ENGLAND'S PETITION To KING CHARLES.  
OR, An humble Petition of the distressed and almost destroyed Subjects of ENGLAND,  
To the KING'S most excellent Majesty, now at the Isle of Wight, That He would yield to His Parliament in all their reasonable Demands in the Treaty there.  
Containing the very sense of all the loyall-hearted true lovers of the KING.  Better save something then lose all. 
Dept the 8th LONDON: Printed in the Month that the Scots Army were utterly overthrown, and Colchester taken. 1648.   

To the obvious not desired Reader.  
GOod Friend,  
We would have you know this Petition was intended only for His Majeties view, but considering what power his pretended friends have with Him, we think fit to submit it to common view, and to turn it out, in hope His Majesty may be induced seriously to read it, and lay to heart the distress of the miserable: if you censure it as the work of some few discontented persons, Know you it is the sense of our 
* The North and North-west of England, with ●he Inhabitants of Colchester.  part of the Kingdoms, and if you will promise us hopes of success, we'll soon return it you with the hands of 1000000. If you condemn us for speaking too plainly, Know that misery makes men forget good manners; and dying men use not compliments; We are in the casi of the I epers, If we sit still we perish, therefore we will move in the way of hope, and go in to the King, though it be not according to Law, and if we perish we perish. Yet know, we will come fare short of the plainness of better persons and times, 2 Sam. 7.12. 1 King. 18.18. & c. &c.&c.   

To the Kings most Excellent Majesty; The humble P●t●tion of many of Your distressed and almost destroyed Subjects of Your Kingdom of England.  
DREAD SOVEREIGN,  
It's a double grief to our souls, that we should be constrained to beg for our lives at Your hands, who are bound by the Law of God and nature, and by Your Oath, to preserve them, and that we should be forced to entreat You to spare our estates, liberties, and blood, whose honour and strength depends so much on these our enjoyments: But extremity prevaileth and drives us to You, and casteth us here prostrate at the feet of Your Majesty: And let not Your Majesty be offended, if we speak more plainly then usually becometh us; for necessity hath no law: It is for our lives and more, and therefore blame us not to speak; our friends, our wives, our children, our wants, our dangers, our Country, our blood, do all pierce our ears and hearts with their daily and doleful cries; Oh that our requests could find as quick access to Yours! Surely it's impossible Your Majesty should be ignorant of the doleful condition Your two Kingdoms are in; Do You not know that our houses are replundred, and the fruit of our new labours taken from us; that men who have heretofore relieved hundreds of the poor, have not left them a bed to lie on, food to sustain them, or an house to put their heads in? And the poor they were wont to relieve, are forced to become Soldiers, that they may rob us by authority. Know You not how many thousand distressed souls cry to God day and night, in their anguish and misery, while they see You the Father of their Country, having no compassion on them? You were wont if we lost our estates by Pirates, or but an house by fire, to grant Your gracious Letters Patents for our relief; but now Your Soldiers rob us of all, and burn our houses to the ground. You were wont to relieve Your Subjects when taken by Pirates, and made Galleyslaves; and now the loathsome prisons are filled with their miserable, starved, diseased bodies, who (some of them) would think themselves half freemen were they Turkish Galleyslaves; such is their cruel usage. Know You not how our Corn lies uncut, and devoured by Soldiers, who seize upon our horses and sheep, and eat the bread out of our mouths? and what can follow this but extreme famine? Know You not how our blood is spilt, and the dead bodies of Your Subjects scattered as dung on the face of the earth? Have not your eyes seen it, and your ears heard the groans of the wounded, gasping for life? Is all this nothing in your ears? To whom should Your people go but to Your Majesty in this our distress? We have tried all other known means, and profess in the sight of God, we know none but Your Majesty, under God, that can deliver us without more blood and desolation; and the world knows it is in your hands, You may do it if you will; and do it easily, and do it with increase of Your honour, safety, and happiness. What if it were to part with something of Your right, yet should not your Majesty do it to save the life of Your people, from whom, and for whose good, You first received it?  
Dread Sovereign, We beseech You consider, what hath your Parliament and people done, that deserves all this from You? Is it because your Parliament relieved us from oppressing Courts, and illegal taxations? Was it not with your own consent? and is it not your glory, to be King of a rich and free people? Is it because they prosecute Delinquents? Why, to what end are your Courts of Justice else? and are not they your chiefest Court? And can those be friends to You, and worth the defending, that are enemies to your Kingdoms? For your Forts and Navy, are they not yours for your Kingdoms good? And is not your Parliament, the Kingdom representative? We know your Majesty cannot manage them in your own person, but by your Ministers, and those chosen by Counsel; and can You or the Kingdom possibly judge any more able, impartial, and faithful to advise You in this, than your Parliament? They meddled not with it, till absolute necessity constrained; till they saw Ireland in rebellion, the Rebels threatening England▪ and their own lives and the Kingdom in present apparent jeopardy, by the same spirits as malignant and active at home, and your Majesty's consent to their Bill denied. We cannot but see the same Counsels that set your Majesty against your Parliament, which caused their so long discontinuance, which caused the Ship-money, and other illegal taxations, which caused the late innovations in Church and State, which caused the war with Scotland, which broke up the last Parliament, and caused that invective Declaration against them, in the very language of the present times, to be restless in their endeavours to carry on their wicked designs by raising a new war. They desire nothing more than your concurrence; and we know if humble Petitions or loyal affections would procure it, there would not have been so long a distance. Neither is there any visible means left, but either the Parliament must give up our states, liberties, lives and Religion to the dispose of your toolong tried secret Council, and make your Majesty's mere will the only Law, and so betray their Country, and the trust committed to them; (which God forbidden) or else defend us by the sword.  
And for us your people, what have we done that we are made a common spoil? Would your Majesty desire us (which we will never do) perfidiously to betray them whom we have trusted? and to kill them whom we have chosen to save us? and destroy those who are ourselves representatively? Then should we be the disgrace of the English Nation, the reproach of our posterity, the very shame of Nature, and should presently expect some strange judgement of God, according to the strangeness of our offence. It's true, we are forced to take Antidotum contra Caesarem; or rather to save our throats from the violence of desperate persons; But we beseech You call not this bearing Arms against You; it may be against your will; but if any of your now followers be more respective of your royal Authority established by Law, more truly tender of your person and honour than we; then let not God prosper our proceed, but cause us to fall before them, and give us up into their hands.  
We are fallen upon by the cruel, and because we will not die quietly, and without resistance, we are accused as traitors and enemies to your Majesty. We beseech your Maje●●●e, consider in the presence of God, if your own Father and King had run upon you with his drawn sword, whether would You have suffered death without resistance, or have taken the sword pro t●mpore out of his hand? and yet neither be averse to his honour and person, or his propriety in his weapon. Doth not Nature teach us the preservation of ourselves? will not the eye winks without deliberation? and the smallest worm turn back, if you tread on it? And beside nature, we have frequent precedents in sacred Writ, for even more than defensive resistance of Transcendent Monarch, 1 Sam. 14.44, 45. 1 Sam. 23.11, 12. 2 King. 1.10.12, 13. 2 Chron. 26.18.20. Dan. 6.14. etc. But if all this were nothing, yet we know your Majesty hath passed an Act for the continuance of this Parliament: and sure that Act must needs mean a Parliament with its power and authority, and not the mere name and carcase of a Parliament; It's not only that they shall stay together in London, and do nothing, or no more than another Court; but that they continue your chief Counsel, your chief Court, and have sole legislative power, which are your Parliaments peculiar properties: And if your Majesty hath enacted the continuance of a real Parliament in its power, who seethe not that You have thereby joined with them your royal Authority, though not your person? wherefore we hope your Majesty must needs discern that we fight not against You, but for your known established Authority in Parliament. And we hope your Majesty will not deny them to be your entire Parliament; for is the Act recalled whereby they were established? if not, how can they seize to be your Parliament? neither let the fault be laid on part of them; for we all know the major part hath the authority of the whole; and if it were the minor part, why did not, or doth not the major over-vote them? And we beseech your Majesty blame us not to think our Religion and all lies at the stake, while we look back by what a train Popery had been almost brought upon us by that party, and see them still the chief in favour, and when so many Pap●sts English and foreign are now in Arms against us, and know no one Papist in the Land that is not zealous in the cause. Wonder not, Dread Sovereign, if we hardly believe that those come now to save us, who in 88 and the Powder Plot, would so cruelly have destroyed us: that Papists should be most zealous in fight for the Protestant Religion, and Delinquents (proceeded against in parliament,) should stand for the privileges and Laws of the Parliament; that oppressing Monopolists show d fight for the Subject's liberties, seem all riddles and paradoxes to us. Blame us nor, we bessech You, to fear, while we see no contradiction appear to Mounsieur de Chess his book, sold openly for many years, not in Paris only, but in London, and read at Court, which records your Majesty's Letter to the Pope, promising to venture Crown and all to unite us to Rome again.  
Dread Sovereign, many Princes have gone astray through strength of temptation, and after have been happy in repenting and returning; Oh that the Lord would make it your case, and glorify his mercy on You and us, in making known to You the thing concerning our peace, and not his Justice in hardening You to destruction: that it may never be read in our Chronicle by the generations to come, that England had a Prince who lived and died in se●king the desolation of his people, and the Church of God, and would not be wrought upon either by mercy or judgement. Your Majesty knoweth there is a King and a Judge above You; before whom You must very shortly stand and give account of your Government; We desire You in the presence of that God, to think, and think seriously, and think again how sad it will be, to have all this blood charged on your soul; Can your Majesty think of this with comfort when You are dying? Can these Counsellors that now put you on, then bring You as safely off? do you not see how the hand of God is against them in all they do? And are there not many desperate Levellers that plot the ruin of Kingly Government? Your Majesty may despise what we say, and call away our Petition, and judge us your enemies, because we tell you the truth, and speak as dying men in the sorrow of our souls; but You cannot so put by Divine Justice, or quiet conscience at the la●t: As true as the Lord liveth, your Majesty will one d●y know that Blasphemers, Papists, and flatterers, are not your friends; but plain dealers, who do assure You, the way You take, tends to the utter ruin and destruction of yourself and Kingdom. And can your heart endure, or can your hands be strong in the day the Lord will reckon with Y●u for His people committed to your charge! O●! suppose You now heard the blood of your people already spilt, crying in your ears, and saw the many thousands yet living a life worse than death, lying in their sorrows at your feet, crying for pity, help, Oh King help, or we lose our liberties, Laws, lives and Religion; help that yourself and Royal posterity, be not ruined: help as ever You would have God help You in the day of death and judgement, when yourself shall cry for help and pity; help that deliverance come not some other way, while You and your Father's house are destroyed. The Lord God of our hopes, who hath for our sins most justly afflicted us in You, give your Majesty a discerning eye, an holy and tender heart, to yield to the Petition of your distressed Subjects, To concur with your Parliament, that God and man may forget your mistake, and You may be the blessedest Prince that ever reigned in our Land, the terror of your real enemies, the joy of your people, and the glory of posterity; Such shall be the daily and hearty prayers of  
Your Majesty's loyal (how ever esteemed) Subjects, etc.   
FINIS.