"In an age when so many memoirs, narratives, and pieces of history come out as it were on purpose to justify the taking up arms against that king, and to blacken, revile, and ridicule the sacred majesty of an anointed head in distress; and when so much of the sense of religion to God, and of allegiance and duty to the crown is so defaced that it is already within little more than fifty years since the murder committed on that pious prince by some men made a mystery to judge on whose side was the right and on which the Rebellion is to be charged."

“brought, by unaccountable administrations on the one hand, and by vile contrivances on the other, into the greatest difficulties and distresses throughout all his kingdoms; then left and abandoned by most of his servants, whom he had himself raised to the greatest honours and preferments; thus reduced to have scarce one faithful able counsellor about him, to whom he could breathe his conscience and complaints, and from whom he might expect one honest, sound, disinterested advice: after this, how he was obliged to take up arms, and to contend with his own subjects in the field for his crown, the laws, his liberty, and life; there meeting with unequal fortune, how he was driven from one part of the kingdom, and from one body of an army to another, till at last he was brought under the power of cruel and merciless men, imprisoned, arraigned, condemned, and executed like a common malefactor.”