Page:Eikonoklastes - in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon basilike - Milton (1649).djvu/22

. No man but may remember it was thir continuall exercise to dispute and preach against them; and in thir common discours nothing was more frequent, then that they hoped the King should now have no need of Parlaments any more. And this was but the copy which his Parasites had industriously tak'n from his own words and actions, who never call'd a Parlament but to supply his necessities; and having supply'd those, as suddenly and ignominiously dissolv'd it, without redressing any one greevance of the people. Somtimes choosing rather to miss of his Subsidies, or to raise them by illegal courses, then that the people should not still miss of thir hopes to be reliev'd by Parlaments.

The first he broke off at his comming to the Crown; for no other cause then to protect the Duke of Buckingham against them who had accus'd him, besides other hainous crimes, of no less then poysoning the deceased King his Father; concerning which matter the Declaration of No more addresses hath sufficiently inform'd us. And still the latter breaking was with more affront and indignity put upon the House and her worthiest Members, then the former: Insomuch that in the fifth year of his Raign, in a Proclamation he seems offended at the very rumor of a Parlament divulg'd among the people: as if he had tak'n it for a kind of slander, that men should think him that way exorable, much less inclin'd: and forbidds it as a presumption to prescribe him any time for Parlaments, that is to say, either by perswasion or Petition, or so much as the reporting of such a rumor; for other manner of prescribing was at that time not suspected. By which