A
P A N E G Y R I C
TO
Charles the Second,
PRESENTED
TO HIS MAJESTIE
The XXXIII. of APRIL, being the Day
OF HIS
CORONATION.
MDCLXI.
By JOHN EVELYN, Esquire
LONDON,
Printed for John Crooke, and are to be sold at the Ship in St. Paul’s Church-Yard.
A
PANEGYRIC
TO
CHARLES the II.
PRESENTED
TO HIS MAJESTY
On the Day of His Inauguration,
April 23. MDCLXI.
I have decreed with myself (O best and greatest of Kings!) to publish the just resentiments of a heart, perfectly touch’d with the Joy and Universal Acclamations of your People, for your this dayes Exaltation and glorious investiture. And truly, it was of custome us’d to good and gracious Princes, upon lesser occasions, to pronounce and celebrate their merits with Elogies and Panegyrics; but if ever they were due, it is to your Majesty this Day; because as your Virtues are superiour to all that pass’d before you; so is the Conjuncture, and the steps by which you are happily ascended to it, Miraculous, and alltogether stupendious: So that what the former Ages might produce to deprecate their fears, or flatter the Inclinations of a Tyrant, we offer spontaneously, and by Instinct, without Artifice to your Serene Majesty, our just and rightfull Soveraign. And if in these expressions of it, and the formes we use, it were possible to exceed, and so offend your Modesty; herein only (great Sir) do we not fear to disobey you; since it is not in your power to deny us our rejoycing, nor indeed in ours, to moderate. Permit us therefore (O best of Kings) to follow our genius, and to consecrate your Name, and this dayes exaltation to that posterity which you alone have preserved, and which had certainly seen its period, but for your happy Restauration; so that your Majesty does not so much accept a benefit from, as give it to your Subjects. For though the fulness of this Dayes joy, be like the seven years of plenty; yet, is that bread far more sweet, which is eaten with remembrance of the past Famine (too bitter, alas! to be forgotten on the suddain) especially, when it may serve to illustrate our present felicity, and conduce to your Majesties glory: For so the skillful Artist, studious of making a surprising peice, or representing some irradiated Deity, deepens the shadowes sometimes with the darkest touches, and approaching to horrour it self, thereby to render his lights the more refulgent, and striking in the eyes of the Spectator.
Let us then call to mind (and yet for ever cursed be the memory of it) those dismal clouds, which lately orespread us, when we served the lusts of those immane Usurpers, greedy of power, that themselves might be under none; Cruel, that they might murther the Innocent without cause; Rich, with the publick poverty; strong, by putting the sword into the hands of furies, and prosperous by unheard of perfidie. Armies, Battails, Impeaching, Imprisonment, Arraining, Condemning, Proscribing, Plundring, Gibbets and Executions were the eloquent expressions of our miseries: There was no language then heard but of Perjury, Delusion, [Hypocrisie], Heresie, Taxes, Excises, Sequestration, Decimation, and a thousand like barbarities: In summe, the solitudes were filled with noble Exiles, the Cities with rapacious Theives, the Temples with Sacrilegious Villains; They had the spoiles of Provinces, the robbing of Churches, the goods of the slain, the Stock of Pupils, the plunder of Loyal Subjects; no Testament, no State secure, and nothing escaped their cruelty and insatiable avarice. For if it be sweet in prosperity, to consider of the past adventures, if tempests commend the Haven; War, Peace; and our last sharp sickness, our present Health and Vigour; why should it not delight your Majesty to hear of the miseries we have suffered; since they re-inforce your own felicity, and the benefits which we receive by it? where then should I begin but with thy Calamities, O unfortunate England! who hadst only the priviledge of being miserable, when all the World were happy: But I will not go too for in repeating the sorrowes which are vanish’t, or uncover the buried memory of the evils past; least whilst we strive to represent the vices of others, we seem to contaminate your Sacred purple, or alloy our present rejoycing; since that only is sign of a perfect and consummate felicity, when even the very remembrance of evils past, is quite forgotten.
Miraculous Reverse! O marvel greater then Mans Counsel! who will believe that which his eyes do see? what before a twenty years confusion had destroy’d; behold a few moneths have restor’d: But the wonder does yet so much more astonish, that the grief was not so universal for having suffer’d under such a Tyranny, as for having been so long depriv’d of so excellent a Prince: No more then do we henceforth accuse our past miseries; All things are by your presence repair’d, and so reflourish; as if they even rejoyc’d they had once been destroy’d, Auctior tuis facta beneficiis. So as not only a Diadem binds your sacred Temples this day; but you have even crown’d all your Subjects too; so has your auspicious presence gilded all things; our Churches, Tribunals, Theaters, Palaces, lift up their heads again; the very fields do laugh and exalt. O happy, and blessed spring! not so glorious yet with the pride and enamel of his flowers, the golden corn, and the gemms of the pregnant Vine, as with those Lillies and Roses which bloom and flourish in your Chaplet this day, to which not only these, but even all the productions of nature seem to bend, and pay their homage.
And let it be a new year, a new Æra, to all the future Generations, as it is the beginning of this, and of that immense, Platonic Revolution; for what could arrive more justly, more stupendious, were even the eight sphear it self now hurled about? For no sooner came our CHARLES on shore, but every Man was in the Haven where he would be; the storm Universally ceas’d, and every one ran forth to see our Palladium, tanquam cœlo delapsum: Virgins, Children, Women, trembling old Men, venerating the very ship that wafted our Jason and his Heroes, ravish’d with the sight, yet hardly believing for astonishment; the greatness of the miracle, oppressing our sences, and endangering our very faith.