daily do, in factious clubs, to vilify the government in your discourses, and to libel it in all your writings? Who made you judges in Israel? or how is it consistent with your zeal of the publick welfare, to promote sedition? Does your definition of loyal, which is to serve the King according to the laws, allow you the licence of traducing the executive power, with which you own he is invested? You complain that his Majesty has lost the love and confidence of his people; and by your very urging it, you endeavour what in you lies to make him lose them. All good subjects abhor the thought of arbitrary power, whether it be in one or many; if you were the patriots you would seem, you would not at this rate incense the multitude to assume it; for no sober man can fear it, either from the King's disposition or his practice, or even where you would odiously lay it, from his ministers. Give us leave to enjoy the government and the benefit of laws under which we were born, and which we desire to transmit to our posterity. You are not the trustees of the publick liberty; and if you have not right to petition in a crowd, much less have you to intermeddle in the management of affairs, or to arraign what you do not like; which in effect is every thing that is done by the King and Council. Can you imagine that any reasonable man will believe you respect the person of his majesty, when it is apparent that your seditious pamphlets are stuffed with particular reflections on him? If you have

8

the confidence to deny this, it is easy to be evinced from a thousand passages, which I only forbear to quote, because I desire they should die and be forgotten. I have perused many of your papers; and to shew you that I have, the third part of your NO PROTESTANT PLOT is much of it stolen from your dead author's pamphlet, called the GROWTH OF POPERY; as manifestly as Milton's Defence of the English People is from Buchanan, de jure regni apud Scotos; or your first Covenant, and new Association, from the holy league of the French Guisards. Any one who reads Davila may trace your practices all along. There were the same pretences for reformation and loyalty, the same aspersions of the King, and the same grounds of a rebellion. I know not whether you will take the historian's word, who says it was reported that Poltrot, a Hugonot, murdered Francis, Duke of Guise, by the instigations of Theodore Beza; or that it was a Hugonot minister, otherwise called a presbyterian, (for our church abhors so devilish a tenet,) who first writ a treatise of the lawfulness of deposing and murdering Kings of a different persuasion in religion: but I am able to prove from the doctrine of Calvin, and principles of

7 An Account of the Growth of Popery and arbitrary Government in England, &c. was written by Andrew Marvel, and published in folio, in 1678.

8 The famous solemn League and Covenant, devised by the Scotch in 1638, and entered into by the parliament of England in 1643. Of the new Association an account has been already given in p. 81.

Buchanan, that they set the people above the magistrate; which if I mistake not, is your own fundamental, and which carries your loyalty no farther than your liking. When a vote of the House of Commons goes on your side, you are as ready to observe it, as if it were passed into a law; but when you are pinched with any former and yet unrepealed act of parliament, you declare that in some cases you will not be obliged by it. The passage is in the same third part of the No PROTESTANT PLOT, and is too plain to be denied. The late copy of your intended Association you neither wholly justify nor condemn; but as the papists, when they are unopposed, fly out into all the pageantries of worship, but in times of war, when they are hard pressed by arguments, lie close entrenched behind the Council of Trent,so now, when your affairs are in a low condition, you dare not pretend that to be a legal combination; but whensoever you are afloat, I doubt not but it will be maintained and justified to purpose. For indeed there is nothing to defend it, but the sword; it is the proper time to say any thing, when men have all things in their power.

In the mean time you would fain be nibbling at a parallel betwixt this Association, and that in the time of Queen Elizabeth.' But there is this

'An Association, subscribed by all the loyalists in England, in 1584, to defend Queen Elizabeth with their lives and fortunes, against all the attempts of her enemies. Vid. Camden. ELIZ. p. 418. edit. Hearne.

small difference betwixt them,-that the ends of the one are directly opposite to the other; one with the Queen's approbation and conjunction, as head of it; the other without either the consent or knowledge of the King, against whose authority it is manifestly designed. Therefore you do well to have recourse to your last evasion,—that it was contrived by your enemies, and shuffled into the papers that were seized, which yet you see the nation is not so easy to believe, as your own jury; but the matter is not difficult, to find twelve men in Newgate, who would acquit a malefactor.

I have one only favour to desire of you at parting, that when you think of answering this poem, you would employ the same pens against it, who have combated with so much success against ABSALOM AND ACHITO PHEL; for then you may

5 Several Answers to ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL were published in 1681 and 1682. One of these (a single half-sheet,) which appeared so early as the 10th of Dec. 1681, is entitled-" Towser the Second, a Bulldog, or a short Reply to ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL." Four days afterwards appeared-" Poetical Reflections on a late Poem entitled ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL, by a Person of Honour;" who is supposed to have been George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; and if he was indeed the author of this piece, it would furnish a strong presumption that his associates wrote much more of THE REHEARSAL than his Grace; for it is miserable stuff. On the 20th of the same month another Answer appeared, (a half-sheet,) under the title of " A Panegyrick on the Author of ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL,

assure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply. Rail at me abundantly, and not to break a custom, do it without wit; by this method you will gain a considerable point, which is wholly to wave the answer of my arguments. Never own the bottom of your principles, for fear they should be treason. Fall severely on the miscarriages of government; for if scandal be not allowed, you are no freeborn subjects. If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock and welcome : let your verses run upon

occasioned by his former writing of an Elegy in praise of Oliver Cromwell (lately reprinted.)" All these, however, were only the light infantry of his adversaries : in about three months afterwards the heavy horse began to charge; for early in April, Elkanah Settle published

ABSALOM SENIOR, or ACHITOPHEL transprosed, a Poem," in folio. He is also said to have been the author of AZARIAH AND HUSHAI, another poem, on the same subject. To all these must be added the wellknown poem, entitled-DRYDEN'S SATIRE TO HIS MUSE, and THE WHIP AND KEY. See n. 6.

THE

TO THE MEDAL various Answers also were published. One, entitled" THE MUSHROOM, or a Satyr against libelling Tories and prelatical Tantivies, &c." was written, according to a manuscript note in Mr. Bindley's copy, by Edmund Hickeringill. In April appeared-" THE ROYAL MEDAL VINDICATED, a Poem," in folio. MEDAL was also attacked in a poem, entitled-THE MEDAL REVERSED (printed in 4to.) a very dull performance, ascribed to Settle. In the same form appeared THE MEDAL OF JOHN BAYES, a very bitter satire, the preface to which contains some anecdotes of Dryden, Of this piece I know not the author.