Next, wonder, that he, whom the earth was too angust for, when he was alive, should be imprisoned in so small a space of ground, now he is dead. When he had commoved earth, he aspired to rule even heaven itself; as appears by his arrogating to himself this Symbolum, or motto, MENS' SIDERA VOLVIT. And, that thou may understand what kind of intelligence this was, know that he was of a sagacious industry, but unquiet; an enemy both of the publick, and of his own private tranquillity. In a great wit, by many revered, not a few, that knew him, found a great mixture of madness. He had a mind that was made worse by every thing, bettered by nothing. 1 He stood thus long; not so much through favour, as his power with a mighty King; and was happy in the event of things, rather than in a prudent management of them. Only he was unhappy in the disfavour of Almighty God; for, having continually conflicted with noisome diseases, he was ignorant of the seat of happiness, which yet, to the rendering both himself and others unhappy, he sought after. Nor did he ever seem happy even in his own eyes, as not honest in the eyes of those who called him happy. He was vexed with two great tormentors of life, choler, and melancholy. In the flames of the former, and the fumes of the latter, he continually suffered. So that venom which he spit out, to the perdition of others, he could not keep in, without hurt to himself. He outwent most men in covetousness, all men in ambition. A waster of the royal exchequer, but a niggard of his own purse. Cruel, if offended; but more cruel, where he ofended others. By the conferrings of the queen-mother he was made rich, by her plottings preferred, and, by her power, made more potent. Yet her did he deprive of the King's favour, of her liberty, of her estate, of France, and, at last, of her life, she being an exile at Cologne. And, lest he should spare her, when she was dead, he nulled her last will, and caused her corps to lie five months (at the end of which, himself followed her) in her chamber unburied. The honour of monsieur, the King's brother, he violated, and endeavoured to supplant even his person. He not only withdrew the affections of son from mother, and of* brother from brother, but of * husband from wife. Mariliack he caused to be beheaded by the greatest wrong; Montmorency by the greatest right; Cinkmart, partly by right, partly by wrong; M. de Thow, whether by right or wrong, no man knows. Some noblemen he condemned to perpetual imprisonment, more to banishment; but those he drove from court were innumerable. He proscribed many, lest they should hinder his designs. Nor did milder France ever behold so frequent punishments. * King of France, Building upon the power of a great King, whom, with a great deal of art and study, he deceived, and supplied with the wealth of a most fruitful kingdom, he spent an infinite number of arrows, in aiming to hit the main mark, which he had missed. A continual working and agitation of mind, backed with many mad attempts, together with a rigid severity, and an all-trying boldness, produced a few fortunate issues. But he had soon been supplanted, if, among foreign enemies, he had found some more wary, or, among Frenchmen, scarce any of whom but were averse to him, had met but with one adversary. It well besteaded him, that hardly any body knew him, or believed those that did. He was so fortunate, that those of the nobility, as well as of the army, whom he had irritated, did yet, for his honour, shed their own and others blood, whilst himself mingled his with the King's. He had perished in the same design, in which Sejanus once perished, had he not taken out of the way, O grief to think on! the royal Count of Soissons. Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Low-Countries, but especially France, will hardly be able, in a whole age, to efface the bad impressions of so hurtful an authority. Taking pleasure in the miseries both of the citizens and suburbers, that he might fleece these, he lanced the very entrails of those. Nor did he any wise indulge to the sacred health of the king, but disturbed that, whilst, with anxieties and various passions of mind, he wore out his own. The divine justice first ulcerated his arm, which he had stretched out against heaven. Next, it took from him the use of his right hand, which had subscribed to unnecessary wars. His arm, eight months before his death, rotted, by reason of which his hand withered. And yet, which is a sad thing, he, that so plainly felt God an avenger, would not plainly enough acknowledge him. This apwears, in that he more hotly exercised his fury upon his private enemies. In that, death approaching, rather out of a politick prudence, than a Christian piety, he commended his favourites to the King, more than his soul to God. In that, a few days before the catastrophe of his tragick life, he caused a play of his own devising, which he called Europa Triumphata, to be acted in the most royal pomp, that could be, though himself could not behold it. In that, being a cardinal, he afflicted the church: being a priest, he shed blood; being a christian, he forgave no injuries; and being a man, he yet would not remember himself to be mortal, even when the worms, crawling out of his many ulcers, did admonish him to how frail and noisome a mortality he was obnoxious. When by all ways, the most impious not unassayed, he had, for the space of eighteen years, prosecuted his private ends, to the undoing of the publick, he, at length, arrived, to the ordinary end of men, by a death, to appearance, peaceable, but more lingering than that of many, whom he had sent before him. He died at Paris, where he had been born fifty-seven years and three months before. Forsaking France, and his own house, he seemed to endeavour the combustion of them both; of that, by an extorted declaration against the King's brother; of this, by a will framed to a * woman's fancy. For the rest; nor did the kingdom of France, being opulent, ever deal with any so bountifully; nor, being of a genius impatient, did it ever bear with any so continuedly; nor, affecting quietment, did it ever part with any so gladly. I assert these things openly, which thou, O passenger, didst privily suspect, and, in wisdom, kept to thyself. If thou encounterest any one who still doubts, intreat him not to give credit to abused men, not to corrupt flatterers; but rather to me, who speak nothing but truth, and that out of a conscientious sincerity. And I would have all men persuaded, that the least justice is more acceptable to God, than the greatest power; that a name is to be esteemed, not for being far and wide diffused, but for being good; that to trouble and unsettle many things is not to do much, but, being unsettled, to compose them, more; to keep them from being unsettled, most of all. Prosperous wickednesses are, by the multitude, acounted for virtues; but do thou, on the contrary, think nothing more wretched, than such thriving impieties. This egregious artisan of cheats, Richlieu, deceived many for a while, and himself haply to eternity. Who, alas, shall reduce to order that infinity of things which he hath confused? Who deemed of peace, because it suited not with his turbulent brain, that it was disagreeable even to his fortune. From whence, sprang those many evils, which, for these last fifteen years, have so oppressed the Christian world. Pray, that God would not eternally avenge it upon the author; who needed much mercy, and many of God's compassions, amidst his many and great crimes. Do thou, O Christian, seriously perpend, what a nothing that is, which is subject to a momentary vanish: None of those, whom thou seest clad in purple, are therefore happy, no more than they, whose part in a comedy allows them a robe and scepter; who having buskined, and, on tiptoes, strutted it before the staring spectators, as soon as they come to their exit, are un-pantoffled, and return to their own stature.' Furthermore, see how small an ash-heap he now is, who once was so great a fire; how fetid a stream he now sends forth, who lately darted a splendor so coruscant, that every one's eyes were thereby dazzled, The Duchess of Eguillon. + Seneca. 1 I wish he prove not a firebrand to himself, in another world, who was so to Europe in this. Poor Europe now hopes for peace, the fewel of her wars being extinct. I should intreat thee, O passenger, to pray for peace to this so mortal an enemy even of his own peace; but that I fear thou wouldst but trouble him, in wishing a thing to him, which he so greatly hated. Yet pray notwithstanding, in that thou art commanded to love thy enemies; if the peace, thou prayest for, reach not him, it will return unto thyself: Such was the commandment of our Saviour; in whom I wish thee peace whilst thou livest, that thou mayest sweetly rest in him when thou diest. In the mean time, farewel. THE POWER OF THE LAWS OF A KINGDOM Leyden, printed by William Christienne, 1643. Quarto, containing eight pages. A Kingdom is above a tyrant, or a King, when he breaks the laws. I must here wonder, with Buchanan, That law which concerns the Kings themselves, what is it, and by whom enacted, neither can the lawyers themselves resolve; the Roman Kings never had that power, from them there was an appeal to the people. Seneca, epist. 19. 'Scribit se ex Cicerone de repub. Libris didicisse, provocationem ad We will examine what the French populum & etiam á regibus fuisse.' story can afford us, since that government is so much affected; I conceive it is Lex Talionis, to be judged by their examples, which hath been but of late times within this one-hundred, two-hundred, or threehundred, years; for, since these times, I am persuaded their parliaments are so far short of their ancient authority, that they are not equal with those liberties they have had, by reason of the incroachment of their Kings; for, by the French story, it will easily appear, that they are inferior unto their parliaments. John de Rubra, in those times, 1371, a famous lawyer, Sub finem tractatus, scribit his verbis, Si alicui regi superiorem non recognoscendi dandus esset coadjutor, illis adsumtio & institutio, pertinent ad tres status, regni quod superiorem non habet, ut est regnum Francia. Did not the nobility rise against Lewis the Eleventh of France, for the publick 6 good, that they might demonstrate perforce unto the King the miserable estate of the commonwealth? The sum of their request was, that the three estates might meet; and, when they did meet, there were chosen twelve out of every state by the parliament, so that there were thirtysix chosen in all to reform the grievances of that kingdom; and the King promised his faith, that he would ratify whatsoever those thirtysix should present to him; but Lewis the Eleventh broke his faith, which was the cause of the war that continued thirteen years afterwards; and so the perjury of the King, with his own infamy, and the destruction of the people, was expiated. The historians, that this history are gathered out of, are Philip de Com. Lib. cap. ii. N. Gillius, Lib. fol. 152. Guagninus in vita ejusdem Ludov. Monstrolettus Oliverius Lamarcius Belga. Hist, cap. 35. I must tell you, this King was neither weak in body or mind, for he was about forty, and, for his natural parts, surpassed all the Kings of France. To make the controversy more plain, 'There was a difference between this Lewis and Charles his brother, in 1468, upon which the parliament did decree the King should give some Duchy which did not belong to the crown; besides, they did decree that the King should pay him yearly, out of his own treasure, a great sum of money.' Britan. Amor commemorat. Lib.iv.fol. 200. Gasco de Beirna, in 1275, was besieged by Edward King of England; Gasco appeals to the parliament, and Edward would not detract it, but did commit it to his officers, lest he should, if he had detracted it, make the French King, to whom he had lately dome homage for some land he held there, a party against him; but that which makes this case most perspicuous, is that of Edward the Third, and Philip of France, in 1328: The contention arising betwixt them two for the kingdom of France, they both of them submitted to the censure of the parliament of that kingdom; the parliament judged the kingdom to Philip, neither did King Edward detract that judgment, he paying of him homage for Aquitain a few years after. Thomas Walsingham. In this all the French historians agree as well as England. Polydor. Virgil. Lib. xix. Thomas Walsingham sub Edwardo tertio. But, of all the institutions of countries, there is none so memorable as that of the Spaniards, who, when they create Kings in the council of Arragon, and that it may be the better remembered, they present a man upon whom they place this inscription, Jus Arragonicum, whom they do publickly decree to be greater and more powerful than the King; when that is done, they speak to their King, being created upon certain laws and conditions, in these words, which we will produce, because they will shew a notable and singular stoutness of that nation, in curbing their Kings, Nos que valemos tanto come vos y podemos mas que vos elegimos Rei, con est as y estas conditiones, intra vos y nos un que mandamas que vos; 'We that are as great as you are, and are of more power than you, have chosen you our King, upon these and these conditions, betwixt you and us, there is one that is of more power than you.' The examples are infinite that the French have made of their Kings, and their Kings children, so that I will instance no more than I have done; for these testimonies are the more to be noted and observed, because they do clearly demonstrate, that the chief right and arbitrement hath |
