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Hol. We should be far from advising anything which might be of the least danger to your Majesty's person: and I believe your coming to your parliament would be none; but we most humbly submit that to your majesty's own pleasure and great wisdom.

King. Let us pass by that, and let me desire you two, Mr. Hollis and Mr. Whitelocke to go into the next room, and a little to confer together, and to set down somewhat in writing, which you apprehend may be fit for me to return in answer to your message; and that in your judgments may facilitate and promote this good work of peace.

Hol. We shall obey your majesty's command and withdraw.

We went together into another room, where we were private, and upon discourse together we apprehended that it would be no breach of trust in us to observe the king's desire herein; but that it might be a means to facilitate the work about which we came, the most desirable business of peace.

Therefore by Mr. Hollis's intreaty, and as we both agreed I wrote down what was our sense in this matter, and what might be fit for the substance of the king's answer to our message; but I wrote it not in my usual hand, nor with any name to it, nor was any person present but we two when it was written, nor did the king admit of any others to hear the discourse which passed betwixt him and us.

The paper which was thus written we left upon the table in the withdrawing room; and the king went in, and took it, and then with much favour and civility, bid us farewell, and went away himself, after which, and a few compliments passed between the Earl of Lindsey and us, we took leave of him and the rest of the company, and returned to our own lodgings.

(From the Same.)

THE TRIAL OF THE KING

THE High Court of Justice sat in Westminster Hall, the President in his scarlet robe, and many of the commissioners in their best habit.

After the calling the court, the king came in, in his wonted posture with his hat on; as he passed by in the Hall a cry

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was made, Justice, Justice, Execution, Execution. some soldiers and others of the rabble.

This was by

The king desired to be heard, the president answered, that he must hear the court; and sets forth the intentions of the court to proceed against the prisoner, and withal offered that the king might speak, so it were not matter of debate.

The king desired, that in regard he had something to say, for the peace of the kingdom and liberty of the subject, before sentence were given, he might be heard before the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber.

Upon this the court withdrew into the court of wards, and the king to Sir Robert Cotton's House; and after about an hour's debate, they returned again into Westminster Hall.

The court resolved, that what the king had tendered, tended to delay; yet if he would speak anything for himself in court, before sentence, he might be heard.

Many of the commissioners in the debate of it in the court of wards, were against this resolution, and pressed to satisfy the king's desire, and themselves, to hear what the king would say to them in the Painted Chamber, before sentence; but it was voted by the major part in the negative. Upon which Colonel Harvey, and some others of the commissioners went away in discontent, and never sat with them afterwards; this proposal of the king's being denied by the commissioners, the king thereupon declared himself, that he had nothing more to say.

Then the president made a large speech of the king's misgovernment, and that by law, kings were accountable to their people, and to the law, which was their superior, and he instanced in several kings, who had been deposed, and imprisoned, by their subjects, especially in the king's native country, where, of one hundred and nine kings, most were deposed, imprisoned, or proceeded against for mis-government, and his own grandmother removed, and his father an infant crowned.

After this the clerk was commanded to read the sentence, which recited the charge, and the several crimes of which he had been found guilty.

For all which treasons and crimes, the court did adjudge that he, the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.

The king then desired to be heard, but it would not be

permitted, being after sentence, and as he returned through the hall, there was another cry for Justice and Execution.

Here we may take notice of the abject baseness of some vulgar spirits, who seeing their king in that condition, endeavoured in their small capacity, further to promote his misery, that they might a little curry favour with the present powers and pick thanks of their then superiors.

Some of the very same persons were afterwards as clamorous for justice against those that were the king's judges.

A prince is not exempt from the venom of these mad dogs.

(From the Same.)

THOMAS FULLER

[Thomas Fuller was born in the rectory of Aldwinkle St. Peter's, Northamptonshire (the same village but not the same parish, and consequently not in the same house which saw the birth of Dryden some twenty years later), in 1608. His father was a prebendary of Salisbury, as well as rector of Aldwinkle; and, as his mother's brother, Dr. Davenant, who was president of Queens' College, Cambridge, afterwards became Bishop of the same diocese, he had more than one connection therewith. He was entered at his uncle's college, and graduated there, but migrated to Sidney Sussex. He held a curacy in Cambridge, but as soon as he had taken priest's orders, was presented by his uncle to a prebend in Salisbury, receiving a little later, 1634, the rectory of Broad Windsor, in Dorsetshire. He began to write early,

attempting verse without any success; but when he published the first of his well-known books, The Holy War, he was thirty-one. Three years later, in 1642, he produced the still more characteristic Holy and Profane State, a book in which the whole Fuller appears in microcosm. He had before this removed to London, where he was preacher at the Savoy. When the Rebellion broke out he served as army chaplain at Basing, at Oxford, at Exeter, and peripatetically with Hopton's army. During this time he wrote another of his best books, Good Thoughts in Bad Times (1645), which had sequels later. Considering the active part he had taken on the king's side (though indeed it is said that extreme royalists thought him lukewarm), he was fortunate during the Commonwealth, for though he lost his country benefices, and could not remain at the Savoy, or in Eastcheap, where he preached for some time, he was appointed to and remained undisturbed in the curacy of Waltham Abbey. A Pisgah Sight of Palestine (1650), and his great Church History of Britain (1655), which brought him into controversy with Heylin, were the chief results of this time. The Restoration, when it came, restored him to his benefices, made him a royal chaplain extraordinary, and put him in a good way for a bishopric; but he died of fever on August 16, 1661, being only fifty-three. He had been married twice once in quite early life, and again in 1651 to a daughter of Lord Baltinglass. His largest, if not his most important work, the Worthies of England, was published in an unfinished state a year after his death, by his son. His sermons were never collected till 1891, when an edition of them, which had been begun by Mr. J. E. Bailey, a lifelong student of Fuller and collector of books, relating to him, was completed and published by Mr. Axon of Manchester. There is no complete edition of his work; but a selection from the whole of it appeared under the editorship of Dr. Jessopp at the Clarendon Press, 1892.]

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