Page:Eikonoklastes - in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon basilike - Milton (1649).djvu/23

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Εικονοκλάστης
3

feirce Edict, the people, forbidd'n to complaine, as well as forc'd to suffer, began from thenceforth to despaire of Parlaments. Whereupon such illegal actions, and especially to get vast summs of Money, were put in practice by the King and his new Officers, as Monopolies, compulsive Knighthoods, Cote, Conduct, and Ship-mony, the seizing not of one Naboths Vineyard, but of whole Inheritances under the pretence of Forrest, or Crown-Lands, corruption and Bribery compounded for, with impunities granted for the future, as gave evident proof that the King never meant, nor could it stand with the reason of his affaires, ever to recall Parlaments; having brought by these irregular courses the peoples interest, and his own to so direct an opposition, that he might foresee plainly, if nothing but a Parlament could save the people, it must necessarily bee his undoing.

Till eight or nine years after, proceeding with a high hand in these enormities, and having the second time levied an injurious Warr against his native Countrie Scotland, and finding all those other shifts of raising Mony, which bore out his first expedition, now to faile him, not of his own choise and inclination, as any Child may see, but urg'd by strong necessities, and the very pangs of State, which his owne violent proceedings had brought him to, he calls a Parlament; first in Ireland, which onely was to give him four Subsidies, and so to expire; then in England, where his first demand was but twelve Subsidies, to maintaine a Scotch Warr, condemn'd and abomi-