided by those barbarous nations that issued 

like an inundation out of the North and overran Europe, Asia, and 

Africk. In Britain the Saxons drave out the old Britons, the Danes the 

Saxons, as the Saxons afterward drave out the Danes again and then were 

themselves subdued by the Normans.



Of Submission and Obedience to Power (Supposed Usurped and Unlawful) 

According to the Opinion of the same Salmasius, ut supra.



Page 71, speaking about Christ and his apostles paying tribute to 

Caesar, saith he, who was this Caesar to whom they paid tribute? Was he 

a good and lawful prince? Or was he not rather a cruel tyrant both in 

the usurpation and exercise of his power? It was Tiberius that then 

reigned, who by the practices of his mother possessed himself of the 

Empire to which he had no right and secured it by the subtile sleights 

and wickedness of a woman while the right heir was excluded. Having 

invaded the sovereignty as a tyrant, as a tyrant he ruled. Yet since 

Christ himself so freely and willingly submitted himself, did he not in 

so doing signify, by the doctrine which he delivered and commanded his 

disciples to publish to all nations, that he desired not any change of 

that form of government which was then established? And did not his 

apostles declare to their successors and recommend unto the people the 

very same doctrine which they received from their lord and master? Peter 

in that his epistle general which he wrote to the Jews, scattered in all 

nations, commanded them to submit to every ordinance of man. By which, 

according to the best interpretation, is meant all principality or 

magistracy whatsoever. To whom accords Paul in his 13 to the Romans, 

where according to the old Greek copies we read "To all supereminent 

powers," and in the old Latin, "Be ye subject to all higher powers," as 

it is read also by Irenaeus and Ambrose in their commentaries. And 

whereas Peter saith, "To every ordinance of man," it is meant to every 

power which is set over men, to all magistrates as well as to kings. And 

whereas he saith "to the king as supereminent," it is to be noted that 

epistle was written from Babylon and so the subjection must be meant 

then of the King of the Parthians to whom he willed the Christians in 

the provinces of that country to be subject. And whereas it was 

superscribed to the converted Jews that dwelt in Pontus, Galatia, 

Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, those things spoken by Peter may be 

meant likewise of the Roman Emperor. And who was emperor at that time 

but Nero. No ordinary tyrant but the most notorious, cruel tyrant in the 

world! So that, in all times since, his name hath been made use of by 

all nations as an ordinary appellation for the worst of tyrants. But 

whether it were to the King of the Parthians, or to the Roman Emperor, 

or whatsoever tyrant besides, Peter affirms there is a debt of 

subjection due unto them from the people. So likewise doth Paul in his 

forementioned chapter to the Romans and gives the reason why we should 

submit to all supereminent powers because: "There is no power but of 

God; the powers that are, are ordained of God."[11] And from thence he 

infers, "Whosoever resists the power, resists the ordinance of God; and 

they that resist shall receive damnation." Lastly, he saith, subjection 

must be yielded not only for fear of the anger of the magistrate, but 

also for conscience sake. As if we could not preserve a conscience pure 

and upright before God except we paid the obedience due unto all 

magistrates whatsoever without dispute concerning their right of power 

and supremacy.



Page 113, Paul, in his first Epistle to Timothy, chapter 2, exhorts that 

"Prayers and supplications be made for all that are in authority, that 

we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty," 

because godliness and honesty cannot well subsist without peace and 

tranquillity. And there can be no peace and quietness without the safety 

of our governors. But what were those governors which the apostle 

commanded us to pray for? Certainly they were tyrants by usurpation that 

ruled in a tyrannical manner, haters of the true religion, persecutors 

and idolaters. Yet this was the rule, this the law, this the 

commandment. And, as he observes page 197, Christ himself was content to 

be born, to live and pay obedience, to acknowledge their authority in 

matter of tribute and judicature, and at last to be condemned 

injuriously and suffer death most shamefully under a tyrannical, usurped 

government. — Much more he hath to the same purpose, but let this 

suffice out of one of their own oracles to show: that if the present 

power were usurped (as our antagonists would suppose, though as yet they 

never proved it), yet their consciences cannot be secure from the guilt 

of that treason wherein they must needs involve themselves if they 

proceed in their pertinacious courses of disobedience and opposition.



Arguments for Submission Brought Out of Mr. Hobbes His Book, De corpore 

politico[12]



If it be true, which Mr. Hobbes saith,[13] that "The cause in general 

which moveth one man to become subject to another is the fear of not 

otherwise preserving himself; and if a man may subject himself to him 

that invadeth, or may invade, for fear of him"; or, if "men may join 

among themselves to subject themselves to such as they shall agree upon 

for fear of others; and if when many men subject themselves the former 

way there ariseth thence a body politic, as it were naturally," then it 

appears that since there is no other possible way to preserve the well-

being of this nation but by a submission to the present powers (as I 

have proved in the second part of this treatise), we may pay subjection 

to them in order to our security. Nor can any hold a plea for 

nonsubmission upon pretense of having been invaded, or overmastered, by 

those whom he reckons here as invaders or usurpers. Nor can the 

prevailing party of this nation be blamed in any wise for joining among 

themselves to subject themselves to such as are now in authority for 

fear of foreign invaders. But having thus subjected themselves, they are 

naturally, lawfully, and completely united in the form of a[14] body 

politic, or commonwealth, truly called The Commonwealth of England.



Mr. Hobbes saith further,[15] "The end for which one man giveth up and 

relinquisheth to another, or others, the right of protecting or 

defending himself by his own power, is the security which he expecteth 

thereby of protection and defense from those to whom he doth so 

relinquish it. And a man may then account himself in the state of 

security when he can foresee no violence to be done unto him from which 

the doer may not be deterred by the power of that sovereign or supreme 

authority that is set over them. And without that security there is no 

reason for a man to deprive himself of his own advantages and make 

himself a prey to others. How far therefore, in the making of a 

commonwealth, man subjecteth his will to the power of others must appear 

from the end, namely, security." From whence may plainly be inferred 

that since no security for life, limbs, and liberty (which is the end of 

all government) can now be had here by relinquishing our right of self-

protection and giving it up to any other power beside the present, 

therefore it is very unreasonable in any man to put himself out of the 

protection of this power by opposing it and reserving his obedience to 

the King of Scots or any other power whatsoever; it being clear that 

neither he, nor any other, can now protect us by affording any possible 

present security from violence and injury.



Section 8.[16] He saith, "And for as much as they who are among 

themselves in security, by the means of this [power or] sword of justice 

that keeps them all in awe, are nevertheless in danger of enemies from 

without, if there be not some means found to unite their strengths and 

natural forces in the resistance of such enemies, their peace among 

themselves is but vain. And therefore it is to be understood as a 

covenant of every member to contribute their several forces for the 

defense of the whole whereby to make one power as sufficient as is 

possible for their defense. Now seeing the use of every man's strength 

is transferred to him, or them, that have the sword of justice, it 

followeth that the power of defense, that is to say the sword of war, be 

in the same hands wherein is the sword of justice. And consequently 

those two swords are but one and that, inseparably and essentially 

annexed to the supreme power."



Section 9.[17] "Moreover, seeing to have the right of the sword is 

nothing else but to have the use thereof, depending only on the judgment 

and discretion of him, or them, that have it, it followeth that the 

power of indenture in all controversies wherein the sword of justice is 

to be used and in all deliberations concerning war wherein the use of 

that sword is required, the right of resolving and determining what is 

to be done, belong to the same sovereign or supreme power."



Section 10.[18] "Farther, considering it is no less, but much more, 

necessary to prevent violence and rapine than to punish the same when it 

is committed and all violence proceedeth from controversies that arise 

between men concerning meum and tuum, right and wrong, good and bad, and 

the like, which men use everyone to measure by their own judgments, it 

belongeth also to the judgment of the same supreme power to set forth 

and make known the common measure by which every man is to know what is 

his and what another's, what is good and what bad, and what he ought to 

do and what not, and to command the same to be observed. And these 

measures of the actions of the subjects are those which men call laws 

politic or civil. The making whereof must of right belong to him that 

hath the power of the sword by which men are compelled to observe them. 

For otherwise they should be made in vain." All these sections are so 

express and positive to our purpose that I need not press the inferences 

for submission upon the meanest understanding.



"There are three titles only by which one man may have right and 

dominion over another. The first is hereditary and takes place upon 

supposition of children begotten. The other two may take place 

presently, and these are voluntary offer of subjection and yielding by 

compulsion."[19] Likewise, he saith in the second chapter, section 15, 

"A man is released of his former subjection by conquest. For when it 

cometh to pass that the power of a commonwealth or kingdom is 

overthrown, he is discharged of his obligation to the former. For no man 

can serve two masters."[20]



"And since God speaketh not in these days to any man by his private 

interpretation of the Scriptures nor by the interpretation of any power 

above, or not, depending on the supreme power of every commonwealth, it 

remaineth that he speaketh by his vice gods or lieutenants here on 

earth; that is to say, by sovereign kings or such as have sovereign 

authority as well as they."[21]



"These things considered, it will easily appear that under the sovereign 

power of a Christian commonwealth there is no danger of damnation from 

simple obedience to human laws. For, in that the sovereign alloweth 

Christianity, no man is compelled to renounce that faith which is enough 

for his salvation, that is to say, the fundamental points. And for other 

points, seeing they are not necessary to salvation, if we conform our 

actions to the laws, we do not only what we are allowed but also what we 

are commanded by the law of nature, which is the moral law taught by Our 

Saviour himself. And it is part of that obedience which must concur to 

our salvation."[22]



Section 12.[23] "And though it be true that whatsoever a man doth 

against his conscience is sin, yet the obedience in these cases is 

neither sin nor against the conscience. For the conscience being nothing 

else but a man's settled judgment and opinion when his right of judging 

is once transferred to another, that which shall be commanded is no less 

his judgment than the judgment of that other. So that in obedience to 

laws, a man doth still according to his own conscience, but not his 

private conscience. And whatsoever is done contrary to private 

conscience is then a sin, when the laws have left him to his own 

liberty, and never else."



These things, together with the whole treatise, I once again recommend 

to all nonsubscribers, whether Royal or Presbyterian. God give them 

impartial hearts to weigh the particulars.



     Rode, caper, vitem; tamen hic, cum stabis ad aras, in tua quod 

     fundi cornua possit, erit.[24]







[1] The appendix is based on the copy of the second edition of 1650 

(Wing N377) in the George Peabody Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library 

of Baltimore, Maryland. In the second edition it is paged 103-11.



[2] Claude de Saumaise [Claudius Salmasius] (1588-1653', French 

Protestant scholar), Defensio regia, pro Carolo I (n.p., 1649 [12 mo. 

ed.]).



[3] Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679, English philosopher and political 

theorist), De corpore politico or The Elements of Law (London, 1650).



[4] Futile.



[5] MN: Populi duplici modo in alterius arbitrium se dedunt, &c. 

[Saumaise, Defensio regia, pp. 188-89.]



[6] Bore.



[7] MN: This is that tacit consent mentioned by me in Part I, c. 4. p. 

23. 24. [See pp. 39-40.]



[8] MN: Cruci affigebantur, aut in ergastulum trudebantur. pag. 196. 

[Saumaise, Defensio regia, p. 195.]



[9] MN: Quos poterat jure belli perdere, servatos maluit. [Ibid., p. 

197.]



[10] MN: Imo nulla, quae non ad hoc instar nata, vel facta juerint. 

[Ibid., p. 198.]



[11] MN: Non esse potestatem nisi a Deo. Nihil differunt, omnes 

potestates esse a Deo ordinatas, & nullam esse nisi a Deo. [Ibid., p. 

73.]



[12] See supra, note 3.



[13] MN: Part I, chap. 6, sect. 11. [Hobbes, De corpore politico, pp. 

57-58.]



[14] In the original text, the words "of a body" read "a of body."



[15] MN: Part 2, chap. I, sect. 5. [Ibid., pp. 64-65.]



[16] MN: Sect. 8. [Ibid., pp. 66-67.]



[17] MN: Sect. 9. [Ibid., p. 67.]



[18] MN: Sect. 10. [Ibid., pp. 67-68.]



[19] MN: Part 2, chap. 3. sect. 2. [Ibid., p. 92.] 



[20] Ibid., p. 90.



[21] MN: Part 2, chap. 7. sect. 11. [Ibid., p. 158.]



[22] MN: Chap. 6. sect. 11. [Ibid., p. 140.] 



[23] MN: Sect. 12. [Ibid., pp. 140-41.]



[24] "Gnaw at the vine, old goat; however, when you stand before the 

altar, this is what will be poured over your horns."







                            FINIS