and a murderer. That he had no wrong done him, shall now be made appear. But let us define a tyrant, not according to vulgar conceits, but the judgment of Aristotle, and of all learned men. He is a tyrant who regards his own welfare and profit only, and not that of the people. So Aristotle* defines one in the tenth book of his Ethics, and elsewhere; and so do very many others. Whether Charles regarded his own or the people's good, these few things of many that I shall but touch upon will evince. When his rents and other public revenues of the crown would not defray the expenses of the court, he laid most heavy taxes upon the people; and when they were squandered away, he invented new ones; not for the benefit, honour, or defence of the state, but that he might hoard up, or lavish out in one house, the riches and wealth, not of one, but of three nations. When at this rate he broke loose, and acted without any colour of law to warrant his proceedings, knowing that the parliament was the only thing that could give him check, he endeavoured either wholly to lay aside the very calling of parliaments, or calling them just as often, and no oftener, than to serve his own turn, to make them entirely at his devotion. Which bridle when he had cast off himself, he put another bridle upon the people: he put garrisons of German horse and Irish foot in many towns and cities, and that in time of peace. Do you think he does not begin to look like a tyrant? In which very thing, as in many other particulars, which you have formerly given me occasion to instance, though you scorn to have Charles compared with so cruel a tyrant as Nero, he resembled him extremely much. Nero likewise often threatened to take away the senate. Besides, he bore extreme hard upon the consciences of good men, and compelled them to the use of ceremonies and superstitious worship, borrowed from popery, and by him reintroduced into the church. They that would not conform, were imprisoned or banished. He made war upon the Scots twice for no other cause than that. By all these actions he has surely deserved the name of a tyrant once over at least. Now I will tell you why the word traitor was put

For

In Victor's edition the passage referred to by Milton occurs in book viii. p. 472. This is somewhat too long for quotation; but the reader will find it well worth referring to.-ED.

into his indictment: when he assured his parliament by promises, by proclamations, by imprecations, that he had no design against the state, at that very time did he list papists in Ireland, he sent a private embassy to the king of Denmark to beg assistance from him of arms, horses, and men, expressly against the parliament; and was endeavouring to raise an army first in England, and then in Scotland. To the English he promised the plunder of the city of London; to the Scots, that the four northern counties should be added to Scotland, if they would but help him to get rid of the parliament, by what means soever. These projects not succeeding, he sent over one Dillon, a traitor, into Ireland with private instructions to the natives, to fall suddenly upon all the English that inhabited there. These are the most remarkable instances of his treasons, not taken up upon hearsay and idle reports, but discovered by letters under his own hand and seal. And finally I suppose no man will deny that he was a murderer, by whose order the Irish took arms, and put to death with most exquisite torments above a hundred thousand English, who lived peaceably by them, and without any apprehension of danger; and who raised so great a civil war in the other two kingdoms. Add to all this, that at the treaty in the Isle of Wight the king openly took upon himself the guilt of the war, and cleared the parliament in the confession he made there, which is publicly known. Thus you have in short why king Charles was adjudged a tyrant, a traitor, and a murderer. "But," say you, "why was he not declared so before, neither in that solemn league and covenant, nor afterwards when he was delivered to them, either by the Presbyterians or the Independents; but, on the other hand, was received, as a king ought to be, with all reverence?" This very thing is sufficient to persuade any rational man, that the parliament entered not into any councils of quite deposing the king but as their last refuge, after they had sufferred and undergone all that possibly they could, and had attempted all other ways and means. You alone endeavour maliciously to lay that to their charge, which to all good men cannot but evidence their great patience, moderation, and perhaps a too long forbearing with the king's pride and arrogance. But "in the month of August, before the king suffered, the house of commons, which then bore the only

sway, and was governed by the Independents, wrote letters to the Scots, in which they acquainted them, that they never intended to alter the form of government that had obtained so long in England under king, lords, and commons." You may see from hence how little reason there is to ascribe the deposing of the king to the principles of the Independents. They that never used to dissemble and conceal their tenets, even then, when they had the sole management of affairs, profess, "That they never intended to alter the government,' But if afterwards a thing came into their minds, which at first they intended not, why might they not take such a course, though before not intended, as appeared most advisable, and most for the nation's interest; especially when they found that the king could not possibly be entreated or induced to assent to those just demands that they had made from time to time, and which were always the same from first to last. He persisted in those perverse sentiments with respect to religion and his own right, which he had all along espoused, and which were so destructive to us; not in the least altered from the man that he was, when in peace and war he did us all so much mischief. If he assented to anything, he gave no obscure hints that he did it against his will, and that whenever he should come into power again, he would look upon such his assent as null and void. The same thing his son declared by writing under his hand, when in those days he run away with part of the fleet, and so did the king himself by letters to some of his own party in London. In the meantime, against the avowed sense of the parliament, he struck up a private peace with the Irish, the most barbarous enemies imaginable to England, upon base dishonourable terms; but whenever he invited the English to treaties of peace, at those very times, with all the power he had, and interest he could make, he was preparing for war. In this case, what should they do, who were entrusted with the care of the government? Ought they to have betrayed the safety of us all to our most bitter adversary? Or would you have had them left us to undergo the calamities of another seven years' war, not to say worse? God put a better mind into them, of preferring, pursuant to that very solemn league and covenant, their religion and liberties, before those thoughts they once had, of not rejecting the king;

for they had not gone so far as to vote it; all which they saw at last, (though indeed later than they might have done,) could not possibly subsist, as long as the king continued king. The parliament ought and must of necessity be en tirely free, and at liberty to provide for the good of the nation, as occasion requires; nor ought they so to be wedded to their first sentiments, as to scruple the altering their minds, for their own or the nation's good, if God put an opportunity into their hands of procuring it. But "the Scots were of another opinion; for they in a letter to Charles, the king's son, call his father a most sacred prince, and the putting him to death a most execrable villany." Do not you talk of the Scots, whom you know not; we know them well enough, and know the time when they called that same king a most execrable person, a murderer, and a traitor; and the putting a tyrant to death a most sacred action. Then you pick holes in the king's charge, as not being properly penned; and you ask, "why we needed to call him a traitor and a murderer, after we had styled him a tyrant, since the word tyrant includes all the crimes that may be; and then you explain to us grammatically and critically, what a tyrant is. Away with those trifles, you pedagogue, which that one definition of Aristotle's, that has lately been cited, will utterly confound; and teach such a doctor as you, that the word tyrant (for all your concern is barely to have some understanding of words) may be applied to one, who is neither a traitor nor a murderer. But "the laws of England do not make it treason in the king to stir up sedition against himself or the people." Nor do they say, that the parliament can be guilty of treason by deposing a bad king, nor that any parliament ever was so, though they have often done it; but our laws plainly and clearly declare, that a king may violate, diminish, nay, and wholly lose his royalty. For that expression in the law of St. Edward, of "losing the name of a king," signifies neither more nor less than being deprived of the kingly office and dignity; which befel Chilperic, king of France, whose example for illustration sake is taken notice of in the law itself. There is not a lawyer amongst us, that can deny, but that the highest treason may be committed against the kingdom as well as against the king. I appeal to Glanvile himself, whom you

cite, "If any man attempt to put the king to death, or raise sedition in the realm, it is high-treason." So that attempt of some papists to blow up the parliament-house, and the lords and commons there, with gunpowder, was by king James himself, and both houses of parliament, declared to be high-treason, not against the king only, but against the parliament and the whole kingdom. It would be to no purpose to quote more of our statutes, to prove so clear a truth; which yet I could easily do. For the thing itself is ridiculous, and absurd to imagine, that high-treason may be committed against the king and not against the people, for whose good, nay, and by whose leave, as I may say, the king is what he is: so that you babble over so many statutes of ours to no purpose; you toil and wallow in our ancient law-books to no purpose; for the laws themselves stand or fail by authority of parliament, who always had power to confirm or repeal them; and the parliament is the sole judge of what is rebellion, what high-treason, (lasa majestas,) and what not. Majesty never was vested to that degree in the person of the king, as not to be more conspicuous and more august in parliament, as I have often shewn but who can endure to hear such a senseless fellow, such a French mountebank, as you, declare what our laws are? And, you English fugitives! so many bishops, doctors, lawyers, who pretend that all learning and ingenuous literature is fled out of England with yourselves, was there not one of you that could defend the king's cause and your own, and that in good Latin also, to be submitted to the judgment of other nations, but that this brainsick, beggarly Frenchman must be hired to undertake the defence of a poor indigent king, surrounded with so many infant-priests and doctors? This very thing, I assure you, will be a great imputation to you amongst foreigners; and you will be thought deservedly to have lost that cause you were so far from being able to defend by force of arms, as that you cannot so much as write in behalf of it. But now I come to you again, good man Goosecap, who scribble so finely; if at least you are come to yourself again: for I find you here towards the latter end of your book in a deep sleep, and dreaming of some voluntary death or other, that is nothing to the purpose. Then "deny, that it is possible for a king in his right wits to

you