John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  But our author finds, that commendation is no more his talent, than flattery was that of Æsop’s ass; and therefore falls immediately, from pawing with his fore-feet, and grinning upon one prince, to downright braying against another.

  He says, I have not used “my patron duke much better; for I have put him under a most dismal and unfortunate character of a successor, excluded from the crown by act of state, for his religion; who fought his way to the crown, changed his religion, and died by the hand of a Roman assassinate.”

  If it please his Royal Highness to be my patron, I have reason to be proud of it; because he never yet forsook any man, whom he has had the goodness to own for his. But how have I put him under an unfortunate character? the authors of the Reflections, and our John-a-Nokes, have not laid their noddles together about this accusation. For it is their business to prove the king of Navarre to have been a most successful, magnanimous, gentle, and grateful prince; in which character they have followed 176 the stream of all historians. How then happens this jarring amongst friends, that the same man is put under such dismal circumstances on one side, and so fortunate on the other, by the writers of the same party? The answer is very plain; that they take the cause by several handles. They, who will not have the Duke resemble the king of Navarre, have magnified the character of that prince, to debase his Royal Highness; and therein done what they can to shew the disparity. Mr Hunt, who will have it to be the Duke’s character, has blackened that king as much as he is able, to shew the likeness. Now this would be ridiculous pleading at a bar, by lawyers retained for the same cause; and both sides would call each other fools, because the jury betwixt them would be confounded, and perhaps the judges too.

  But this it is to have a bad cause, which puts men of necessity upon knavery; and that knavery is commonly found out. Well, Mr Hunt has in another place confessed himself to be in passion, and that is the reason he is so grosly mistaken in opening of the cause. For, first, the king of Navarre was neither under dismal, nor unfortunate circumstances: before the end of that very sentence, our lawyer has confessed, that he fought his way to the crown; that is, he gloriously vanquished all his rebels, and happily possessed his inheritance many years after he had regained it. In the next place, he was never excluded from the crown by act of state. He changed his religion indeed, but not until he had almost weathered the storm, recovered the best part of his estate, and gained some glorious victories in pitched battles; so that his changing cannot without injustice be attributed to his fear. Monsieur Chiverny, in his Memoirs of those times, plainly tells us, that he solemnly promised to his predecessor 177 Henry III. then dying, that he would become a Romanist; and Davila, though he says not this directly, yet denies it not. By whose hands Henry IV. died, is notoriously known; but it is invidiously urged, both by Mr Hunt and the Reflectors: for we may, to our shame, remember, that a king of our own country was barbarously murdered by his subjects, who professed the same religion; though I believe, that neither Jaques Clement, nor Ravaillac, were better papists, than the independents and presbyterians were protestants; so that their argument only proves, that there are rogues of all religions: Iliacos infra muros peccatur, et extra. But Mr Hunt follows his blow again, that I have “offered a justification of an act of exclusion against a popish successor in a protestant kingdom, by remembering what was done against the king of Navarre, who was de facto excluded by an act of state.” My gentleman, I perceive, is very willing to call that an act of exclusion, and an act of state, which is only, in our language, called a bill; for Henry III. could never be gained to pass it, though it was proposed by the three estates at Blois. The Reflectors are more modest; for they profess, (though I am afraid it is somewhat against the grain,) that a vote of the House of Commons is not an act; but the times are turned upon them, and they dare speak no other language. Mr Hunt, indeed, is a bold republican, and tells you the bottom of their meaning. Yet why should it make the “courage of his Royal Highness quail, to find himself under this representation,” which; by our author’s favour, is neither dismal, nor disastrous? Henry IV. escaped this dreadful machine of the League; I say dreadful, for the three estates were at that time composed generally of Guisards, factious, hot-headed, rebellious interested 178 men. The king in possession was but his brother-in-law, and at the time publicly his enemy; for the king of Navarre was then in arms against him; and yet the sense of common justice, and the good of his people so prevailed, that he withstood the project of the states, which he also knew was levelled at himself; for had the exclusion proceeded, he had been immediately laid by, and the lieutenancy of France conferred on Guise; after which the rebel would certainly have put up his title for the crown. In the case of his Royal Highness, only one of the three estates have offered at the exclusion, and have been constantly opposed by the other two, and by his majesty. Neither is it any way probable, that the like will ever be again attempted; for the fatal consequences, as well as the illegality of that design, are seen through already by the people; so that, instead of offering a justification of an act of exclusion, I have exposed a rebellious, impious, and fruitless contrivance tending to it. If we look on the parliament of Paris, when they were in their right wits, before they were intoxicated by the League, (at least wholly) we shall find them addressing to king Henry III. in another key, concerning the king of Navarre’s succession, though he was at that time, as they called it, a relapsed heretic. And to this purpose I will quote a passage out of the journals of Henry III. so much magnified by my adversaries.

  Towards the end of September, 1585, there was published at Paris a bull of excommunication against the king of Navarre, and the prince of Condé. The parliament of Paris made their remonstrance to the king upon it, which was both grave, and worthy of the place they held, and of the authority they have in this kingdom; saying for conclusion, that “their court had found the stile of this 179 bull so full of innovation, and so distant from the modesty of ancient Popes, that they could not understand in it the voice of an Apostle’s successor; forasmuch, as they found not in their records, nor in the search of all antiquity, that the princes of France had ever been subject to the justice or jurisdiction of the Pope, and they could not take it into consideration, until first he made appear the right which he pretended in the translation of kingdoms, established and ordained by Almighty God, before the name of Pope was heard of in the world.” It is plain by this, that the parliament of Paris acknowledged an inherent right of succession in the king of Navarre, though of a contrary religion to their own. And though, after the duke of Guise’s murder at Blois, the city of Paris revolted from their obedience to their king, pretending, that he was fallen from the crown, by reason of that and other actions, with which they charged him; yet the sum of all their power to renounce him, and create the duke of Mayenne lieutenant-general, depended ultimately on the Pope’s authority; which, as you see, but three years before, they had peremptorily denied.

  The college of Sorbonne began the dance, by their determination, that the kingly right was forfeited; and, stripping him of all his dignities, they called him plain Henry de Valois: after this, says my author, “sixteen rascals (by which he means the council of that number) having administered the oath of government to the duke of Mayenne, to take in quality of lieutenant-general of the estate and crown of France, the same ridiculous dignity was confirmed to him by an imaginary parliament, the true parliament being detained prisoners, in divers of the city gaols, and two new seals were ordered to be immediately made, with this inscription, — the 180 Seal of the Kingdom of France.” I need not enlarge on this relation: it is evident from hence, that the Sorbonnists were the original, and our Schismatics in England were the copiers of rebellion; that Paris began, and London followed.

  The next lines of my author are, that “a gentleman of Paris made the duke of Mayenne’s picture to be drawn, with a crown imperial on his head;” and I have heard of an English nobleman, who has at this day a picture of old Oliver, with this motto underneath it, �
�� Utinam vixeris. All this while, this cannot be reckoned an act of state, for the deposing king Henry III., because it was an act of overt rebellion in the Parisians; neither could the holding of the three estates at Paris, afterwards, by the same duke of Mayenne, devolve any right on him, in prejudice of king Henry IV.; though those pretended states declared his title void, on the account of his religion; because those estates could neither be called nor holden, but by, and under the authority of, the lawful king. It would take more time than I have allowed for this Vindication, or I could easily trace from the French history, what misfortunes attended France, and how near it was to ruin, by the endeavours to alter the succession. For first, it was actually dismembered, the duke of Mercæur setting up a principality in the dutchy of Bretagne, independent of the crown. The duke of Mayenne had an evident design to be elected king, by the favour of the people and the Pope: the young dukes of Guise and of Nemours aspired, with the interest of the Spaniards, to be chosen, by their marriage with the Infanta Isabella. The duke of Lorraine was for cantling out some part of France, which lay next his territories; and the duke of Savoy had, before the death of Henry III., actually possessed himself of the marquisate of Saluces. But 181 above all, the Spaniards fomented these civil wars, in hopes to reduce that flourishing kingdom under their own monarchy. To as many, and as great mischiefs, should we be evidently subject, if we should madly engage ourselves in the like practices of altering the succession, which our gracious king in his royal wisdom well foresaw, and has cut up that accursed project by the roots; which will render the memory of his justice and prudence immortal and sacred to future ages, for having not only preserved our present quiet, but secured the peace of our posterity.

  It is clearly manifest, that no act of state passed, to the exclusion of either the King of Navarre, or of Henry the fourth, consider him in either of the two circumstances; but Oracle Hunt, taking this for granted, would prove à fortiori, “that if a protestant prince were actually excluded from a popish kingdom, then a popish successor is more reasonably to be excluded from a protestant kingdom; because,” says he, “a protestant prince is under no obligation to destroy his popish subjects, but a popish prince is to destroy his protestant subjects:” Upon which bare supposition, without farther proof, he calls him insufferable tyrant, and the worst of monsters.

  Now, I take the matter quite otherwise, and bind myself to maintain that there is not, nor can be any obligation, for a king to destroy his subjects of a contrary persuasion to the established religion of his country; for, quatenus subjects, of what religion soever he is infallibly bound to preserve and cherish, and not to destroy them; and this is the first duty of a lawful sovereign, as such, antecedent to any tie or consideration of his religion. Indeed, in those countries where the Inquisition is introduced, it goes harder with protestants, and the reason is 182 manifest; because the protestant religion has not gotten footing there, and severity is the means to keep it out; but to make this instance reach England, our religion must not only be changed, (which in itself is almost impossible to imagine,) but the council of Trent received, and the Inquisition admitted, which many popish countries have rejected. I forget not the cruelties, which were exercised in Queen Mary’s time against the protestants; neither do I any way excuse them; but it follows not, that every popish successor should take example by them, for every one’s conscience of the same religion is not guided by the same dictates in his government; neither does it follow, that if one be cruel, another must, especially when there is a stronger obligation, and greater interest to the contrary: for, if a popish king in England should be bound to destroy his protestant people, I would ask the question, over whom he meant to reign afterwards? And how many subjects would be left?

  In Queen Mary’s time, the protestant religion had scarcely taken root; and it is reasonable to be supposed, that she found the number of papists equalling that of the protestants, at her entrance to the kingdom; especially if we reckon into the account those who were the Trimmers of the times; I mean such, who privately were papists, though under her protestant predecessor they appeared otherwise; therefore her difficulties in persecuting her reformed subjects, were far from being so insuperable as ours now are, when the strength and number of the papists is so very inconsiderable. They, who cast in the church of England as ready to embrace popery, are either knaves enough to know they lie, or fools enough not to have considered the tenets of that church, which are diametrically 183 opposite to popery; and more so than any of the sects.

  Not to insist on the quiet and security, which protestant subjects at this day enjoy in some parts of Germany, under popish princes; where I have been assured, that mass is said, and a Lutheran sermon preached in different parts of the same church, on the same day, without disturbance on either side; nor on the privileges granted by Henry the fourth of France to his party, after he had forsaken their opinions, which they quietly possessed for a long time after his death.

  The French histories are full of examples, manifestly proving, that the fiercest of their popish princes have not thought themselves bound to destroy their protestant subjects; and the several edicts, granted under them, in favour of the reformed religion, are pregnant instances of this truth. I am not much given to quotations, but Davila lies open for every man to read. Tolerations, and free exercise of religion, granted more amply in some, more restrainedly in others, are no sign that those princes held themselves obliged in conscience to destroy men of a different persuasion. It will be said, those tolerations were gained by force of arms. In the first place, it is no great credit to the protestant religion, that the protestants in France were actually rebels; but the truth is, they were only Geneva protestants, and their opinions were far distant from those of the church of England, which teaches passive obedience to all her sons, and not to propagate religion by rebellion. But it is further to be considered, that those French kings, though papists, thought the preservation of their subjects, and the public peace, were to be considered, before the gratification of the court of Rome; and though the number of the papists exceeded that of the 184 protestants, in the proportion of three to one, though the protestants were always beaten when they fought, and though the pope pressed continually with exhortations and threatenings to extirpate Calvinism, yet kings thought it enough to continue in their own religion themselves, without forcing it upon their subjects, much less destroying them who professed another. But it will be objected, those edicts of toleration were not kept on the papists’ side: they would answer, because the protestants stretched their privileges further than was granted, and that they often relapsed into rebellion; but whether or no the protestants were in fault, I leave history to determine. It is matter of fact, that they were barbarously massacred, under the protection of the public faith; therefore, to argue fairly, either an oath from protestants is not to be taken by a popish prince; or, if taken, ought inviolably to be preserved. For, when we oblige ourselves to any one, it is not his person we so much consider, as that of the Most High God, who is called to witness this our action; and it is to Him we are to discharge our conscience. Neither is there, or can be any tie on human society, when that of an oath is no more regarded; which being an appeal to God, He is immediate judge of it; and chronicles are not silent how often He has punished perjured kings. The instance of Vladislaus King of Hungary, breaking his faith with Amurath the Turk, at the instigation of Julian the Pope’s legate, and his miserable death ensuing it, shews that even to infidels, much more to Christians, that obligation ought to be accounted sacred. And I the rather urge this, because it is 185 an argument taken almost verbatim from a papist, who accuses Catharine de Medicis for violating her word given to the protestants during her regency of France. What securities in particular we have, that our own religion and liberties would be preserved though under a popish successor, any one may inform himself at large in a book lately written by the reverend and learned doctor Hicks, called Jovian, in answer to Julian the Apostate; in which that truly Chr
istian author has satisfied all scruples which reasonable men can make, and proved that we are in no danger of losing either; and wherein also, if those assurances should all fail, (which is almost morally impossible,) the doctrine of passive obedience is unanswerably demonstrated; a doctrine delivered with so much sincerity, and resignation of spirit, that it seems evident the assertor of it is ready, if there were occasion, to seal it with his blood.

  I have done with mannerly Mr Hunt, who is only magni nominis umbra; the most malicious, and withal, the most incoherent ignorant scribbler of the whole party. I insult not over his misfortunes, though he has himself occasioned them; and though I will not take his own excuse, that he is in passion, 186 I will make a better for him, for I conclude him cracked; and if he should return to England, am charitable enough to wish his only prison might be Bedlam. This apology is truer than that he makes for me; for writing a play, as I conceive, is not entering into the Observator’s province; neither is it the Observator’s manner to confound truth with falsehood, to put out the eyes of people, and leave them without understanding. The quarrel of the party to him is, that he has undeceived the ignorant, and laid open the shameful contrivances of the new vamped Association; that though he is “on the wrong side of life,” as he calls it, yet he pleads not his age to be emeritus; that, in short, he has left the faction as bare of arguments, as Æsop’s bird of feathers; and plumed them of all those fallacies and evasions which they borrowed from jesuits and presbyterians.