THE

CENSURE OF THE ROTA

UPON MR. MILTON'S BOOK,

INTITLED,

The ready and easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth.

Die Lunæ 26, Martii, 1660.

Ordered by the Rota, that Mr. Harrington be desired to draw up a Narrative of this Day's Proceeding upon Mr. Milton's Book, called, "The ready and easy Way, &c." And to cause the same to be forthwith printed and published, and a Copy thereof to be sent to Mr. Milton.

TRUNDLE WHEELER, Clerk to the Rota.

Printed at London by Paul Giddy, Printer to the Rota, at the Sign of the Windmill in Turn-again Lane, 1660. Quarto, containing sixteen pages.

IA

SIR,

AM commanded, by this ingenious Convention of the Rota, to give you an account of some reflexions that they have lately made upon a treatise of yours, which you call, The ready and easy Way to establish a free Commonwealth; in which I must first bespeak your pardon, for being forced to say something, not only against my own sense, but the interest, which both you and I carry on; for it is enjoined me to acquaint you with all that was said, although I take as little pleasure to repeat it, as you will do to hear it. For whereas it is our usual custom to dispute every thing, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at one another with our heads, as rams fight, until we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the box; and seldom any thing, how slight soever, hath appeared, without some patron or other to defend it: I must confess, I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did against you, when any thing was put to the question, from the beginning of your book to the end; for it was no sooner read over, but a gentleman of your acquaintance said, he wished, for your own sake, as well as the cause you contend for, that you had given your book no name, like an anabaptist's child, until it had come to years of discretion, or else that you had got some friend to be gossip, that has a luckier hand at giving titles to books than you have. For it is observed, you have always been very unfortunate that way, as if it were fa

* This is the 26th number in the catalogue of pamphlets in the Harleian Library,

tal to you, to prefix bulls and nonsense to the very fronts of your learned works, as when you call Salmasius, Claudius Anonymus, in the very title of that admired piece, which you writ to confute 'his wife and his maid. As also in that other learned labour of yours, which you stile Tetrachordon, that is to say, a Fiddle with four Strings; but, as you render it a four-fold cord, with which you undertake (worse than Captain Ottor, and Cuthbert the Barber) not to bind, but, most ridiculously, to unty matrimony. But in this book, he said, you were more insufferable; for you do not only stile your declamation, The ready and easy Way, as if it were the best or only way, to the disparagement of this most ingenious assembly, who are confident, they have proposed others much more considerable; but do very indiscreetly profess, in the same place, to compare the excellencies of a commonwealth with the inconveniencies and dangers of kingship; this, he said, was foul play, and worse logick. For, as all conveniencies, in this world, carry their inconveniencies with them, to compare the best of one thing with the worst of another is a very unequal way of comparison. He had observed, that comparisons were commonly made on the wrong side, and so was this of yours, by your own confession. To this another added, He wondered you did not give over writing, since you have always done it to little or no purpose; for, though you have scribbled your eyes out, your works have never been printed, but for the company of chandlers and tobacco-men, who are your stationers, and the only men that vend your labours. He said, that he himself reprieved the whole defence of the people of England for a groat, that was sentenced to vile Mundungus, and had suffered inevitably, but for him, though it cost you much oil and labour; and the Rump three-hundred pounds a year, to whose service it was more properly intended; although, in the close, you pronounce them to be as very rascals as Salmasius, and all the christian world calls them, if ever they suffered any of their fellow-members to invade the government, as Oliver Cromwell and others have since done, and confess yourself fooled and mistaken, and all you have written to be false, howsoever you give yourself the second lye in writing for them again. After this, a grave gentleman of the long robe said, You had broken the heads of all the sages of the law, and plaid false in the very first word of your treatise. For the parliament of England, as you call the Rump, never consisted of a packed party of one house, that, by fraud and covin, had disseized the major part of their fellows, and forfeited their own right, by abetting the ejectment of the whole house of peers, and the greater part of their own, which was always understood to be the whole house, with whom they had but a joint right. That they had been several times justly dissolved by the army, from whom they really derived their authority; and the general voices of the people, in whom they had declared the supreme power to reside; and their own confession, upon record in their journal-book. But this, he said, you stole from Patriot Whitlock, who began his declaration for a free state with the same

words; and he wondered you would filch and pilfer nonsense and fallacies, that have such plentiful store of your own growth. Yet this was as trué as that which follows, that a great number of the faithfullest of the people assisted them in throwing off kingship; for they were a very slight number, in respect of the whole, and none of the faithfullest that forswore themselves, to maintain and defend that which they judged dangerous, and resolved to abolish :' And, therefore, they turned regal bondage, as you word it, into a free commonwealth, no more justly and magnanimously, than other knights of the post do their feats, by plain down-right perjury. And the nation had little reason to trust such men with their liberty or property, that had no right to their own ears, but, among the rest of their cheats, had defrauded the very pillory of its due. This, being put to the ballot, was immediately carried on in the affirmative, without a dissenting pellet. When presently a gentleman, that hath been some years beyond-seas, said, he wondered you would say any thing so false and ridiculous, as that this commonwealth was the terror and admiration of France itself; for, if that were true, the cardinal and council were very imprudent to become the chief promoters of it, and strive, by all means to uphold that, which they judged to be dangerous to themselves, and for the interest of a nation, which they hate and fear so much as they do us; for, if this free state be so terrible to them, they have been very unwise, in assisting it to keep out the king all this while, especially if they saw the people of Parts and Bourdeaux disposed, as you say, to imitate us, which appears very strange; for, by their history, any man would judge, we had catched the disease of them. As for our actions abroad, which you brag of, he said, he never heard of any where he was, until Oliver Cromwell reduced us to an absolute monarchy, under the name of a free state; and then we beat the potent and flourishing republick of the United Provinces, But, for our actions at home, he had heard abroad, that they savoured much of Goth and Vandal barbarism, if pulling down of churches, and demolishing the noblest monuments in the land, both publick and private, beside religion and all laws, human and divine, may amount to so much. And yet, he said, he granted what you affirm, that they were not unbecoming the rising of a glorious commonwealth, for such are usually founded in faction, sedition, rebellion, rapine, and murder. And how much soever you admire the Romans, ab infami gentem deducis

Asylo, if you remember, they were, at first, but a refuge for thieves and murderers. In all Asia, Africa, and the New World, there is no such thing as a republick, nor ever was, but only that of Carthage, and some paltry Greek colonies upon the skirts of Asia Minor; and, for one commonwealth, there have been an hundred kingdoms in the world; which argues, they should be the more agreeable to mankind. He added, commonly republicks arise from unworthy causes, not fit to be mentioned in history; and that he had heard many persons of honour, in Flanders, affirm, that it was not the tyranny of Spain, nor the cruelty of Duke d'Alva,

against, and enemies to his most sacred majesty, and his friends, in their stations and qualities, before and ever since the detestable and unparalleled murder of our blessed sovereign his royal father, as far as the extent of the press could make them capable or extant.

Who printed the pretended act of the commons of England for the setting up an high court of justice, for the tryal of his mar. tyred majesty, in 1648? Or, the acts for abolishing kingship, and renouncing the royal line and title of the Stuarts? Or, for the declaring what offences should be adjudged treason? For taking the engagement? For sale of dean and chapters lands? For sale of the king's, queen's, and prince's goods and lands, and the fee-farm rents? For sale of delinquents lands? Or, the proclamation of the 13th of September, 1652, after the fight at Worcester, offering one-thousand pounds to any person, to bring in his majesty's person? But only John Field, printer to the parliament of England (and since, by Cromwell, was and is continued printer to the University of Cambridge) omitting many other treasonable offences, and egregious indignities done by him and H. Hills to the royal family, and good old cause of the king and kingdom, in all the late tyrannical usurpations. Who printed the Weekly Intelligencer, and Mercurius Politicus, with the Cases of the Commonwealth sta-. ted, and that Interest will not lye, for Marchamont Nedham, Gent. from 1650, till the blessed and assured hopes of his majesty's restoration of late, but Thomas Newcomb, printer, dwelling overagainst Baynard's-Castle in Thames-street? And with what familiar titles of honour did they salute his majesty therein, we pray, but of young Tarquin, the son of the late tyrant, the titular king of Scots, the young Pretender, with an infinite more of the like treasonable extraction? Which, for brevity's sake, and for that they are of Milton's strain, and so publickly known, and were the weekly trash and trumpery of every hawker, pedlar, and petty. carrier, we omit.

But we cannot as yet pass over his majesty's good friends, Hills and Field (take them conjunctim and divisim:) What zealots and factors, or blood-hounds or tarriers rather, they have been for that abstract of traitors, tyrants, and usurpers, Oliver Cromwell, his son Richard, and the pretended Committee of Safety, in searching for, seizing, and suppressing, as far as they could, all books, treatises, and papers, asserting the king's right and title to the crown, or tending to the promotion of his interest, and vindication of his authority, the worst of his majesty's enemies must necessarily, with shame and detestation, confess! And is this all that hath been done by Hills and Field to his majesty only, and his royal relations and interests? No! Their impieties and insolences have mounted as high, as to become actual and professed traitors against. the glorious crown and dignity of the King of Kings, blessed for Have they not invaded, and still do intrude upon his majesty's royal privilege, prerogative, and pre-eminence; and, by the pusillanimous cowardice, and insignificant compact of Mr. ".

ever:

Christopher Barker, and another of his name, and, not without probable suspicion, by the consent and connivance of Mr. John Bill (though he was artificially defeated in his expectations of profit) have they not obtained (and now keep in their actual possession) the manuscript copy of the last translation of the Holy Bible in English, attested with the hands of the venerable and learned translators in king James's time, ever since the sixth of March, 1655; and thereupon, by colour of an unlawful and forced entrance in the Stationers Registry, printed and published ever since, for the most part, in several editions of bibles (consisting of great numbers) such egregious blasphemies and damnable erratas, as have corrupted the pure fountain, and rendered God's holy word contemptible to multitudes of the people at home, and a ludibrium to all the adversaries of our religion? Have they not suffocated and suppressed all books containing pious and religious prayers and devotions, to be presented and offered to the Blessed Trinity, for the blessing of heaven upon his majesty's royal person and family, and the church and state, by preventing and obstructing the printing of the Common-Prayer, Primmers, and Psalters, contrary to the statute of 1 queen Elisabeth, c. 2. and other good laws and ordinances, and the ecclesiastical canons of the church of England; unless that they contained prayers for their late protector! And are these small offences to be past and pardoned, or such as shall deserve the favour of indemnity and oblivion? God forbid!

Impunitas peccati præbet ansam peccandi. The not punishing. of offences emboldeneth offenders to commit greater enormities with brazen brows, as if they were incorrigible: And, as the proverb saith, He, that saves a thief from the gallows, shall be first robbed himself." Is not the king as the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, his person sacred, his authority dreadful? And is not all our present and future security and happiness in. volved in his majesty's preservation and prosperity? And shall his majesty's most apparent and implacable enemies be chiefly entrusted in the great concernments of his state and government, as Newcomb, Hills, and Field are under his titular printers? God for. bid. Are there not honest and well affected printers in London, sufficient and able and willing to serve his majesty, but his grandest adversaries must be picked out for his service? And are there not lodgings enough about the city to be had for convenience, but Mr. Christopher Barker and his family must now be entertained at the house of that libidinous and professed adulterer Henry Hills in Aldersgate-street? One that for his heresy in religion (being an anabaptist) and his luxury in conversation (having hypocritically confessed his fact in print, and been imprisoned for his adultery with a taylor's wife in Blackfriars) would scandalise a good christian, and an honest man, to be in his company. But, it seems, the old confederacy compacted between Barker, Hills, and Field, by the agitation of Nedham, upon their conversion of the copy of the Bible, cannot yet be forgotten; albeit it tend never so much to the dishonour, disparagement, and prejudice of his majesty's