Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/79

Rh joining with a factious party from Scotland, who had the same fancies in religion, forced him to pass an act for cutting off the head of his best and chief minister; and at the same time, compelled him, by tumults and threatnings of a packed rabble, poisoned with the same doctrines, to pass another law, by which it should not be in his power to dissolve that parliament, without their own consent. Thus, by the greatest weakness and infatuation that ever possessed any man's spirit, this prince did in effect sign his own destruction. For the house of commons, having the reins in their own hands, drove on furiously; sent him every day some unreasonable demand; and when he refused to grant it, made use of their own power, and declared that an ordinance of both houses, without the king's consent, should be obeyed as a law, contrary to all reason and equity, as well as to the fundamental constitution of the kingdom.

About this time the rebellion in Ireland broke out, wherein his parliament refused to assist him; nor would accept his offer to come hither in person to subdue those rebels. These, and a thousand other barbarities, forced the king to summon his loyal subjects to his standard in his own defence. Meanwhile the English parliament, instead of helping the poor protestants here, seized on the very army that his majesty was sending over for our relief, and turned them against their own sovereign. The rebellion in England continued for four or five years: at last the king was forced to fly in disguise to the Scots, who sold him to the rebels. And these puritans had the impudent cruelty to try his sacred person in a mock court of justice, and cut off his head; which he might Rh