wish such of you as have any charges in your counties, to hasten you home for the repressing of the insolencies of these rebels, and apprehension of their persons, wherein, as I heartily pray to the Almighty for your prosperous success, so do I not doubt, but we shall shortly hear the good news of the same; and that you shall have an happy return, and meeting here to all our comforts.

[Here the Lord Chancellor spake touching the proroguing of the Parliament. And having done, his Majesty rose again, and said:]

Since it pleased God to grant me two such. notable deliveries upon one day of the week, which was Tuesday, and likewise one day of the month, which was the fifth; thereby to teach me, that as it was the same devil that still persecuted me, so it was one and the same God that still mightily delivered me; I thought it therefore not amiss, that the one and twentieth day of January, which fell to be upon Tuesday, should be the day of meeting of this next session of Parliament, hoping and assuring myself, that the same God who hath now granted me and you all so notable and gracious a delivery, shall prosper all our affairs at that next session, and bring them to a happy conclusion. And now I consider God hath well provided it that the ending of this Parliament hath been so long continued; for as for mine own part, I never had any other intention, but only to seek so far my weal and prosperity, as might conjunctly stand with the flourishing state of the whole Commonwealth, as I have often told you: so on the other part I confess, if I had been in your places at the beginning of this Parliament (which was so soon after mine entry into this kingdom, wherein ye could not possibly have so perfect a knowledge of

mine inclination, as experience since hath taught you), I could not but have suspected, and misinterpreted divers things, in the trying whereof, now I hope, by your experience of my behaviour and form of government, you are well enough cleared, and resolved.

A DISCOURSE

Of the Manner of the Discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, together with the Examinations and Confessions of some of the most notorious Conspirators concerned in it.

"THERE is a time when no man ought to keep silence." For it hath ever been held as a general rule and undoubted maxim, in all well governed commonwealths, whether Christian, and so guided by the divine light of God's word, or ethnic, and so led by the glimmering twilight of nature, yet howsoever their profession was, upon this ground have they all agreed, that when either their religion, their king, or their country was in any extreme hazard, no good countryman ought then to withhold either his tongue or his hand, according to his calling and faculty, from aiding to repel the injury, repress the violence, and avenge the guilt upon the authors thereof. But if ever any people had such an occasion ministered unto them, it is surely this people now, nay this whole isle, and all the rest belonging to this great and glorious monarchy. For if in any heathenish republic no private man could think his life more happily and gloriously bestowed, than in the defence of any one of these three, that is, either pro aris, pro focis, or pro patre patriæ; and that the endangering of any one of these. would at once stir the whole body of the commonwealth, not any more as divided members, but as a solid and individual lump: how much more ought we, the truly Christian people, that inhabit this united and truly happy isle, under the wings of our gracious and religious monarch? Nay,

nata.

Insula fortu- how infinitely greater cause have we to feel, and resent ourselves of the smart of that wound, not only intended and execrated (not consecrated) for the utter extinguishing of our true Christian profession, nor jointly therewith, only for the cutting off of our head and father politic, Sed ut nefas istud et sacrilegiosum parricidium omnibus modis absolutum reddi possit? And that nothing might be wanting for making this sacrilegious parricide a pattern of mischief, and a crime, nay a mother or storehouse of all crimes, without example they should have joined the destruction of the body to the head, so as Grex cum rege, Aræ cum focis, Lares cum penatibus, should all at one thunder-clap have been sent to heaven together: the king our head, the queen our fertile mother, and those young and hopeful olive plants not theirs but ours; our reverend clergy, our honourable nobility, the faithful councillors, the grave judges, the greatest part of the worthy knights and gentry, as well as of the wisest burgesses; the whole clerks of the crown, council, signet, seals, or of any other principal judgment-seat. All the learned lawyers, together with an infinite number of the common people; nay, their furious rage should not only have lighted upon reasonable and sensible creatures without distinction, either of degree, sex, or age; but even the insensible stocks and stones should not have been free of their fury. The hall of justice, the House of Parliament, the church used for the coronations of our kings, the monuments of our former princes, the crown and other marks of royalty, all the records, as well of Parliament, as of every particular man's right, with a great number of charters and such like, should all have been comprehended under that fearful chaos. And so the earth, as it were opened, should have sent forth of the bottom of the Stygian lake such sulphured smoke, furious flames,

and fearful thunder, as should have, by their diabolical doomsday, destroyed and defaced, in the twinkling of an eye, not only our present living princes and people, but even our insensible monuments reserved for future ages. So as not only ourselves that are mortal, but the immortal monuments of our ancient princes and nobility, that have been so preciously preserved from age to age, as the remaining trophies of their eternal glory, and have so long triumphed over envious time, should now have been all consumed together; and so not only we, but the memory of us and ours, should have been thus extinguished in an instant. The true horror, therefore, of this detestable device, hath stirred me up to bethink myself wherein I may best discharge my conscience in a cause so general and common, if it were to bring but one stone to the building, or rather, with the widow, one mite to the common box. But since to so hateful and unheard of invention, there can be no greater enemy than itself, the simple truth thereof being once publicly known and divulged; and that there needs no stronger argument to bring such a plot in universal detestation, than the certainty that so monstrous a thing could once be devised, nay concluded. upon, wrought in, in full readiness, and within twelve hours of the execution,-my threefold zeal to those blessings, whereof they would have so violently made us all widows, hath made me to resolve to set down here the true narration of that so monstrous and unnatural intended tragedy, having better occasion by the means of my service, and continual attendance in court, to know the truth thereof, than others that, peradventure, have it only by relation at the third or fourth hand. So that whereas those, worse than Catalines, thought to have extirpated us, and our memories, their infamous memory shall by these means remain to the end of the

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