In the days of King Charles the Second how did the Church reward their
bloody doings with lenity and mercy, except the barbarous regicides of
the pretended court of justice? Not a soul suffered for all the blood
in an unnatural war. King Charles came in all mercy and love,
cherished them, preferred them, employed them, withheld the rigour of
the law, and oftentimes, even against the advice of his Parliament,
gave them liberty of conscience; and how did they requite him with the
villanous contrivance to depose and murder him and his successor at
the Rye Plot?

King James, as if mercy was the inherent quality of the family, began
his reign with unusual favour to them. Nor could their joining with
the Duke of Monmouth against him move him to do himself justice upon
them; but that mistaken prince thought to win them by gentleness and
love, proclaimed an universal liberty to them, and rather
discountenanced the Church of England than them. How they requited him
all the world knows.

The late reign is too fresh in the memory of all the world to need a
comment; how, under pretence of joining with the Church in redressing
some grievances, they pushed things to that extremity, in conjunction
with some mistaken gentlemen, as to depose the late King, as if the
grievance of the nation could not have been redressed but by the
absolute ruin of the prince. Here is an instance of their temper,
their peace, and charity. To what height they carried themselves
during the reign of a king of their own; how they crept into all
places of trust and profit; how they insinuated into the favour of the
King, and were at first preferred to the highest places in the nation;
how they engrossed the ministry, and above all, how pitifully they