a plain puny Doeg and all this at a time the Government stood firm upon its Foundations and the best of Basis its Fundamental Law to what an height of exalted Insolence was the very Soul of Sedition then aspired to to suffer such a Serpent to see the Light that hist at the sight of a Soveraign and spit its Venom in the very Face of Majesty And whatever Recommendation this virulent Republican gives us of the Venetian Justice he would find sufficient severity sublim'd Cruelty instead of Law distributed to such daring Offenders as should offer at a Monarchy there tho but a mixt and of which they seem to have some necessitated resemblance in their constant creating of a Duke as if there were yet some remains of Royalty left which they could not extirpate and like Nature it self whom all the Art of Man can never expel the Libeller would not be long then without an Halter the Jealous State would soon send Vid. Resiquiae Wotton Foscarino 's case him the sight of his Sin and Sentence together and that by the Hands of his Hangman and some little Gondula to Ferry him to the deep No Magna Charta no Petition of Right no privilege of a Tryal of Peers or even a Plea allowed to the Prisoner and whom with a Praevious Sentence too they many times dispatch assoon as seiz'd And shall a Monarchy here founded upon Kingly Government has been the usage of the Land beyon'd History it self the Common Law is but Common usage Plowd Comment p. 195 Le Commen Ley n'est que Commen use its Fundamental Law and that for fifteen hundred years be invaded with impunity by the Pen of every virulent Villain each Factious Fellow that can but handle the Feather of a Goose I confess when they were arriv'd here to their Acme of Transcendent Villany when Vice had fixt her Pillars here and that in an Ocean too but of Blood when they had washt their Hands even in Insuperable Wickedness and shed that of their Prince when by a Barbarous Rebellion they had subverted the best of Civil Governments our Monarchy and establisht their own Anarchy a Common Wealth 2. part of the Inst fol. 496. Kings Praerogative is part of the Law of England then they might well be so bold as to write their Panegyricks upon their own Usurpation when they were to be paid for it by the Powers instead of Punshment Then they might tell us as indeed they did that the greatest of Crimes was the committing of High Treason against the Majesty of the People That the Romans gave us good Presidents for Rebellion Mâ—rc Pol. Num. 107. in the turning out of their Tarquins and the Government together that Caesar Usurpt upon the power of the People Marius and Sylla on the Jurisdiction of the Senate Pisistratus turned Tyrant at Athens and Agathocles in Sicily that Cosmus was the first Founder of a Merc. Pol. Jun. 17. 52. Dukedom and a fatal Foe to Florence that Castruccio made himself the Lord of all Luca and oppressed the Liberty of all the Freeborn Subjects of the Land that all our Kings from him they called the Conqueror to the Scottish Tyrant were but the same sort of Usurpers upon the power of the People All this with much more Execrable Treason was Printed Publish'd and Posted through the Kingdom with Approbation of Parliament and which we shall in its proper place represent in its own blackness black as Hell it self the seat of such Seditious Souls full of Anarchy and Confusion But why we should now have so lately left us such daring desparadoes to retrieve to us the same Doctrine to tell Plato us that Affairs of State must be managed by a Parliamentary that is in their own Phraseology a meer popular Power could proceed certainly from nothing but the deepest the most dangerous Corruption of the Times from the desperate Condition of a Goverment ready to be undermined by Treachery Plot and Machination brought so low that it did not dare to defend it self and its boldest Assertors so far frightened into a dishonest and imprudent sort of Diffidence as to distrust the strength of their own Cause and that was evident too from the sad servile Complyance of some fearful Souls otherwise well affected that seemed to give up their Government like a Game lost that had rather sink then swim against the Tyde But for a more direct Answer to this Proposition we shall shew that Affairs of State must be managed by our Monarch that matter of Fact has prov'd it by Prescription that it is our Kings Prerogative by the Lands Law and his unquestionable Right by the force of Reason For the first 't is evident from History that for above 600. years near a thousand before the Conquest we had Kings that had an Absolute and Soveraign sway over their Subjects as appears from the Gildas B. who was born Anno 493. most Antient Writer of our British History it is apparent that all our Monarchs Britains Saxons and Danes exercis'd unlimited Jurisdiction without having their Affairs Govern'd by any estabisht Council much less a Parliament and that to be prov'd beyond Contradiction from the several Authors that Lived Wrote and were Eye These were Nennius a Monk of Bangor who liv'd An. 620. Bede a Saxon who wrot in their Heptarchy dy'd in the 733. Asserius Menev. who writ the Acts of King Alfred Colemannus Ang. who liv'd in the time of the Danes and Harold the first Vortiger the British King on his own Head call'd in the Saxon without his Subjects consent Egbert an absolute Monarch of the Saxons over all the Isle Canutus as absolute among the Danes call'd only his Convention of Nobles at Oxford about 1017. Witnesses of the manner and Constitution of their Government and then sure must be suppos'd to understand that to which they were Subjected from those good Authorities can be easily gather'd that the power of Peace and War was always in the Prince that they were Govern'd by him Arbitrarily and at his Will that he call'd what Councils of whom when and where he pleased so far from being Limited that the most popular Parliamentarians would be loth his present Majesty should prescribe to such an Absoluteness and which nothing but the kind Concessions of some of his Predecessors to their Clamourous Subjects has given from the Crown and dispens'd with that power and right enjoy'd by their Royal Ancestors 'T is strange and unaccountable that those which stretch their Wit and Invention for this power of Parliament and run through all the Mazes of Musty Records for the proving it so Ancient yet will not allow that of their King so long a standing and which after all their fruitless Labour lost proves at last nothing but the Council of their King those Noble and Wise-men he would please to Assemble their Gemotes the name of that most Ancient Assembly implying nothing more as appears
great a power and prerogative and exercised it too punishments Vid. Baker p. 34. vir William 2d before his time which were Mutilation of Members he made pecuniary provisions for his House which were paid in kind he made to be turned into Money an Alteration of Custom and Law not now to be compast but by particular Act Baker makes him first to have So also Florence of Worst instituted the form of an High Court of Parliament and tells us that before only the Nobles and Prelates were called to consult about Affairs of State But he called the Commons too as Burgesses elected by themselves but this can't be gathered from Eadmerus the much better Autority who in the Titles and the Stile of near Nine or Ten Councils of his time not so much as mentions them King Stephen what he wanted and was forc't to spare in Taxations which were not then granted by the suffrages of the Common People tho they commonly bear the greatest burden of it tho he did not according to the Power he was then invested with raise great Sums upon his Subjects and the greatest Reason because he could not the Continual Wars having impoverisht them as well as their Prince and it has the proverbial Authority of necessitated Truth That even where it is not to be got the King himself must foregoe his Right yet this mighty Monarch's power was such that Confiscations supplyed what he could not Tax and as our Historian tells us Baker p. 49. upon light Suggestions not so much as just Suspicions he would seize upon their Goods and as I remember the Bishop of Salisbury's Case in his time confirms But tho the Menace of the threatning King the Text be turned now into the clear Reverse and our Kings Loyns no heavier then the very Finger of some of his Predecessors still we can The wordâ— of a Priâ—â—t lately tryed and convicted of High Treason find those that can preach him down for a Rehoboam or some Son of Nebat that makes Israel to Sin Henry the Second resum'd by his own Act all the Crown Lands that had been sold or given from it by his Predecessors and this without being questioned for it much less deposed or murdered whereas when our Charles the First attempted only to resume the Lands of Religious Houses that by special act of the Parliament in Scotland had been settled on the Crown but by Usurpation were shared among the Lords when 't was only to prevent their Scandalous defrauding of the poor Priest and the very box of the poor to keep them from an Imperious and even a cruel Lording it over the poor Peasant in a miserable Vassallage beyond that of our antiquated Villains and when he endeavoured all this only by the very Law of all the Land by an Act of Renovation Legal Process and a Commission for the just surrendring Superiorities and Tyths so unjustly detain'd from the Crown but our modern Occupants of the Kirks Revenue had far less Reverence for the State chose much rather to Rebel against their Prince for being as they would Phrase it Arbitrary than part with the least power over their poor Peasants which themselves exercised even with Tyranny This was the very beginning of the first Tumults in that Factious Kingdom and 't is too much to tell you in what they ended Richard the First had a trick I am sure would not be born with now he pretends very cunningly to have lost his Signet and puts out a Proclamation that whoever would enjoy what he had under the former must come and have it confirmed by the new and so furnisht himself with a fine fund he could fairly sell and pawn his Lands for the Jerusalem Journey and as fouly upon his return resume them without pay And all this the good peaceable Subject could then brook without breaking into Rebellion and a bloody War and as they had just then none of their Great Charter that made afterward their Kings the less so neither had they such Rebellious Barons that could not be contented even with being too Great as they were then far from having granted so gracious a Petition as that of Right so neither 3 Car. 1. you see so ready to Rebel and that only because they could not put upon their Prince the deepest Indignities the greatest wrong And these warrantable proceedings of our Princes whose power in all probability was unconfin'd before the Subjects Charter of Priviledges was confirm'd must needs be boundless when there were yet no Laws to Limit them yet these two Presidents were as impertinently applyed by the Common Hackney Goose quils whose Pens were put upon by the Parliament to scribble Panegyricks upon a Common-wealth to prove 1648. 49. 51. Mercur Polit. n. 64. 65. all our Kings a Catalogue of Tyrants tho the Presidents they brought from those times were clear Nonsense in the Application and no News to tell us or reproach to them that those Princes were Arbitrary when they had yet given no grant to restrain their Will Here I hope is sufficient Testimony and that too much to Demonstrate that our Kings of old by long Prescription were so far from being guided and governed by a Parliament as our Factious Innovator would have them now that in truth they never had any such Constitution and the People then insisted so little on their own Priviledges that they could not tell what they were and the Princes Prerogative so great that even their property could hardly be called their own But these being but Presidents before their Charters were granted or the Commons came in play tho these preceding Kings might deviate from the common Custom of the Realm in many that some may call irregular Administrations yet the Customs of the Vid. Lex Terrae Kingdom relating to the Royal Government in all those Reigns were never questioned much less altered they never told their Kinge then as this piece of Sedition does now that their Nobles were to manage their Affairs of State as well as he would have even a Council of Commons We come to consider now whether An. Reg. 17 John from the granting them Charters which was done in the next Reign that of King John when the long tugged for Liberties were first allowed or from the Constitution of admitting the Commons to consult which by the greatest Advocates can't be made out handsomely before this Kings time or his Son and Successors who might well be necessitated to Consult the meaner sorts when all the great were in Arms and wisely flatter their Commons into peace when the Lords had rebelled in an open War tho' still good Authorities will Vid Dr. B. Introduct p. 72. 105. c. not allow them to be called in either of their Reigns not so much as to be mentioned in any of their Councils and p. 149. The King calls Parl. per advisam entum Concilii Vid. Bract. Parl. 4. Inst p. 4. and
deny it positively because the Nation should know he could answer Filmer The whole we can't animadvert on because thought perhaps too dangerous to be publisht but what was taken at the Bar and delivered on the Scaffold was too much the Truth of a Republican too much Treason to be divulged and what can never be too much discountenanced and refuted And here you have the chain of a parcel of rebellious Libellers linkt in an orderly Combination for the shackling of us into Slavery and the binding our Kings and Nobles again with Fetters and Iron I shall begin with the first factious Fellow in the Front and that 's the Historian CHAP. I. Historical Remarks on the brief History of Succession I Don't Design here a particular answer to each Paragraph of his Historical Discourse which probably has been as much falsify'd as any thing the contrary of which could be verify'd on Record and perhaps cramb'd with as many lyes as ever could be Corrected with truth it would be a presumption and impertinence to pretend The Worthy Dr. Bradys to answer that which has been already done by some unanswerable Pens the Knowledg of whose Persons and Worth would deter me from such an And the Learned Author of the Great Point of Succession undertaking as well as the satisfaction of their Papers supersedes it mine shall be but a few sober remarks subsequent to their solid Confutation And truly in the first place all Historians agree that our English History was uncertain before the coming of the Romans and without doubt we had reason to want the Tradition of it when needs we must when we had nothing of Learning or Knowledg to deliver it down unless we would imagin the silly simple Souls could have left us their own Skins for a Chronicle and transmitted the painted Constitution of their Government in the Colours and Hieroglyphicks of their Bodys But since that Author owns and that from the good Authority he quotes that the Nature of it was uncertain but that they Strabo Tacitus Caes Com. were subject to many Princes and States which last Expression I fancy was his own to make it favour more of a Republick which I am confident they were then as Ignorant of as we truly now of Tyranny and Oppression which I gather partly from the Constitutions of all Nations at this time truly Barbarous Since both the East and West of the uncivilized World confirms the warrantable Hypothesis the most probable Conjecture which is all at this present governed by its petty Monarchs and puny Princes tho' some greater Empires too than any of ours in Europe no small Argument for the Divine Right of Monarchy by its being so generally embraced only by the light of Nature whose Creation was whose Subsistence is the sole Care of Divinity it self And besides Dr. Heylin tells us that at the entrance of the Romans the Isle was divided into several Nations governed by its several Kings and particular Princes The Druids as may be gathered out of Caesars Commentaries had in those Ignorant days all the Learning and the Law But too little alass to let us know whether their Princes were absolute So also Caesar Bell. Gall. Lib. 6. Monarchs or limited Hereditary or Elective though 't is to be suspected they were both unconfined in their power as well as succeeded by their blood those poor Embryo's of Knowledg the very primitive Priests of Barbarous Heathens that in their highest felicity were no happier than the first asserters of the Gospel under Misery and Persecution their reverend Hermitages but the Woods the Dens and Caves of the Earth were far sure from disputing the right of Sovereignty when only capacitated to obey far from transmitting to us the frame of their Monarchy unless they had known the Egyptian learning of writing on the Barks of Trees and made their Libraries of the Groves in which they dwelt The Princes and Monarchs of their Times were wont to frequent those pious places for Worship and Adoration and had a Veneration too without doubt for those reverend Bards that sacrificed but were far I believe from subjecting their Regal Authority to that Divinely Pagan tho' then the sacred Jurisdiction tho' 't is reported that upon Caesar's invading them the very power of Life and Death and the Punishment for all manner of offences was in their sacred Breast and such as would not stand to their award were forbidden their Sacrifices which Interdiction then was the same I believe in effect with the modern power of our Church to Excommunicate but besides another reason and the best too why we have nothing delivered from those sacred Oracles of Religion and Law why the History of those times is still uncertain and was never transmitted is because they were expressly forbidden to transfer any thing to Posterity or to commit it to Books and Letters tho somewhat of that sort of Communicating must be supposed by that Inhibition to have been Imparted to them from the Egyptians Greeks Romans those Eastern Climes through which Learning and Letters had their first Progress But whether their Ignorance or such a prohibition were the Causes why nothing descends to us of the Government of our old Britains 't is granted by all and by this Author himself that it was Monarchical that Kings Reigned here ab origine if not Jure-divino Though I look on their Antiquity no small Argument of their Divine Right and for the probability of their Haereditary Succession which I insinuated above can I confess since we are so much in the dark be only guessed by the light of Reason and that I shall make to warrant the Conclusion from the present Practise and Constitution of all barbarous Nations where the next of blood still mounts the Throne unless interrupted by Rebellion and that 's but the best Argument of our Author for the Power of his Parliaments and if only for this certain Reason we have more Authority to conclude it was then Haereditary then he only from the uncertainty of the Story has to conclude it otherwise In the next place I see no reason why his Sentiments should determine other Peoples thoughts and why we should not think that the following Heptarchy of the Saxons tho they had their seven Kings yet still might agree in one rule of Succession nay tho their Laws were so different too as he would insinuate which is not absolutely necessary to suspect neither for they being all one Nation and then but just called from their home by our British King Vortiger for his assistance may probably be supposed to have retained for the Main the general Rules and Laws of their own Countrey tho when divided into those seven Kingdoms they might also make a sort of private by-Laws according to the different Emergences of particular affairs that occurred in their several Governments Can he prove that the Succession of the Saxons in their own Countrey was not Hereditary when they inhabited
that was his least Relyance for as little 1. H. 4. 12. 52. Vid. Dr. B. p. 25. as he makes of his claim from Henry the Third it is apparent from some Rolls of Parliament that he challenged the Realm upon that account and the Lords were interrogated what they thought of that claim upon which without delay they consented he should Reign and as another Evidence of his Right to Rule shewed them the Seal of King Richard as a Signification of his Will that he should succeed him but that which for ought I see he lay his greatest weight upon was but what all Vsurpers must most relie on the Sword and he himself assures them just after the Sermon was ended at the time they consented to be his Subjects that he would take no advantage against any Man's Estate as coming in by Conquest and Conquest is one of the first claims he puts in at his Coronation and as Haward Haward p. 98. Baker p. 15 is relates it in his Life not the least mention of his being elected is there mingled with his Claim But neither did the success of a prosperous Wickedness Countenance this Usurpation for he was soon made sensible that a Crown seldom sits easie on that Head where it has so little Right to sit and indeed before it could be well setled his Lords conspired against him at Westminster set up Maudlin the Counterfeit send to the King of France for assistance Glendour stirrs up the Welsh to rebel the Nobility fell from him drew up the following Articles against himself viz. for having Articl'd himself against his Sovereign for having falsified his Oath in medling with the Kingdom and the Crown for taking Arms against his King Imprisoning Murdering Him that he unjustly kept the Crown from the Earl of March to whom of Right it belonged and vowed the Restoration of Him and His Destruction and our Author now shall know these too are Articles Vid. Baker 1â—1 as well deserving to be read and one thing more that deserves as much Observation that this his good Peoples Election was the prime Principal Cause of losing of Millions of Lives and an Notwithstanding all these claims Speed says he at his Death owned he had no Right to the Crown Speed Lib. 9. Chap. 14. Philip De. Comines which wrote then says to his Remembrance 80. of Blood Royal dy'd If they long for the draught of Slaughter and Blood that followed this their Election of the Line of Lancaster then look upon the lamentable List at the end of Trussel Ocean of Blood here entred that Line of Lancaster that had almost left the Nation Childless the Nobility and Gentry that escap'd the Sword were still by the prevailing Party chopt off or gibbited and in the space of about thirty year and somewhat upwards they dreined more Blood in England then e're was spent in the Conquest of France or would have been spilt had it been again attempted and that too never have been lost by their Henry the Sixth had it not been for an altered Succession and an injured Heir and the Bloody Consequences of a debarr'd Right And now at last he is forc't to allow an instance of a Prince that succeeded without the least shadow of Election and that in Henry the Fifth to whom himself owns they swore Allegiance without staying for his being declared we are obliged to him for this fair Concession but this Kindness is only because he finds it as clear as a Postulatum in the Mathematicks beyond his own Impudence to contradict but however he must malitiously observe that it was a thing strange and without President and why so because his Polidore tells him such an extraordinary Kindness was never shown to any King before 't is strange that his Italian should understand more of our own Government than all our own English Authors 't is no wonder sure if he that was a Stranger to our Affairs should Write as strangely of it and make our Mighty Monarchs of Britain no more then some petty Prince of his own Italy and as Elective as their Duke of Venice But this perverse Gentleman shall know it was not without President and that by several Instances And first Richard the First presently on his Fathers Death without staying for their suffrages seised on his Father's Treasure was girt with the Sword of the Dutchy of Normandy took fealty both of Clergy and Lay and exercised all the Authority that Sovereign power cou'd allow before he came to be recogniz'd by their Suffrages or to his Coronation Vide Daniel 2. Hoveden's Account that he gives of King John's coming to the Crown which as some Writers say is the best extant says they swore Fealty to him when he was out of England without mentioning any thing of preceding Election and he had his better Title his Brothers Army then in the field by which he cou'd have made himself soon their King had they not been so ready to receive him 3. Upon the Death of Henry the 3d. the States Assembled at the New-Temple and proclaimed his Son Edward King when they knew not whether he was living or dead swear Daniel Fealty to him and cause a New-Seal to be made Here sure are some presidents of Allegiance before their Election unless he 'll make Declaring or Proclaiming to be so and then in Gods Name in that sense let them as he contends for be Elected for I think all will allow they are proclaim'd But suppose on the death of a Predecessor there was no convention of any of the Nobility Vid 4 part In Stit. 46. and Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 7. or Commonalty for Parliaments they then can have no Existence when the Breath is gone that gave them Being as all other Communitys are de facto dissolv'd If I say there were none met to Declare or Proclaim his Successor must the common Maxim be contradicted and the King dye too for want of their Popular Breath to give him Life or do our Laws admit that this interval between his Predecessors expiration and the proclaiming or crowning his Successor shall be call'd an Interregnum they know the Constitutions of our Government admit no more of this than an Exclusion They know that immediately by Descent King James was declar'd to be completely and absolutely King and that by all the Judges 1 Jacobi Watson Clark Vid also Calvins Case Cokes Rept part 7. of the Kingdom I know the Kings Successor is always immediately proclaim'd upon his death and that perhaps is more for the proceedings of judicial Processes and that Writs may presently run in his name But were such a Proclamation obstructed I am satisfi'd he commenc'd an absolute King upon the very Minute of his Predecessors Expiration and if the Law Maxim won't allow an Haeres viventis there can be no Heir at all if he begin not to be so presently upon his Predecessors Death and for an Evidence of Fact as
idolatrous Admirer of his own created Gods see in these particulars and even in his own presidents that he cites the mutability of Mens minds and the contradictory Conclusions of this his infallible Council while Right it self must still remain the same and the decrees of Heaven can't be cancell'd since the very Laws of the Persians could not and still when our own in this point of Succession were repeal'd we find it turn'd all into Confusion and a Hell and for a more sudden alteration in this vein and humor of Parliament observe but this single Instance and that in the very season of which we are discoursing In the 38 of this Henry the sixth a Parliament was held at Coventry by that vid. Stow 38. H. 6. p. 406. the Duke of York too is attainted of Treason and all his Adherents Their Heirs disinherited to the ninth degree their Tenants spoiled of their goods maim'd slain but in the very next year of his Reign the very same Coventry Parliament declar'd by another to be a devillish Councel celebrated for the destruction of the Nobility never elected unduly returned desiring the destruction rather than the Advancement of the Commonwealth And now can the most popular advocate of the Party from the perusal of Stow 39. H. 6. p. 406. these their inconsistent irregular proceedings make them absolute Arbitrators of Right They must resolve themselves into this Absurdity for a reply that the supream Power of the Nation for its own security can justly do wrong We have seen several Subjects against all Reason ruin'd with an Act of Parliament and therefore shall we think it alway to do Right What Reason can we give that our Courts of Equity are still the same but that they can't be controll'd by the mutability of their Statute-Law and granting this their Bill of Exclusion had past into Statute that it had been Enacted a Royal Heir must be debarr d of his Birthright I am sure the general Council of the world would quickly have given their Opinions against this great one of our Nation And tho their Codes and Digests don't obtain with us yet I cannot see why a Prince shou'd be deny'd the priviledge of a private Person And the Brother of our King the claiming his Right in Equity what is allow'd the meanest Subject when forecluded by the Law The next immediate Succession of the Crown descends as immediately to the Buck whom he cites in R. 3d reign no good Authority who contradicts his Murdering of his Nephews and makes him no way deform'd against the sense of all Historians But that prejudic'd Author might well flatter the Tyrant when one of his own name and family was the Monsiers minion and favorite by his own Confession next of Blood and as for the most part it has done since the time of the Saxons from Father to Son the Fifth Edward as hopeful as unfortunate and the more in affording our Factious fellow another president for an Assembly of Rebels that prefer'd the very Murderer of their Soveraign and a pretended Parliament that plac't the Butcher of his Brothers Children on the Throne And truly this Monster might be said to be Elected by the People whom no God or Nature design'd for the Crown and who was forc't to break the Laws of both to come at it and a sort of Election it was like those we had of late in the City with Rout and Ryot and that in the same place too at their Guild-hall where the Duke of Buckingham very solemnly convenes the Mayor and Aldermen and there propounds to them and the rabble their new King Richard and it was like Vid Stow Baker to be a fine sort of National Choice that was to be decided by the Freemen of L. Bacon calls him a King in fact only but Tyrant in Title 1. p. London But whatever Influence as this Gentleman observ'd they had on the Succession nothing of their consents could be gather'd but from their silence for suffrages they had none they being all surpriz'd with so strange a Proposition Their Buckingham Elector with his Aldermen and some of their Retinue cry up a Richard and so carry'd all with a House of Commons Nemine contradicente And now for his Bill in Parliament made rather by a pack't Convention of Buckinghams for the Bastardizing of his Soveraign's Issue that very Roll of Rebellion acknowledges his right by Lawful Inheritance grounded upon the Laws of Vid. 1. R. 3. the whole Record in the Exact Abridgment fol. 712. Nature and Custom and God himself also this which was rather a Convocation of Rebels than a Convention of States acknowledgd what this inconsiderate Author cites them to Contradict the Lineal and Legal discent of the Crown by Proximity of Blood but in this acknowledging of an Usurper the good Bishop of Ely then oppos'd and for it was Committed to Buckingham's Custody and Stow calls it all a Stow p. 460. meer mock-Election And here enters all in blood that of the Blood Royal and Innocents the meer Monster of a man that beyond her intention seem'd to crawl into the World while nature lay asleep with a distorted Body the proper receptacle for as perverse a Soul and in him the third great Example that our Impious Author vouches for the Practicable Presidents of a Parliaments abetting the plain Usurpation of a Rebel to the Rebellious deposition of a King that Reign'd and consequently the subsequent Murders of those that had the right and those damnable Proceedings against Edw. 2d and Richard 2d and these poor Infants has he more Elaborately handled than all the rest of his abominable Treatise and the Contradictory Wretch calls the Murder of the Nephews Barbarous yet pleads for the power of a Parliament that Introduc'd the Tyrant for their Murder for they were as much dispatch't by their suffrages in the senate as by Tyrrel in the Tower they were the Ministers of Injustice that sentenc'd them out of their Right and that other only an Executioner to dispatch them of their Life for the History of all Nations and too sadly that of our own verifies it for an experienc'd truth that the Destruction of those that have right certainly follows in all Monarchies the bloody Vsurpation or the popular Election of him that has none an Association will needs follow an Exclusion for whom they have expell'd they must destroy for such Murders as are grounded upon MAXIMS of State must as necessarily follow the Foundations upon which they are lay'd for whatever Usurpers undermine an old frame of Government their Interest obliges them to remove as rubbish all that shall obstruct the raising of the new and the dangers and fears from excluded deposed Princes or the poor injur'd Heirs soon makes it absolute necessity to cement the Walls with their Blood The best remarks that can be gathered from the following Reign of Harry the Seventh are to be found in the Lord Bacon's
History the best account of that King and he tells us he had no less then three Titles to the Crown whatever that Italian States-man Commines could conceive to the contrary first his Title in right of the Lady Elizabeth whom he was resolv'd to marry secondly that of the Line of Lancasters long disputed both by Plea and Arms thirdly the Conquest by his own But the Learned Historian observes the first was look't on the fairest and Yorks line been always lik't as the best Plea in the Crowns descent and for Confirmation of it the Learned Lord tells us that this Henry knew the Title of Lancaster Condemn'd by Act of Parliament Bacon Hist H. 7. p. 3. Ibid. page 12. and prejudic'd in the Common opinion of the Realm and that the root of all the Mischiefs that befel him was the discountenancing of the house of York whom the General body of the Kingdom still affected and whatever stress and reliance this Prince might place in the PARLIAMENT's power this able states-man observes there is still a great deal of difference 'twixt a King that holds by civil Act of State and him that holds Originally by the Law of NATVRE and DISCENT of BLOOD so that we have here a Person vers'd in our own Laws an excellent and allowed Scholar by the whole World and not only Lauds and Bishops as our bigotted Author would have it allowing a Divine right by the Laws of Nature and who I am sure was so good a Naturalist as best understood her Laws and that Natural discent by blood to be much more preferable than any other Human title given by such Inferiour powers of a Parliament whom the most zealou's adorerssure won't acknowledg more Omnipotent then the God of Nature himself I shall observe another Historical Instance that a true lineal discent was then taken for the best title and even in those times had the greatest Influence which was the Lord Stanley's Case who tho the very Person that plac'd the Crown on this Princes head yet suffer'd the loss of Vid Bacon Hist his own only for saying somewhat that savoured of his kindness to the Succession and that if he was sure the Children of Edward were alive he would not â—ear Arms against them so mightily did the sense of the right blood prevail with him that he sacrified all his own for it and rather than recant what he so well resolv'd seem'd no way sollicitous for his Life But that which this Historian might have observ'd too in this Reign as a discouragement to the designs of some of their popular Patriots then afoot when he pen'd this his presumptuous piece was the ill success that two several impostures met with in their pretensions to a Crown to which they were not born no great Inducement certainly for any one to be persuaded to personate the Royal Heir to set up for a Lambert or a Perkin only for their misfortune and fate Lastly I shall conclude my remarks upon this Kings Reign with an Animadversion upon a Paragraph or two that conclude his piece very pertinent to this place since it relates to the times of which we treat and that is the resolution of the Judges upon the Case of this their King that the Descent of the Crown purged all his defects and attainder This their opinion he refutes Brief Hist p. 17. as Frivolous Extrajudicial and here Impertinent but I hope to show this Point a most material one the Resolution to be a good Judgment and their reply much to the present purpose First sure it was a matter and that of a high Nature to know how he was qualify'd to sit in the House that was to preside in it as the head And tho he might in some sense be said to have won the Crown with Arms yet he knew it would wear much Better sit much Easier if setled and establish't according to Law and tho a Conquerer that has the Sword in his hand can soon capacitate himself to sway the Scepter yet he 'l soon find the most regular Proceedings tend most to the Establishment of his Reign this made Henry the Seventh who had a Triple Plea for the Crown and that one by discent from the Lancasters consult his Oracles of the Law how far an Attainder past in the Reign of the Yorks would still taint his Blood and make it less Inheritable Secondly their Resolution that all preceding defects were purg'd in the discent was a Judgment both equitable and reasonable for 't was sure but equal that an Heir to whom an Inheritance and that of a Crown was allowed to discend should be qualify'd to take too for if he was a King no Bill of Attainder could touch him that was past too when he was none And if he was no King Vid Dyer H. 7. f. 59. The King is the head of the Parliament Lords and Commons but Members So no more Parliament without a King than a body without a head It is no Stat. if a King assent not to it 12. H. 7. 20. all the concurrence of the Lords and Commons cou'd never have made him an Act for his being so there being no Royal Authority to pass it into Law and nothing by the very constitution of our Government can be made a Law without so that such a resolution certainly was highly reasonable and unavoidable that that should purge its own defects which no power had perfection anough to purge wou'd he have a King pass an Act with his two Houses for the reversal of his own Attainder or the two Houses reverse the Attainder of their King If the first the allowing him to pass such an Act supersedes the end for which it should be past and makes him de Facto capable whom they would capacitate if he allows the Latter then he must an Interregnum too extinguish that Monarchy for a while of which the very Maxim says the Monarch can't dye and place that Supream power in the People which all our Fundamental Laws have put in the King Thirdly this Resolution is very pertinent to the present purpose to which 't is commonly now apply'd and that is the Bill of Exclusion But his passion and prejudice would not permit him to Examin the little difference there is between them For certainly that ability that can discharge any attainder is as efficacious for the voiding and nulling any Bill that shall hinder the descent for a Bill of Exclusion would have been but a Bill or an Act of the House for disabling the next Heir And an Attainder can do the same and is as much the Houses Act and to distinguish that in an Exclusion the Discent it self is prevented by a Law makes just no difference for whoever is Attainted has his Discent prevented by a Law too and that antecedently also before the Descent can come to purge him so that they only differ in this formal sort of Insignificancy In an Exclusion the Discents prevention would be
confirmed Henry the 7th had his Negative Voice the thing those Seditious discontented Grumblers so much repine at maintained asserted for his undoubted Prerogative It is at present by the Law of ‖ 12. H. 7. 20. 7. H. 7. 14. his Time no Statute if the King assent not A Prince beloved and favoured only because he was their King who tho he had as many subsidies granted more than any before him His Subjects you see never thought it a Grievance then to contribute to their Soveraign's being Great but acknowledged his Supremacy even under their greatest pressure His Extortion upon penal Statutes * Vid. 4. Inst Baker page 248. Historians call and the Law the most unjustest way for raising of Money that was ever used yet still had he the Hearts of his People as well as their Purses They thought Rebellion then could not be Justifyed with clamor of Oppression as since by Ship-money and Lone tho levyed by a King whom themselves had Opprest The simplicity of those times made them suffer like good Subjects and better Christians when the refined Politicks of such Authors and a profligate age can tell them now to be Wise is to Rebel I need not tell him who managed Affairs in Henry the †H. 8. Eighth's Time when Parliaments seemed to be frightned into Compliance with a Frown and Bills preferr'd more for the pleasure of the Prince than the profit of the People Their Memberships then so far from medling with the measures of the State that they seemed to take them for their sole Measures so far was then an Order of the House from controuling that of the Board And I can't see that the Peoples * 1 Car 3. Petition of Right has since beg'd away too the King's Prerogative yet it was affirmed for ‖ 25. H. 8. C. 21. Law in this King's Time that he had full power in all Causes to do Justice to all Men. If the Parliament or their Council shall †Plato manage Affairs let them tell me what will become of this Power and Law His Son Edward succeeded him and tho a Minor a Prince whose Youth might have given the People an opportunity for an Encroachment upon his Power and the Subject commonly will take advantage of the Supremacy and that sometimes too much when the Soveraign knows but little what it is to be a King I am sure they were so Seditiously Wise in that Infancy of Henry the Third and yet he had Protectors too as well as this But notwithstanding such an Opportunity for the robbing the Rights of the Crown you shall see then they took the first occasion for the asserting them In the very First year of his Reign it was resolved that all Authoritie and Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived from the King but this Republican has found out another Resolution of resolving it into the power of the Parliament And in this very ‖ 5 Ed. 6. c. 11. Reign too it was provided as the common Policy and Duty of all Loving Subjects to restrain the Publishing all manner of Shameful Slanders against their King c. upon whom dependeth the whole Unity and Universal weal of the Realm what Sentence then would the Parliaments of those times have past upon Appeals to the City vox patriae's and a Plato Redivivus upon a Libel that would prove the †Plat. pag. 117. Kings Executive power of War forfeitable and that the * pag. 237. Prerogative which is in the Crown hinders the Execution of the Laws tho I am sure those very Laws are the best Asserters of the Prerogative there next resolve would have been to have ordered such an Author to the Flames by the Hands of the Hangman instead of that Honorable Vote the thanks of the House In Queen Mary's Time too the Law left all to her Majesty tells her all * 1 Mar. c. 2. Jurisdiction does and of Right ought to belong to her In Queen Elizabeth's ‖ 1 El. c. 1. Time what was Law before they were obliged even to Swear to be so Every Member of the House before qualified to sit in it forc'd to acknowledg his Soveraign SVPREAM in all Causes over all Persons And were their Memberships to be modelled according to the Common-wealth of this Plato their Oath must be repealed or they perjur'd Their very Constitution would be Inconfistant with his Supremacy they must manage and Command at the same time they Swear to submit and obey Was there ever a more full acknowledgment of Power and Prerogative than was made to King †Jac. c. 1. James upon his first coming to the Crown And tho I confess they took upon them to manage Affairs in his Son and Successors time yet this was not until they had openly bid him defyance to his Face and actually declared War against His Person then they might well set up their Votes for Law when they had violated the Fundamental ones of the Land yet themselves even in that Licentious and tumultuous time could own ‖ K. Charles his Collect. Ordinanc 1. part fol. 728. that such Bills as His Majesty was bound even in Conscience and Justice to pass were no Laws without his Assent What then did they think of those Ordinances of Blood and Rebellion with which themselves past such Bills afterward so unconscionable so unjust Here it was I confess these Commons of this pernicious Projector took upon them the management of the State their Councils their Committees set up for regulating the Kings Then their †Vid. wil. Prynns Parliam right to elect privy Councellors Pillor'd Advocate that lost his ears as this with his Treasonable Positions should his Head Publisht the very same Proposal in his pestering Prints the very Vomit of the Press to which the dangerous Dog did in the Literal Sense return to lick it up still discharing again the same choler he had brought up before in a Nauseous Crambe A Wretch that seemed to Write for the Haberdashers and Trunk-makers instead of the Company of Stationers that Elaborate Lining the Copious Library for Hat-cases and Close-stools that Will with a whisp whose fuming Brains were at last illuminated for the leading Men into Boggs and Ditches Rebellion and Sedition The Confusion of others only for the confounding of himself ‖ Vid. his Memento to Juncto for the for a King for the †2d his Parliaments Soveraigns Power For the Parliament for the * 3d. his Lords Bishops none of the Lords Bishops or the Buckle of the Canonical Girdle turned behind 〈…〉 every 〈…〉 for nothing but that ONE thing Scribble Compare the power of his Parliaments and his Vnparliamentary Juncto the meer Lumps of distorted Law or Legal Contradiction with the 25th of Edward He first deposes his King and even there then finds his Deposition Treason Their Divine Baxter never baffled himself more with the Bible and the Gospel than this Elaborate Legislator with
being Rational debase his very Nature so much as to call it Justice Would they ascribe an Omnipotency to this their power of Parliaments beyond that of the Almighty and blasphemously allow to this their Created God what the Schools would not the Divinity it self to reconcile Contradiction but still these Statute Mongers that can make any Miscellanies of Parliament for their turn this they will defend to be Legal only because it was past into a Law Let it be so but still there must be much difference between this their Legality which now in their Sense can be nothing but the power of making Laws and common Justice which must be the Reason for which they are made and what is contrary to that and all Reason by the Laws of God and all Nations must be null and void otherways the most Barbarous Immoralities that an Heathen would blush at by such an indefinite Legislative would be truly Legal only because they are past into a Law Murder it self made Statutable as soon as ever those that have the power have Sign'd it for an Act. These Suggestions of Consequences are far from being extravagant because at present the Principles that lead to them are what but very lately have been Printed and Publish'd and the very Practices themselves not long since put in Execution This * Postscr p. 55. Author I am handling has made his Legislative not to be confin'd and that Plato we have pretty well examined allows his People can pass any thing for the good of the Common-wealth and then it may Polygamy too because it was practis'd in his Republick and is now tolerated amongst the Turks and what some Waggs tell us an indiscreet Member was once moving for here But that we can have hard measure for our Lives upon the pretence of a Parliamentary Power the Case of Strafford will attest and that with the pretext of a Parliament a Monarch may be murder'd The Martyrdome of our King these are too terrible Testimonies that our Legislative has been strein'd to make the greatest Injury Law and ‖ By Parl. 12. Car. 2d C. 12. That Session declar'd Traiterous Treason it self the Statute of the Land for they past an Act for the Tryal of their Soveraign and then declar'd it Legal because it was past Their God Almighty of the Law †Cook 4. Inst C. 1. p. 36 huic nec metas rerum nec tempora pono Cook himself whose Words with them is all Gospel too tho' he in his Pedantick Phraseology puts no period to this Power of Parliament yet in the very * Pag. 36. next Page condemns the self same sort of Proceeding and that was in the Case that hard Fate too of another Earl as Innocent perhaps also and as unfortunate ‖ Earl of Essex 35. H. 8. Cromwell was attainted in Henry the Eighth's time much after the same manner my Lord Strafford was in Charles the First but only if so great Injustice can be extenuated the latter was more Inhumane For tho' the First was Sentenc'd and suffer'd by Parliament without being admitted to Answer A Proceeding against our * Magna Charta C. 29. 5 Edw. 3. C. 9. 28 Edw. 3. C. 5. own Laws those of all ‖ The Manner of the Romans was to see Accusers Face to Face and Answer if you believe the Bible Acts 25. v. 16. Matt. Paris vita Reg. Johan 275. incivile videtur contra Canones in absentem ferre Sententiam Nations and of †Deuteronomy Chap. xix Verse iv The Almighty provides for the Prisoner's Defence Heaven it self against all that was Humane or Divine yet Wentworth's Measure was more hard whom they made to suffer with an Attainder after he had argued for his Life confounded his Accusers and convicted some of his own * My Lord Digby with several others Judges The same sort of Severity Sir John Mortimer met with from this Parliamentary Power upon whom they past a Judgment without so much as permitting him to be arraigned but these Barbarities of Mr. Vid. Rot. Parl. 2d H. 6. num 18. Hunt's unlimited Legislative were condemn'd even by this their learn'd Lawyer tho' he would not did not or dared not question their Authority yet damned them in his own Words * But of these says he Auferat Oblivio si potest si non ut câ—nque silentium tegat 4 Inst p. 37. Postscript p. 74. if it were possible to dark Oblivion if not to be buried in Silence but this more Dogmatical Judge with his Postscript has rather Encouraged such Injustice and Severity and represented to his Parliament a power they have of Proceeding more unwarrantably when he tells them tho the Succession of our Crown be Hereditary they can alter the whole Line and Monarchy it self by their unlimited power of their Legislative Authority But I shall also shew him that his Legislative power as it cannot justly extend to such great and impious Extravagancies yet but what we see it has been actually stretch'd to so neither can it to some other things that are less so In King Edward the Third's Time there were several Acts past that took away the power of Pardons from the Prince yet all these made void by the Common ‖ Stanford 2. 101. Law because against the Prerogative of their King And it was resolved by the Judges in King James †2. Jacob. Term. Hill Cook Lib. 7. his Reign that Himself could not grant away the power of Dispensation with the Forfeitures upon the Penal Laws because annext to his Royal Person and the Right of his Soveraignty And if what is only Derogatory from the Crown 's Right and King's Prerogative shall be actually voided by the Common Law as we see it did to the nulling three several Statutes I cannot see how this Bill of Exclusion had it past into an Act would not have been as much null and void unless it can be proved that our Hereditary Descent of the Crown is not so much the King's Prerogative that wears it as the Pardoning of a Felon or the remitting a Fine And that I believe will be difficult to be cleared by those that have spent so much Pains and Paper for its Justification and our Author himself so much Labors for so that even the Common Law it self will anticipate the Work of the Statute and perhaps his Highness need not have stayed till that of Henry the ‖ 1. Henry the Seventh Fol. 4. Que Le Roy est Person dis charge D'ascun Attainder quil prist sur luy le Reign estre Roy. Seventh had taken away his Exclusion as well as Attainder and purged away all his Defects and framed in capacities by his coming to the Crown I have but two Cases more with which I 'll conclude Mr. Hunts great point of Legislative In †5. Ed. 3. Edward the Third's Time an Act was purposely declared void that was past and the King had
Work by the Pope for raising a Rebellion against our most Protestant Queen Elizabeth of whom I have two or three Editions by me such Encouragement does Treason and Sedition still meet with amongst our Puritans and the Popish part of the World for Re-impression and Improvement and from this damnable Libel upon Christianity it self and the Badge of its Profession the Gospel a piece so lewdly Seditious that both the Catholicks and Phanaticks that hugg its Doctrine yet had not the Confidence to entitle them selves to the work from this and Brutus his vindicioe has Mr. Hunt and his Apostate absolutely borrowed all their Principles at least unfortunately transcribed them by Inspiration which I may demonstrate with as plain a Parallel as any Corollary can be drawn from a Mathematical Proposition when I come in the next Chapter to handle that Reproach to Christianity that Opprobrium of our Church In the mean while give me leave to close this with these few Animadversions upon some of this Lawyers Sentences before we come to the Lewd Maxims of the Divine * P. 68. 88. He tells us with Passion and transport that this Opinion of a Divine Authority in Kings renders us all Traytors and this Doctrine of their Divinity is dangerous to the Peace of the Kingdom and pregnant with Wars Nothing but a Zeal that had overcome his Senses could precipitate him upon such Paradoxes the only thing that prevails most with me and I believe with all that are not open Enemies to the State or fled from its Justice for an entertaining of this Religious Principle of our Loyalty is that nothing can possible with Christians be a better Argument for their living peaceable under so good a Government or were it not so good than to believe that those that are their Rulers have Authority from their God and sure his Anointed is preserved the sooner from being toucht from the regard an Heathen would have to any thing that has a power Sacred and Divine what can be a stronger Conviction to a Reasonable Soul of the good the peaceable Consequences of such a pious Doctrine than that those that contend so much against it are still found to be Disturbers of our Peace Can he prove that the Consecration of a Church and the very presence of God in the Tabernacle shall be an Encouragement for Sacrilege and an Invitation for a Villain to rob it of its Candlestick Chalices Offerings and Oblations Only that he may break the Tables before the Face of his God that gave the Law But whenever our Peace is interrupted by this Doctrine It is only by such Sacrilegious Desperado's as dare attempt Majesty and that upon the same account for Plunder and Prey At the last * Pag. 148 149. he is mighty tender of his Fanaticks and their Throats from the Papists but sure he may be now less concerned when we can match them with an intended Massacre of their own as clearly proved as the noon-day but may well be disbelieved by such who can not only side with the Turks in their Arms but almost in their Infidelity But I can tell them a more Ingenuous a better way of denying their Plot by confessing it by owning what indeed it was a bare-fac'd Conspiracy a Resolute Rebellion Hitherto Mr. Hunt has been animadverted on as his Lewd Expressions and the more abominable Principles in a Person pretending to so much sincerity lay scattered promiscuously so that our Remarks must have made a Miscellany as well as his Book but its whole substance of Sedition I shall reduce now to three several Heads First * That Assertion of the Legisative which he would not allow in p. 46. 61. the King Secondly That Divine Right which he would rather place in the People Thirdly That Succession of the Crown to depend upon a Parliament or the power of both The first Reason that he gives for the first is from his Rule and Inferrence in Arithmetick where a Unite added to two makes a Third And the Conclusion is because none can say therefore those two do not go to the making that number and what then Therefore the King hath not the Legislative and this is the Logick of this Body of Law when it sets up for the Mathematicks and would demonstrate the King's Co-ordinacy as plain as a Probleme and he might have told us too without turning pedant in his Latinisms of Vnites and Triads that one and two makes three which no body can deny as the burden of the Ballad has it and here upon the strength of his Performance he has found out this wonderful discovery I know not what kind of Figure he would make of the King here but I am sure such kind of Seditious Souls could with all their Hearts make him pass for a Cypher I could find in my Heart to cap the pretty simile with another as silly A three legg'd Stool take away one and all tumbles to the Ground they being all Equal and Co-ordinate powers for the supporting of this Supremacy in Cathedra which sounds as well as their Curia or Camera their old musty Metaphysicks that distinguisht once the King from his Crown And this obliging Metaphor will serve Mr. Hunt's turn much better For here every foot of this Magisterial Stool is commonly made of the same Matter and Mold joint Supporters of the tripple Dignity whereas his Unite even amongst Mathematicians is allowed somewhat of Precedency and to be the First the Foundation of all number But to be serious if possible in an Inference so silly must he not suppose in such a simile of two Figures which by the Accession of an Unite is made a Triad and the two concurring as much to the making that number as well as that one must he not suppose I say this to result from the equality of every single Unite so that one can not confer more to the Composition of this Triad than another If they be not equally concerned or impowered then one would concur more to the making up that number than the rest so that this Law Philosopher this Cook upon Hereboord will be reduced to this Dilemma either they do not equally go to the making up that number or they do If they do not he denies his own Supposition and gives himself the Lye if he grant they do then his simile is Nonsense in the Application and a very begging of the Question For we say that our Monarch who if he please shall be the Vnite for once is more than either of the other Two and if the peevish Malecontent won't be angry I 'll tell him more than Both his Assent is such an One as is attended with a power to deny and neither of them will pretend to the Negative and that is the true Reason we find all our Republicans so furiously contending for the taking away the Kings It was for this * Pryn's power of Parliam Pryn Printed and Pestered the Press For this he
made or not Queen Mary must have Succeeded by Proximity of Blood as next Heir after her Brother And 't was that inherent and unalterable Right that made the Nation the more Zealous in her Cause tho there were enough too as Warm for her Religion he very well knows how that Will was extorted from a weak and dying Prince by the Powerful Importunities of Northumberland for the sake of Jane the Eldest of the House of Suffolk whom one of his younger Sons had Marry'd he knows nothing but self Interest and Ambition promoted it he may Read that both the Learned in the * Sir James Hales Judge Court Com. Pleas Sir John Baker Chancel Excheq Vid. Baker pag. 311. Law and as emiment of the ‖ Goodwin in Vitâ Mariae Divines were against it Bishop Goodwin tells us of Cranmer himself present that he opposed it and that for the same Reasons all good Subjects do now because he thought no pretence of Religion could warrant an excluding the Right Heir This was the Sense of a Protestant so Zealous that he afterward suffer'd for it but the power of the great Northumberland prevailed with him at last for his Consent of which himself afterwards heartily repented to the Queen tells her he never liked it that nothing griev'd him more and that he wish't he could have hinder'd it And the ill success that Attempt had is alone sufficient one would think to discourage such another 'T is strange that the very thing that has once brought a Calamitons War upon the Kingdom that in this very Instance terminated in the Confusion of all the Attempters brought Northumberland to be Executed and to Penitence too for having offended and poor Lady Jane as her self said to suffer justly only for accepting of a Crown so unjustly offer'd 'T is Prodigious that such contradictory Mediums should be urged for countenanceing a thing to which they are so much repugnant Did not a Parliament here of Protestants declare for a Popish Successor and as Bishop Goodwin says the Suffolk men set her up tho they knew her a Papist Did not a Popish Parliament after her death declare for Queen Elizabeth tho they knew her a Protestant and were not in all these sudden Revolutions the Right Heirs still preferr'd notwithstanding their Religion was not the same that was profess'd how then can men that offer at such a piece of Injustice touch upon those times for the Justifying so much wrong where they see that under the same Circumstances they still asserted their Princes Right The next pretty Notion of this Ecclesiastical novice in the Law that we shall now pass our Notes upon is a quaint conceit relating to our Oath of Allegiance what it's form was of old and what he would have implyed in the word HEIR therein mentioned to whom we Julian p. 19 20. 11. swear and here at the same time that he would deliver the poor people as he pretends from the sad delusions of Error and Sophistry does he put upon them the greatest Falsehood and fallacy and the quaintest Sophism a Quirk in Law viz. That the King 's Heir in possibility cannot be meant in our Oath of Allegiance because 't is a Maxim forsooth in our Law * Non est Haeres Viventis that no Man can have an Heir while he is living And with this silly Solaecism a sort of Sense merely Sophisticated this Elaborate Gospeller in the Law lays himself out in the pains of two or three Pages to prove the prettiest Postulate which we would have granted but for an asking that in this our Oath we did not swear Actually Allegiance to the D. of Y. And truly I am much of his opinion too in that point and that he was not then our Soveraign tho he had a possibility to Succeed But can ever a more Senseless Inference be made by a pretender to Sense or a more Jesuitical Evasion by the most dexterous Manager of an Oath First I would ask him what he thinkâ— was the Design of its first Imposition what was the Reason of Inserting including the Kings Heirs and Successors it those Oaths of SVPREMACY and ALLEGIANCE Was it to perpetuate or acknowledge an Hereditary Succession or to warrant an Exclusion of the Right Heirs Did the Parliament design in the framing them the Lineal Discent of the Crown when they Swear to defend the Authority of the Kings Lawful Successor as well as his own or did they then reserve to themselves a power of declaring who should be his Successors by Law But if the Divine Gentleman would have reason'd pertinently and to the purpose tho it would have been but an absurd sort of Reasoning this he must have inferr'd that because we there swear only to be faithful to the Kings Heirs when they come to Succeed therefore this Oath non Obstante we are left at Liberty to prevent any Heir from his Succession and then I would have this Political Casuist tell me What would be the Difference between this Evasion and a direct Perjury for we swear to be faithful to the King's Heir that shall Succeed him and truly in the mean while we make them our own suffer only whom we please or â—ust none at all to Succeed for by the same Law Equity and Reason that we interrupt the Succession of one we may that of one thousand too and still be true to our Oath * And even that is allow'd by Hunt in his Postscript pag. 74. if we abolisht the whole Line of Succession for then those Juglers with a turn of hand and a Presto will tell us very readily why truly we swore to obey his Majesties Heirs and Successors but must needs be absolved now since there are none that do succeed And such were the Casuistical Expositions of some of our Late Divine Assemblies even in this very point when they had Murdered their Prince and denounced Death Vid. Vote of the house in the Journal 1648. to His Heirs and were urged with their Allegiance But is not this first Perjuring themselves to Commit a Crime and then justifieing its Commission by their being Perjur'd May we not as well Murder one that would be the Successor and then plead our Innocence we did not suffer him to Succeed or truly did they not design such an Impious and Execrable countenancing of the Villany when they Associated for his Destruction and swore to destroy him would not they then too have Absolved themselves thus in Johnson's Sense and the Jesuits from any obligation to this his Majesties Heir because the Law Maxim did not yet allow him to be so and they had helpt him now from being so for ever Will a Nice point of this his Law resolve does he think as tender a Case of Conscience This his Law makes it but Manslaughter where a person is kill'd without Malice Propense but will this be no shedding of Blood to be required at his hands by the Judge of
Latin Idiom sometimes applies the word Princeps to subordinate supremacy as well as to those that are sole Supream But even the Authority that he cites for this silly Suggestion and others P. Virgil himself is sufficiently secluded from being Authentick by Sir Henry In 's Epistle to Queen Eliz. Savill The next Factious Insinuation that follows is that John De Gaunt this Edward the Thirds fourth Son but the Eldest surviving disputed the Succession But this as a Learned and Loyal Author observes so far from Truth that he was at the latter end of his Fathers Life made Lieutenant of the Realm and Protector of it during Richard his Minority certainly had his Competition come in Question they would have been but dangerous Trusts and against the Laws of all Nations and our own for the Civil takes sufficient Care for the removing of all suspected Tutors and our Common ordained upon Instit Lib. 1. Tit. 26. de suspectis Tutoribus Cokes 1 Insti sect 108. Daniel p. 217. the Lord 's loosing his ward for disparagement that the wardship of the Heir should never go to the nearest of kin but to the next to whom the Inheritance cannot descend Daniel says King Edward purposely to prevent the disorder and mischiefs that attend the disordering Succession setled the same in Parliament on Richard lest John of Lancaster should supplant him as Earl John had done his Nephew Arthur and this disingenuous Creature perverts the fear of Supplantation into a dispute of the Succession and Stow tells us of nothing but his being made Prince of Wales on his Brothers Death But this Uncle proved a better Keeper of the King in his Protectorate than this John or Richard the Third had but the Poor Princes Subjects kept their Faith too and not given our perjured Author another Instance for the renouncing his Allegiance and a second president for the deposing of his King And here since this Historian has already cited two or three Popish Archbishops for the Countenancing of his Puritanism and the Doctrine of Bellarmin for the Counterpart of Buchanan conspiring in a perfect Harmony for the Deposition of their Kings and their Murder I 'le tell him of another Canterbury too that blew the Trumpet to the dethroning of the next King and the sacrificing of his Sovereign upon that Altar of his Lips For the first thing that the first Usurper attempted that aspiring Prince when he landed was the causing of Arundel then the Metropolitan to preach down King Richard the Prelate had ready a Bull procured from Rome promising Remission of Sins to all those that should aid the said Henry and after their death to be placed in Paradice which preaching as our Author says moved many to cleave to the Duke Stow p. 320. but this Popish Puritan knows our Bishops and Divines since the Reformation have taught him better Doctrine and he licks up the very Poyson of his deadly Foes only to spit the venom in the Face of the Government But with what face can he tell us of a Parliament here drawing up a Form of Resignation which was just as much a Parliament as their late Major part of Members that were to be obey'd in their Association An Invader Usurper and a banisht Subject takes upon him in the name of his Sovereing to Summon it and so did our late Rebels fight and fire at his Majesty but still with his own good Leave and Authority this Convok't that Parliament as Cromwel secluded his with an Army at his heels only those had secured their King in the Tower these in the Isie of Wight and shall these their Journals of Rebellion make up a Book of Presidents Is such a fellow fit to breath under a mild Government that calls for Blood where there is so much Mercy that Recommends to your reading an Impeachment of his King and refers you to the Charge and Articles that were drawn up for his Deposition as a worthy Subject and well deserving to be read Brief History page 7. Why did he not tells us too as well deserving to be imitated Jan. 20 48. The Sollicitor Cook presented the Charge against CHARLES STEWART Engrost ordered that it be returned to him to be exhibited Preposterous Lump of Law and It is a Maxim in Law Rexest Principium Caput Finis Parliamenti Logick revers'd that prints himself the Contradiction to common Equity and Reason can such a Body Politick justly convene it self only to Rebel against its head and to take away that Breath from whence it needs must have its being and can those Laws be made to Vid. Bracton Lib. 1. C. 2. Leges Anglicanae Regum Authoritate jubent conspire his Death from whom themselves acknowledge they receive their Life But as to the matter of Fact it self you shall see what Sence some of the Times had of it The King of France 22. E. 3. 6. Resolved the King makes Laws by the Assent of Lords and Commons was so sensible of this Injurious Proceeding that it ran him into a fit of Frenzy Richard being related to him by the Marriage of his Daughter he acquaints his Lords with his Resolution of Revenge and they shew'd themselves as ready to take it too but were prevented here in England by their taking away his Life which made them desist not able to serve him after his Death This is but an Evidence how the Villany was resented abroad and you may find they were as much upbraided with it at home and that to their very face when a Parliament was sitting and their Usurper on the Throne by the Loyal Prelate of Carlisle whose Memory may it live as long as Loyalty can flourish or our Annals last so solid and unanswerable were the Suggestions so significant the Sense of this pious Soul that it silenc'd all the Senate that Vide Baker and Trussel agree in the same of the Bishops Speech was sitting and nothing but the prospect of some private or publick Favor and Preferment hindred their Conviction their King was cool enough in prosecuting of his bold Truths being scarce warm in his own Government yet at last upon Debate and Consultation they confin'd the bold Bishop for a while for the Liberty that he took and could only condemn his bold Indiscretion for shewing them so much the badness of their Cause Hollinshed tells us this poor Prince was most unthankfully us'd of his Subjects In no Kings days were the Commons in greater Wealth or the Nobility more 3d. Vol. Chron. f. 5â—8 cherisht how near some of our pamper'd Jesuruns that are fatten'd to rebel confirm the danger of too much Luxury and ease the present fears from their experienced Attempts can best attest But the fatality that befel that unhappy Prince affords us the best politicks for the prevention of the like Fate And now for his Henry the Fourth he is forc't to falsifie for his depending on the Parliaments choice when in
love I am sure we have such a Number of true Profligate Villains on their side that as Mortally hate it that we should soon have it undermin'd 'T is a strange Paradox that a Republick which was always the result of a Rebellion and which is restless till it return to that Government from which it revolted should be lookt upon by these prejudic'd preposterous Politicians for a piece of Reformation which can proceed from nothing else but from the Turbulent Humour and discontents of some restless Spirits that dislike the Constitution of that under which they were Born and would that of any to which they are Subjected yet still can Fancy that Monarchy which they will have Establish't by the common Consent of the People to proceed from a Corruption of their Manners when this their Peoples Consent and Unanimous Agreement for it should determine him at least to think it eligible for the best And if that part of the People which always in a defection from a Monarchy must be suppos'd the least Number shall be allow'd to reform for the better by running into a Republick as I know he thinks of the Rebellious Dutch which Polity wiser heads and honester hearts may and do for ought I see fancy the worse yet why should not even there the Vniversal Consent of almost all the King of Spains Subjects in retaining of their Monarchy make it preferable much Over-ballance the Scales against the revolt of an handful of Rebels unless he fancys the Authors of such pieces and Positions to be the Best the Wisest and the most Honest part of the World and that they are always among such Renegadoes And can in Reason three or four petty Common-wealths most of them in Europe too and such as by the Machinations of Our own Isle that so lately experienc'd the confus'd Anarchy of the Common-wealth of England is the most competent Judg which Polity is the best to whose restor'd Monarchy the words of Paterculus may be well apply'd Revocat◠in urbem fides summota seditio e foro c. Vell. pater◠Hist Lib. 2. some of these sort of Male-Contents and by the Poison of their Principles were Debauch't in their Loyalty and animated to Rebel be so prevalent an Argument as to perswade Men in their Wits that the Monarchies in which almost all our Christian World Conspires and all the Heathen agrees as far as it is known and which Government we have still found even in those unknown parts as far and as fast as they have been Discover'd that this all the while must be the worse Frame only from it's being by so few rejected and so generally receiv'd But to Convince any reasonable Soul unprejudic'd that these Domocratical Devil's won't stick to give their God the Lye and set themselves a Contradiction to all History and Truth this Daemon of Plato as an Ingenious Author and Answerer of his Diabolical Principles has naturally nam'd him let him but consider this single Falsehood of his Factious Heart tho' that I believe fails him too in asserting this Impudent Paradox That Moses Theseus Romulus were the Founders of Democracies Page 52. when for the First his own God if he believe any and against whom he Rebels too if he do had appointed him the Supream Ruler and also a Judge to lead On the morrow Moses sate to Judg. the people Ex. 18. 13. them in their Decampments and give them their Laws in the Camp against whose absolute Monarchy he can object nothing but that they did not call him King and yet even that is done too by those Primitive Rebels in the Rebellion of Corah when they Expostulate with him for making himself altogether a Prince over them that is what our Modern ones call Arbitrary Absolute but even that is literally said and Moses was King in Jesurun And will our Numb 16. Murmurers at the Lords Anointed never be Convinc'd till they are Confounded with the same Fate till Fire come again from Heaven or they go quick down into Hell The Survivors of those discontented Mutineers upbraiding Moses for destroying of that Rebellious Brood whom God only in his Judgments had destroy'd the Almighty would have Consum'd them too in a moment neither was his Anger stay'd till Fourteen Thousand fell in a Plague our Land has Labour'd under all these Judgments but because the Almighty's resentments of our Rebellious Practices are not declar'd to us as of old out of a Cloud and he does not reveal himself now to his Vice-gerent as then to his Servant Moses and the Glory of the Lord discends not in a visable Brightness upon our Tabernacle Must we therefore be so vainly blind as to think they were not sent us for those Sins that have most deserv'd them our Conspiring against our Rulers especially when the manner of our Punishments has been so Remarkably the same with their sufferings as well as our transcrib'd Villanies the very Copy of their Crimes For that of Theseus we have the good Authority of an Authentick Historian that writ his Life who tells us when he first went to reduce them to one City and the Government of ONE the Common Ordinary people were well enough pleas'd with his Proposal And to those that were Powerful and Great Plutarch In Thesco Remp. absque Regia dominatione fore si Regem seconstituerent he told them his Government should not be altogether Regal which in their Greek was Tyrannical if they would allow him for their King this prevail'd he says upon them too either out of Fear of his Force or the Power of his Perswasions now can such a False and Factious Imposture can such a Wretch Insinuate well his being no King that calls himself so and only because he Consulted their Opinions in Weighty Affairs make it a Democracy then we need not contend here for a Republick our King still Consulting his great Council in Arduis Regni And for Romulus his founding his Lucius Flor. Hist prima aetas sub regibus fuit prope 250 per Annos Rome a Democracy so far from truth that I defie him to show the least shadow from any Colour of History for such a piece of Imposture Florus in the very First line of his Prologue calls him King Romulus and in the same tells us Rome in it's first Age and Infancy for about two hundred and fifty years was Govern'd by Kings Tacitus too in his very Tacit. An. Lib. 1. Urbem Romam à principio Reges habuere first Remarkable too for an unintended verse tells us that in the beginning 't was Kings had the Government of the City of Rome and afterward tells us this very Romulus Govern'd them Arbitrarily and at his will Sext. Aur. vict says Sext. Aur. de vir Illustr he was the first King of the Romans that he lead them forth against the Sabines that he fought and that he made a League which none I think but Kings by
besides of Mischiefs and Inconveniences the two main matters the Law labours to avoid might be the Result of such an Act and endanger the safety even of King and Subject And what pray now was this Statute of Charles the First but what some even of these ‖ Vid. Seasonable Question and an useful Answer Printed about 77. by a Bencher of the Temple Factious Fellows themselves confess only a Reinforcement of the two Edwards If it were no more by the same Reason they are gone too as being against the King's Prerogative and in Derogation of his Right But Factious Fools that baffle themselves before they can be confuted by others the Statute they repealed did reinforce indeed those of Edward but it was with a Witness even as they * 16. Car. 2. resolved it with an invading the Rights of the King and endangering the Ruin of the People but still 't is true in that latter clause of their repealing Act they prevail upon their King to grant them a Triennial one how far obliging I leave their Oracles of the Law to Judge For if our Kings have had it by their prerogative indefinitely to call Parliaments by Custom or Common Law 't is as much against both for him to be obliged to convene them in three year as two one or without Intermission And I cannot see how the last enacting Clause is consonant to the Repealing Preamble which is so mighty for the Preservation of the Prerogative and we well know under what Circumstances of State Affairs then stood the People could not have more than so good so gracious a King was even in Policy ready to grant it was within a year or two of his being placed upon the Throne of his Father And a Turbulent Faction as furious again to pull him out A Seditious * Venner and his Fifth Monarchy Men. Sect had but just then alarm'd him that were setting up their Christ's Kingdom before his own was hardly settled Sots that thought their Saviour the great pattern of a Passive Obedience could be pleased with the Sacrifice of Fools and Rebels and an active Resistance unto Blood that has commanded us even to suffer unto it and even in the same Season and Session as damnable a * Vid. Brief Narrative of the Tryal of Tongue Stubs c. Lon. 1661. Conspiracy detected as this Hellish one so lately discovered Arms seiz'd the Tower to be taken and an Insurrection contrived the parting at such a juncture with his Prerogative might be the product of his desire to please the People 't is too much to take the forfeiture in his own wrong when in this very particular the same Law provides so much for the Prince's Right But they 'll tell us the King by his passing such a Bill has parted with his Power and Prerogative But then do not the Laws tell us it cannot be past away Was it not resolved by all the Judges but * 1. Jacob. Term. Hill Coke l. 7. in his Grandfathers time That himself could not grant away the Power of Dispensing with the Forfeitures upon Penal Statutes and why because annext to his Royal Person and the Right of his Soveraignty And shall it not be so much our Soveraign's Right which common Custom the Fundamental Law of all the Land has invested him with the convening of Parliaments at his pleasure But for my part for my Life I cannot apprehend did there lie such a great Obligation upon * 16. Car. 2. his Majesty from this his own very voidable if not void Act how 't is possible to bring him at the same time within the Letter of the Laws of Edward and by them lay a necessity upon him to make all their latter Act an entire Impertinence For if by those Laws â—e be obliged to Call a Parliament at least every Year What signifies the latter that allows him three Years for their Calling And if he has three years for their Calling where can lye the necessity for his Calling them in one for a * Cook himself says it is a Maxim in the Law of Parliament that later Laws Abrogate the former that are contrary to them 4. Inst C. 1. pag. 43. Subsequent Stat. that gives such a larger extent of Time tho it do not actually repeal those Preceding that allow less yet it must at least render them Illusory and Vain And to tell us that the latter is but declaratory of the former Act when it contradicts the very Letter of that Law is as absurd as maintaining an Affirmative may be confirmed with an absolute Negative By all the Rules of Reason I have met with yet and Logick is allowed sure to hold good even in Law unless the Legislators set up for Brutes and Irrationals A Proposition of a larger extent must include that of a less which if it does is in this Case Exclusive For should this Authority suppose to bring the Argument home to their Doors and then they can't say it is far fetcht of the House of Commons command me to dance Attendance at their Bar de Die in Diem for abhorring or so and then with a subsequent Order only demand it every third For my part I cannot apprehend the Obligation there lyes upon me for the performing both but that the former stands still a Cypher in their Journal and by the latter is suspended I could assoon resolve in the Crazyness of the Natural Body when 't is batter'd with an Ague that a Quotidian and a Tertian can at the same time assault it together But Mr. Hunt's Illustrations lying in another Science Number and the Mathematicks he may demonstrate this too * Hunt postscript pag. 46. 48 49. with his Vnite and Triad and tell us One and Two make Three But to be serious and that in a matter that so much concerns the Soveraign tho there be no better way of baffling Buffoons and Arguments of Fools must be answered but with Folly tho some may think there may be somewhat of sound Reason in such pleasant Similes for Sense and Nonsense are become Terms now but merely Relative and every Author an Ass or an Animal of Reason as his Reader stands affected we being become parties in that too as well as in Principles if we would truly know the Sense of a Law it must be collected from an Historical Account of that time wherein it was enacted and I think my Lord Cook ‖ Cardinal of Winchesters Case who came from Flanders to purge himself before Parliament of Treason as only the Roll of Henry the Sixth says but Consult the History it appears he had some of the King 's Jewe's gaged to him which the King stopt from going after him c. 4. Inst 7. p. 42. tell 's us as much too And then turn but to the story of the Times and see there the Reasons of such Provisions and when those fail then must sure the force of such Proviso's too for certainly
est Condere and * Quod principi placuit Dig. 1. 4. 1. Pleasure of the Prince only qualifies it with this Insignificant Restriction That it must not be understood of an Absolute Will and Ungovernable but such as is guided and regulated by good advice and the Rules of Equity and Reason and if this be a Warrantable Resolution and I warrant you the rankest Republican will take his Authority to be good should it in any place favour their Anarchy then it must be unavoidably concluded that where the Law is the Princes ‖ Britton that Bishop of Hereford by order of Ed. 1. pen'd a Book of Laws tells us 't is the Kings will that his jurisdiction and Judgment be above all in the Realm Will none of his People neither as aggregate or Jndividuals can be Judges of its Violation neither can it according to common Sense without the greatest Solecism and Absurdity be said by him to be violated at all for where the Custom of the Kingdom as it must be in all absolute Monarchies has plac'd the sole Legislative Power in that which is Supream There the same Will or Moral Action of the Sovereign that breaks an old Edict is nothing else but an Enacting of a new and the Common Objection that our Republicans Flourish withal against this is That then Murder and Sacrilege might be the Laws of the Land because perhaps it has been heretofore the pleasure of our own * Hen. 8. Prince But as such Observations are full of Venom and Spight so they are as much impertinent and nothing to the purpose for whether our own old English Lawyers had restrain'd the meaning Britton Bract. of the Word WILL to a WILL guided by right Reason and Judgment no Person of sober Sense but must Imagine that the very Principi placuit of the Romans was as much restrain'd to the Rules of Reason and Equity and therefore their Tiberius Caligula Nero and Domitian were as much Tyrants and by their own Authors so are term'd as Vid. Sucron In. vitas if they had been bound by the strictest municipal Laws of a mixt Monarchy and as the People themselves to the very Penal Statutes of the Land and therefore for that Reason the very same Civil Sanctions of their Imperial Law that allow such a Latitude to their boundless Prince abound too with this Restriction that still it becomes him to observe those very Laws to which he is not oblig'd Decet tamen Principem inquit Paulus Leges servare quibus ipse solutus D. 32. 1. 23. And for the spilling of Blood or Robbing of Churches and the like unnatural enormities which they say by the Soveraigns being thus absolv'd might become Lawful did not the very Directive part of some of their Municipal Laws forbid them in it the precepts of God and Nature the Unresistable Impulse of Eternal Equity and Reason to which the Mightiest Monarch must ever submit and themselves did ever own a Subjection those will always tye the hands of the most Absolute from Committing such Crimes as well as the Common Lictors do the meanests people for being by them perpetrated and Committed and 't is a great Moral Truth grounded upon as much Reason and Experience That those dissolute Princes that did Indulge themselves in the Violating the Divine Laws of God and Nature could never have been constrain'd to the Observance of our Human Inventions the Municipal Acts of any Kingdom or Country And therefore I cannot but smile to see the Ridiculous Insinuations of some of our Republicans endeavouring to maintain that by such silly suggestions which they can't defend with Sense and Reason for rather than want an Objection they 'll put us too suppose some Kings endeavouring to destroy their Subjects and alienating of their Kingdoms and then put their Question Whether the People shall not Judge and Punish them for it but in this they deal in their Argumentation against their King as some Seditious Senates of late indeavoured to Impose upon him to pass Bills by tacking two together A popular encroachment with an Asserting the Prerogative Just such another business was bandied about by that baffler of himself that pretious piece of Contradiction Will. Prin. Who tells us out of Bracton That GOD the Law and the Kings Courts are above the King where if you take all the Connexion Copulatively 't is not to be contradicted because no King but will allow his God to be above him under whom he Rules yet even there it may be observ'd that the Lower House he so much Labour'd for is not so much as mention'd So do these Sophâ—sters in the Politick's here proceed just like those Jugglers in the House they couple a suppositious piece of Premis'd Nonsense and then draw with it a pretty plausible Conclusion for what man can Imagin if he be but in his Wits that his Monarch unless he be quite out of them and Mad would destroy those over whom he is to Reign none but the Bosan in the Tempest with his Bottle of Brandy was so besotted as to think of Ruling alone and setting up for a Soveraign without so much as a single Subject so that should these peevish Ideots have their silly Supposition granted still they would be prevented from obtaining their end at which they aim for first if we must suppose all the Subjects to be destroy'd where would there be any left to judge this Author of their Destruction if they 'll suffer us only to suppose the Major part or some few certain Persons to be sacrific'd to his Fury then still that Soveraign that would destroy the most part or some certain number of his Subjects without Sense or Reason must at the same time be suppos'd to be out of his Senses and then no Law of any Land will allow the People to punish a Lunatick But if a King must be call'd a Destroyer of his People only for letting the Laws pass upon such Seditious Subjects that would destroy him which is all the Ground they can have here for branding with it their present Princes and for which these exasperated rebels really suggest it then in Gods name let the Latin * Fiat Justitia ruat Coelum Aphorism take place too Then let such Justice for ever be done upon Earth and trust the Judgments of Heaven for their falling Then let them deprecate as a late ‖ Vid. Paper of the Proceedings upon Armstrong his Outlawry Lady did the Vengance of the Almighty upon the Head of the Chief Minister of the Kings but let there be more such Hearts to administer as much Justice and the hands will hardly receive much harm for holding of the Scales And for that others silly supposition of these Seditious Simpletons of a Kings Alienating of his Kingdom * 'T is a receiv'd rule among civil Lawyers and may be well among our own That a King can't in Law alienate his Crown and that if it were
prevent these very Rebels and Republicans in such Factious Inferences did they for two hundred years agon in the first of Richard the Third Resolve what was â—â—gnified by the three Estates of the Realm for say they That is to say the Lords Exact Abridgem Fol. 117. p. 1. H. 3. â—piritual Temporal and Commons and even long since that much more lately out in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in that Act of Recognition of her Right where they endeavor to advance her Royalty as much as possible they can and â—â— make the Crown of this Realm as much Imperial there they tell her 'T is WEE your Majesties most faithful and Keeble Stat. 1. El. C. 3. and does not their own Oracle tell them so L. Coke 4 Inst C. 1. Parliam Obedient Subjects that represent the THREE ESTATES of your Realm of England and therefore in King James and Charles the First 's time â—hen the Commons began to be mutiâ—ous and encroach upon the Crown â—hen they having with the help of their â—â—merous Lawyers which were once by â—articular Act excluded the House and H. 6. if less had State in it perhaps it might have been once less Rebellious too those Gentlemen knowing too well the weight â—f Words and what Construction and Sense Sedition and Sophistry can deduct 4. Inst Stat. de Bigamis concordatum per Justiciarios 2. Inst ibid. Stat. West 2. 13. Ed. 1. Dominus Rex in Parlia mento suo Statuta edidit 2. Inst 331. Stat. Circumspectâ— agatis 13. Ed. 1. begius Rex talibus Judicibus Salutem and tho some would not have it an Act of Parliament my Lord Coke says 't is prov'd so by the Books and other Acts 2. Iust page 487. from a single Syllable I am confident it was they contriv'd the Matter and Method so as to foist in the Factious form of this Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons for that is the General Stile of the Enactive part of most of the Statutes of those Times and this was most agreeable with their mighty Notion of his Majesties making but up one of the THREE that so they might the better conclude from the very Letter of their own Laws That the TWO States which the Law it self implyed now to be Co-ordinate must be mightier and have a Power over their King whom the same Laws confest to be but ONE and the Reason why the forms of their Bill and the draught of the Lawyers and the Lower-House might be past into Act without any Alteration or Amendments of this Clause was I believe from a want of Apprehension that there ever could be such designing Knaves as to put it in to that Intention or such Factious Fools as to have inferred from it the Commons Co-ordinacy For the Nobility and Loyal Gentry that have commonly the more Honesty for having the less Law cannot be presumed so soon to comprehend what Construction can be drawn from the Letter of it by the laborious cavil of a Litigious Lawyer or a cunning Knave and therefore we find that those Acts are the least controverted that have the fewest Words and that among all the multiplicity of Expressions that at present is provided by themselves that have commonly the drawing of our Statutes themselves also still discover as many Objections against it to furnish them with an Argument for the Merits of any Cause and the Defence of the Right of their Clyent at the same time they are satisfied he is in the wrong And for those Enacting forms of our Statutes whatsoever Sense some may think these Suggestions of mine may want That some Seditious Persons got most of them to run in so low so popular a Stile in the latter end of King James and Charles the first 's time such as Enacted only by the Authority of the Parliament 21. Jâ—â—â— by the Kings Majâ—sty Lords and 6. Car. p. 1. C. 1â— 12. Car. 2. C. â—5 Staâ— 2. 13. Car. 2d Commons yet upon the Restauration of Charles the Second the Words With the consent of the Lords and Commons were again reviv'd and afterward 13 14. Car. 2. C. 10. 19. Car. 2. 8. 25. Car. 2. C. 1. 25. Car. C. 9. they bring it into this old agen With the Advice and Assent of Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons according to the form of Richard the 3d. and Queen Elizabeth that resolv'd them to be the THREE STATES and this runs on through all the Acts of his Reign and even in several of them the Commons humbly beseech the King that it may be so enacted I thought it necessary to bring home Buchanan and his Disciples in Scotland maintain'd the same Doctrine of the King 's Co-ordinacy and therefore their Acts in the Rebellion too ran in the Name of the three States But when the King was returned to his Crowu and they to their Obedience the old form was retrieved The King with advice and consent of to our present tho most profligate time as much Acknowledgement as possible I could of my Kings Prerogative from the Laws of our Land and the very Statutes themselves because that some great Advocates for the power of the People some times pretend to plead for them too from Acts of Parliaments tho I think in this last lewd and Libellous Contest against the Crown that lasted for about five year in that Lustrum of Treason there was but one that was so laboriously Seditious so eminently popular as to endeavour to prove the Peoples Supremacy from Rolls and Records and Acts of State and for that recommend me to the good Author of the Right of the Commons Asserted tho I should rather approve of such an undertaking when endeavored to be done from the tracing the dark and obscure tracts of Antiquity and the Authority of a Selden than the single Assertion of a Sidney and the mere Maxims of some Modern Democraticks that have no other Foundation for their Establishments than the new Notions of their Rebellious Authors and that ipse dixit of such Seditious Dogmatists But I am satisfied too that this Gentleman who has laboured so much in vindicating the Commons Antiquity and their constituting an essential part of our Saxon Parliaments did design in it much more an Opposition of our Antient Monarchy and the Prerogative of the Crown than a mere clearing the dark foot-steps of our Old Chronicle and a real defence of Matter of Fact and the Truth And this is too clearly to be prov'd from the pestilent Pen-man's P-tyts own Papers that were publish'd at such a time when there was no great need of such an Asserting the Commons Right when themselves were more likely to have Usurp'd upon the Crown and as Mr. Sidney and his Associates would have it made themselves and the People Judges of their own wrong For to see such a task undertaken at a time when we are since satisfied such dangerous designs were a-foot looks only like a particular
as repugnant to our Nature as that praeternatural Coition of Matter for have we not all the Laws of our Land on our side and that besides Sense and Reason to whose determin'd sanctions even those themselves must submit for I look upon our Argumentative reasoning in such matters to be somewhat like Belief which all our Learned in the Metaphysicks will allow to determine it self upon demonstration and Commences knowledg'd and a science and so must our Positions at last in the Politicks no longer pass for indifferent Notions or disputable Opinions when they come once to be ratified by some supream Establishment or unquestionable Authority for as the result of demonstration is some Theorem or Postulate that requires our assent so are the Sanctions of the Supream power some Statutes or Laws that Command our Obedience as the one is prov'd so the other Enacted and let any one Judge from the several we have cited or any single Act themselves can cite whether all and every one do not expressly assert or absolutely imply the Soveraign so far from being the Servant of the Subject or the Peoples Creature that they many times maintain him to be ‖ 16. R. 2. c. 5. under none but God and in all places acknowledge him above all the People and is not the absurdity on their side and a Contradiction even in Terms when they contend for the contrary And as that Author of the Right of the Magistrate and the like writings of the most Eminent Republicans led on and seduc'd Mr. S. in some Points so has also his predecessor or Co-eval for I think they liv'd in an Age W. Pryn imposed upon him in others and I am sorry to â—ee Mr. S. that valu'd himself upon his parts â—o rely upon that which that pest of the â—ress plac'd so much confidence in and that are the words of * Deum Legem Parliamentum Bracton where he says as Mr. S. would have it God the Law and the Parliament are the Kings three Superiors But even Pryn himself the perverter of all that was not for his purpose does not deal so disingeniously as this Gentleman in the Case for he recites it more Exactly as it is in Bracton which is the Kings Court instead of the Parliament which in the time that Antient Author writ very probably consisted only of his prelates and Lords so that if granted them Pryn's Commons and Mr. S. his People of England â—re not comprehended in the words of â—hat old writer and then besides it is the opinion of some that those words the Laws and the Kings Courts were not originally in the writings of that Loyal Lawyer who in several other places of his works carries up the Divine Right of his King and that absolute Power of his Prince as high as any of the most Modern whom ‖ Postscript Mr. Hunt has represented and libell'd as first introducers of this new Notion this dangerous and damnable Doctrine for that grave Judge for above 4 or 5 hundred years agon told us our †Hen. the 3d's time Bracton lib. 4. cap. 24. § 5. Rex sub nullo nisi tantum Deo and l. 5. tract 3. non habet superiorem nisi Deum satis habet ad paenam quod DeuÌ„ expectat ultorem King was under none but God that he had none above him but God and that he had God alone for his Avenger and it seems some what Improbable a person of his Loyalty and Judgment should not only detract from the Supremacy of his Soveraign which he seems so much to maintain but also in direct opposition to what himself had asserted and besides were they the sense as well as the words of that Author they are only true as I have before shown when they are taken collectively in a complicated Sentence and so seems a sort of Sophistry which the Logical heads call a fallacy in Composition But yet from that does Mr. S. conclude That the power is Originally in the People and so by Consequence in the Parliament only as they are their Representatives For my part I cannot Imagine thâ—â— Gentleman's large Treatise to be any thinâ— else but a Voluminous Collection of aâ—â— the Rebellious Arguments that were publisht in our late War for as in this little fiftieth part of it as he professes it to be Paper at his Execution there is not one new Notion but whâ—â— â—â— to a Syllable the same with the Papers â—â— Pryn and the Merc. Politicus out of â—e Author of the Treatise of Monarchy â—s he made a shift to borrow or else â— chance very harmoniously to agree â— the pernicious Position That our â—onarchy is not only Limited and Mixt for that wont content them alone but that this Limitation has oblig'd the Sovereign to be Subject to the Judgment and Determination of Parliament for says that more Antient Antimonarchist this Limitation Treatise of Monarchy p. 12. being from some body else and the â—ower confer'd by the publick Society in â—he Original Constitution of the Government and then he bethinks himself that Kings too may Limit themselves afterward by their own Grants and Concessions which he is pleased to call a Secondary â—â—iginal Constitution i. e. if my little â—â—nse will let me Comprehend the saying â— a Politician that has none at all someâ—hat like a Figure in Speech the Country-man calls his Bull us'd when the Speaker can't express himself Intelligibly A Secondary Original sounds not much unlike the Nonsense of an Original Coâ—y or a second first yet from this senseâ—â—ss Sophistry it must be concluded that â—e Soveraign being limited by this Original Constitution or as they call it Aâ—ter Condiscent and Secondary Origâ—nal what then therefore every Maâ— Conscience must acquit or Condemâ— p. 17 18. Imperium etsilatissime ex lege Regia propter August latum pateret certis tamen limitibus desinitum de jure magist p. 29. the Acts of his Governour and even man has a Power of Judging the Illegâ—â— deeds of his Monarch And so Mr. S. â—â— almost the same Language As a man hâ— is Subject to the People that made hiâ— a King That he receiv'd the Crown upon condition and That performance is â—â— be exacted and the Parliament Judgeâ— of the Particular Cases arising thereuâ—on I cannot but observe to this Geâ—tleman upon this who was always such â— great admirer of the ‖ So the Roman Senate when Augustus was not so much as present freed him from all obligations Romans Commoâ—-wealth what I hinted before was thâ— Sense of the very Romans when according to their own Notion of Original Monarchy the People of that Commoâ—-wealth first conferr'd their Power â—â— Government upon a single Soveraign why their very Laws tell us That noâ—withstanding those Contracts and Limitations of which there were very likeâ— some exprest even in that their very Câ—lebrated and Glorious * The Lex Regia princeps legibus solutus
est l. princ de legibus Law that fiâ—â— made that Government Imperial yâ—â— when once it was so Conferr'd by thâ— very Act all Magistracy i. e. all powâ—â— of Judging that the Subject had before was past over too And were our own â—onarch by the Compact and condiscent â—â— his first Ancestors such a precarious â—ince as they would make him have not â—ur own Statutes I have cited long since â—â—solv'd his Crown to be Independant and himself accountable to none but God And then abstracting from that Advantage we have of the Resolution of the Law Reason it self against which our Republicans rebell too that also will refute the absurdity of such a Position For first where for God's sake would they fix this their preposterous power of Judicial Process if in some single Persons then the Concession of their own renowned Aphorâ—sm will fly in their Face for that allows the Soveraign to be much superior to any Selected number of his Subjects and Major singulis Junius Brutus Vindic. de Jur. Mag. Will. Pryn Parliam Right Buchanan Sidney Tryal p. 23. â—hey won't be such Senseless Sots sure as to â—â—y That those whom themselves acâ—nowledge to be altogether inferior â—â—ould be invested with that Judicial Power which is the highest token and sign of Supremacy if they 'll place it as Mr. Sidney forsooth does in the Original power of the People delegated unto Parliament then should that be granted â—hem when ever this Parliament is dissolv'd if their King be never so great a Delinquent for I think they may assoon make their King so as they did foolishly those that followed him in the late Wars when the word implies a Deserting and the Law only calls them so that adhere to the King's Enemies then Coke Littleton 291. I say if their Soveraign be never so much a Criminal to the State upon such a Dissolution they devest themselves by their own Maxims of this power of Judicature and so put it in the power of the Monarch or the Prince at any time to blasâ— all his Judges in a moment and dissipate them all with the Breath of his Mouth and therefore Mr. Sidney was so wittilâ— Seditious as to foresee such a Consequence and for that Reason very resolutely does deny what some of our more moderate Republicans will allow That the King has a power of Assembling and Tryal page 26. Dissolving a Parliament But this piece of pernicious Paradox a Position so false that some of them themselves are asham'd to own has been already refuted and prov'd from the very Laws of the Land to be an absolute Lye but our Author having plac'd himself and his People above the Law tho it was his hard fate to fall under it and made the Subject Superior to those Sanctions to which themselves acknowledge none to be so but the Soveraign from whom they proceed all the Satisfaction such a Person can receive from the Statutes must be from something of Reason that is the result of them and 't is such an one as relates to their own Positions For they say therefore the Soveraign is obliged to submit to the Laws of the Land because he accepted the Crown upon such an Obligation and shall it not Seditious Souls be as good a Conclusion To say the People have passed away the power of Assembling themselves when they have passed their own Act for being by their King Assembled Then in the next place if this Original power of this People be delegated to this Parliament it would have been much to the purpose for some of them to have shown us from whence this People had this Original Power Certainly if any it must be deriv'd from God Nature or somewhat that 's Soveraign But for the Almighty In all the sacred Texts there 's not a syllable of such a Legacy left them but abundance of the bequest of it that is made to Kings For Nature there is nothing from it more evident than a whole series of Subordination and that to single Soveraignty setting aside even the paternal among Human Creatures almost to be made out among Insects and Animals Bees and Beasts And if some King indulged this their People to appropriate to themselves all the Supream Power which we never heard of any of ours that did or to participate part of their Prerogative which we know many Indulgent ones of ours to their Parliaments have done then still this their power can't be Original because 't is derivative and I dare swear no Prince ever granted them a power of being Superiors as they must be if they would Judge him or ever accepted a Crown upon that Condition supposing it were as they would have it conferr'd For the very Act of being such a Conditional King would absolutely make him none at all and therefore those whom the Lacedaemonians compounded withâ—â— to be regulated by their Ephori were in effect not so much as the Dictators of Rome and so not to be reckon'd to Reign as Crown'd Heads or mentioneâ— among those that we call our Monarchs In the third place if by this Original Tryal pag. 2â— power of the People delegated to the Parliament the two Houses are constituted the Judges of their King I cannot see how Mr. Sidney could avoid or any of his Associates can this Grand Absurdity and as great a Lye that the Parliament have a Natural Liberty not only to Judge but to lop off the Sacred Head of their Liege-Lord and Soveraign For 't is certain they can have no more Authority than the People they represent and 't is as certain they must have as much Now this Original Power must be a Natural one because not deriv'd from any grant and then this Parliament of theirs must have an Original Power by Nature tho it be but to commit the most unnatural Barbarities I confess we had such an one that upon the same Principles proceeded to the perpetrating that most Execrable Treason and the very Villany that any time may be the Consequence of such Positions A Parliament which this good Author presided in or very well understood the Scandal of our own Nation and the shame and reproach of our Neighbors now I say If this his Original power of the People be delegated to this Parliament as Mr. Sidney says it is then this Parliament hath a Natural and Original Power of being their King's Judges because their People has it whom they represent I confess this is a Bar beyond the Seditious Doctrine of their Author in his Right of Magistrates For he is mighty sollicitous least he should be misapprehended as if he design'd the common People should judge their Soveraign De jure Magistrat therefore tells us very carefully none but the subordinate Magistrates themselves can Judge the Supream and their Brutus that succeeded that Assertor of Rebellion says such only as the Spartan Ephori and the seventy of the Israelites Brutus the Centurions or Equestres
did not themselves find it so in several Instances In the year fourty seven Mr. Sidney's Original Power of the People in his own Sense It began Novem. 3d. 40. was in the Senate and Representatives of that which we since call the long Parliament but they having as Rebelliously as well as impudently put the Sword into the Peoples Hand that had put their Original Power into the Parliaments they found all that but a Complement they soon saw what an insignificant sort of Representers they had made of themselves and that their stout Electors for all their buying of their Burgesships with so much Beef and Beer would allow them to be no longer such than they relish'd their Proceedings For 21. June 1647. Perf. Diurn page 16. 12. to these their Representatives they send a more significant sort of a Representation that of an Army to tell them their good House must be purged of such Memberâ— as for Delinquency Corruption and abuse of the State ought not to sit in it and to let them see that for all Mr. Sidneys DELEGATED Power they retain'd anough not only to revoke their Commissionated Authority but to chastise those whom they had Authoriz'd They prefer an Impeachment of High-Treason against no less than eleven of their most eminent Legislators one of which for such is the remarkable Visitation of Providence upon the Heads of Traytors happen'd to be a Person whom their very King had impeach'd before and which nothing but their harder usage of their Hothams tho but the just Judgement Hothams Loves and Carys Case upon such Perjur'd Heads could so happily Parallel For these Villains when once dipt in a Treason against their King never left it seems till they committed another of as deep a dye against the People they thought perhaps the forswearing their Allegiance might be expiated with a breach of Covenant i. e. A single perfidiousness atton'd by being doubly Perjur'd as if the breach of two Negative Oaths like a brace of Negatives among the Latins had affirm'd their Fidelity But this which is so remarkable I could not but observe because it will attone for the Digression in shewing that the just God of Heaven as a more satisfactory Justice to their injur'd Sovereign and a severer Judgment on such Seditious Subjects had destin'd those Heads that were forfeited to their King to be sever'd from their Bodies by that People they had serv'd But to return to those Rebels that made such pretty returns upon one another they were not only satisfied with threatning their Representatives with a re-assuming their Original Power but they actually did it in * Vid. The Representâ—tion of the Army June 21. 1647. Vid. Remonstrance for delivery of the Militia of the City Hist Independ p. 39 40. Remonstance for the Armies advancing to London p. 44. Remonstrances of Rebellion against their Representers as well as not long before in others against their King For so closely did they pursue their Suffragans in the Senate not only upbraiding them with ordinary Misdemeanors but fairly laying to their charge ‖ Remonstrance against the Members Vid. Hist Indep page 49 50 53. Treason Treachery and breach of Trust neither would the bare charging them suffice but they set up a Committee for Examinations which sent fairly one of the †Sir John Maynard learn'd in our Law yet Living to the Tower whose Confinement was the less to be pitty'd since the result of his serving them so much and several other Lords upon the same Charge of High-Treason were committed to the Black-Rod who had they adhered more Loyally to their King perhaps had never labored under this Tyranny of their Fellow Subjects But Mr. Sidney's Original Power of the People carried them further yet They draw up an Agreement Agreem of the People as they call'd it of the People or rather an Union of Devils wherein it was resolved they being weary of such Representers That the Sitting Parliament should be Dissolv'd That there should be another manner of Distribution of Burrough 's Perf. Journal 1699. Dugdale 260. for better Elections and that the People from thenceforth were to be declared the Supream Power whereunto that and all the future Representatives should be subordinate and accountable And here I hope I have proved it home with a Witness from matter of Fact as well as the force of Reason that Mr. Sidney's placing his Original Power in the People made it impossible to be delegated to the Parliament any longer than just as the People pleas'd that this Position made every Member of it dayly run the danger of his Head and that upon his Foundation 't is impracticable for any State of Government to be establish'd for to be sure the People will seldom be any longer pleased with those Delegates themselves have empowred then while they want a Power to re-assume the same that they delegated it would puzzle almost Arithmetick and a good Accountant to tell us how many Revolutions of Government this confused Principle of perfect Anarchy confounded us withall This Original power was delegated as Mr. Sidney says to the Parliament and so it was indeed to the Long one in 49 But there you see they pull it out of their Hands and plac'd it in the Rump but that prov'd at last so unsavory they could relish it no longer and so the Original Power forsooth is resolv'd into a Council of State from that it runs into the confiding Men of Cromwells and Barebones Parliam then at last Centers in the Usurper himself so that in less than three quarters of a year this Original Power of the People was delegated to three several sort of Representatives I need not tell them how the People reassum'd it from his Son and left it just no where how the People retriev'd it again and lost it they could not tell how how they recovered it from the Committee to whom it was lost and then forc'd to leave it at last to him from whom 't was first taken their King But this I hope is sufficient to satisfie any Soul that this Supream Power when plac'd in the People will be always resolv'd into that part of it that has the Supream Strength That this Maxim of Republicans Rebels against the very Parliaments they so much admire That it always ruins the very Collective Body of People in which these Democraticks themselves would place it and resolves it self into some single Persons that by force or fraud can maintain it and this made Mr. Sidney tell us Tryal page 33. he call'd Oliver a Tyrant and acted against him too well might he look upon him as a Usurper that Usurpt upon their design'd Common-Wealth as well as the Crown I am much of his Mind but it was far from the result of any Kindness to his King He saw his Common-wealth could never be founded upon so false a bottom no not tho she had been his Darling and Dutch built
and in the Mines If we must be put upon such a piece of Impertinence as the Postscript would have it to find out this King Adam 's Court too I 'll just take the Liberty to put them to just such another task They will have their instituted Common-wealth to Commence from the World 's in sancy even before that of Israel before that Moses as they say had divided their Plat. p. â—â— Land unto them by Lot and turned the several Tribes into so many Republicks And then let them tell me what sort of a Republick it was that the Patriarchs liv'd under and were ruled by where it was that Abraham and his Fellow Citizens consulted to make Laws for the Benefit of the Common-wealth of his Family so great that his train'd Servants 318 fought 4 Kings where it was that Lot and his Herds-men when they pitch'd their Tents in the Plain set up Stadtho their use and commenced Burgomasters if in those days there was any Government purely Democratical that is lewdly Licentious it must have been seen in the Cities and Towns of those times some Sodom or Gomorrah yet even Gen. c. 14. verse 2. there the Text tells us Bera was King of the one and Birsha of the other let them tell us where Isaac when he settled in the Valley of Gerar set up his Servants for Senators tho he was grown so great since they will have it so in the Common-wealth of his Houseshold that a mighty King of those times Gen. C. 26. whom the Text expresly calls so Abimilech told him that he was much mightier than he and the Philistines envyed and feared him too for it Let them tell us how Jacob liv'd in the Republick of his Sons and Servants in Succoth tho such a numerous train that they could venture to invade the City of the Shechemites inhabited by the Subjects of Hamor the Hivite whom the Scripture calls the Prince of the Country and sure these Patriarchs were somewhat more than the ordinary Page 32. Fathers of Families as Plato would make them when their Forces were so great and their strength so formidable that they fought Kings and were feared by Princes And now let them prove that this paternal Power of these ‖ One of their Republicans much countenances the Notion of Kings being but Fathers or Fathers Kings Prisci Reges vocabantur Abimilech quod Hibraice sonat Pater meus Rex Jun. Brut-Vindiciae Quest 3. Patriarchal Kings was no more than that of a Burgher in the Town of Antsterdam or that the Cities that were several of them then erected and where the sacred writ expresly says Kings and Princes Reign'd that those were nothing else but as perfect Republicks as Venice Genove or the united Provinces in the Netherlands And cannot our Seditious Souls be convinc'd that this their Patriarchal Power was Monarchical unless we can prove every patriarch a Crown'd King should we oblige them to make out their same Common-wealths of those days after the same manner their Modern ones are now Establish'd they would be put to find out in those primitive times some general revolt of a Rebellious people from their Lawful prince For that was the first Foundation of their fam'd Republick pag. 25 26. in the Low-Countries as Mr. Sidney himself will allow tho against common Sense and Reason he cannot let it be called a Rebellion And also is it not one thing to say a paternal Right was once Monarchical but must it make all Monarchs to Rule by a paternal Right conquest of the Sword grounded upon a good pretence of Right is what a great many Kings claim by a long series of Successive Monarchs makes the Title of a great many more as much unquestionable and yet I cannot see why Monarchy may not still be said to have been first founded in a paternal Right tho the claims to Soveraign power since in such several Kingdoms and Nations where it is now Establish'd are of as several sorts too as there are Subjects that have submitted to be govern'd by it It is a pleasant sort of Diversion to see Mr. Hunt Harangue out half of his Tretise in an impertinent pains to prove the Father of every Family at present not to be the King of it we would have granted it him quietly and the postulate should have been his own in peace without raising upon his War of Words and the thundering charge that he gives Postscr p. 100. this Opinion of puzzl'd senseless vain unlearned paradox For once every parent shall not be a Crown'd Head and every City but a Common-wealth of Kings for that is all they must contend against and then what 's the Contention but just about nothing but that parents have nothing in them that is Analogous to a Monarchical power that they have no Right to govern those very Children He that but curseth his Father shall dye Levit. C. 20. V. 9. they have begot as this Gentleman with his mighty performances thinks he has perfectly prov'd that I think will be found at last to be the greater paradox if not a perfect Lye For first the very Deut. 2. verse 18. decalogue declares the contrary And the command we have to Honour our Father and Mother implies an Authority that they have that requires Obedience by the Levitical the Laws of the Jews the Rebellious Son was to be ston'd to Death and if the very Bible can call it Rebellion Certainly it must suppose some power against which he could Rebel And what does Mr. Hunt who himself admits of this say to the refuting the very Objection that he raises why he says this was an unnatural severity permitted the offended parent that is an unnatural severity commanded by the very God of Nature For all those their Laws were so many Divine precepts for the regulating his own Theocracy and the very Text tells us this exemplary punishment of Dissobedience to parents was shown that Israel might fear i. e. fear those parents in whom the Almighty's Law had lodged such a power and then if we consider it in the Abstract from any positive Law of God or Divine precept if we look upon it in a pure natural State as the result of Generation for all whatever the postscript impertinently suggests with his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all the distracted noise that he makes with the procreation work being such an Act of Affection and mere impetus of Love I cannot see why by that darling work that delights Mr. Hunt so much the power of governing those very Children he has begot should be superseded The Gentleman among his many Malancholy moods had it seems some pleasant Fancies For in effect he tells us no more than this that Coition being an Act of Love to the Mother the Government over the Child that she bares him must by no means be call'd a power and if this be not indeed a puzzl'd senseless Opinion I submit to persons that abound
Womb as being she that ‖ Pater is est quem nuptiae demonstrant D. 2. 4 5. determines it to such a Father as she that has commonly the sole care and concern of its Education till it is grown more Adult and fit for to be form'd into manmers by the Management of the Father and therefore not only according to the Maxim and Sanction of the Imperial Law not only in a Civil and Political Sense the Birth is said to follow the Belly but it holds good even in the State of Nature Partus sequitur ventram and even in the literal Sense visible among Beasts But that which gives the Father a double Title to the Dominion over the Child is not only his being as a Natural Agent the first Spring that gives it Life and Motion but also because the Civil Sanctions of all Kingdoms and Countries still establisht the Fathers Heads of their Families and from the Conjugal Compact that is made in Matrimony subjected the Wife to the Jurisdiction of the Husband so that whatever power and Right belongs to her over her Infant is like the acquest that acrues to a Servant or a Son which the Civil Law and our own ‖ Quicquid acquirit filius acquirit patri suo servus domino Inst 2. 9. 1. Coke Little § 172. Dr. Stud. l. 1. c. 8. Common too resolve into the Power and possession of the Master and Parent And then with what an Impertinent fury with what an insignificant Folly does the renowned Lawyer Labour and lay out his Lungs against Sir Rohert Filmer ‖ Posts p. 113. In making him a Monster and persuading Mankind to Sacrifice their Sons unto Moloch in depraving Human Nature worse than the Leviathan I confess the Furious fellow might as well fasten this upon that Loyal Persons position of a Paternal Right as they have several other propositions full of absurdity upon the Doctrine of the Divine which still have been nothing else but the durt and dust of their own raising but is it a Crime at last with some of our Rebellious Christians to become Loyal because the Leviathan whom themselves will make but an Infidel has lent them so many Lessons to learn them Obedience or is not a reproacht rather anough to make the boldest republican to blush that believes but a Deity to see a Monarchy so well maintain'd even by a Reputed Atheist if the Asserters of a paternal Right concur with him in such positions as render them good Subjects I am sure these opposers of it agree with him in every point from whence they can draw but the least countenance for Rebels These Venemous heads the Spiders of the publick that spin their Notions into Cobwebs into such fine nonsense that they cannot hang together have here also that other good Quality of that virulent Creature to suck up all the Venom and Poyson of Mr. Hobs and prey upon the very principles of his Corrupted Air and the Infectious depravations even of Human Nature his Origination of Society out of Fear his definition of Right to Consist in Power his Community in Nature his Equality in persons all the very Contradictions of himself reproaches of his Reason the Opprobriums of his Sense the Pest and Plague of the People are priz'd with our Republicans as the Philosophers and the Schools do their propofitions of Eternal truths they imbibe the Poyson and exalt improve it too they sublimate the very Mercury of Mr. Hobs and whereas he equals us only in a state of Nature our Levellers will lay us all Common under the Inclosures of a Society and the several restrictions of so many Civil Laws But to what tends this their turning all the Power of a Parent into Tyranny as if a Father could not have an Authority over his Child unless he be bound to make it his Slave as if the Chastisement of a Father could not Evidence his Supremacy over his Son unless like the Saturn of the Easterlings he Sacrifice him to the Fire and torment it in the Flame But this paternal Right of the Father must suffer by these Factious Fools from the same sort of Inferrences they bring against the Divine Right of their King which may only serve with some Loyal Hearts to confirm the great sympathy there is between them for as by the Law of Nature a Father can't be said to injure his Son so neither by those of the Land can our Soveraign wrong his Subjects For say these Seditious ones your Divinest Monarchs by that Doctrine can Hang Burn Drown all their Subjects they should put in Damn too for once since they may as well infer from it his sending them to the Devil But cannot common Sense obtain amidst these transports of Passion can they not apprehend a Father to have any paternal Authority over his Family unless he be able to Murder every Man of it the Civil Laws the municipal ones of his Land if a Member of a Society supersede such a severity and if a Patriarchal Prince must be supposed as were several of old after the deluge then the Affection of Potestas patris debet in pietate non atrocitate consistere D. 48. 9. 5. a Father And the Laws of Nature were sufficient to secure the Son or preserve the Servant from any severity but what some proportionable guilt might deserve so also did this Divine Right make the Soveraign as entirely absolute as the great Turk yet the Directive part of Decet princi pem leges servare quibus ipse solutus D. 32. 1. 24. those Civil Sanctions to which the Divinest of them all would be Subject or at least the precepts of the Divinity their God under whom they Govern that will oblig'd them both to Justice and Mercy the two great Attributes of him whom they represent But since they would make this Empire of a paternal Power so Ridiculous in Reason let us see how it has all along sounded in the Letter of the Law and if it has there neither been look'd upon as a Notion so Senseless and insignificant The most illuminated Reason of our eminent Lawyer must submit to be much in the dark The ‖ Jus autem potest tis quod in liberos habemus proprium est civilum Romanoâ—um nulli aliâ— homines talem potestatem habent Inst 1. 9. Romans from the result of their Imperial Sanctions look'd upon themselves to have such an absolute Power and Authority over their Sons and Daughters that they tell us expressly it was a peculiar Prerogative and privileg'd of the Citizens of Rome and that there was no other Nation that could Exercise such a Jurisdiction they could alienate for ever by this Power Inst lib. 21. 9. Vid. Pacii Anal. ibid. of the Parent any thing that was acquired by the Son and give it to any whom they pleas'd whereas it might have been an Argument enough of a paternal Power had they been but only usufructuaries
and the Dominion remained in the Child and such a Sense of Soveraignty do the Civilians express to reside in the Father of a Family that they gave him the same Appellation with that of a King and tell us by the name Appellatione Familiae etiam princeps familiae Continetur Zouch pars 3. §. 4. Dig. 50. 19. 196. of a Family the Prince of it is also understood and tho Mr. Hunt tells us a Story out of the Cabala of the Jews Laws and the Tract of Maimonides that they lookt upon their Children Emancipated of Course when they came to Thirteen and that then they could claim it as their right to be free I must tell him from the Constitutions of the Imperial that must be of more force among us unless we resolve still that even Christians shall Judaize that no Sons were ever emancipated or emitted out of the power of the Parent unless they could prevail upon him for his own consent that by no means he could be compell'd Neque naturalâ— liberi neque adoptivae ullo modo possunt cogere parentes de potestate suâ eos dimittere Iust 1. 12. 12. Vid. Jul. Pac. ibid. to it and they had no freedom de Jure till their Fathers were de facto dead And tho Pacius in his Comment on that part of the Institution says They became sui Juris at 25 from their Manner and Custome yet concludes the Law of Nature oblig'd them still to their Parent which no civil one could disanull The Duty that their ‖ D. 22. 3. Digests say was due to this Paternal power which they Insinuate almost as Sacred was exprest by the word piety and a * Ridley's part 4. C. 2. learn'd Civilian of our own laments that there is no more provisions made in our English Laws for the Duty of the Child and the protection of the Parent and with them so great was the crime of parricide that they could not a long time invent an adequate punishment for such an unproportionable Guilt tho they had one for Treason against the Prince And tho our own Laws do not make the Paternal power savour so much of Soveraignty yet we shall see they sufficiently evince that the Parent has a power very Analogous too it whereas Mr. Hunt will not allow it to have the least Relation which remisness of our Civil Institutions might well proceed from a presumption of our knowledge of the express command in the Decalogue of which the Romans were ignorant tho we have no formal ‖ Yet Servants were heretofore with us formally Emancipated Qui servum Liberat inmercato vel hil lumdredo Lanceam gladium quae liberorum sunt armâ in manibus ponat Lex H. 1. 78. Lamb. p. 206. Vid. Bract. l. 1. c. 10. Flet. l. 1. c. 7. Lex Aethelst 70. Lamb. p. 54. Emancipation now in use which does imply a power of Government yet our old Lawyer tells us still that Children are in the power of their Parents till they have extrafamiliated them by giving them some portion or Inheritance and the Custody of them while minors which afterward went to the King upon the presumption I suppose of his only ability to be a second Father that was settled in the Parent both by Common-Law and Statute for there lay a good action against any one for seducing a Mans Son as well as Servant out of his power which does imply that there is a power out of which he may be seduced and thus I have endeavor'd to shew the first Foundation of power to have been in the Fathers of Families And it signifies nothing whither every Father of it Reigns in it as a King now and therefore Mr. Hunt his impertinence is inconclusive and part of his Assertion a plainly Post p. 98. when he would infer from the continuance of the Parents Authority over their Children together with the Soveraign power distinct that therefore there was never any Foundation of a Patriarchal power for he might as well tell us That because we have no Parents now Si aliquis filiolum occideret ergaâ—um parentes mortui conjuncti re us est Lex Hen. 1. 79. Lamb. p. 207. And with this agrees the reviv'd practise among our moderns to bring Appeals but what are Subject to the Municipal Laws of the Land therefore there was never any Patriarch in the Bible never an Abraham an Isaac or a Jacob that had an absolute Dominion over their own Families or none now amongst some Barbarous Nations that have no other jurisdiction but what is Paternal the question is not what jurisdiction those Parents have that are Subjected to the Laws of a Civil Society but what they have by those of nature and 't is as absolute a lye when he says 't is not abated by the Soveraign power for were it not the Parent had a power over the life of his off-spring as the Patriarchs had of old and some Barbarous Nations that are at present unciviliz'd And for the Statute of the 25 which 25. Ed. 3. Mr. Hunt brings as an Argument against it because Parricide is not made by that petit Treason is as pertinent perhaps as if he had told us that every Father of a Family was not included in that of Edward the first that settles the Militia Ed. 1. in the King for sure 't is not possible to suspect how they can be considered as so many Soveraigns in the very Civil Sanctions that establish a much more Supream Soveraignity whose Supremacy in their several Families is founded on the Law of Nature tho we have seen that they are confirm'd too by the general Laws of Nations and the Hypothesis favour'd from our own But as it is impertinently applyd to this purpose so is it as falsely infer'd from that Statute for tho Parricide be omitted and the Judges by that act restrained to interpret its extent from the paty of reason or à Fortiori Coke 3. Ins p. 20. yet no Man in his senses can imagin that it was therefore omitted because there was no Relation of Subjection or Soveraignty between the Father and the Son when a Master and a Servant are exprest in the very Letter of the Law when a Prelate and a Priest a Husband and a Wife And is it not against Sense to imagin a Man has not as much Soveraignty over his Son as over his Wife that sits always with him as his Equal and to whom our Courtesie of England gives the Precedence and the Laws of the Land make but one as well as those of God and if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Impetus of Love and Affection will supersede the Servitude and Subjection I think that by Mr. Hunt's leave is more abundantly exprest to the Wife especially in that point upon which he himself puts it the work of Generation And can it be imagin'd that even a regular or secular Priest whose Subjection to his Primate
or Rector is only the result of the Statutes of the Society or the resolution of the Common Law can denote more Soveraignty then the Filial Obedience required by the Laws of God Nature and Nations the citing this Statute of Edward for having omitted the making Parricide Petty-Treason because it argues they had no opinion of the Soveraignty of the Father is the greatest Argument that they had for since they have suppos'd a Soveraign Power which from the suggestiing of such an Argument here themselves do seem to allow and tacitly to Confess in those Authorities the Destroying of which is made Treason by this Act they must conclude a greater Soveraignty to reside in him that has really a GREATER POWER then those that in that Act are exprest for were it askt any impartial Person living Whether a Man has not a greater Power over his Son then his Wife or Servant it would soon be resolv'd that he has he being impower'd only from some civil Constitutions to govern the latter but the former from the Laws of Nature and Nations both so that in Common Reason and Common Equity Parricide must be concluded in the Chapter of Treason according to the receiv'd Rule of Natural as well as Artificial Logick that every greater Crime must be Punishable by that Law that punishes a less of the like Nature and the true Reason why in this very Case the Judges do not make the like Conclusion from the Similitude or Aggravation of the sin is as my Lord Coke * Chap. Treas p. 20. Et pur ceo plus semblable Treason c. 25. E. â— c. 2. Confirm'd p 1. Mar. Cap. 1. Insinuates because the words of the Act it self declare that nothing but what is their specify'd and exprest shall be adjudg'd Treason but even that very Act foreseeing they might have omitted several things that by the same parity of Reason might be included does provide with a sort of reserve that at any time the Parliament might make it more Inclusive and I dare Swear had it it been propos'd to any Session that has sat since the Statute was first Enacted whether by Parity Parricide was not fit to be made Petty-Treason not a man of Sense in the Senate but would have consented And this Construction of a Parliament is what Mr. Sidney himself forsooth so much rely'd upon who if they will but put upon this branch of the Statute according to his ‖ Paper at his Exec. own words a construction agreeable to Reason or Common Sense must conclude that he certainly is as much a Traytor that Murders his own Father as the Servant that kills his Soveraign Master or a Priest that makes away with his Lord the Prelate But besides if this Letter of our Law does not include the killing of the Parent in Petty-Treason yet the Comment of my Lord †3 Inst p. 20. Coke upon this Case will go near to conclude it for he says 't is out of the Statute unless the Son serve the Father for Wages Meat or Drink or Apparel and I cannot see how any Son till he is Emancipated by years or Marriage or the like can be said to be any other then his Fathers Servant and that for all four for as the Father requires of him filial Obedience so he can and they Commonly do Command their Sons in the Offices of Servants and that Arbitrarily in whatsoever he pleases and find him accordingly the fore-mention'd necessarys to the performance of his duty and above all this it is the opinion of a good Historian recorded by my Lord Coke that before this Statute Parricide 22. Ed. 1. Matt. Paris 874. was Petty-Treason by the Common Law and then what will become of Mr. H. Triumphant Appeal to the Laws as well as his impertinent applycation to Reason and before this Statute too such a signal sign of Soveraignty was supposed to reside in the Father of a Family That it was Petty-Treason too ‖ Si quis falsaverit sigillum domini sui de cujus familia fuit Flet. l. 1. c. 22. Britton fol. 16. to Counterfeit or falsify the Seal or Signet of the Lord of the Family wherein he liv'd a Signature of Royalty indeed and almost a mark of Majesty it self and the Reason my * Coke 3. Ins fol. 20. Lord Coke resolves it into their own omission of this Reasonable part of the Statute is so far from the Postscript impertinency of the Parliaments opinion against the paternal Power that he says those Law makers could never imagin that any Child could be guilty of such a sort of Barbarity and seems to insinuate the pretermission to have been the result of such a probable piece of presumption and that I remember was the very reason among the Romans that there was no punishment for such a sin as superseded a Sentence They had a ‖ Lex Juli. Majest Law supposed to be made in Caj Caesar the Dictators time against those that attempted Majesty and a severe one too besides its being Capital * Dig. ad leg Jul. maâ— l. ult Vid. Gottâ—fred Groenvin l. 6. ff d. pub to have his Goods confiscated his Children disinherited and his very Memory damn'd and one would think it might have serv'd for Parricide too but they lookt upon that Treason so gross such a Traytor so great that for a long time he superseded even the Invention of a Torment from his Insuperable quiet Mr. Hunt would do well and like himself that is to infer very Foolishly even from this too that the Romans had once no Regard no respect for this paternal Right because the Punishment of Parracide was once left out of their Laws and yet at last that it might be no longer unpunishable only upon the same presumption that there could not be found such Criminals one Cnej. Pompeius is said to have been the Author and Inventor of a Natural Punishment if possible for a Crime so unnatural that is as he had Rebell'd against the Laws of Nature in this his Crime so he should be depriv'd while living of the benefit Vid. Lex Pompeia de Parriâ—idiis Inst Lib. 4. Tit. 18. Par. 6. of all her Elements and neither her Heaven or Earth receive him after Death but to be Buried alive with wild Beast in a Bag and set a floating in the midst of the Sea whereas if they kill'd any other Kindred or Relation like Common Felons they were only punisht by the Cornelian Law And now Lex Cornelia de sicar made by Cornelius Sylla the Dictator ibid §. 5â—â— by this time I hope I may with modesty maintain whatever our mighty Dâ—mogogues do say to disprove it that I 've shown the Paternal Power in the beginning of the World to have been patriarchal and Absolute And in all succeeding Ages to have been sub-ordinately Soveraign in the respective Families and several Households in which the Parent does preside and that asserted from the very
the former they had abolisht was but the Government of a few an absolute Oligarchy tho' they were pleas'd to call it the Common-wealth of England as if it had been but Democratical when not the tenth part of the People were represented by those Administrators but so they had the confidence to call them a Parliament too but their words had commonly as much sense in them as their actions had Loyalty But Oliver having Plotted them out of all had now no great need of any Politick Plot for himself It would puzzle now our Politicians to tell me where at this time was their * Sidney's Tryal p 23. Supream original power of the People their natural Liberty and that Delegatory right they are to communicate to Representatives There was no King no Parliament no Rump and as yet no Protector The Disciples of Mr. Sidney's Doctrine must say forsooth The Supream Power was then in the People but as the Devil would have it Cromwel had got the supream strength Strength and power I confess are mighty different and just distinguisht by the same Metaphysicks the Scots put upon the King at Newark when they would persuade him The Army was one thing and the Soldiers of it another but if this People had then the supream power why did they not assemble themselves into a Parliament since there was no Writ from above to call them to the Assembly But our History tells us Oliver call'd it and what for why say our Republicans That the People might confer upon him their supream original Power which he could not assume without their consent very good So Cromwel was willing this supream power should be settl'd upon him by Parliament therefore he calls the Parliament i. e. gives it the supream power they in common Civility could not avoid to give it him again But where would but a grain of sense settle this Supremacy in him that call'd them to assemble or in those that were assembl'd at his call I confess if the cunning Canary Birds could but contrive as once they did design such a rare Parliament that like the Bird of Asia should rise from the ashes of it's Ancestors we might have one then not only long but everlasting But even this tho' then attempted to have been enacted would have been but Nonsense and absurd and fit only to have past in that Parliament which he call'd who made many * Oliver's first Parliament made the filly Acts about Marriages Laws just as ridiculous for thosethat have a power to dissolve themselves by the same reason would have a power to summon another and then must issue out their Writs either before their dissolution or after if after then it is without authority and by no part of the Government and if before then a new one must be summoning before the old is dissolv'd and if the Writs should be but of force from the time of dissolution the Country Electors must be said to be conven'd by the supream Authority that is dissolv'd Cromwel and his Conspirators foresaw they would be confounded with such absurdities and they found themselves plung'd into as much confusion and then pray what did they do with this Sidney's supream original power that they did not know what to make of or how to use tho' it lay upon their hands why they surrender it to a single person from whom they thought they had it and so the Usurper had his design The next Plot was how they could play the Knaves to get that Power again which they thought they had parted with like Fools Cromwel was cunning enough to hold what he had gotten and never parted with it but with his Breath tho' the Levellers the Anabaptists and Fifth-Monarchy Men conspir'd for Insurrections and Lambert himself left little undone to supplant him But when his Son succeeded whose silliness only made him not sit so long a Usurper they soon found opportunity to set him aside As they had pleas'd Oliver with making him a * Protector Mock King so he to pleasure them had mock't them with an †The other House House of Lords And Richard's first Parliament being made up of most Common-wealthsmen fall foul upon that new Constitution which was indeed as filthy they take themselves without the Protector and that other House to be the Supream Power Lambert and Fleetwood that first upon the Principles of these Rebels and Republicans had promoted the Affairs of the Father fall now to Plotting upon the same grounds of LIBERTY which with Daemocraticks is to do what they list to depose his Son and 't is no wonder that those should fail in their Faith to a Rebel that had revolted from their Prince For this therefore they have freequent Meetings at Wallingford House and the Parliament seeming as uneasie under him as they and they as uneasie under the Parliament they send Desborough to get its dissolution to be signed by the Protector at the same time they make their Messenger to dissolve it by themselves Richard signs it and presently after is forc'd to his own Resignation and that to just no Body and all is brought to what all such Principles and Practises always tend to perfect Anarchy and Confusion The Protector here quarrels with the Parliament and the Army the Parliament with the Army and Protector the Army with the Protector and Parliament till at last they leave us neither Parliament Protector or Army When they had brought the Government to be just no where Richard having been Plotted upon to resign to just no Body some of the rebel Rump with Lenthal their Speaker Lambert their Officer take it up as Scavengers do a piece of Silver they find in the kennel or dropt in the street these by the Army are declared a Parliament because they resolv'd themselves to be so first and the People at present could not tell where to find out another the secluded Members offer'd to run in too but were Fools for their pains and repuls'd with as much violence for they might well have foreseen and imagin'd that those that threw them out before had their Swords in their hands still and to be sure were much rather for their room than their company and that they found when they set their Souldiers with their Swords drawn to keep them out and their most Legislative Arms soon suspended them from the medling in the making of Laws Thus re-instated and establisht into that Oligarchical Tyranny that first turn'd off all Monarchy and took off the King's Head and this re-establishment of the most desperate Rebels confirmed with the approbation of the Army one would have thought their very Master the Devil could never have undermin'd or made them again to miscarry But yet so it happen'd for these Principles of our Republicans having made all obedience meerly precarious and utterly defac'd the Doctrine of the Gospel to be subject for Conscience sake as well as repeal'd the Oaths of Allegiance that required