ting slip, and you lose your hold, the brute will turn and rend you.

PROGRESS OF REBELLION.

1.

THERE is little hope of equity where rebel

lion reigns:

2:

When a mutinous people begin to talk of their griefs, never bees make such a confused humming. The town-dwellers demand putting down of imposts: the country fellows require laying out of commons. All All cry to have new counsellors; but when they should think of any new, they like them they have, as well as any other they can remember; but especially, they would have the treasury so looked to as that it should never need to take any more subsidies. At length, they fall to direct contraries: for the artisans, they

will have corn and wine set at a lower price, and bound to be kept so; the ploughmen, vinedressers, and the farmers, won't have that. The countrymen demand that every man may be free in the chief towns; that cannot the burgesses like. The peasants will have all gentlemen destroyed; the citizens (especially such as cooks, tailors, and others, who live most by gentlemen), would but have them reformed. And of each side are like divisions, one neighbourhood beginning to find fault. with another. But no confusion is greater than that of particular men's likings and dislikings; one dispraising such a one, whom another praises, and demanding such a one to be punished, whom another would have exalted. The finer sort of burgesses, as mérchants, 'prentices, and cloth-workers, because of their riches, disdaining they of baser occupations; and they, because of their number, as much despising them :-All of them scorning the countrymen's ignorance; and the countrymen suspecting as much their cunning.

3.

In that state of uproar, public affairs were mingled with private grudges; neither was any man thought of wit that did not pretend some cause of mislike. Railing was counted the fruit of freedom; and saying nothing had its uttermost in ignorance. At length, the king's sacred person fell to be their tabletalk; a proud word swelling in their stomachs, and disdainful reproaches against so great a greatness having put on the shew of greatness in their little minds, till at last the very unbridled use of words having increased fire in their minds (which, God wot! thought their knowledge notable, because they had at all no knowledge to condemn their own want of knowledge), they ascended (Oh, never to be forgotten presumption !) to a direct dislike of his living amongst them; whereupon, it were tedious to remember their far-fetched constructions; but the sum was, he disdained them! and where the pomps of his state, if their arms maintained him not? Who would call him a prince, if he had not a people? When certain of them of wretched estates,

and worse minds, (whose fortunes change could not impair), said, that the government ought to be looked into; how great treasures had been spent; why none but great men and gentlemen could be admitted into counsel; that the commons, forsooth, were too plainheaded to say their opinion-but yet their blood and sweat must maintain all? "Let us," cried they, "do that which all the rest think! Let it be said, that we only are not astonished with vanities, which have their force but in our force! Lastly, to have said and heard so much, is as dangerous as to have attempted; and to attempt, we have the glorious name of liberty with us!" These words (being spoken) like a furious storm presently carried away their well-inclined brains. What some of the honester sort could do to oppose them, was no more than if with a puff of breath one should go about to make sail against a mighty wind, or with one hand stay the ruin of a ponderous wall. So general grew this madness among them, there needed no drum where each man cried; each spoke to other that spake as fast to him; and the disagreeing ag

VOL. II.,

sound of so many voices was the chief token of their unmeet agreement. But as furious rage hath, besides its wickedness, that folly, that the more it seeks to hurt, the less it considers how to be able to hurt; they never weighed how to arm themselves, but took up every thing for a weapon that fury offered to their hands. Thus armed, thus governed, forcing the unwilling and heartening the willing, adding violence to violence, and increasing rage with running, they came headlong toward the palace! No man resolved in his own heart what was the uttermost he would do when he came thither; but as mischief is of such nature that it cannot stand, but by strengthening one evil with another, and so multiply in itself till it come to the highest, and then fall with its own weight; so to their minds, once passed the bounds of obedience, more and more wickedness opened itself; so that they who first pretended to preserve their king, then to reform him, now thought that there was no safety for them but in murdering

him.