Page:Behemoth 1889.djvu/103

 A third, that they cherished Arminians, Papists, and libertines (by which they meant the common Protestants, which meddle not with disputes), to the end they might compose a body fit to act according to their counsels and resolutions.

A fourth, that they endeavoured to put the King upon other courses of raising money, than by the ordinary way of Parliaments.

Judge whether these may be properly called accusations, or not rather spiteful reproaches of the King’s government.

B. Methinks this last was a very great fault. For what good could there be in putting the King upon any odd course of getting money, when the Parliament was willing to supply him, as far as to the security of the kingdom, or to the honour of the King, should be necessary?

A. But I told you before, they would give him none, but with a condition he should cut off the heads of whom they pleased, how faithfully soever they had served him. And if he would have sacrificed all his friends to their ambition, yet they would have found other excuses for denying him subsidies; for they were resolved to take from him the sovereign power to themselves; which they could never do without taking great care that he should have no money at all. In the next place, they put into the remonstrance, as faults of them whose counsel the King followed, all those things which since the beginning of the King’s reign were by them misliked, whether faults or not, and whereof they were not able to judge for want of knowledge of the causes and motives that induced the King to do them, and were known only to the King himself, and such of his privy-council as he revealed them to.

B. But what were those particular pretended faults?

A. 1. The dissolution of his first Parliament at Oxford. 2. The dissolution of his second Parliament, being in the second year of his reign. 3. The dissolution of his Parliament in the fourth year of his reign. 4. The fruitless expedition against Calais. 5. The peace made with Spain,