A Brief HISTORY Of the several PLOTS Contrived, AND REBELLIONS Raised by the Papists, Against the Lives and Dignities of Sovereign Princes, since the REFORMATION.

Taken from Faithfull Historians.

LONDON, Printed for Richard Wilde at the Map of the World in• St. Paul‘s Church-yard. 1692.

TO THE READER.

IT is strange, that of all men Papists should calumniate Protestants with Treason and Rebellions; were Modesty an Essential in the Complexion of a Jesuite, surely they would forbear, or Charity they so much talk of, and so little practise, to be found among them. Are horrid Massacres, villanous Assassinations, or Poisonings, the Effect of Charity? Or, Is Malice inveterate, Traducing or Lying the Fruit thereof? Yet nothing is more obvious in the whole course of History than those diabolical Machinations and hellish Conspiracies of Priests and Jesuites, especially within this last hundred and fifty years; and, generally speaking, Princes, and crowned Heads, have been most the objects of their Fury, and lest the palliation of Villany should pass on the weaker sort, and this Objection any way obtain, That forsooth most of these Contrivances were against Heretical Princes, excommunicated by the Pope and Church, and by consequence delivered over to Satan, and that the killing of them really was no Murther, no more than of Wolves or Bears.

To this I answer, That Princes of the same Communion, as Henry the Third of France, could not escape their fatal Stab, who never made profession of any other; and though Henry the Fourth was first a Protestant, and by them constrained to change, nay, and highly indulging them in his latter years, and as Mathieus says in his Life, to all appearance was devout, I mean in their way; yet from Ravilliac‘s Hand all this could not defend him. We need not long here six, but look on former times, where for five or six hundred years nothing 〈◊〉 been more common, or more lamentable, than the story of several Princes, struck with the Lightening of the Court of Rome, and others wholly ruined by the Vatican Thunder, the consequences being either their own Tragical Ends, or, at the most favourable, strong and lasting Rebellions, which all conversant in History may plainly see; and so dextrous were they in translating to the other World, that in the very Host it self was Poison given to one of the German Emperours, so that Silence to none is a more necessary Virtue, especially in this Case, than to regular Monks and Friars, who for several Ages have been the very Pest and Bane of Secular Princes, acting not only their Villanies in the Time of the Holy War, but in the time of their Antipopes also. But to return to our own Nation: What Barbarities have they not committed? What Impieties have they not been guilty of? What Cruelties have they left unattempted? and yet with a brazen Front daily bespatter Protestants, accusing them of what themselves were Authours of; imitating herein the very Skum of Mankind; for none shall sooner call another ...