A HAPPY DELIVERANCE, OR, A Wonderfull Preſervation of foure Worthy and Honourable Peeres of this Kingdome, and ſome others.
Who ſhould have beene poyſoyned at a Supper in St. Martins Lane neere Charing-Croſſe, on Tueſday, the 11. of Ian. 1641.
Viz.
Whereunto is annexed five Articles preferred by the COMMONS in PARLIAMENT againſt Mr. Herbert the Kings Atturney Generall.
London, Printed for John Thomas, 1641.
THe daily and horrible Plots and Enterpriſes of the Romiſh Faction practized againſt this Iſland of Brittaine, and the teſt of his Majeſties Dominions, are not vnknowne unto us all, and the bloody practiſes and miſchiefes invented and plotted by them, have much diſquieted the peace of this Kingdome, and diſtracted the content of King and Subject, had they not beene growne moſt impudent in their attempts, and audaciouſly reſolute to performe their bloody intentions, The many Diſcoveries of their Helliſh practizes and inventions, (with which it hath pleaſed God to bleſſe this Nation) might deterre and affright them from any new proſecution, But they are growne now moſt deſperate, and their corrupt nature cannot forbeare to Act, what is familiar and common to their Religion, which they ſeeke to propogate by the effuſion of blood, for why ſhould they doubt to put that in execution, which is commended and allowed by their holy Father, in whom they put their confidence, and from whom they expect more then Abſolution from their ſinnes, a bleſſing for their pious undertakings, villany cannot want inſtruments to put it in execution, and wickedneſſe is ſeldome ſtifled in the infancy, by the deficiency or ſcarcity of Nurſes to mature it, and bring it into action, they have laboured often by ſtrong hand and power to ſubvert and captivate this Kingdome, but the hand of Heaven hath given us the upper hand of them, and turned all their plots to their owne confuſion, now of late they haue planted their malice in divers places of this Realme by private agents, endeavouring to effect that by pollicie, which they could not attaine and reach too by their Power, amongſt which J ſhall relate one of a moſt dangerous conſequence, but the Lord that protected them, brought this wicked and horrid reſolution to light.
The Earle of Leiceſter having invited foure Honorable Lords and Peeres of this Kingdome, with ſome other great perſonages, to a Supper, which was performed at his houſe in St. Martins Lane neere the Strand on Tueſday Ian. 11. 1641.
And being all ſet at Supper, there came in a Helliſh and bloody minded fellow, a French-man, (and is conceived) backed unto that wicked intention by ſome of the Popiſh Faction, which may well be conjectured by the Sequell which followeth.
This French-man being come into place where theſe Noble Peeres did ſup that night, he privately whiſpered with the Cooke of the Earle of Leiceſter, who alſo was a French-man, and could not ſpeake a word of Engliſh, and told him in his owne Language, that if he would vndertake to poyſon the ſecond courſe that was to be ſet before theſe worthy and Honourable perſonages, he would for his reward and ſecrecy therein, give him 3000 l. in ready Gold; The Cooke perceiving this his wicked and bloody intentions, told him that if it might gaine him 1000 worlds, he would not attempt an Act ſo wicked, and withall told him that his Trecherous deſigns he would immediately diſcover, the which the French-man perceiving (when he ſaw his opportunity) ſtole out of doores, for no man there preſent could underſtand French, And this French Cooke vnderſtanding no Engliſh, whereby to diſcover this wicked advice, of his Countryman, was the reaſon why he did eſcape, who if he had beene as avaricious of lucre as the other of bloud, they had diſpatched out of this world theſe Noble Pillars of our Realme, this was not diſcovered till after Supper, the Cooke meeting one of the Earle of Leiceſters Chaplaines which underſtood French, who told him the manner and forme of it as is before related, yet was this French Cooke apprehended and ſent for to be examined before the Lords in Parliament, and as yet not acquitted.
Let every chriſtian reader judge what Diabolicall, and unparallel'd intentions are continually practized by the Papiſts in England, againſt the Pillars of our Church and Commonwealth.
WHether he contrived, framed, or adviſed the Articles exhibited in the Houſe of Lords, againſt the Lord Kimbolton, Mr. Hollis, Sir Arthur Haſlerig, Mr. Pym, Mr. Hampden, and Mr. Stroud or whether he knew or had heard who did contrive, frame or adviſe the ſame. To which he anſwered, That he did none of thoſe three, and if he was proved ſo to doe, he•ould be contented to die for it.
Whether he know the truth of thoſe Articles; To which he Anſwered, That he knew nothing but what was ſaid to him by his Maſter the King.
Whether he will make them good when he ſhall be called thereto, To which he Anſwered, he was no way able to make them good farther then his ſaid Maſter ſhould enable him.
From whom be had received them, or by whoſe advice he did exhibit them, To which he Anſwered, That from his Maſters hands he received them, and by his command did exhibit them.
What proofe and teſtimony he had to maintaine thoſe Articles, To which he Anſwered, That he received the Command from his Maſter, and had no other proofe or teſtimony but ſuch as his Maſter ſhould enable him with. And being preſſed to deale cleerely, what teſtimony that was, He ſaid he was of his Majeſties Councell, and therefore deſired further time to conſider what anſwer to make.
Upon all which it was reſolved upon the Queſtion, that the exhibiting of thoſe Articles in the Lords Houſe againſt Members of the Commons Houſe, was illegall and a high crime. It was likewiſe ordered, that a Meſſage ſhould be ſent to the Lords, to deſire them to joyne with the Houſe of Commons, to move the King, that by Thurſday next his Majeſty will be pleaſed to appoint ſuch as have given information againſt the foreſaid Members, may bring in their charge, or elſe they to be freed by ſuch a way as the Parliament ſhall thinke fit.
An Order was entred that in regard there was a high breach of the Priviledges of Parliament by Mr. Herbert Mr. Attorney in exhibiting the Articles aforeſaid, in the ſealing up their papers and Trunkes, in the demand of the foreſaid Members in the Commons Houſe, and in his Majeſties comming in that manner to the Commons Houſe, that a Meſſage be ſent to the Lords to make a Committee of Lords to meet with a Committee of the Commons Houſe, to conſider how and in what manner reparation may be made for the breach of Priviledges.
Then the Black Rod came to call the Speaker and the Commons Houſe into the Lords Houſe, where the King by Commiſſion paſſed the two Acts, 1. For preſſing of Marriners for the ſhips. 2. For the reliefe of the Captives taken by the Pyrats of Argiere.
(EEBO-TCP ; phase 2, no. A87074)
Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 156362)
Images scanned from microfilm: (Thomason Tracts ; 23:E132[16]-[17])
Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.
EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO.
EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org).
The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source.
Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data.
Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so.
Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor.
The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines.
Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements).
Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site.
This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. Searching, reading, printing, or downloading EEBO-TCP texts is reserved for the authorized users of these project partner institutions. Permission must be granted for subsequent distribution, in print or electronically, of this EEBO-TCP Phase II text, in whole or in part.