their trenches, which the French possess; whereupon the English were forced to retreat. At last the duke makes a vain storm upon the castle, but was beaten off, and two days after retreats, the French being now equal to him in foot, and superior in horse; when the English were entangled in their retreat, the duke having neglected to take La Prie, or build a fort upon a narrow lane or causey, to secure the retreat, the French charged the English horse in the rear and routed them, who rout the foot in the narrow passages, between the salt-pits and ditch; but, in this confusion and adversity, the bravery of the English appeared, for a few having passed the bridge, the French following, the English rallied, and faced about gallantly to charge the French, who cowardly retreated over the bridge. And of this a foreign author speaking, saith, The English were magis audaces quam fortunati, and, withal, taxeth them for want of secrecy in their counsels and conduct of so great an affair. The duke of Buckingham, upon his retreat from the isle of Rhee, promised the Rochellers to send them speedy relief, now close besieged by the French king; and, upon his return, sent away the earl of Denbigh, his brother-in-law, with a fleet to that purpose, who, on the first of May, 1628, arrives before Rochelle, where he found the French fleet, consisting of twenty sail, had blocked it up by sea. Upon the earl's approach, the French retired towards their fortification, and anchored within two cannon-shot of our fleet, and so continued till the eighth of May. The earl promised the Rochellers to sink the French fleet when the waters increased, and the winds became westerly, it being then neap-tide; but two days after, the waters increasing, and the wind becoming westerly, the earl was intreated to fight the French fleet, but did not, and weighed anchor, and sailed away. The duke, to redeem this miscarriage of his brother-in-law, in August following, goes to Portsmouth, to command the fleet there, for the relief of Rochelle; but, on the twenty-third of the said month, was stabbed by Felton, on whom, by the way, hanging in chains at Portsmouth, was made this ingenious copy of verses:

There uninterr❜d suspends (though not to save
Surviving friends the expences of a grave;)
Felton's dead earth, which to itself must be
His own sad monument, his elegy ;

As large as fame, but whether bad or good,
I say not, by himself 'twas wrought in blood.
For which his body is intomb'd in air,

Arch'd o'er with heaven, and ten-thousand fair
And glorious diamond stars, a sepulchre;
Which time can never ruinate, and where
Th' impartial worms (not being brib'd to spare
Princes wrapp'd up in marble) do not share
His dust, which oft the charitable skies
Embalm with tears, doing these obsequies,
Belonging unto men, while pitying fowl
Contend to reach his body to his soul.

Yet the design was pursued under the command of the earl of Lindsey, who attempted several times to force the barricadoes of the river before Rochelle, but all in vain; or, if he had, it had been to no purpose, for the victuals wherewith the Rochellers should have been relieved, were all tainted, and it was well the French had no fleet there, for the English tackle and other materials were all defective, and so Rochelle fell, and with it, in a manner, all the glory and interest of the reformed in France. But it is remarkable what counsel concurred to the reducing of this important place, and what accidents followed after. The French army had been before it a long time, and had made no considerable progress in the siege, when the marquess Spinola, returning from Flanders into Spain, directed his course through France, and hearing the king and cardinal were at the siege of Rochelle, waited upon both; and going to view the works one day, asked the cardinal what they meant to do there, and continuing his discourse, said, That as they managed matters, there was no possibility of taking the place. What must we do then,' says the cardinal? 'Push!' replies the marquess, do as we have done at Antwerp, make a dike at the mouth of the harbour, and you will by that means starve them out.' The cardinal immediately takes up the project, sets all hands on work, and with immense labour and celerity, finishes the dike, which, in a short time, reduced the place to that starving condition, that they were at length forced to surrender at discretion; and it is note-worthy, that as Leyden, about fifty-four years before, was miraculously preserved from the hands of the Spaniards, for being reduced to the last extremity, they let loose the waters upon them, which the dams restrained before, and upon that the army marched away; whereas, had they staid but two or three days longer in the neighbourhood, they might have had an open passage to the town, for the walls of it fell down to the ground, and a strong northerly wind had cleared the country of the water. So Rochelle, by a quite contrary fate, had been surrendered but a very few days, when the dike so far broke, as that they might have been relieved by sea, had there been a fleet ready for that purpose. But when Spinola came to the council in Spain, he was so brow-beaten and snubbed for his advice to the cardinal, by the duke of Medina, then prime minister of state, and other grandees, that he never could get his money paid, that was owing him, and died a beggar, in the utmost disgrace. So well did the Spaniards then understand their true interest, that as long as the reformed could make head in France, the arms of that kingdom would be confined within its own limits, and they and other princes be less molested, by those aspiring and restless neighbours. And this was the unhappy end of this war, between England and France; and the dreadful presages of the duke of Roan, hereupon (to give his words the mildest terms I can) had but too fatal effects, upon the person of that prince, to whose perfidy he attributed the loss of this fortress, and the protestant interest in France; for after this, dissension grew daily more and more in

England, which drew on an unnatural civil war, that ended with a sad catastrophe, in the king's dying by the ax, for he was beheaded, January 30, 1648, after he had reigned twenty-three years, ten months, and odd days, and in the forty-ninth year of his age.

1. The causes pretended for this war were, that the French king had employed the eight men of war, which the king of England had lent him, to be made use of against Genoa, against the Rochellers.

2. That the king's mediation, in behalf of the reformists, was slighted..

3. That the English merchant ships, and their effects, were seized, before there was any breach between both kingdoms, though it is certain, that the duke of Buckingham, as lord high admiral of England, by an extraordinary commission, first seized the St. Peter of Newhaven, the whole cargo being computed to amount to forty-thousand pounds; and though the king ordered the releasement of the ship, December 7, 1625, yet the duke, upon the sixth of February following, caused the said ship to be again arrested, and detained, as you may see in Rushworth, fol. 313.

4. A fourth cause of this war we have assigned in the noble Baptista Nani, that the duke of Bucks, having, while in France, contracted love in that court, and desiring leave to go thither, under pretence of composing the feuds, that broke forth in the queen's family in England, was by Richelieu's advice denied entrance into that kingdom, and grew thereupon so enraged, that he swore, since he was forbidden entrance in a peaceable manner into France, he would make his passage with an army.

CHARLES II.

AFTER about twelve years exile, during which interval, we had no wars with France, was restored to the throne of his ancestors, anno 1660. This prince had not been above five years settled in his dominions, when a war broke out with the Dutch by sea, the French joining with them in it at that time against us, so that there was a declaration of war set forth against France. But the Dutch found no great assistance from them in this confederacy; for while the Dutch in all the engagements, we had with them, but one (and that was when the fleet was foolishly divided) were beaten by us; the French, instead of uniting their force with the other, dispatched away a fleet to subdue the English, in their plantations in the Leeward islands; almost totally expelled the English out of St. Christophers, interrupted them in their trade to their other islands, and assumed a sovereignty in those seas, but upon the treaty of peace, they were forced to restore all to the English again. But they left St. Christophers, in so pitiful a plight, that it seemed, in a manner, to be as much a wilderness, as when first the English took footing in it. About seven years after,

things veered about, the French joining with the English, against the Dutch, in a second Dutch war, during this reign; and here a late learned author has observed, that as the English were so successful in the former war against both, and the Dane to boot, and were never beaten but once, and that, when the fleet was divided; so in this the English in all the fights they had, which were four, came off with more loss than the Dutch. But the truth of it is, the French only came out to learn to fight, both in the one, and the other way, for they stood still looking on, or firing at a very great distance, while the English and Dutch battered one another; and monsieur de Martel, for falling on, and engaging bravely, was recalled, checked, and dismissed his employ; insomuch that the Parliament, who began to smell the French designs, moved, November the fourth, 1673, that the alliance with France was a grievance; and so a peace was concluded with the States, and our king sets up for a mediator at Nimeguen, between the French and Dutch, with their confederates, and in the mean time, having got considerable supplies from his parliament, raises forces. For the French king had, during this naval war, possessed himself of a great part of Flanders, and the territories of the States; but before a peace was shuffled up, or at leastwise, before the prince of Orange knew, or would know, of its being concluded, the prince, not staying for eight-thousand English, that were on their march to join him, did with the assistance only of ten-thousand English, under the command of the duke of Monmouth and earl of Ossery, storm the duke of Luxemburg's camp, fortified with all imaginable art, before Monts, with that resolution and bravery, that he beat him out of it, and relieved the place; and this was the last act of hostility, between England and France, of any kind, during this reign; this king afterwards, instead of putting a stop to the growing greatness of that kingdom, fell in more and more with the interest of it; and the nation, during the latter part of his reign, was almost rent to pieces, with the parties of Whig and Tory, which are but too much felt to this day; and he himself, at last, died on the sixth of February, 1684-5, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and the thirty-seventh of his reign, computing it from his father's death.

JAMES II.

ONLY surviving brother to Charles the second, immediately assumed the English crown, of which, notwithstanding the opposition made against him, in the preceding reign, he got peaceable possession; but had not been long invested with the regal dignity, when the earl of Argyle, landing in Scotland, and the duke of Monmouth in the west of England, put him in no small danger of losing, that he had so lately attained. But this storm blew over, and ended in the execution of both the aforesaid chiefs, with a multitude of their followers, and that in a very barbarous manner; which execution, as it drew no small emulation upon his person, so the success egged him on, with so much violence, in the pur.

suits of his designs, for the advancing of the Papal power in these kingdoms, that it made the subjects now in danger of the loss, both of their religion and civil properties, have recourse for relief to that prince, who has since so worthily filled the abdicated throne, and who then readily embraced their quarrel, and in the most perillous season of the year, with an army from Holland, landed at Torbay, November 5, 1688; a day and year memorable in the annals of time, for the English deliverance; and, having wished success, was the thirteenth of February following, with his princess, proclaimed king and queen of England, &c. King James having, sometime before, withdrawn himself into France, with whom he was so far from having any wars during his four years reign, that he entered into a stricter alliance with that crown; but since his present majesty's ascending of the throne, what traverses of war there have been between England and France by sea and land, and what the causes of them, I purposely omit, because they are yet fresh in every man's memory, and for that a final period has not hitherto been put unto them.

CONTEMPLATIONS

WITH

SERIOUS

UPON

LIFE AND DEATH;

REFLEXIONS ON THE MISERIES THAT ATTEND HUMAN LIFE, IN EVERY STATION, DEGREe, and changE THEREOF.

Written by a person of quality, in his confinement, a little before his death; shewing the vanity of the desire of long life, and the fear of death; with a true copy of the paper delivered to the sheriffs upon the scaffold at Tower-hill, on Thursday, January 28, 1696-7, by Sir John Fenwick, Baronet.

From a Quarto, containing thirty one pages, printed at London, in 1697.

1

do not presume to arraign the justice of that sentence by which Sir John Fenwick, the author of this tract, was condemned to die for high-treason; neither does it concern me to enter into the particulars of the charge brought against him; but I cannot but justly observe, that he, in these contemplations, has left us a convincing proof, how well he improved the time under his confinement; and a rare example of patience, resignation to God's will, and of a real christian understanding in the way of godliness. For I may venture to say, that, in this short draught of life and death, he not only shews his great ability in point of method and invention; but has excelled