Did we not bring our oaths in first,145
Before our plate, to have them burst.
And cast in litter models, for
The present use of church and war?
Did not our worthies of the House,
Before they broke the peace, break vows?150
For having freed us first from both
Th' Alleg'ance and Suprem'cy oath,[1]
Did they not next compel the nation
To take, and break the Protestation?[2]
To swear, and after to recant,[3] 155
The Solemn League and Covenant?[4]
To take th' Engagement, and disclaim it.[5]
Enforc'd by those who first did frame it?
- ↑ Though they did not in formal and express terms abrogate these oaths of allegiance and supremacy till after the king's death, yet in effect they vacated and annulled them, by administering the king's power, and substituting other oaths, protestations, and covenants.
- ↑ In the Protestation they promised to defend the true reformed religion, as expressed in the doctrine of the Church of England; which was presently afterwards disclaimed in the Covenant. Ultimately the Covenant itself was altogether renounced by the Independents.
- ↑ And to recant is but to cant again, says Sir Roger L'Estrange.
- ↑ In the Solemn League and Covenant (called a league, because it was to be a bond of amity and confederation between the kingdoms of England and Scotland; and the covenant, because it was in form a covenant with God) they swore to defend the person and authority of the king, and cause the world to behold their fidelity; and that they would not, in the least, diminish his just power and greatness. The Presbyterians, who held by the Covenant so far as it upheld their church, contrived to evade this part of it by saying they had sworn to defend the person and authority of the king in support of religion and public liberty, and not when they were incompatible with each other. But the Independents, who were at last the prevailing party, utterly renounced the Covenant. Copies of the Covenant, subscribed by the Minister and Parishioners, remain in many Parochial Registers, and in some the place for the Minister's name is blank,—he, perhaps, expecting some change, in which it might not be well for him to have signed it.
- ↑ After the death of the king a new oath, which they call the Engagement, bound every man to be true and faithful to the government then established, without a king or House of Peers.
own meaning, but as the authority shall afterwards interpret it." The swearing and unswearing, which Butler satirizes, is one of the numerous parallels between the Great Rebellion and the French Revolution, only in the latter case the oaths were taken to a far more imposing array of Constitutions. Talleyrand's oaths of this sort would have made the boldest Parliamentary swearer seem nought.
