Page 9
THE Roman Catholick Souldier's LETTER TO Dr. THO. TENISON.
You and your A. B. has publish'd a Reply to my Defence of the Speculum, before I either Printed or Published any such thing. This is not to stay till all the Muster∣Roll be call'd over before you answer to your Name, as you say Mr. P. would have had you to have done; but 'tis every whit as absurd; for 'tis to cry I am here, I am here, before ever you be call'd. This is a strange and unheard of way of proceeding.
You write an Epistle to your A. B. in which you tell him and the World, that I was a Cambridge Scholar, and has chang'd my Black Coat for a Red one; I am sorry you have gotten no better Information from your Enquiries after me at my Lodging, there having been no less than Two Men at one time, and Four at another (whether sent by you or no, I will not say) making Enquiries of me at my Quarters, what I was? whether I had been an Oxford Scholar or no? was I no more than a Souldier? what I did? what I writ? with such like Queries, to which the good people of the House could give them little or no Answer, (as they told me) other than this, that they told some of them I was writing something concerning your Reverence, but they knew not what. Indeed Dr. your Oracles has deceiv'd you, and you have abus'd me by writing such palpable and false untruths of me. For so far off was my thoughts from ever being either a Cambridge Scholar, or wearing a Clergy-Mans Black Coat, that on the contrary, I was a Catholick before I was 19 years of Age, and (God Almighty be prais'd) have remain'd a Catholick ever since, which is now other 19 years, which if I had but time to write into Yorkshire, I could prove by hundreds of Witnesses; nor had my Father (being a Calvinist or Presbyterian) ever the least