BEHEMOTH:

THE

HISTORY

OF THE CAUSES OF THE

CIVIL WARS OF ENGLAND,

And of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on, from the Year 1640, to the Year 1660.

VI. Great Britain - Hist, - Puritan revolution,

1.

1642-1660

This Work contains the Application of there principles of gronament, which are land dan in the Leviathan' of the same author, to the cmitibution & State ofluglued in the Civil War.

See Hallames this t? afleyland june Hey VII Whoren II._Vel II (4t° 1827) pa.27. hot + - Sur Philifi Wenrich in his chenuar p.198 hints something of the same

See Banu Sraseres's Cum ales

pa. 657 of this Volume

kind.

BEHEMOTH:

OR,

THE EPITOME

OF THE

CIVIL WARS OF ENGLAND.

PART 1.

4. IF in time, as in place, there were degrees of high
and low, I verily believe that the highest of time would be
that which passed between 1640 and 1660; for he that
thence, as from the Devil s Mountain, should have looked
the World, and observed the Actions of Men, espe-
upon
cially in England, might have had a prospect of all kinds
of injustice, and all kinds of folly that the world could
afford; and how they were produced by their Hypocrisy
and Self-conceit; whereof the one is double Iniquity, and
the other double Foily

B. I should be glad to behold that prospect. You that have lived in that time, and in that part of your age, wherein men use to see best into good and evil; I pray you set me (that could not see so well) upon the same mountain by the relation of the actions you then saw, and of their Cau-es, Pretensions, Justice, Order, Artifice, and Event

A In the year 1640, the Government of England was Monarchical, and the King that reigned, Charles, the first of that name, folding the Sovereignty, by right of a descent continued above six hundred years, and from a much longer descent King of Scotland, and from the time

of

457

Presbyterian Minis

ters.

Papists,

of his ancestor Henry II. King of Ireland; a man that wanted no virtue, either of body or mind, nor endea voured any thing more than to discharge his Duty towards God, in the well-governing of his subjects.

B. How could he then miscarry, having in every county so many trained Soldiers as would (put together) have made an army of 60,000 men, and divers magazines of ammunition in places fortified?

A. If those soldiers had been (as they and all other of his subjects ought to have been) at his Majesty's com mand, the Peace and Happiness of the three kingdoms had continued, as it was left by King James; but the People were corrupted generally, and disobedient persons were esteemed the best Patriots.

B. But sure there were men enough, besides those that were ill-affected, to have made an Army sufficient to have kept the People from uniting into a body able to oppose

him.

A. Truly I think, if the King had had Money, he might have had Soldiers. enough in England; for there were very few of the common people that cared much for either of the causes, but would have taken any side for pay and plunder. But the King's Treasure was very low, and his Enemies (that pretended to be desirous of the people's case from taxes, and of other specious things), had the command of the City of London, and of most Cities and corporate Towns in England, and of many particular persons besides.

B. But how came the people to be so corrupted? and what kind of people were they that did so seduce them?

A. The seducers were of divers sorts. One sort was Ministers, Ministers (as they cailed themselves) of Christ; and sometimes, in their Sermons to the People, God's Ambassadors, pretending to have a right from God to govern every one his parish, and their Assembly the whole

nation.

Secondly, There were a very great number (though not comparable to the other), which (notwithstanding that the Pope's power in England, both temporal and ecclesiastical, had been by Act of Parliament abolished,) did still retain a belief, that we ought to be governed by the Pope, whom they pretended to be the Vicar of Christ,

and