As loyall a Subject to your Majesty when I
have never a head on my shoulders, as
you a Royall King to me, when you have
your three Crownes on your head,
Theod: de la Guard.
[4] I speake in termes of Divinity not of Law and am deepely grieved that I am forced to such necessary over boldnesse.
Sir,
I Cannot give you over thus; I most earnestly implore you, that you would not deferre to consider yourselfe throughly, you are now returned to the brinke of your Honour and our Peace, stand not too long there, your State is full of distractions, your people of expectations, the importune Affaires of your Kingdome perplexedly suspended, your good Subjects are now rising into a resolution to pray you on to your throne, or into your Tombe, into Grace with your Parliament and People, or into Glory with the Saints in Heaven; but how you will get into the one, without passing first through th' other, is the riddle they cannot untye. If they shall ply the Throne of Grace hard, God will certainely heare, and in a short time
mould you to his minde, and convince you, that it had and will bee farre easier to sit downe meekely upon the Rectum, than to wander resolutely in obliquities, which with Kings, seldome faile to dissembogue into bottomlesse Seas of sorrows.
Dearest Sir, be intreated to doe what you doe sincerely; the King of Heaven and Earth can search and discover the hiddenest corner of your heart, your Parliament understands you farre better then you may conceive, they have many eares and eyes, and good ones, I beleeve they are Religiously determined to re-cement you to your Body so exquisitely, that the Errors of State and Church, routed by these late stirs, may not re-allee hereafter, nor Themselves be made a curse to the issue of their own bodies, nor a Scoffe, to all Politique Bodies in Europe. The Lord give your Majesty and all your Royall Branches the spirit of wisedome and understanding, the Spirit of knowledge and his feare, for His mercy and Christ his sake.
I Would my skill would serve me also, as well as my heart, to translate Prince Rupert, for his Queen-mothers sake, Eliz. a second. Mismeane me not. I have had him in my armes when he was younger, I wish I had him there now: if I mistake not, he promised then to be a good Prince, but I doubt he hath forgot it: if I thought he would not be angry with me, I would pray hard to his Maker, to make him a right Roundhead, a wise hearted Palatine, a thankfull man to the English; to forgive all his sinnes, and at length to save his soule, notwithstanding all
his God-damne mee's: yet I may doe him wrong; I am not certaine hee useth that oath; I wish no man else would. I dare say the Devills dare not. I thank God I have lived in a Colony of many thousand English almost these twelve yeares, am held a very sociable man; yet I may considerately say, I never heard but one Oath sworne, nor never saw one man drunk, nor ever heard of three women Adulteresses, in all this time, that I can call to minde: If these sinnes bee amongst us privily, the Lord heale us. I would not bee understood to boast of our innocency; there is no cause I should, our hearts may be bad enough, and our lives much better. But to follow my businesse.