The annals of King James and King Charles the First ... containing a faithful history and impartial account of the great affairs of state, and transactions of parliaments in England from the tenth of King James MDCXII to the eighteenth of King Charles MDCXLII : wherein several material passages relating to the late civil wars (omitted in former histories) are made known.

Here followeth their Protestation.

For God and the King.

WE Noble-men, Barons, Ministers, Burroughs, appointed to attend his Majesties Answer to our humble Petition and complaint, and to prefer new Grievances, and to do what else may lawfully conduce to our humble desires; That whereupon the 23 of Sep∣tember last, we presented a Supplication to your Lord∣ships, and another upon the 18 of October last, and also a new Bill relative to the former upon the 19 of December last, and did therein humbly remonstrate our just exceptions against the Service-Book, and Book of Canons; and also against the Archbishops and Bishops of this Kingdom, as the Contrivers, Main∣t••••ners, and urgers thereof, and against their suting as our Judges until the cause be decided; earnestly sup∣plicating withal to be freed and delivered from these and all other innovations of that kind, introduced against the landable Laws of this Kingdom; as that of the High Commission, and other evils particularly mentioned, and generally contained in our aforesaid Supplications and Complaints, and that this our party delinquent against our Religion and Laws may be taken order with, and these pressing grievances may be taken order with and redressed according to the Laws of this Kingdom, as by our said Supplications and Complaints more largely doth appear: With the which on the 19 of December last, we gave in a Declinator against the Archbishops and Bishops as our Parties, who by consequence could not be our Judges; whereupon your Lordships declared by your Act at Dalkeith the said of December, that you would present our Petiti∣ons to his Majesties Royal consideration, and that without prejudice of the Declinator given in by us the said Supplicants; whereupon we should be heard at place and time convenient. And in the mean time should receive no prejudice, as the said Act in it self beareth. And whereas we your Lordships Supplicants with a great deal of patience, and hope also, grounded on sundry promises, were expecting an answer to these our humble desires, and having learned that upon some directions of his Majesties anent our Supplications and Complaint unto your Lordships of the Secret Council, your Lordships admits to the consulting and judging anent our Supplications, and His Majesties Answer thereunto, the Archbishops and Bishops our direct Par∣ties, contrary to our Declinator first propounded at Dalkeith, and now renewed at Sterling; and † 1.1 con∣trary to your Lordships Act aforesaid at Dalkeith, and contrary to our Religion, and Laws, and humble Supplications. Therefore, lest our silence be prejudici∣al to this so important a cause, as concerns God's Glo∣ry and Worship, our Religion, Salvation, the Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom, or derogatory to the former Supplications and Complaints, or unaswer∣able to the trust of our Commission; out of our bound Duty to our God, our King and native Country, we are forced to take instruments in Notaries hands, of your Lordships refusal to admit our Declinator, or remove these our Parties, and to protest in manner following: First, That we may have our immediate recourse to our Sacred Soveraign, to present our grievances, and in a legal way to prosecute the same before the ordinary competent Judges, Civil or Ecclesiastical, without any offence offered by us, or taken by your Lordships. Se∣condly, We protest that the said Archbishops and Bi∣shops, our Parties complained upon, cannot be reputed or esteemed lawful Judges to sit in any Judicatory in this Kingdom, Civil or Ecclesiastical, upon any of the Supplicants, until after lawful trial judicially they purge themselves of such crimes as we have already laid to their charge, offering to prove the same whensoever his sacred Majesty shall please to give us audience. Thirdly, We protest that no Act nor Proclamation to follow there∣upon, past, or to be past in Council or out of Council, in presence of the Archbishops and Bishops, whom we have already declined to be our Judges, shall anywaies be prejudicial to us the Supplicants, our persons, estates, lawful meetings, proceedings, or pursuits. Fourth∣ly, We protest that neither we nor any whose heart the Lord moveth to join with us in these our Supplications, against the aforesaid Innovations, shall incur any dan∣ger in Life, Lands, or any Political or Ecclesiastical pains, for not observing such Acts, Books, Canons, Rites, Judicatories, Proclamations, introduced with∣out or against the Acts of General Assemblies, or Acts of Parliament, the Statutes of this Kingdom; But that it shall be lawful to us or them to use our selves in matters of Religion of the external Worship of God and Policy of the Church, according to the Word of God, and laudable Constitutions of this Church and Kingdom, conform to His Majesties Declaration the ninth of December last. Fifthly, seeing by the le∣gal and submiss way of our former Supplications, all who takes these Innovations to heart, have been kept calm and carried themselves in a quiet manner, in hope of redress; We protest that if any inconvenience shall happen to fall out (which we pray the Lord to prevent) upon the pressing of any of the foresaid Innovations or evils, especially or generally contained in our former Supplications and Complaints, and upon your Lord∣ships refusal to take order thereanent, the same be not imputed to us, who most humbly seeks all things to be re∣formed by an Order. Sixthly, we protest that these our requests, proceeding from Conscience and a due respect to his Majesties Honour, do tend to no other end, but to the preservation of the true reformed Religion, the Laws and Liberties of this His Majesties most an∣cient Kingdom, and satisfaction of our most humble desires contained in our Supplication and Complaint, according to his Majesties accustomed Goodness and Ju∣stice, from which we do certainly expect that His Sa∣cred Majesty will provide and grant such remedy to our

just Petitions and Complaints, as may be expected from so gracious a King toward most loyal and dutiful Subjects, calling for redress of so pressing grievances, and praying to God that his Majesty may long and pro∣sperously Reign over us.

AGainst which Protestation We shall now say nothing, because it is contained and repeat∣ed in another larger Protestation of theirs, which shall be inserted hereafter, and there it shall re∣ceive a full answer: Only We desire the Reader to observe these two things in it; First, the iniquity and injustice of their demanding some of our Bi∣shops to be removed from our Council; nay, and (which we think never was heard before) their protesting against all Acts to be done and passed in our Council at which any of them shall be pre∣sent, alledging, that this their Protestation against them, and Declinator of them, maketh them to be Parties, and so they cannot be Judges; and withal they require them first to be removed, and then promise they will make proof of such crimes against them as shall declare the justice of their re∣moval; which is all one as to intreat them first to condemn a man, and then to try him: And if a Protestation against their sitting in Council, and a Declinator of our Councils authority (neither of them admitted by our Council) shall make some Councellors to be Parties, and invalidate all Acts of Council so long as these Councellors, whom they have fancied to be Parties, sit there; how their last pretended general Assembly, against which there were so many Protestations made both by the Bishops and others, and which by all these Protesters was declined as Judge, because the members of it had all made themselves Par∣ties, can be counted a lawful general Assembly, or the members of it lawful Judges, We leave it to themselves to reconcile: And if they should say, that these Protestations and Declinators against the Assembly were repelled by the Assem∣bly, who was the sole Judge of them, let them remember, that their Protestation against the Bi∣shops, and their Declinator against our Councils authority, if they should not eject them, were both of them likewise repelled and rejected by Our Council, who was the only true Judge of them, their last pretended Assembly being no true but only a pretended Judge of the others, after the Assembly was dissolved by our Authority. And Secondly, We shall desire the Reader to ob∣serve, that their demands in this Protestation are very far short of those which are made by them in their succeeding Protestations, which swell with far more bold and insolent demands than this doth, although this be bold and insolent enough: But it is an usual course with the Heads of all Re∣bellions, to draw in that Party, by whose power they intend to make good their wicked plots, with small things at the first, concealing from them the depth of their intentions, until they have engaged them so far, as they can make them believe that there is no safety in retreating, when their crimes are past hope of Pardon.

And now after this their first Protostation; begun the most unnatural, causless, and horrible Rebel∣lion that this or perhaps any other Age in the World hath been acquainted with: For now these Protesters begin to invest themselves with the su∣preme Ensigns and Marks of Majesty and Sove∣raignty, by erecting publick Tables of advice and Council, for ordering the Affairs of the King∣dom, without our authority, and in contempt of us and our Council established by us there, and by entring into a Covenant and most wicked Band & combination against all that shall oppose them, not excepting our own Person, directly a∣gainst the Law of God, the Law of Nations, and the municipal Laws of that our Kingdom: So that after this their Protestation, they perfected that which they had before begun confusedly, and as it were in a ruder draught: For then, contrary to our express commandment and authority expressed in our last Proclamations, and repeated unto them by our Council, they did erect a great number of Tables (as they called them) in Edenburgh: Four principal, One of the Nobility, another of the Gentry, a third of the Burroughs, a fourth of Ministers; and the Gentry had many subordinate Tables, according to their several Shires: These several Tables did consult of what they thought sit to be propounded at the general Table, which consisteth of several Commissioners chosen from the other four Tables; and what they of the ge∣neral Table resolved on, was to be put in practice with a blind and Jesuitical obedience: A rare and unheard form of Government in a Kingdom whose Government ever was Monarchical, and which they themselves still say continueth to be so: Sure these Meetings by wise men have been accounted rather Stables of unruly Horses, broken loose and pulling down all they can reach, than Tables for the consultations of wise and rational men. Now the first dung which from these Stables was thrown upon the face of Authority and Government, was that lewd Covenant, and Seditious Band an∣nexed unto it, which We here subjoin, because We are confident that by the very recital and perusal of it, every religious and wise man ••m run and read that sentence of condemnation which it carrieth in its own front.

Notes

• † 1.1

  It is n•••• so; for the Council never pro∣mised that the Bi∣shops should be removed from the Table, but only tha•• they would make us acquaint∣ed with their Peti∣tion.