the first evidence that ever I gave against a traitor. A strange thing, bloody opinions, bloody doctrines, bloody examples, and yet the government scarce sprinkled with the blood of any offenders of this nature. This clemency of his Majesty, as it is to be magnified, so it may well show them the proceeding with this offender at this time is as it were upon a case excepted out of the general course of his Majesty's mercy.

As for the person and condition of this man, we see by miserable examples that these wretches that are but as the scum of the earth have been able to stir earthquakes by murthering of Princes, witness Ravaillac and his fellows, and we know that in infection a rascal may bring in a plague into a city as well as a greater man.

Now for the treason itself and the fact thereof, I said in the beginning that this treason in the nature of it was old. It is not of the treasons whereof it may be said ab initio non fuit ita, from the beginning it was not so. You are indicted, Owen, not upon a statute made against the Pope's supremacy, or other matters that have reference to religion: but merely upon that law which was born with the kingdom, and was law even in superstitious times, when the Pope was received. Then and ever the compassing and imagining of the King's death was treason, and the statute of 25 Ed. III. is but declaratory of the Common Law.

To search therefore this fact of treason, though indeed it have scarcely any bottom, but is as bottomless, I will observe to the Court and hearers two things.

1. The one that of all high treasons the conspiring and compassing of the King's death is the greatest.

2. That of all other compassing or conspiring the King's

death, this case whereinto Owen is fallen is the greatest. For the former, all men know and perceive that against hostile invasions and the adherence of subjects to the King's enemies, kings can arm and prepare. Rebellions, why they must go over the bodies of many good subjects before they can hurt the sole of the King's foot: but conspiracies against the persons of Kings are like thunderbolts that strike upon the sudden, not to be avoided. Major metus a singulis, saith he, quam ab universis. There is no preparation against them, and that preparation that is is a most miserable one,-namely a perpetual guard

and custody. It maketh the fortune of a King like one of the ancient torments which the heathen described to be in Hell: A man sitting richly robed at table, delicately served, solemnly attended, and a sword over his head hanging by a small thread. Therefore this treason the statute of 25 E. 3. placeth first, before adhering to the King's enemies, or levying war against the King, as the capital of capitals. They that have written of the privileges of ambassadors and of the amplitude of safe-conducts, have ever defined that if an ambassador or a man that cometh in upon the highest safe-conducts, do practise matter of sedition in a state, yet by the law of nations he ought to be remanded; but if he conspire against the life of a prince he may be justiced, quia odium est omni privilegio majus. Nay even amongst enemies and in the most deadly wars, yet nevertheless conspiracy and assassinate of princes hath been accounted villainous and execrable.

The manners of conspiring and compassing of the King's death are many. But the sowing of this seed that it is lawful, that it is but the execution of Justice, that it is the obeying of the decree of the Church, that it is meritorious for any son of Adam whatsoever to kill the King, this surmounteth all the rest and that for three respects.

First because it is grounded upon a motive of religion, which is a trumpet that inflameth the heart and powers of a man (above all things) to daring and resolution. And therefore Cardinal Peron subtilly under colour of a caution doth intimate a secret threat unto all Kings that will not submit themselves unto the Pope of Rome, signifying to them that it is in vain for them to think it is any fear of death or earthly tortures can warrant their safety; for that a votary that hath but an apprehension, though false and erroneous, of the pains of Hell in case he should break his vow when he hath vowed their death, doth but despise and scorn the executioner or tormentor here on earth, and thinks only what he shall do and not what he shall suffer. So here is the case of Princes, that fear of law and punishment, which be the ordinance of God as a fence about their thrones, is thrown down and trampled under foot.

Secondly, compare this with a particular conspiracy, and you shall see how much it goes beyond it. When a particular conspiracy is intended or plotted against the King by some one or some few conspirators, it meets with infinite obstacles or impedi

ments. Commonly he that hath a heart to devise it hath not the heart to execute it; and he that undertakes it sometimes fails in courage; sometimes he fails in opportunity; sometimes he is touched with remorse. But to publish and maintain that it may be lawful for any man to kill the King, this is (I tell you) like the Devil called Legion, for it doth at once enter and search into the hearts of all that are any ways prepared or of any predisposition to be traitors; so that whatsoever fails in any one is supplied in many; if one man faint another will dare, if one man hath not the opportunity another hath, if one man relent another will be desperate.

Thirdly, particular conspiracies have their periods, and if they be not taken in their time they take vent and vanish; but this is a perpetuity of conspiracies; it includes in it springing conspiracies from time to time; so that I conclude the infusion of this opinion is of all high treasons the highest. And so much concerning the nature of the fact.

For the third point, which is the doctrine that upon an excommunication of the Pope with a sentence of deposing, that Kings may be slaughtered, and that it is justice and no murther, and that their subjects are absolved of their allegiance, and their realms exposed to spoil and prey: I said before I would not speak of it as to argue the subtlety of a question: it is rather to be spoken to by way of accusation of the opinion as impious, than by way of dispute as of a thing doubtful. Nay (I speak it in the presence of God) I think it deserveth rather some holy league amongst all Christian Princes of either religion, Papists and Protestants, for the extirping and razing of this opinion and the authors thereof from the face of the earth, as the common enemies of mankind, than the stile of pen or speech. Therefore in this kind I will speak to it a few words and not otherwise: and I protest if I were a Papist (as I hope I shall sooner go to my grave than to that Church) I think I should speak as much. Nay I should speak it with more indignation and feeling for this horrible opinion is our advantage, and it is their reproach, and will in the end be their ruin.

This monster of opinion is to be accused of three most evident and most miserable effects.

First, of the slander it bringeth to the Christian faith, which

is plantation of irreligion no better than a secret atheism.

The second is the subversion it produceth into all policy and
government.

And the third is, the great calamity it brings in all countries
where the Protestant religion is established upon the
Papists themselves; whereof the more moderate sort (as
men misled) are to be pitied.

For the first, if a man do visit the foul and polluted opinions customs or practices of heathenism, Mahometanism, and heresy, he shall find they come nothing near this-they fall much short of it. So as it is as the Apostle speaketh of the

if

,

a thing not seen amongst the heathen. Take the examples of most damnable persons amongst the heathen, the proscriptions you will in Rome of Sylla and afterwards of the Triumvirs, what were they? They were but a handful of persons misaffected to that present state, that were exposed to every man's sword. But what is that to the proscribing of a King, and all that shall take his part, whole tribes and nations of people? Yea but what was the reward of a soldier that should kill one of the proscribed? Some small sum of money. But what is the reward now of one that shall kill a King? No less than the kingdom of Heaven. So that the endless reward of Christ's blessed passion is prostituted unto those the instruments of the passion of bloody prelates.

The Mahometans make it a part of their religion to propagate their sect by the sword; but yet still by honourable wars, never by villanous and secret murders. Nay, I find that the Saracen prince, of whose country the name of the Assassins, which is now familiar in the Civil Law, is derived, which had divers votaries at Court, which he sent and employed to the killing of divers princes in the Estate; by one of whom Amurath the first was slain, and Edward the first of England was wounded, was put down and rooted out by common consent of the Mahometan princes.

The Anabaptists, it is true, come nearest. For they profess the pulling down of magistrates, and the monarchy of them that are inspired; and they can chaunt the Psalm To bind their kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron. This is the glory of that saint, a very express image of the Pope's authority that he claimeth it. Multum æquum est (saith Egidius Bella

1 Blank left in MS.

2 So in MS.

Mora) et reipublicæ1 valde expediens ut sit aliquis supremus monarcha, qui Regum excessus possit corrigere et de ipsis justitiam ministrare. It is great reason and very expedient for the Commonwealth that there be a supreme monarch to correct Kings and do justice upon them. Infinite other are there of like passages of common stuff; but it is true, here is the difference between the Anabaptists and the Consistory of Rome, that the one is a furious and fanatical folly and the other is a sad and meditated tyranny. The one imagines mischief as a vain thing, and the other imagines mischief as a law.

As for the defence which the more moderate sort of them do make, that the Pope hath this power in ordine ad spirituale,2 it doth but aggravate the impiety and turneth it from a cruelty towards man to a blasphemy towards God; for evil is never in order towards good. So that it is plainly to make God the author of evil, and to say with those that St. Paul speaketh of, Let us do evil that good may come thereof, of whom the Apostle says excellently That their damnation is just.

Here the fair copy ends abruptly in the middle of the page. If we could have seen the conclusion, we could have judged better what the intention of the proceeding was. But I fancy that in this case also, as in those of Talbot and Peacham and St. John, the object of the Government was to establish and make known the law with regard to such offences-to make it known by public and formal trial that the promulgation of such doctrines was an offence by law punishable-not to carry it to any extremity against the particular offenders. The result of the trial we learn from Chamberlain; who writes to Carleton on the 20th of May 1615:

This term draws to a conclusion, and hitherto hath brought forth little novelty, only young Owen that I wrote of was arraigned at the King's Bench on Wednesday, and condemned, for divers most vile and traitorous speeches, confessed and subscribed with his own hand; as among others that it was as lawful for any man to kill a King excommunicated as for the hangman to execute a condemned person. He could say little for himself, or in maintenance of his desperate positions, but only that he meant it not by

In MS. "(sayeth Egidius) Bella mora et reip.," etc. I do not find the name of this writer in any of the common bibliographical dictionaries, nor in the Catalogue of the British Museum Library. But among the Selden MSS. at Lincoln's Inn (XIII. (XII.) 27) there is a list of the authors quoted in the Tractatus Pacis Universi, a work published in Venice in 1584, which contains among the rest, "Egidius Bellamera. Beneficiorum Permutatio T. 15. P. 1. fol. 190."

2 The MS. has in ordine spirituali.