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.

CHAP. I.

THe Act is long, and hath many Branches, we only recite two: First, it confirms that Act of the Assembly, which acknowledgeth the indicti∣on of the General Assembly of the Church, to appertain to his Majesty by the Prerogative of his Royal Crown: And in the last Branch of the Act, Our Royal Fa∣ther and the three Estates do annul and rescind the 114. Act of the Parliament held in Anno 1592. which did give some power to the General Assem∣bly, in some cases, of themselves to indict a new Assembly.

Their fifth Reason containeth an instance of an Assembly that would not stay a Process which they had intended against Archbishop Montgo∣mery the Archbishop of Glasgow, nor yet dissolve it self, notwithstanding they were charged by his Majesties Royal Father and his Councel with Let∣ters of Horning and Rebellion to do one of the two: An excellent argument, Because one As∣sembly did wickedly, and that which they could not do, they must do so likewise; as if many years ••e••ce, an Assembly being charged by one of his Majesties Successors to dissolve, should not o∣bey, but alledge for their defence, That this As∣sembly of Glasgow would not dissolve it self, not∣withstanding the Members thereof were charged by his Majesty to do so under pain of Treason; as it one unjust act could justifie another. But they should do well to remember, that those who did but offer to hold an Assembly at Aberdene, after it was discharged by his Royal Father, were first con∣vented before his Councel, and afterwards severe∣ly punished for it.

In their sixth Reason there is no reason to be found.

In their seventh Reason they alledge, that they cannot rise until they have found his Majesties Co∣venant and theirs to be all one. If by their Co∣venant they mean the Confession of Faith and Co∣venant annexed, which was first injoyned by his Majesties Royal Father, and twice afterward by his Authority renewed, then they needed not to have sit one hour longer for finding of that; for any man that can read may find the words and syl∣lables of both, to be the very same without the least alteration: But if by their Covenant they do understand their explications, additions, and glosses which destroy and corrupt the very text of the first Covenant, then certainly they should not have risen yet, nor could have risen until the end of the World; for they will never find that these corrupt glosses, and apocryphal additions of their own, can consist with his Majesties Royal Father his Confession and Covenant, upon which they pretend they ground their own. Besides, as shall presently appear, they have discharged all men to subscribe the Confession and Covenant commanded by his Majesties authority; which may be supposed they would not have done if they had found them to be one; and therefore if they be men of their words, they should have sate still and not risen yet, because as yet they have not found them to be one.

After their seven Reasons, they add seven Pro∣testations of the same piece with their Reasons: The first, third, fourth, and fifth are not worth the reading, for they contain nothing but their usual Tautologies, and taking the sacred Name of God in vain. In the second, and latter end of their sixth Reason, there is so much boldness ex∣pressed, as could never have been expected from any men who had been acquainted with the names of King, Law, Authority, or Government: For who ever heard that Subjects durst require their Kings Commissioner not to depart out of the Assembly, when he himself had pleased, although he had not been commanded by the King so to do? What greater command could they have laid up∣on the meanest Member of the Assembly than this, by which they affronted the Lord Commissioner, and in him his Majesty and his authority? But their ••itation of the Council, who signed the Proclamation, to appear as Offenders before his Majesty and the three Estates of Parliament, (which by the way maybe wonder'd how they can be made up without Bishops) and to answer the Subscription of the King's Proclamation as a crime, is a boldness that calleth more for admi∣ration than refutation. They cite for this their doing the twelfth Act of the second Parliament of his Majesties Royal Progenitor James the fourth. It may be wondered that in his days there should be any warrant found for the allowing the Members of a General Assembly in any thing, in whose time a General Assembly had no existence: But when the Act is lookt into, we may wonder much more; for there is not so much as any word to be read there, which can be drawn to any show of construction that way. That Act attributeth rather too much to Privy Counsellors, than dimi∣nisheth them; so that upon perusal of the Act, his Majesty was almost inforced to excuse them, and lay the fault upon the Printer, who had mistaken the citation, until he remembred that in their ci∣tations both of other Acts of Parliament, and ma∣ny passages of holy Scripture, they are as far out as in this, hoping (belike) that the Reader would never peruse them. That which they affirm a∣bout the middle of the sixth Protestation, that the Prelats moved the Lord Commissioner to dis∣solve the Assembly, his Majesty did aver upon his own knowledge to be far otherwise; for he did it by his special commandment, when none of the Prelats were near him to give him any such ad∣vice. Their seventh Protestation is usual with them, and therefore now not to be taken notice of.

And now when the Reader hath perused both his Majesties Proclamation for the dissolving of that Assembly, and their Protestation against that Proclamation, and hath well weighed all the pre∣cedent first violences, and then juglings for their obtaining of such persons only to be elected, as should be sure to stand for such conclusions as they had resolved upon at their Tables at Edenburgh, we do leave it to the judgment of every man to consider, whether his Majesty could any longer continue that Assembly without indangering his own Royal authority, which they intended to sup∣plant, and betraying into the hands and power of their sworn and combined enemies the Bishops of that Church, who never declined, nor yet do de∣cline the trial of a General Assembly lawfully con∣stituted.

They did long call for a free General Assem∣bly; his Majesty granted them one most free on his part, and in his intentions: But as they have handled and marred the matter, let God and the World judge whether the least shadow or footstep of freedom can in this Assembly of theirs be dis∣cerned by any man who hath not given a Bill of di∣vorce both to his natural light, that is, his Un∣derstanding, and to his connatural light, that is, his Conscience. It is a great errour to conceive, that liberty and limitation are destructive one of another: For that freedom which admitteth no bounds and limits, is not liberty but licentious∣ness: When therefore they talked of a free Ge∣neral Assembly, his Majesty took it as granted that they meant not an Assembly in which every one both in the necessary preparations preceding it, and in the necessary proceedings in it, might say and do what he would; but such an Assem∣bly, in which no man having interest, should be barred either in the precedings to it, or proceed∣ings in it, of that liberty which the Laws or Cu∣stoms of that Kingdom and Church in which that Assembly was convocated, do allow him: Which two bounds whosoever shall transgress, though they pretend liberty and freedom, yet in

all true intendment and construction, they must be taken either for professed and common, or clan∣destine Enemies to the freedom of that Assembly. What wresting and wringing was used in their last Protestation made at Edenburgh, to charge the King's gracious Proclamation with prelimitati∣ons, is known; and it was detested by many e∣ven of their own Covenant. Whether their cour∣ses, especially in the Elections of the Members of this Assembly, were not only prelimitations of it, but strong bars against the freedom of it, and such as did utterly destroy both the name and nature of a free Assembly, inducing upon it ma∣ny and main nullities, besides the reasons con∣tained in the Bishops Declmator, let these few par∣ticulars declare.

First, Whereas they refused so much as to hear from his Majesties Commissioner of any precedent Treaty for repairing and right ordering of things before the Assembly, alledging that it could not be a free Assembly where there was any consulta∣tion before, either concerning the chusers, or those to be chosen, or things to be discussed in the Assembly, but that all things must be treated of upon the place, else the Assembly must needs be prelimitated. Whether they did not transgress in all these particulars, is easie to be discerned? For besides these instructions, which it may be are not come to his Majesties knowledge, his Majesty hath seen, and his Commissioner at the Assembly did produce four several papers of in∣structions, sent from them, who call themselves the Table, all of them containing prelimitations, and such as are repugnant not only to that which they called the freedom, but to that which is indeed the freedom of an Assembly. Two of these papers were such as they were content should be commu∣nicated to all their Associates, viz. that larger pa∣per sent abroad to all Presbyteries, before or a∣bout the time of his Majesties indiction of the Assembly; and that lesser paper for their meeting first at Edenburgh, then at Glasgow some few days before the Assembly, and for chusing of Assessors: These two papers his Majesties Commissioner deli∣vered not into the Assembly, because they did pub∣lickly avow them: But their other two papers of secret instructions were directed, not from the Ta∣ble publickly, but under-hand, from such as were the prime Leaders of the rest. The one of them was delivered or sent only to one Minister of every Presbytery whom they trusted most, and was on∣ly to be communicated to such as he might be con∣sident of, and was quite concealed from the rest of the Ministers, although Covenanters: The o∣ther paper was directed only to one Lay-Elder of every Presbytery, to be communicated as he should see cause, and to be quite concealed from all others. These are the two papers, which before you heard were delivered by the Lord Commissioner into the Assembly, and they did contain directions, which being followed (as they were) did banish all free∣dom from this Assembly; as doth appear before, by the reading of the papers themselves.

The second: Some Presbyteries did chuse their Commissioners before the Assembly was indicted, and therefore those Commissioners could not law∣fully have any voice there.

The third: Neither Lay-elder, nor Minister chosen Commissioner by Lay-Elders, could have voice in the Assembly, because such Elections are ••ot warranted by the Laws of that Church and Kingdom, nor by the practice and custom of ••••ther; for even that little which seemeth to make for their Lay-Elders, is only to be found in these Books, which they call the Books of Discipline, which were penned by some private men, but never confirmed either by Act of Parliament, or Act of General Assembly; and therefore are of no Authority. And yet in these Election they did transgress even the Rules of these Books, there being more Lay-elders who gave voices at every one of these Elections, then there were Ministers; contrary to their Books of Disci∣pline, which require that the Lay-Elders should always be fewer. But say there were an Eccle∣siastical Order or Law for these Lay-Elders, yet the interruption of that Order for above forty years, maketh so strong a prescription in that Kingdom against it, as that without a new revi∣ving of that Law by some new Order from the General Assembly, it ought not again to have been put in practice: For if his Majesty should put in practice and take the penalties of many disused Laws, without new intimation of them, it would be thought by his Subjects hard usage.

The fourth: In many Presbyteries these Lay-Elders disagreed wholly in their Election from chu∣sing those Ministers whom their own Fellow-Mi∣nisters did chuse, and carried it from them by num∣ber of voices, although in all reason the Ministers should best know the abilities and fitness of their Brethren.

The fifth: These men elected as Lay-Elders to have voices in this Assembly, could not be thought able and fit men, since they were never Elders before, all or most of them being newly chosen; some of them were chosen Lay-Eldens the very day before the Election of the Com∣missioners to the Assembly, which sheweth plainly they were chosen only to serve their As∣sociates turn.

The sixth: Since the institution of Lay-Elders by their own Principles is to watch over the man∣ners of that people in that Parish wherein they live, how can any man be chosen a Ruling Elder from a Presbytery, who is not an inhabitant within any Parish of the Precinct of that Presby∣tery? And yet divers such, especially Noblemen, were chosen as Lay-Elders Commissioners from Presbyteries, within the Precincts whereof they never were inhabitants, against all sense or reason, even upon their own grounds.

The seventh: They can shew neither Law nor Practice for chusing Assessors to the Ruling-Elders, without whose consent they were not to give voice to any thing in the Assembly.

The eighth: The introducing of Lay-Elders is a burthen so grievous to the Ministers, as that ma∣ny Presbyteries did protest and supplicate against them, and many Presbyteries (though they were in a manner forced to yield to it then) yet did pro∣test against it for the time to come.

The ninth: In the Election of Commissioners to this Assembly, for the most part the fittest men were passed by, and few chosen who ever were Commissioners at any Assembly before: The rea∣son was, they conceived that new men would not stand much for their own Liberty in an Assem∣bly, of the Liberties whereof they were utterly ig∣norant: Besides, some were chosen who were under the censures of the Church, some who were deprived by the Church, some who had been expelled out of the University for reading to their Scholars against Monarchical Govern∣ment, some who had been banished out of that Kingdom for their seditions Sermons and beha∣viour, some who for the like offences had been banished out of Ireland, some who were them ly∣ing

under the sentence of Excommunication, some who then had no ordination or imposition of hands, some who had lately been admitted to the Ministery, contrary to the standing Laws of that Church and Kingdom, and all of them were chosen by Lay-Elders. Now what a scandal were it to the Reformed Churches, to allow this to be an Assembly, which did consist of such Members, and so irregularly chosen?

The tenth: Divers Members of this Assembly, even whilst they sate there, were Rebels, and at the King's Horn; and so by the Laws of that Kingdom uncapable of sitting as Judges in any Ju∣dicatory.

The eleventh: Three Oaths were to be taken by every Member of this Assembly: The Oath to the Confession of Faith lately renewed by his Ma∣jesties commandment, the Oath of Allegiance, the Oath of Supremacy, any of which three Oaths whosoever shall refuse, cannot sit as a Judge in a∣ny Court of that Kingdom; and yet none of all these three Oaths were sworn by any Member of this Assembly.

Besides these nullities of this Assembly, what indecency and rudeness was to be discerned in it? Not so much as the face of an Ecclesiastical Meeting to be seen, not a Gown worn by any Member of it, unless it were by one or two Mi∣nisters who lived in the Town, the appearance in a manner wholly Laical; amongst the Mem∣bers of it were seven Earls, ten Lords, forty Gentlemen, one and fifty Burgesses; many of them in coloured Clothes, and Swords by their sides, all which did give voices not only in very high points of Controversie (which we are sure very many of them did not understand,) but also in the sentences of Excommunication pronounced against the Bishops and others: Nay and more, all things in the Assembly carried by the sway of these Lay-Elders, insomuch that all the time which the Lord Commissioner stayed in the Assembly, it was a very rare thing to hear a Minister speak; for there was one Earl and one Lord who spake far more than all the Ministers, except the Mode∣rator. And in the Assembly every thing which was put to voices, was so clearly discerned to have been resolved amongst themselves before by a palpable pre-agreement, that it was very tedi∣ous to the Auditors to hear the List of the As∣sembly called, when the conclusion of it was known to them all, after the hearing of his voice who was first called; which made some present to envy no Member of the Assembly but one, whose fortune it was ever to be first called, his name being set down first in the List; his name was Master Alexander Carse Minister of Polwart, one of the Commissioners from the Presbytery of Dunce: For if the Acts of this Assembly should come out in Latin, and be thought worth any thing in the Christian World, and withal it should be expressed that the List of the Members of it was called to the passing of every Act, and his name should ever be found to be the first, there was never a Father nor Bishop, whose name is in any of the Greek or Latin Councels, so famous as this man should now be: For he would be taken for a man of an unparallel'd judgment both for ••oundness and profoundness, from whose judg∣ment not one of the whole Assembly (except one, and that but once) did ever swerve in the least particular; for as he begun, all the rest did con∣stantly follow.

All these things being well considered, what hope could be conceived of any good, either for the Church or Kingdom, from an Assembly thus miserably constituted? And therefore his Majesty resolved to dissolve it, as knowing that it would make that Church and Kingdom ridiculous to the whole World, especially to the Adversaries of the Protestant Religion; that it would both grieve and scandalize all the other Reformed Churches, and make his Justice to be universally traduced, if he should have suffered the Bishops his Subjects, in that which concerned their Callings, their Re∣putations and Fortunes, to be judged by their sworn Enemies thus prepared against them.

After the Lord Commissioners departure from Glasgow, they still continued their Assembly not∣withstanding his Majesties dissolving it by Procla∣mation under pain of Treason: And then imme∣diately the Earl of Argyle, who indeed all this while had been the heart of their Covenant, be∣gun to declare himself openly to be the head of it; for he presently adjoyned himself to them, sate continually with them in the Assembly, although he were no Member of it, nor had suffrage there, but sate only as their chief Director and Counte∣nancer, and indeed like his Majesties Commissio∣ner.

It was not to be expected that after his Majesty had dissolved the Assembly, they would observe a∣ny greater moderation in their proceedings than they had done before: Nor did they indeed; for all things passed in a hudling confusion, nothing argued publickly, but every particular referred to some few Committees, who were the most rigidest they could pick out of the whole pack. What they resolved on, was propounded presently to the Assembly, swallowed down without further discus∣sing; Mr. Alexander Carse was called up, what he said first all the rest said the same. In one hour they declared six General Assemblies to be null and void, though two of them were then and are still in force by several Acts of Parliament, and divers Acts of the other four are ratified and confirmed by Parliament. In another hour they condemned, upon the report of a few Ministers, all the Armini∣an Tenets (as they call them) and, under that name, many things received by all the Reformed Church∣es: A strange way, to condemn the Arminian Te∣nets without defining what those Tenets were. In another hour, the deprived the Archbishop of St. Andrews, the Bishops of Galloway and Brechen, and so at other times all the rest of the Bishops, many of whom they likewise excommunicated: Where it is observable, that in the printed Acts of this their (now after his Majesties dissolving of it) pre∣tended Assembly, the Acts of the depositions of the Bishops bear no such odious crimes, as they had made the people believe they were guilty of in that infamous Libel which they caused to be read in the Pulpits against them; for proof whereof we have caused one of their sentences of deposition to be here inserted, whereby it may be seen that not so much as one witness was examined, nor of∣fered to be produced against them for any one of those fearful crimes with which they were slan∣dered in the Libel, but were only deposed for their obedience to Acts of Parliaments and General Assemblies.