the King: the Lesser of Two Evils
[CIVIL WAR IN WALES.] The Heads of the present Greevances of the County of Glamorgan, Declaring the Cause of their late rising and taking up of Armes. Published for the satisfaction of all other Counties of England and Wales, who groane under the same, or like burthens of Oppression and Tyrannie. Now exercised by that Arbitrarie Power and Authoritie, pretended to be derived from the two Houses of Parliament, throughout all His Majesties dominions (by those who stile themselves Committees) contrary to Justice, and the known Lawes of the Land. [London?: n.p.] 1647.
Small 4to. Disbound, pp. [2], 6; a little toned, a few stains to title, light dampstaining to outer margin of A1-2, but overall a very good and crisp copy.
First and only edition, very rare, of this denunciation of the abuses of the Parliamentarian County Committees in Wales, issued at the height of the Civil War.
By the summer of 1647 (one surviving copy is dated in manuscript “1 July”), the war had dragged on for nearly five years. Parliament was steadily gaining the advantage, largely through the network of County Committees manned with loyal supporters. These officials collected the taxes that sustained the war effort, requisitioned horses and supplies for the army, and carried out Parliament’s decrees. Their growing power – together with the ever-heavier burden of taxation to maintain the army – provoked widespread resentment and, in turn, revived support for the Royalist cause.
This pamphlet sets out the grievances against the Parliamentarian committees in Glamorgan, South Wales, and denounces their exactions and abuses. The rising it encourages was less an expression of loyalty to Charles I than a reaction to Parliament’s oppressive rule. Indeed, it contains no Royalist propaganda and no expressions of loyalty to Charles. Instead, it reads as a near-anarchic denunciation of arbitrary power itself, of its arrogance, remoteness, and disregard for the people.
ESTC R201640, recording only five copies (BL, National Library of Wales, Cardiff Central Library, Oxford, Folger).
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