Series 1 > Letters and papers illustrating the relations between Charles the Second and Scotland in 1650

THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
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fawning spaniel. They are here most afraid of your High
Court of Justice, which they doubt may much discourage their
party, and they wish you would not renew the power of it,
when what they have shall expire; then they think after
Michaelmas, they may relye upon assistance with you. And
indeed the Court is of almost as much use to you as an army,
and will prevent the rising of as many enemies as the other
will destroy; onely you must be sure to execute justice there
with all severity. A few of the first stirrers taken away by the
power thereof, without respect to cosen or countrey, will keep
all the rest quiet: but whoever that Court condemns let them
be as already dead. If the Parliament give pardons in these
cases they will much weaken their own security. But let them
be most free in cutting the Vena Cephalica (for the Basilica will
be latent) ; the Median1 would be spared as far as may be, that
the body be not too much emaciated, besides the blood is most
corrupted in the Cephalique, and is the very causa continens of
your disease : you need not fear to take freely of this veyn, so
long as you have evidence of the corruption of it; the body can
well spare it and if it be well emptied perhaps you may be
without danger of a recidivation into the malignant fever of
a war within you. I thought to have gone last week to
Leyden, but He now be gone on Friday, and from thence
you shall here of me, if I meet with anything worth your
trouble.
LXXVII
EXTRACT FROM A BRIEF RELATION 2
Sir,—We are assured this week from Holland that Prince i650_
Charles is gone for Scotland ; letters from Breda of the eighth June M-
of June telling us, That he left that Town that same day at three
of the clock in the morning for to go to the Hague; and
letters from the Hague of the ninth, that being arrived there
the evening before, he was that day gone down to Scheveling,
and had put himself aboard there of a man of war, the which,
1 This probably means that the English Presbyterians are to be spared.
2 A Brief Relation, June 11-20 (E. 603, 9) p. 629.