NEWS FROM PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY,

OR

OXFORD MANCHESTERED,

By Michael Oldsworth and his Lord, who swore he was Chancellor of Oxford. And proved it in a speech made to the new visitors, in their new convocation, April 11, 1648. As here it follows word for word, and oath for oath.

Printed at Montgomery, 1648. Quarto, containing eight pages.

I

Mr. Visitors,

AM glad to see this day, I hope it will never end; for I am your chancellor. Some say I am not your chancellor, but dam me, they lye, for my brother was so before me, and none but rascals would rob me of my birth-right. They think Marquis of Hertford is chancellor of Oxford, because, forsooth, the university chose him. S'death, I sit here by ordinance of parliament, and judge ye, gentlemen, whether he or I look like a chancellor. I'll prove he is a party, for he himself is a scholar; he has Greek and Latin, but all the world knows I can scarce write or read; dam me, this writing and reading hath caused all this blood.

Some say, I love not the university, but, I say, they lye. I love her, I count her my mother, for I had four sons there. You know what a coil I had e're I could get hither; Selden did so vex us with his law and his reasons, we could get nothing pass; you saw I was fain to swear him down, and Mr. Rous, Gurdon, Mildmay, Wentworth, Prideaux, Scot, and other friends, voted bravely, else Selden had carried it. S'death, that fellow is but burgess for Oxford, and I am chancellor, and yet he would have the parliament hear his law and reasons against their own chancellor. I thank God, and I thank you. I thank God I am come at last, and I thank you for giving me a gilded bible; you could not give me a better book, dam me I think so; I love the bible, though I seldom use it; I say I love it, and a man's affection is the best member about him; I can love it, though I cannot read it, as you Dr. Wilkinson love preaching, tho' you never preach. What? cannot a man be a doctor of divinity but he must preach? I hope you'll confess I have gotten you good places; if I had not stuck to you, how could you have thrown out Bayly, Sheldon, Fell, Potter, Oliver, Hammond, Morley, and the rest? and then to what end had you been visitors, if you got not their places? You know Hammond is my own godson, and they say he is a scholar; s'death, I love you, what care I for deep scholars? Mr. Cheynell, I thank you, you have been kind to me; you have broke your brains again for me, and I have given you another

head, for I made you head of St. John's, and for your sake have thrust out Bayly, his wife, and nine pretty children. Master Reynolds, I feared you would have left us, for you pretended to take no man's place from him, but, I thank God, you are of another mind, for you have both a man's place and a woman's place, you have all that belonged to Fell, his wife, and all his children. Mr. Wilkinson, you love me, and I am glad of it, they say, you hate your enemies to the bottomless pit; I have given you my own chaplain's prebend, and dam me, while he served me, he was an excellent scholar. Mr. Corbet, I love you too, I have made you orator of the university; it was my godson Hammond's place, I hope none will blame me for displacing my own godson; you are now my godson, for you are orator. I hope you'll speak for me, I cannot speak for myself; you have a tongue now, though you want eyes; what cannot a man be a visitor, though without eyes? Mr. Langley, I love you also, I have made you doctor of divinity; malignants say, it is impossible to make you a doctor, but, hang them, they lye, for you were created doctor, and nothing can create but God and a chancellor; nay, I have made you head of Pembroke college, I cannot make you governor, for a rogue, they call him Poyer, is governor of Pembroke, and, dam me, I think the king will make Poyer to be Earl of Pembroke. Master Harris, you are an old man, I have made you head of Trinity college, I love an old head; Dr. Kettle was an old head before, but he loved us not, I love an old head new made. Sir Nathaniel Brent, I know you love me, for you are judge of the prerogative court; the parliament gave it you, you are a good man, and that's a good place; they say you have no civil law, what is that to the purpose? you have an ordinance of parliament; a man may be a civilian by an ordinance of parliament, else why the devil have we sat seven years? my father said, that a parliament could do any thing but make a man a woman, and a woman a man. Mr. Rogers, you look as if you loved me, and I have made you a doctor; they call you Aaron, I hate them for it, for I hate Aaron, he was a priest, and I would have all priests and Jesuits hanged. Mr. Cornish, I love you, though your wife plays tricks with you; they say she gads abroad, because you are a sickly weak man, but I have given you Dr. Wall's place, for the weakest goes to the wall; you must give me leave to clinch, for those that have no wit must be content with clinches. Mr. Palmer, I have made you head of All-Souls, and have turned out Sheldon; I hope you love me, for you are a physician, and never any physician was head of All-Souls; they say their statutes do keep you out, hang their statutes, I'll keep you in; you are a member of the House of Commons, and a member of parliament may be head of any house. What? must the parliament be tied to oaths and statutes? I have, for your sake, clapped Sheldon in prison, was it not high time? dam me, he hath more brains than all we together, you saw to-day what tricks he put upon me: I could not speak to him but he made it nonsense, so as I was forced to cry him mercy four several times; but I have Sheldon'd him by the heels, and he deserves it. S'death, is he not clerk of the closet? I love no clerks of the closet, I am not one myself, dam me if I be. There is a young rogue, one Palmer, I hope, Mr. Palmer, he is not your name

sake, this little knave looked at me as if he cared not two-pence for me; but I have Sheldon'd him too; and I'll justify it, for he is at least twelve years old, and the parliament hath imprisoned one at nine years old, I mean Inchiquin's son, a plague upon him, for now Inchiquin is turned Inchiking. Gentlemen, love one another, for there's twentythousand do hate you, they say you are all either dunces, knaves, or madmen; s'death, they will say so of me, if they durst. But do you serve God, and love your chancellor, you have all the good places the university can yield: you desired us to make you visitors, and you have made yourselves heads of colleges; I love you all, dam me I do. I command you, register, to write it down that I love them all; your name is French, and my name may be French, for I cannot spell English. God bless you all, and God bless me, and do as I do, for I fear God, and obey the parliament. I will live and die with you, and God confound me, if I leave the town these two days.

Copia vera

Michael Oldsworth.

THE CUCKOWS NEST AT WESTMINSTER:

OR,

The parliament between the two lady-birds, Queen Fairfax and Lady Cromwell, concerning negociations of state, and their several interests in the kingdom; sadly bemoaning the fate of their deer and abhorned husbands.

Who buys a cuckow's nest, hatch'd in an air
That's not far distant from Westminster-fair?
The hedge-sparrow, that fed her t'other day,
Is, for her kindness, now become her prey;
O'tis a precious bird, wer't in a cage,
Twould please both king and people; cure this age
That surfeits with rebellion, and can have
No help to keep her from destruction's grave.
She cuckows treasons, strifes, causes great stir,
But must pack hence 'twixt this and Midsummer:
Though Goatham hedge her in with pikes and gun,
She shall not 'scape us, though she flies, or runs;
For all the birds with one consent agree,
To spring her for base disloyalty.

By Mercurius Melancholicus. Printed in cuckow-time in a hollow-tree, 1648.
Quarto, containing ten pages.

WHO

HO is it amongst us that hath not heard these cuckows at Westminster? an ayrie of such ominous owl-birds, that the like was never before seen in this kingdom; that have kept a great cackling, and

been long and close sitters, but have hatched nothing but cockatrice eggs, vile treasons, addle ordinances, and the like, to insnare and inslave a free-born people, making of them no better than hedge-sparrows, to nurse up, with their wealth, the bastard issue of their pernicious plots against King, church, and kingdom; the common people, that willingly fed them, and lent them not only hands, but lives and estates, being now, for their great kindness, justly become a prey to the ravenous and griping claws of these cannibal cuckows, the parliament and army, that are now devouring them, after they have pulled and polled them to the bare skins; are now feeding upon their flesh, and picking their very bones, killing, destroying, and robbing them; and, if this be not enough to provoke the people to curse these unnatural vipers, and to loath all future parliaments to the world's end, I have lost my senses; none will fear them, none will love them, none will obey them, all will hate them, all will despise them, all fight against them.

Let us now consider what manner of birds these be; and we shall find them not cuckows only, but other birds of prey, as vultures, harpies, puttocks, ostriches, owls, martins, daws, and such like ominous and unclean birds, that with their huge bodies, and baleful wings, have obscured our king, our peace, our happiness, and hid all joy and comfort from us; these are all birds of a feather, that sit in council, and conspire together against the eagle, the phenix, the turky, the pea-hen, the turtle, the swan, the canary, and sweet-singing nightingale, who, being all too credulous to believe the feigned babblings of these statedecoys, are now covered and intangled in their nets, caught in their pit-falls, and all their goods and feathers pulled from them by limetwig ordinances.

These birds of prey flock together at Westminster; and have, for almost eight years, roosted themselves there, even till they had defiled their very nests, and were forced to fly abroad till they were cleansed; and yet sit brooding and hatching their pernicious plots and treasons, cockatrice ordinances, bald buzzardly votes, contradicting orders, and changeling declarations, both against the laws of nature, reason, conscience, and religion; and have usurped all power and authority from, and over their lawful and undoubted sovereign, doing their utmost to deprive both him and his posterity of their hereditary rights and successions, denying to acknowledge him for their head, forbidding addresses to be made unto him, or messages to be received from him; by which they have changed and abandoned the national and fundamental laws of the land (the only ligaments and sinews of a kingdom) being an act, not only of the highest treason that can be, but a crime that divests them of all their privileges, unparliaments them, and makes them all guilty of the abhorred sin of perjury, in breaking protestations, oaths, and covenants, and liable to a just censure, and conviction of theft, treason, and rebellion; for which they can no otherwise satisfy the king, laws, or people, but by the tribute of their roundheads, too slight a recompence for such abhorred and traitorous crimes.

Therefore the people may now see, without spectacles, how grossly they have been deceived, and juggled out of their lives and estates. It is true, the parliament, at the first, convened by royal authority, was

a lawful, and, for aught I know, a conscientious parliament, and the whole body, (being aptly and compleatly united together in the members, without forceable dislocation, or false election) was, questionless, the highest judicature in this kingdom: but, since (Edgehill fight, this juncto (or pretended parliament, acting in open hostility, and fighting against their king) abandoning their head, are no more a parliament, but the body of a parliament, without a head, a monster, a very cuckow's nest; a combined medley of traitors and rebels, and far different from the nature of a parliament (by reason of their Luciferian pride, to be flung down to hell) and to be deserted by all loyal subjects, as disjointed, severed, and mangled in its members; as deficient as their then general, uncapable of any just act, but wading on in blood (by an usurped, treasonous, tyrannical, and over-awing power, having no derivation from the king, but their own lusts) therefore no subject whatsoever hath any warrant, neither can they bind the conscience of any, to yield either active or passive obedience to any act or ordinance, because they illegally act, contrary to all precedents of former parliaments, and parliamentary power, and are no longer the visible representatives of the body politick, and so must necessarily be guilty of all the innocent bloodshed these six years in this kingdom, and still shedding in most counties in England. These rebels being so fleshed in blood and rapine, they are resolved to go thorough-stitch in their abhorred rebellion, though they ruin three kingdoms, by their inhuman butcheries, being rewarded with a large sum for shedding blood in the city, encouraged and rewarded for murdering the Surry Petitioners, the Kentish, and Essex men, for delivering, in a legal way, petitions for redress of their several grievances. What can any rational man think, but that they defer to murder their king, until such time as they have first murdered and destroyed all his loyal subjects?

That, when the army could not have an opportunity to plunder the city, as nothing so sure as they intended it, they were hired by Martin, Mildmay, Vane, and the rest of that nest, to pick a quarrel with the country, that they might plunder and undo them, when then they had missed of their aim in the city, as now they do in Essex, Kent, and all the kingdom over, killing, plundering, and triumphing over all they are able to conquer; so that between both parties, royalists and roundheads, as between the good and bad thief, the poor country must be crucifi d. The chief fomentors that are regicides, and most active in our destruction in the upper house, are the lords Say, Pembroke, Manchester, Kent, Warwick, Denbigh, Stamford, Wharton, and Grey; these always cuckow forth one tune, 'No King, No King.' In the lower house, are a nest of as evil birds, as ever hatched at Tyburn, and these are Lenthall, Mildmay, Scot, Challoner, Martin, Weaver, Vane, Corbet, and Cromwell, that cannot endure to hear the King so much as named in the House. In the synod of time-serving presbyters, there are Marshall, Burgess, Strong, Sedgwick, Vines, Love, Whittaker, and Nye, that draw altogether in one yoke, against monarchy; these teach rebellion instead of divinity, more lyes than truth, more blasphemy than sound doctrine, and will have no king to reign over them, except he be of the royal progeny of Mrs. Parliament, or the child of Reformation.