Since it hath pleased the Almighty God, out of his infinite mercy, so
to make us happy, by restoring of our native King to us, and us unto
our native liberty through him, that now the good may say, _magna
temporum felicitas ubi sentire quæ velis, et dicere licet quæ sentias_,
we cannot but esteem ourselves engaged in the highest of degrees, to
render unto him the highest thanks we can express. Although, surpris’d
with joy, we become as lost in the performance; when gladness and
admiration strikes us silent, as we look back upon the precipiece of
our late condition, and those miraculous deliverances beyond
expression. Freed from the slavery, and those desperate perils, we
dayly lived in fear of, during the tyrannical times of that detestable
usurper, Oliver Cromwell; he who had raked up such judges, as would
wrest the most innocent language into high treason, when he had the
cruel conscience to take away our lives, upon no other ground of
justice or reason, (the stones of London streets would rise to witness
it, if all the citizens were silent.) And with these judges had such
councillors, as could advise him unto worse, which will less want of
witness. For should the many auditors be silent, the press, (as God
would have it,) hath given it us in print, where one of them (and his
conscience-keeper, too,) speaks out. What shall we do with these men?
saith he; _Æger intemperans crudelem facit medicum, et immedicabile
vulmis ense recidendum_. Who these men are that should be brought to
such Scicilian vespers, the former page sets forth—those which conceit
_Utopias_, and have their day-dreams of the return of I know not what
golden age, with the old line. What usage, when such a privy councillor
had power, could he expect, who then had published this narrative? This
much so plainly shows the devil himself dislikt their doings, (so much
more bad were they than he would have them be,) severer sure than was
the devil to their Commissioners at Woodstock; for he warned them, with
dreadful noises, to drive them from their work. This councillor,
without more ado, would have all who retained conceits of allegiance to
their soveraign, to be absolutely cut off by the usurper’s sword. A sad
sentence for a loyal party, to a lawful King. But Heaven is always
just; the party is repriv’d, and do acknowledge the hand of God in it,
as is rightly apply’d, and as justly sensible of their deliverance in
that the foundation which the councillor saith was already so well
laid, is now turned up, and what he calls day-dreams are come to passe.
That old line which (as with him) there seemed, _aliquid divini_, to
the contrary is now restored. And that rock which, as he saith, the
prelates and all their adherents, nay, and their master and supporter,
too, with all his posterity, have split themselves upon, is nowhere to
be heard. And that posterity are safely arrived in their ports, and
masters of that mighty navy, their enemies so much encreased to keep
them out with. The eldest sits upon the throne, his place by birthright
and descent,
“Pacatumque regit Patriis virtutibus orbem;”
upon which throne long may he sit, and reign in peace. That by his just
government, the enemies of ours, the true Protestant Church, of that
glorious martyr, our late sovereign, and of his royal posterity, may be
either absolutely converted, or utterly confounded.
If any shall now ask thee why this narrative was not sooner published,
as neerer to the times wherein the things were acted, he hath the
reason for it in the former lines; which will the more clearly appear
unto his apprehension, if he shall perpend how much cruelty is
requisite to the maintenance of rebellion; and how great care is
necessary in the supporters, to obviate and divert the smallest things
that tend to the unblinding of the people; so that it needs will
follow, that they must have accounted this amongst the great
obstructions to their sales of his majestie’s lands, the devil not
joining with them in the security; and greater to the pulling down the
royal pallaces, when their chapmen should conceit the devil would haunt
them in their houses, for building with so ill got materials; as no
doubt but that he hath, so numerous and confident are the relations
made of the same, though scarce any so totally remarkeable as this, (if
it be not that others have been more concealed,) in regard of the
strange circumstances as long continuances, but especially the number
of persons together, to whom all things were so visibly both seen and
done, so that surely it exceeds any other; for the devils thus
manifesting themselves, it appears evidently that there are such things
as devils, to persecute the wicked in this world as in the next.
Now, if to these were added the diverse reall phantasms seen at
Whitehall in Cromwell’s times, which caused him to keep such mighty
guards in and about his bedchamber, and yet so oft to change his
lodgings; if those things done at St. James’, where the devil so joal’d
the centinels against the sides of the queen’s chappell doors, that
some of them fell sick upon it; and others, not, taking warning by it,
kild one outright, whom they buried in the place; and all other such
dreadful things, those that inhabited the royal houses have been
affrighted with.
And if to these were likewise added, a relation of all those regicides
and their abettors the devil hath entered into, as he did the
Gadarenes’ swine, with so many more of them who hath fallen mad, and
dyed in hideous forms of such distractions, that which hath been of
this within these 12 last years in England, (should all of this nature,
our chronicles do tell, with all the superstitious monks have writ, be
put together,) would make the greater volume, and of more strange
occurrents.
And now as to the penman of this narrative, know that he was a divine,
and at the time of those things acted, which are here related, the
minister and schoolmaster of Woodstock; a person learned and discreet,
not byassed with factious humours, his name Widows, who each day put in
writing what he heard from their mouthes, (and such things as they told
to have befallen them the night before,) therein keeping to their own
words; and, never thinking that what he had writ should happen to be
made publick, gave it no better dress to set it forth. And because to
do it now shall not be construed to change the story, the reader hath
it here accordingly exposed.