ing to be got by it but blows, first or last, were
so ill used by this independent, powerful party, who tripped up
the heels of all their honesty, that they were either forced by ill
treatment to take up arms on our side, or suppressed and reduced by
them. In this the justice of Providence seemed very conspicuous, that
these having pushed all things by violence against the king, and by
arms and force brought him to their will, were at once both robbed
of the end, their Church government, and punished for drawing their
swords against their masters, by their own servants drawing the sword
against them; and God, in His due time, punished the others too. And
what was yet farther strange, the punishment of this crime of making
war against their king, singled out those very men, both in the
army and in the Parliament, who were the greatest champions of the
Presbyterian cause in the council and in the field. Some minutes, too,
of circumstances I cannot forbear observing, though they are not very
material, as to the fatality and revolutions of days and times. A
Roman Catholic gentleman of Lancashire, a very religious man in his
way, who had kept a calculate of times, and had observed mightily the
fatality of times, places, and actions, being at my father's house,
was discoursing once upon the just judgment of God in dating His
providences, so as to signify to us His displeasure at particular
circumstances; and, among an infinite number of collections he had
made, these were some which I took particular notice of, and from
whence I began to observe the like:--

1. That King Edward VI. died the very same day of the same month
in which he caused the altar to be taken down, and the image of the
Blessed Virgin in the Cathedral of St Paul's.

2. That Cranmer was burnt at Oxford the same day and month that he
gave King Henry VIII. advice to divorce his Queen Catherine.

3. That Queen Elizabeth died the same day and month that she resolved,
in her Privy Council, to behead the Queen of Scots.

4. That King James died the same day that he published his book
against Bellarmine.

5. That King Charles's long Parliament, which ruined him, began the
very same day and month which that Parliament began, that at the
request of his predecessor robbed the Roman Church of all her
revenues, and suppressed abbeys and monasteries.

How just his calculations were, or how true the matter of fact,
I cannot tell, but it put me upon the same in seve