Political Ballads of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries/Volume 2/Lay by your Reason

by anon

For other versions of this work, see Lay by your Reason.

Lay by your Reason.

[The Jacobite author of this ballad, whilst satirising the government of William, affects a sympathy for the non-jurors, whose clamour upon the appointment of bishops to the vacant sees revived for a season the expiring hopes of James’s adherents.]

To the tune of “Love lies Bleeding.”

  Lay by your reason,
  Truth’s out of season,
Rebellion now is loyalty, and loyalty is treason;
  Now forty-one, Sir,
  Is quite undone, Sir;
A subject then deposed a King, but now ’is by a Son, Sir.
  The Nation’s salvation
  From mal-administration
Was then pretenc’d by the Saints, but now ’tis abdication.

  And now the case, Sir,
  Bears another face, Sir;
Billy had a mind to reign, and Jemmy must give place, Sir.
  Rais’d Insurrections,
  With base Reflections,
And labour’d tooth and nail to perfect his projections.
  Rebellion in fashion,
  Declar’d throughout the Nntion,
Then turn’d his father out, and call’d it abdication.

  A Declaration^[1]
  For self-preservation
Was spread abroad, wherein was prov’d a father’s no relation.
  Monarchy haters,
  With Abdicators,
Did swell into a league of Dutchmen, Whigs, and traitors:
  They enter indenture,
  Soul and body venture,
Whilst at Royal Jemmy’s head their Mmlice still did center.

  What have we gain’d?
  Grievances retain’d,
The Government is still the same, the King is only chang’d.
  Was ever such a bargain!
  What boots it a farthing,
Whether Father Petre Rule, or Bentinck^[2] and Carmarthen:
  Distressed, Oppressed,
  With empty hopes caressed,
We still remain in Statu quo, there’s nothing yet redressed.

  The bill for Treason^[3]
  Now’s out of season,
And judges must be courtiers, still a’ainst all right and reason;
  Nay more I’ll mention,
  The Senate has a pension,
Which overthrows the Contract made with the blest Convention.
  Thus we, Sir, you see, Sir,
  Come off by the lee, Sir;
And gave our money to be slaves, instead of being free, Sir.

  Was ever beetle
  Blind as his people,
To think that God will own a Church with a Soci’an steeple^[4]:
  Of wits bereav’d,
  By priests deceiv’d,
Who’ve bro’t themselves unto that pass ne’er more to be believ’d.
  They lear, Sir,
  For fear, Sir,
And then they’ll all repent that e’er they took the swear, Sir.

  ’Las! what’s conscience
  In Sherlock’s own sense^[5],
Where intrest lies at stake, and oaths with him are nonsense.
  The Temple’s master
  Fears no disaster,
He can take a hundred oaths and yet be ne’er faster;
  He’ll wrangle, and brangle,
  And all the cause entangle,
Nothing now can serve the wretch except the old triangle.

  For holy cause, Sir,
  You may break laws, Sir;
Not treason then, nor perjury, will signify two straws, Sir.
  So bsd our fate is
  Worser far than papists;
For Socinus rules the Church, and is ruled by an Atheist.
  The Nation’s Damnation
  Was this last Reformation,
For you must either take the swear, or starve, or lose your station.

1. Alluding to the famous Declaration of William, which was published a few hours only before his descent upon our shores.
2. Bentinck, the first Earl of Portland, and the Earl of Carmarthen, subsequently Duke of Leeds. The former stood highest in William’s favor, and, being a foreigner, excited the jealousy of the English nobility. His influence over the King may be judged from the following contemporary epigram, entitled a “Description of a Hampton Court life:”—
    “Man and wife are both one
    In flesh and bone;
   From hence you may gues what they mean;
    The Queen drinks chocolate
    To make the King fat,
   The King hunts to make the Queen lean.
   
   

    Mr. Dean, he says grace,
    With a reverend face—
   ‘Make room,’ cries Sir Thomas Duppa:
    Then Bentick uplocks
    The King in a box,
   And you see him no more till supper!”
   
   
3. Alluding to the clause in the bill for regulating trials in cases of high treason, which enacted that no person should be convicted of that crime committed more than three years before the indictment was found.
4. Archbishop Tillotson, who succeeded the nonjuring Sancroft in the archbishopric of Canterbury, was most unjustly suspected, on account of his friendship for and correspondence with Locke, Limborck, Le Clerc, and others, of entertaining Socinian views. “All considerate inquisitive men,” as he once observed in his own defence, “that are above fancy and enthusiasm, must be either Socinians or atheists,” in the estimation of men of his own day.
5. See the preceding ballad.