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 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 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 2. Hoveden's Account that he gives of King John's coming to the Crown which as some Writers say is the 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 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 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 Succes 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 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 well as Reason this very King of whom we now treat catcht at the Crown while his Father was catching at his last breath seised it as his own as being his Right assoon as the gasping Monarch did but seem dead who only reviv'd to let him know how little that Right was by which he claim'd and so sealed the wrong he had done with his last breath the Successor declaring his own Sword should maintain what his Fathers had got Immediately upon this Henry the Fifths Death his Son Henry the Sixth succeeded This Author himself can talk of nothing of Election here neither but that he succeeded as his Fathers Heir but to make the power of Parliament prevail in this Kings Reign he is forc't to fly to a President that prevents any other Confutation of his whole History for whereas he has contended all alone for a Parliamentary priviledge for altering the Succession here he has brought upon the Stage one that condemns it self for doing so here we find a Duke of York too by the power as this Gentleman would have it of a Parliament but rather a perfect Vsurpation upon the Crown for a long time excluded from his Birthright and to make way for one of their Usurpers that was a Monmouth too That Exclusion was begun but with a Rebellion and it ended in as much Blood is our having been wretchedly miserable an Argument for our tempting the Almighty to make us once more so shall we Plot against Heaven for our Destruction and defie Fate to make us happy 't is matter of Astonishment to find the very Presidents of our Nations ruin to be preferr'd as expedients for its Preservation unless they think a Prince whose Just
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 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 〈◊〉 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 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 Isle 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 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 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 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 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 〈◊〉 were the Suggestions so significant the Sense of this pious Soul that it silenc'd all the Senate that 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 cherisht how near some of our pamper'd Jesuruns that are satten'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 〈◊〉 for his depending on the Parliaments choice when in that was his least Relyance for as little 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 fucceed him but that which for ought I see he lay his greatest weight upon was but what all Usurpers 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 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
happy union of the Monarchy of the Saxons give me leave to observe this great Truth That from their first King Egbert to this Iron-side the last no less then 14 in number besides that Edward the first Edmunds Brother all successively Reign'd in Lineal discents of the immediate and next Heir of the Royal Blood and most of them too the Successors of the next immediate Brother to their present Prince no less than four several Brothers Sons to Ethelwolf the second sole Sovereign of the Saxons succeeding one another and then with what Face unless with one more lasting then I 〈◊〉 his corrupted History by being all Brass with what a Front but such an one can such a Libel and Imposture a Legend fuller of Lyes than ever was penned by Papist antient or modern Monk offer at such a part of our History for the dispossessing the present Brother of his King But this Popish Plagiary fetching most of the Materials of his Monumental Treasons from a Club of Jesuits the Triumvirate of studious Traytors that forged for the subverting the Succession their damna-Doleman no wonder if he be as full of falshood as those copyed Ignatians whom he transcribes or the Founder of them the Devil All the shadow that he has of any thing of Election was that of the first Saxon King Egbert whom he would have no way related to Brissicus the last King of the West-Saxons but whom a more worthy Author proves from Westminster's own words that he was the sole surviving branch of the Royal Stemm and that he was banisht into France and that only for fear of his Right But granting then what he is resolved to suppose still right Reason will confute his Impertinence even in complying in unreasonable Concession the Question here is of the Succession of our Establisht Monarchy And he brings us an Instance before the Monarchy was Establisht owns that the History of that Heptarchy was uncertain and yet very certainly determins the point of his Election and that we must take too upon an ipse dixit of this Dogmatical Historians for his being no way related he cites just no body and while for his near alliance you have the Authority of so many That other only broken Reed that in all these Reigns he has to rely on and that like AEgypts too is ready to run into his side so false so dangerous to trust too which is Edreds being crown'd in the Minority of his Nephews when all the Historians say it was only for their being Minors And the diligent Baker says he was not then made Protector only because that Authority was not then come into use but crowned as King with purpose to resign when the right Heir should come of age But lest his Modern Authority may be not sufficient with those that malign any thing that makes for the Monarchy let them consult even the most of the Antients and they all agree they were only set aside for their Nonage But this Royal Protectorate soon expired as if Providence laboured to prevent an Vsurpation and provided for the right Heir who succecded in his paternal Inheritance before arrived even to the Romans civil age of Puberty 14. And the malicious Perverter might as well say as great a stress as you 'll find afterwards he truly does upon Richard the thirds Butchery and Usurpation the breaking of the Laws of God and Man for a Crown All the difference is Here were only two Nephews for a while debarred there Butchered and shall such bloody Miscreants pass upon the World for credible Authors who for robbing of a Divine-right can cite you Murder and for the breaking of our Humane Laws the blackest Crime in the Declogue And since this Antimonarchical Zealot has shown himself thus elaborately studious to rake every musty Record of those Reigns for a Rebellious remark give me leave only from the same times to make this last and Loyal Observation where Providence seemed to shew it self remarkably concerned for its crowned Head and that in the subsequent Judgment upon the Proto-Martyrdom of the Saxon Edward as well as what we suffered since for our Martyr'd Charles tho there 't was only for anticipating a right by blood but ours a bloody Usurpation of those that had no right at all Ethelred's passage to his Reign was but before his time and the Almighty's yet the Government suffered for it as many Pangs till it quite miscarried within fifty years the new Monarchy fell quite asunder rent and torn by two several Conquests He himself meets with the Defection of all his Nobility forc't to raise his Danegelt and his Subjects into Rebellion by it prepared his Navies only to be shattered with a tempest or consumed with Fire both Elements and Heaven it self seemed to conspite to make him Miserable Famine and Mortality were the dismal attendants of his Wars the Depredations of Invaders would not allow peace the Reign that begun in a Murder ended in a Massacre The incensed Danes soon invade him the perjured Edric falsely forsakes him he languishes a long time as well he might under Guilt and Misfortune and to put the only period to his days Miseries and Kingdom together Dies You see how little success this Author met with among the Saxons Sovereigns for altering Succession how much of Imposture his Reader may there meet with in him and you shall as soon see he deals as disingeniously with the Danes And here thorough his double diligence this Parliament Historiographer has not omitted an Argument for his purpose much of the same strength as those that he has used viz. That Knute was no kin to Edmund or Ethelred And the Dane no way related to the Line of the Saxon that is the poor conquered England was not Consin German to Denmark the Conqueror and yet the Title of the latter was preferred and their King acknowledged ours I can't conceive what necessity of Relation an Invader needs to the poor Prince he Invades and whether that be not a pretty sort of an Argument for altering Succession to say the Kingdom was Conquered Swayn had before cut out a fine Title for his Son with the Sword The North West and some of the South part of England had submitted frightned with his revengeful Cruelties which their own had provoked Canute himself after his Fathers Death lands as soon at Sandwich with a Navy of two hundred gave our English a great overthrow possest himself of what Swayn had before harassed the West and because the Nobility favoured only whom they feared and set him up in Competition for the Crown whom they could not keep down from being a Competitor ergo therefore the Succession must not run in the right Line and why because here it did not if more absur'd Inferences can be drawn from matter of Fact or greater Solecisms from Historical Observation I 'le forfeit all the little Right I have to Reason and with an Implicit Faith
as Writers say quitted her Title too which was apparently acknowledged in letting him succeed Is the Mothers Right ever the less when the Son does succeed in her Right and is there no Difference between altering a Succession and a refusing to succeed Matt. Paris makes her live thirty years after Stephen's Death time enough to have resented her wrong if she thought she had sustein'd an Interruption of her Right and she must be supposed to be willing to consent to those Conditions of peace being all concluded with her privity and she having suffered sufficiently with a troublesom War in England went over to Normandy for Peace This Henry knowing his Right to the Crown was resolved to secure the same Right of Succession to his Son and this very endeavour for a Lawful and a Lineal discent does this perverse Author turn into an Argument for Election and because he only called his Barons Bishops and Abbots to let them know he would have him to be secured his Successor by making him a Copartner in the Government and to prevent his being wronged after his Death was resolved to see him enjoy part of his Right in his Life therefore from these fine Premises he draws this Illogical Conclusion that he was elected by their Consent and when from Gervas himself whom he Cites it appears they were by the Kings express Command call'd to his Coronation and Paris says 't was at his Summons they came to Crown his Son and by his Fathers own bidding and if this solemnity shall make our Crown Elective since the Conquest we have had none Hereditary and our Kings must never suffer any Nobles or Commons at their Coronation for fear of such Perverters making it a Parliamentary choice But if any thing could be condemned in this unhappy Solicitation for his Sons security to succeed 't was only in making him a King before he came to be a Successor by defrauding himself upon a sollicitous distrust of part of that Divine Right when he was by God entrusted with the whole and making his Son to Anticipate that by his forwardness for which he should have waited the Almighty's leisure The Nature of Monarchy being inconsistent with a Duum-Virate units may be as well divided And the very Etymon of the Word contends for the sole Soveraignty it expresses And the very sad effects of this contradictory Coronation were the best Evidence of its inconsistency and verifies the Latin Aphorism of the Tragedian that the Crown cannot admit of a shareer or competitor no more than the Bed the making himself but half King was like to have lost him the whole Kingdom and almost made him none at all they soon animated the young Monarch against his Old Father and let him know that 't was absurd for any one to be called a King and to have nothing of Government that is essential to it in the Kingdom Daniel calls it the making the Common-wealth a Monster with two Heads and what then must it be with many but withal tells us 't was only the effect of jealousie that this King feared from his Mothers Example and that some of his false Subjects might also break all Oaths of Fealty to his Son as well as this perjur'd Author has that of his Allegiance to his Sovereign and I believe this alone made this King so carefully Praecipitous as to prevent the Expiration of his Reign with an Anticipation of the Grave and a Resignation of his Rule with a POLITICAL DEATH for this Crown'd Son was soon by LEWIS of France embolden'd to that insolency from having the half that in plain Terms he demanded the whole and what the too bountiful Father had no Reason to grant by fair means the ungrateful Son resolves to obtain by foul sides with the King of France and many of the divided Kingdom with Him and are all in Arms ready for Ruin and Destruction neither did they lie down their Swords till it ended as all Alterations in a Monarchy in BLOOD and the Coparcenary King shortly after his Life but a little before reconciled to his too provident Father I am sure this shows even the Participation of the Royal Power dangerous tho by those that had Right to Succession and if such an Alteration in the Government can prove so fatal much more then an altering the Succession it self and if a Crown can't like a common Conveyance with fafety be made over in trust I dare say 't will be less secure to cut off entail The next Reign that we have Reason to reply upon is that of Richard the First and with that his irrational Inferences have dealt as unreasonably for he there by his own Confession has no other Authority for his Election as his own words have it but the words of his Historian and yet this very Historian whom he there most impudently traduces and abuses acknowledges his Hereditary Right to the Crown by which he was to be promoted before ever he tells you of the solemn Election of the People which beyond contradiction confirms what the Worthy Dr. B. has as significantly suggested that the common acceptation of Election amongst ancient Authors imply'd nothing less than what our factious insinuators apply it to and that they meant nothing else but Confirmation or Acknowledgment for first would such a Learned Authority as he cites only labour under a learned Contradiction and tell you such an one was promoted for his Hereditary Right and then in the very subsequent words declare it was by solemn Election Certainly such Immortal Authors could never wage with Sense and Reason a Mortal War and he himself is so favourable to their pious Memory as to omit all the seeming Contradiction because not reconc leable to his prejudic'd Interpretation and when Historians tell you of any thing of Election which he would have popular be sure he omits what ever they say of Hereditary Succession before so has he done here so in most of the Citations elsewhere And next also he tells us that his Father had gotten the Succession confirm'd to him in his Life Of which many of our modern Historians are totally silent and afterwards that he was again Elected by the People of which in his sense none truly speak nether is it reconcileable how they shou'd twice solemnly choose him for their King when even in Poland it self once will serve but besides before his Solemn Coronation or as he wou'd have it his popular Election immediately after his Fathers Funeral without doubt upon the consideration of his Hereditary Right he exercised as he might well do and as has been since resolv'd any King of ours may an absolute Power of a King before this Solemn Ceremony of Coronation for presently he seizes upon his Fathers Treasure in France Imprisons Fetters Manacles the late Kings Treasurer to extort the uttermost penny I think such a severe sort of absoluteness as they wou'd not now allow
our Crowned King He is there girt by the Arch-Bishop with a Sword takes fealty both of Clergy and Lay makes a Truce with the King of France and all this before ever he came into England to be Crown'd or Elected And shou'd we yield to this perverse Imposture the signification of his word for which he has so long labour'd yet all this while we find his very People more willing to Elect him that had an Hereditary Right than a spurious Invader that had none at at all and did actually Confirm him in his Succession unless the more powerful Usurper terrifi'd them from their Loyal Intentions and truly the mistaken Gentleman might have as well prov'd that he was the third time Elected too when after his Imprisonment that he suffer'd from Henry the Sixth the German Emperor after he came home and had held a Parliament at Nottingham he was again recognis'd for their King and Crown'd at Winchester But what can be better Evidence of the precedency that was allow'd to the nearest of blood in a Lineal Descent then this Princes Care he took in appointing his Nephew Arthur to Succeed him tho he had a Brother of his own to whom he had shown a liberal largess of his Love when he began to Reign in bestowing on him no less than half a dozen Earldoms a good part of his Kingdom Certainly this Earl John was nearer to him in Blood and Affection and then what cou'd move him to this Testamentary Disposition but the more nearness of the other to the Kingdom and the Crown But in spight of all Adoption and Right JOHN as great an Usurper as any laid hold of the Scepter and held it too only as some of our Tenures in Law by primer occupancy he had his Brothers Army in the field and that was then enough to have made a King of a Cromwel an Hewson a Brewer or a Cobler powerful Arms that filence any Law But still the Nobility were for maintaining the Right of Succession in Arthur and as they call'd it the usual Custom of Inheritance most of his Provinces in France stood firm to him and so did the King of it and had Fortune favor'd him upon whom for the most part it frowns the Justest pretender he had not been made a Prisoner to his Uncle to whom he was a King and been murder`d by him after the Siege of Mirabel But the Barons rebellious Insurrection soon aveng'd the Barbarous Butchery and but bloody consequences here too attended the Debar'd Right He is forsaken of all his People and the French Kings Son a perfect Forreigner invited in for a King and his end at the last as unnatural as the death he gave to his Nephew And here upon the Coronation of this intruding King John the factious Historian rehearses the Clause of Hubert the Bishop of Canterbury's Speech that declar'd the right to the Crown to consist only in the Election of the People but disingenuously omits the very reason of the self same Prelate who when he was pincht with the Interrogatory why he would preach up such pernicious Principles own'd it more a Design of Policy than the Sense of his Soul But to give him a perfect Rowland for his Oliver he will find in the Life of Richard the Second a better Bishop making of a more Divine Speech and asserting the Right of Succession more 〈◊〉 than ever this designing Metropolitan was able to confute But that worthy Prelates Doctrine did no way countenance our Authors seditious Observations and so directly different from his Huberts Harangue that he might well pass it by without reading and which must certainly have 〈◊〉 him into Blushes to have read Henry the Third a Prince too young to know his Right much less to be able himself to take Possession of it was presently upon his Fathers Death Crown'd King Certainly upon the Consideration of his Hereditary Right or the Testamentary Donation of his Father whom Paris says he appointed his Heir as his First-born made the Kingdom swear Fidelity to him sent his Mandatory Letter under the Authority of his Great-Seal to the Sheriff's of the Counties to the Keepers of his Castles that they shou'd all be intent upon the Business and upon his death they show'd themselves as ready to perform it and what can the most factious Pen make more of this than an Acknowledgment of Hereditary Right especially when the same Author in the beginning of the young Kings Reign says they only came together to Exalt him to the Throne of his Father and not one word of their Suffrages or Election therefore what could not be proved from matter of Fact must be suggested with an Innuendo and because the good Earl Marshal in a perswasive Speech exhorted them to adhere to their lawful Sovereign it imply'd the Consent of the People requir'd if such an Assent shall make the Kingdom Elective 't will be hard to proveany Hereditary for all people that do not actually Rebel and Oppose must in that sense be said to Consent and Elect and when ever our Kings are Crown'd 't is so far with the Consent of the people that they do not interrupt the Coronation But can he prove in any of his pretended Elections much less here that ever in England they balloted for the Crown or drew Lots for the Kingdom that they had ever any certain number of Electors as in Germany or carried it by Majority of suffrages as in Poland ' tho I believe some of them would make no more of his Majesty than a Bourrought Representative or a County Knight and 〈◊〉 allow him the Freedom of a Pole But with what face can he urge it here when the whole drift of Pembrokes Oration was only to satisfy them the Succession belong'd to the Son and that the French Usurper Lewis would be the ruin of the Realm which Speech was so effectual too that several of the Principal of the Barons not withstanding that open hatred to his Father in spight of Obligation of an Oath to Lewis they still thought their Loyalty and Allegiance more obliging and revolt from the French-man till all at last deserted of all he abjures his claim and the Kingdom together After he had been first routed by Land at Lncoln by Pembroke the Protector and his fresh supplys at Sea near Dover by Hubert the Gouernour And the bold Speech of that stout Souldiers to this powerfull Prince when he demanded Dover on the Death of King John was a better Evidence what sense the people had of a Lawful 〈◊〉 than he from the Marshals can evince that he succeeded by Election and against the Laws of Descent and all that he can pertinently draw from the Protectors Oration is that an Infant King did not speak for himself But if ought be a blot in his Succession 't is what this praejudiced Historian I am sure does not care to Hit and that is the weakness of his
pardonable faults of this unhappy Prince tho our Law say A King can have none much less be punisht for it when he can do no wrong The greatest that Daniel condemns was his mighty favouring of his Minions Gaveston and Spencer's in Opposition to his Barons and must it be criminal to a King to have a Friend But however in his History calls it the first Example of a deposed Prince no less dishonourable to the State than to him 〈◊〉 calls the Bishop of Hereford that then was busied in the Resignation but a Mischievous Embassador and pray what was the Fate of those that were the first Leaders of the Rebellion and the most mutinous The mighty Duke of Lancaster was by his own Peers condemned to be Hang'd and Quartered and was only Beheaded and several Barons besides and afterward Mortimer the Queens own Minion and Favourite was impeached in Parliament of Edward the Third for making Dissention between the late King and Queen for murdering of his Sovereign and accordingly was drawn Hanged and Quartered for it with several of his Adherents But as Unanimous and as Clamorous as they seemed for his Deposition the greatest Contenders for it as some of our Historians affirm lamented it with regret when it was done and Stow tells us that when the Queen understood her Son was Elected she seemed to be full of sorrow as it were almost out of her Wits and the Son lamented too and swore that against his Fathers Will he would never take the Crown And after all what succeeded this most unjust Deprivation and Imprisonment of a King but what still is its immediate subsequent the Barbarous Murder this was verified in the following fate of King Richard this was the unfortunate Consequence of our late confined Martyr Mattrevers Iron soon followed the firsts Imprisonment in Corse and Berkley Gastle Exton`s Poll-ax as quickly dispatcht the Second at Pomsret and the Block at White-Hall too soon attended the Confinements of the last Martyr in Carisbrook and Holmby confirming even with his last breath and verifying in his latest Blood this too fatal Aphorism that a Death soon follows the Deprivation of a King and that there is in his own words but a little distance between the Prisons and the Graves of Princes And now the next that enters this Theater Royal is Edward the Third a Son too forward to accept of a Crown before 't was his due But notwithstanding this Rebellious Instance he hath given not so formally chosen as to make the Kingdom Elective for their very chusing of his Son and that the Eldest insinuates that in spight of their obstinate dissobedience their resolute Rebellion they were still toucht with a sense of right and priviledge of Primogeniture and the small remainders of Majesty the bare Right they had left him awd them so far as to think it necessary to palliate their too open villanies with the formality of a Resignation neither would the Son accept it neither was he proclaimed or Crown'd till his 〈◊〉 had resigned and let the bold audacious force they used for it lie at their Door that vindicate it his resigning entitled his Son and he had a sort of Right in Civil Law besides Hereditary pro derelicto Here 't is pretty remarkable the fine sort of Observation he makes on the Bishop of Canterbury's Text vox Populi that it was the voice of the Almighty too and impiously upbraids the sacred Dust of their own Martyred Lawd for placing a Divine Right in Kings when some of his Predecessors had so well lodged it in the People but did not the Impudence of his Brow almost exceed the villany of his Heart his Conscience as hard as his Fore-Head or both he could never thus inhumanely reflect on him whom they butchered too as barbarously and that with such a Reflection that flies in his own Face when the very Opposers of this pious Praelates Opinion verifyed afterwards his Prophetick fear and by the placing this Divine Right in the People sent assoon his sacred Majesty to follow the Praelate But can ever Wretches show more industrious Malice towards the Government when they shall close with the Doctrines of their worst of Enemies and which they would be thought so damnably to detest to do it an Injury cite you the Authority of the most Zealous Catholicks when it will make against the Monarchy yet baffle and burlesque the very Bible when it makes for it the malitious Miscreant knows the Clergy then were all bound by their Oaths besides their Opinions to be the Bigots of Rome He knows the Popes supremacy then would not admit of the Kings He knows the pleasing of the People was then the best Expedient for the promoting the Pope that from them came all the Penny 's that paid them for their Pater-nosters and that this beast of Babylon against which our Zealots pretend too as much Brutal rage then only trampled upon the Necks of Kings not only had Her stirrops held by them but rid upon the very backs of Princes and that only because the poor People were so Priest-ridden would he have had that Popish Prelate preach to them the Kings Supremacy told them he was not to be toucht because jure divino when themselves make it the Doctrin of their Church to dethrone them certainly such Sycophà nts dissemble when they cry up the Reformation that rely so much upon the Religion of those times before they were Reform'd The Bishop as he thinks having now pretty well asserted the Peoples supremacy by making them Divine he brings in as prettily Polidore Virgil proving them to be all Princes so that we have now but one Subject left and that 's the King but by his leave the Governments bark must be wrackt in a Rebellion and a storm before they can come to Reign like so many Trincaloes in the Tempest The Gentleman sure read Shakespear instead of Virgil and thinks our Isle enchanted too but to be serious in matters of Blood and Right and that when both Royal could any Person of sober sense be so simply sollicitous as from an Author forreign unknowing our Constitutions calling some of our Subjects Principes to suggest their Supremacy their Superiority we know as well as he what he means by it or what he must mean that they were some of the chief of the Realm and will that make them Rulers too the 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 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
the Question is what was Law since H. 7. time and he Labours to Confute it with what was said some three years before and to Bassle the Resolution of all the Judges of the Kingdom with the Suffrages of the Parliament that even of their own Laws have no right to Judge much less by any Preceding determinations of their house to Bind all the Succeeding Judges of the Realm let him first prove a even Vsurper's Parliaments opinion Law and then proceed to refute the resolutions of the Judges of a Lawful King In short nothing can be Law there but what is Enacted if Clarence his Attainder did not take away the Discent the resolution of the Judges since is certainly the more just if it did then yet still their opinion never the less Justifiable now for the opinion of that Parliament neither was or could be made Law for if they would have made it an Act it must have been done before Richard was in the Throne and then void for want of Royal Assent if after they had Crown'd their Usurper then sure too late to be enacted unless they would have made the Tyrant his own Judge And himself to have Attainted the second Pair of Nephews as well as he Butcher'd the First But as fearless as he says the Monster was from the pretensions of the D. of Clarence his Children whose Minority might well make the poor Infants not very formidable yet he did not think the Duke himself so Barr'd with his Attainder but that he might still have been a Bar against his Horrid Usurpation that truly sent the poor Prince to the Tower and got the Brother of the Monstrous Assassin to be suffocated in the Malmsey Butt The discent to Henry the 8 was both by Blood and Entail and so beyond contradiction and with their own concession Hereditary but where that objection to the Birth-right fails them there to be sure some subsequent Act of that Kings Reign shall be sifted and made to Countenance their suggested falsehoods tho the Succession of the Prince himself contradicts it who had all the Consolidated Titles in him that had been so long disputed all that his Mothers Blood and his Fathers Arms and the Law could Invest him with but because his Exorbitant proceedings his Arbitrary power and predominancy which themselves condemn'd him for over Parliaments awd them into an altering the Succession as often as he was pleas'd to Change his bed or chop off a Wife therefore must we conclude Parliaments to have a Power to do that by Right which against all right perhaps they were compell'd to do why does he not prove it a president for Polygamy and Murder because that furious Prince still sacrificed Women to his Lust and Men to his Anger But yet allowing them such a Power of medling with the Succession which certainly does not follow from their having some time Vsurp't it or been put upon that Usurpation by their very Prince for 't is against reason to make that a right only because they can plead Prescription for doing a wrong but here those several alterations were all caus'd to be made for the securing of a Lineal Legitimate and lawful Succesior to the Throne for as a Reverend Author says the King Lamented that he should leave the Kingdom toa Woman whose Birth was questionable and he willing to settle the Kingdom on his LAWFUL Issue and for this reason he got the 25th to pass against his Daughter Mary And the very Preamble of the Act tells us that it was for the Surety of Title and Succession and Lawful Inheritance Three years are scarce past till the 28 of his Reign repeals almost all that the 25 had Enacted their Protestant Queen Elizabeth made as well as the Popish Mary plain Bastard and tho our prejudic'd Author may make the same matter right and wrong as he stands affected he must think this his powerful Parliament dealt a little hard with the latter whose Mother was never divorc't but from her Life and she pact off for a spurious Off-Spring only upon the pretended suggestions of Anne Boleyn's unknown impediments confess 't sine to Canterbury But whatever they were the Canons of the Church tho born before Marriage and since after the very Laws of the Land did make her Legitimate But however this greater piece of Injustice to this good Protestant Queen which they 'l say now proceeded from the Kings putting the Parliament upon too much Power was palliated all along with the pretence of providing a Legitimate Lawful Successor and so the clear Reverse and Contradiction of the proceedings of our late Patriots to whose Privileges those sort of presidents were apply'd for those Parliamentary Powers secluded but Bastards to make room for Heirs Lawful and Legitimate with us an Issue truly Legitimate should have been EXCLUDED for the setting up of a SPURIOUS ONE But then at last comes the 35th of his Reign and that like a Gunpowder Plot in the Cellars blows up all the former foundations of the whole House both the two former Stat. for Disabling Illegitimating are null voy'd repeal'd the LADY MARY Sister Elizabeth in those seven years suffered my Lord Bacons transmutation of Bodys and were turned all into new matter and what was Spurious Illegitimate and in Capable with the single Charm of be it enacted was become truly Lawful Lineal Heir of the Crown and Capacitated to succeed in an HEREDITARY DISCENT and so far from Invading the Prerogative so full of giving were the bountiful Parliaments of those times that they Impower their too Powerful Prince to dispose of his Crown by Letters Pattents or an Arbitrary Testamentary disposition an Oblation I think his present Majesty might esteem too great to be accepted who knows his Successor to be the Crown 's Heir scarce his own much less the PARLIAMENTS Edward the Sixth upon his Fathers death succeeded an Heir Lineal Legal and Testamentary yet the first thing this Author observes upon him is the greatest falsehood viz. That he took upon him a power what surely no King ever had to dispose of his Crown by Will When in the very Preceeding president his own Father by his Will manifested he had the Power and left it him by his last But his he 'll say was a Power given him by Parliament But that is not so plain neither both from the Preamble and the purport of both the dissonant Acts of 28 and 35 for the designs of both were only for the settling the Succession and then upon supposition of the failure of issue from those upon whom it was setled they fairly leave it to his last Will or his Letters Pattents but supposing this Liberty had not been allow'd can he imagin that a King that had got them to alter the succession at his pleasure in his Life time would not upon the failure of the Limited Heirs have dispos'd of it by Will at his death but that none but this Edward of
to 〈◊〉 were then Punishable with a Premunire yet the Civil Law then obtain'd much more than it does now that Stat. being very young as well as the Reformation and by the Laws of the Church long before it they were such Latitudinarians in this point that the subsequent Marriage would Legitimate those that were born before the Contract but that I confess was rejected here in 20 Harry the 3d's time because contrary to the common Laws of the Realm which the Parliament resolutely declar'd they would not change But what ever power they had of Nullifying this and making Mary spurious 't is certain another and latter Act made her as much Legitimate by making her Hereditary insomuch that what ever Edward her Brother was prevail'd upon a young Prince and a dying one whose forward Understanding might be well disorder'd with an approaching Death and an untimely end and which might be easily prevail'd upon in such Circumstances by the Cruel sollicitations of the defigning Northumberland whose Son had but just Married Suffolk's Daughter the designed Queen yet 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 the truly Loyal Bishop and as true a Protestant of which his 〈◊〉 to the right of the Crown was the best testimony tho now 't is made but a preposterous Emphatical expression of that Religion to invade it that worthy Prelate tho he suffer'd in the Succeeding flames of a real Persecution when demanded by these State Projectors his sense of the setting up of this Testamentary Queen declar'd it was no way agreeable to Equity to disinherit the two Sisters and that the Succession could not be Lawfully alter'd upon any pretence tho Religion then too was the very thing pretended the Bishop of Hereford that was as good a Protestant observes upon the Suffolk men siding with Queen Mary tho they knew she was for setting up of Popery says that our English are in their respects to their Prince so Loyally Constant that no regard no pretext of Religion can extenuate their Affections to their Prince and Lawful Soveraign And he writ it in a Time when the most malitious can't object it was to flatter a suspected Successor and when most of the Prelates themselves were so far from Rome that there was scarce an Arminian Upon the death of her Sister Doctor Health Arch-Bishop of Canterbury presently declar'd Queen Elizabeth's right to the Parliament then sitting who did not put it to the Vote as our Republican would insinuate they use to do but however did as much as was usual acknowledg'd that she was right Lawful Inheritor and presently she was proclaimed in Westminster-hall and in the next vote they do declare moreover in full Assembly Lords and Commons That this their Queen Elizabeth is their Lawful Soveraign by the Laws of God and so not only in relation to 35 H. 8. by the Statutes of the Realm and the Blood-Royal and in this open and generous Recognition they must Implicitly disclaim all power of Election or give themselves the Lye and so must our Impostor put upon them a falsehood if here his Parliamentary Choice must pass for a Truth but where matter fails them before and he can't prove his Election antecedent to the Monarchs right then as in some other places and here at present he can make the Prince tho own'd Hereditary by some subsequent Act of his own to make himself Elective and for this he cites you the 13 of this Queen the purport of which is to disable any one even after her Death to inherit the Crown that shall pretend to it during her Life But does not every one know that this was Enacted as all the fore-mention'd irregular Acts of her Father with her own seeking and desire and the bringing this for a president for a Parliamentary Power is just as pertinent as that of palliating the Treason of their late Covenant with the Title and Pretence of an Association made in her Time too with her own Consent and for the same purpose that this Act was past both being contriv'd in opposition to the pretences of the Queen of Scots and must the only thing that has Blacken'd her clear Integrity with Injustice and Blemish't her Virgin Innocency with Blood be brought upon the Stage for an Imitation to our State and because the Grand-mother suffer'd with a Bill of EXCLVSION and an AXE and the Father with the same Fate must the Son too that has experienc'd exile dangers and all but death from this power of Parliament Succeed only in their Misfortune and his Blood be made Hereditary only in being Split All that he says of King James is but what makes against him and what he might have said of all the rest that they made a Recognition of his right upon his coming to the Crown and truly such an one as must silenc'd all such 〈◊〉 for they acknowledg him Lineal Lawful Liege Lord by the Laws of God and Man this may suffice for my sense of his History and all honest hearts will concur with my Sentiments his subsequent observations are but the same with the Principles of his ASSOCIATES that follow where I shall reflect upon them together as they are combin'd And here only give him an omitted Instance as pertinent as the Presidents he has propos'd to bring down his Narrative to the Times Charles the first notwithstanding his proximity of Blood his possession of the Crown and his pretended right from God 〈◊〉 the Parliament imprison'd him MVRDERED him and put the Power in the People And now what can any Rational Soul living infer even from this Authors own Observations but that those Parliaments which he brings us here for Presidents both for disallowing the Discent of the Crown to purge the Defects of the Prince upon whom it descends as also those that concern'd themselves in altering the Lineal Discent it self are so far from warranting the same Practises and proceedings that they stand upon Record are Chronicl'd in History register'd in their own Journals declar'd by Special Acts REBELS and TRAYTORS and then no wonder if the poor People are encourag'd to Rebel when the very Presidents of TREASON shall be publish't as a Parliamentary Practise the deluded filly Souls don't so soon consider that if every Seditious Senate's determination shall decide too the Descent of the Crown that this consequence which even themselves may blush to own must as inevitably follow that from the Vnion of the Seven under Egbert to our present Soveraign the first Born Heir to our Three Vnited Kingdoms there never was or could ever be a REBELLION or ever one USURPER in the whole Catalogue of Kings Henry of Bullingbrook by this unreasonable sort of supposition had as much right to the Crown as that Unfortunate Richard from whom it was rent and torn Edward the Third but a Son Intitl'd to the wearing it before his Father had done with it himself and that Butcher of his Brothers Babes and the
incorporated to the King himself His true Treasurers and the most profitable Instruments of the State And without doubt this great part they had always in Publick administrations made them of old so much esteem'd that in all Rolls and Acts of State they were mention'd with so much reverence and respect certainly had they been no constitution allow'd of by the Fundamental Laws of our Land they would never have been transmitted to posterity with such veneration to their Memories and that too through every Reign and all the Records of Time let them have but the benefit and priviledge of a Common Burrough and let their President an Office as old as King John's Time and that by Letters pattents but have as fair play as one of their Port-Reevs prescription would incorporate them into the Government as well as entitle those to their Franchises 'T is an absolute Contradiction to Imagin that Rolls then the very Parliaments Acts or Opinions in Transcript should have recorded them so Honourably for their Publick Administration were they not allow'd by the people so much as to be Ministers for the Publick good and such Honour was given them too by our Ancestors such Semblance of Soveraignty to their Persons that their Houses had in some sense the self-same privilege of the very Kings Palace and Verge wherein if a blow was given it was punisht with a Fine the loss of a good Summ of Money as in the other of a Hand And is it not at present Treason to destroy them and can Absurdity it self imagin that the Laws which are made always by those that Govern would make such provisions for those that were no part of the Government And lastly to prove this proposition of our Republican but a Rebels Plot and a fair progress towards a Rebellion I 'll shew this presumptious projector how vainly he presumes upon his parts and Invention that he is a double Plagiary not only borrow'd this 〈◊〉 project against the present Privy Council from these proposals of our Seditious Senate in England but his very Quarantia of Venice was set up long before he could for an Author by those Zealots that were so resolutely resolv'd to Rebel in Scotland and he shall see those Daemagogues too those Devils of Sedition look't upon it even then as a praeparatory project and the best Expedient for their Invading of the Kingdom and the Crown Their Edenburgh their Metroprolis as well as ours here was then the Seat of Sedition so truly great that it's Faction and Villany was Commensurate even with it's very Walls And those too when Casually fallen were not suffer'd to be built as if they would have let the World known by praediction their Ominous Treason was to extend further 't was here that the Sycophants at the same time they pretended so much for their Kings preservation that they protested against the pious Prince's Proclamation only for the dispersing of that dangerous Rabble that seem'd to denounce with an Omen what too fatally follow'd his Death and Destruction his Majesties sincerity to them and their Religion was repeated in it often with assurances but what was as Sincerely promis'd from a King by these Monsters of the People was as Rebelliously Ridicul'd with scorn and derision and that the Government might be satisfy'd with a sure report of their Sedition they made those Heralds that proclaim'd their Princes pleasure to witness how much it displeas'd his Rebel Subjects and in defiance to their very Faces read their own Protestation Big thus with Rebellion and Labouring with their teeming Treason at last they are fairly deliver'd of the same Rebel Brat this Republican would adop't for his own a QVARANTIA they Covenant and agree and 't was time to Vnite for a Justification of those Villanies which nought but a Combination could defend for erecting four principal Tables and 't was time too to set up their own Councils when they had so Seditiously resisted their Kings To pursue the Contempt of this Proclamation which by his Majesties Council and Command was publish't for a further Violation of the Regal Authority they set up this truly Popular the first of their four Councels to consist of their Nobility the second of the Gentry the third of their Burgesses and the fourth of their Ministry and the Decrees of these their principal and general Tables as they call'd them as if as Universally to be receiv'd as Moses his Two of Stone what they did and was approv'd of by the General one the Choice Flow'r of all the Four was to be forc't as the Peoples Law but far I am sure from the Fundamental one of the Land from this their Rebellious assuming of the Soveraignty in their pretended Councils as they call'd them too but in truth a Convention of Conspirators proceeded presently the Renewing of their Negative Confession their Band their Covenant impos'd on all sorts of People with artiside force and Blood it self And can a Test now establish't by Authority and Law be look't upon an Imposition even by those that impos'd Oaths Vnlawful and Rebel'd against both it being by them expressly declar'd in two several Acts that all Leagues of Subjects amongst themselves without their Princes Privity to be Sedition and their Authors and Abetters to be punish't as movers of such And what did this Venetian Government terminate in in Scotland but a plain Confederacy to confound all and tho the Civil and Courteous contriver of our Ruin and Subversion minces the matter with making his Majesty to Exercise his four Magnalia with the consent of these four Councils 't would puzzle his Politicks to tell me the distinction between them and those principal Tables of the Scot what should confine them from Confederating against their King instead of Consulting for him what would signifie his Majesties having a president among those of his own placeing when every one of them would be their own Masters and out of his power to displace what should hinder those from protesting with their old Rebellious Assembly in Scotland against all their Kings desires intentions and Inclinations for the publick good while they presume their own Maxims the wisest and their measures the best and to tell us that these are to give Account and to be answerable to such a Parliament who chuses them is to say a Sidney is the best Judge of the Misdemeanor of a Nevil most qualifi'd to answer his Quaere whether this project be not a better Expedient than the Justitia of Arrogan or the Spartan Ephori or to tell us one that has suffer'd for Treason to a Monarchy is the fittest to Try him that would betray it to a Common-wealth The second Proposition in the Parallel is that Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament or by such Councils as they shall appoint The true Spirit the Life the Soul of Sedition that informes and animates the whole Body of the Faction speakes here the
should tell us Ten Thousand times of this Seditious sort of 〈◊〉 this Senseless Sophistry upon the plain word Heir as well as he says they do an Hundred still all their Noise and Nonsense about Presumptive Apparent Actual possible will be nothing more than what the late Rebels that had Actually Murder'd the best of Monarchs made their defence to Justifie Treason and Sacrilege it self so that all this Divine's Sophistry savours not only of Nonsense and Sedition but of an old odious rank Rebellion and for to satisfie him that the Suggestion is serious and founded upon Matter of Fact if he can find among all his Seditious Papers he has habituated himself to peruse and what if he pleases I can lend him for his perusal such an old obsolete piece as was publisht after they had Butcher'd the best of Kings wherein they endeavour'd to persuade the people to be subject to their Tyrannous Usurpation there will he find the very two Pages that he spends to promote the Quaint Conceptions of his Noddle about nothing or what is worse Faction and Folly for tho he tells us these tales Fifteen Hundred times over they told us so much for Forty years agon and that to satisfie Tender and Malignant Consciences that there lay no Obligation from their Oath of Allegiance upon them to adhere to the right Heirs of Charles Stewart because that those Branches of the Oath which the Providence of God had made Impossible to be observed must be lay'd aside and then they go on to shew that Heirs and Successors must be taken Copulatively and so the word Heirs must be meant only of those that do Actually succeed But the Providence of God as they call'd it having kept the Heir of Charles Stewart from succeeding his Father had made say they that part of the Oath Impossible to be Observ'd and so the power must now be Obey'd Actively in what hands soever it be Seditious Soul 'T is too much to be Senseless too Consider but upon this Occasion a Case your self have Cited 't is that of the Lady Jane Did not the Laws adjudge it Treason in that poor imposed Princess for endeavouring to hinder the True Heir from being the Actual Successor and to say Queen Mary was then already Succeeded will not salve the Matter for it was resolv'd Treason too in her Father Northumberland his Contrivance of the Will for the Queens Exclusion which confirm'd as it was by the Privy-Council was as much an Act of State as the Bill by which our present Heir was to be Excluded and then what they did was but in pursuance of that Will after Edward's Death and as the Duke told Arundel that Arrested him that he had Acted only by the Council and Commission of King Edward Yet all was adjudg'd a defence Insufficient and I cannot see why the same Law would not have made those Traytors had the Bill past that rebell'd upon pretence of such an Act of Parliament as well as it did others that resisted upon the pretext of a Will Confirm'd in Council and which * themselves would have a sort of Exclusion and is almost as much an Act of state 'T is strange that men that would be thought so mighty Rational should not only argue against the known Rules in all Logick but against the very Inferences of Common Reason a man of Ordinary Sense without the help of his Hereboord will allow that any Vniversal and General Assertion in includes all Particulars And shall vve vvhen vve svvear Faith and Obedience to the Kings Heirs and Successors Generally Reserve an Exception of such whom the Parliament shall Exclude It would prove but a senseless Solaecism in Common Speech and must sure be of more dangerous consequence in a Sacred Oath But I remember these same sort of Disputants in another Case managed the Reverse of the Rule after the same manner They tell us Popery cannot be kept out under a Successor Popish because not long since Queen Mary prov'd it so Their first Irrational Argumentation from a proposition and that even in a Solemn Vow clearly Vniversal would except our Obligation to some Particulars and the latter absur'd Inference from a Particular Instance draws a conclusion Vniversal sure men of unprejudiced Reason would not infer against all the Rules of it it must be nothing but Passion and prejudice that can prevail upon their Sense and Soul when they dispute against the very dictates of both And as Irrational are his Inferences upon our Old Oath of Allegiance when by the Statute we have had since establisht a new he cites us for a refutation of Passive Obedience but a part of the poor younglings Oath to be taken in a Court Leet and because 't is there said by the Minor and Sworn only I 'll be Obedient to the King's Laws Precepts and proceedings from the same And what then Therefore that Doctrine alters our faith of Allegiance and gives it new Measures of Obedience So that the Consequence must be this That if we do but perform that Obedience to the Kings precepts and to processes out of a Court Leet we are all very good Subjects and that 's sufficient and truly a Little of Loyalty and less Sense with such Gentlemen may suffice for certainly for any Consequence that can be drawn from this clause of the Minors Oath against his Doctrine of the Bowstring and the Doctors Obedience he might as well have told us too that the Tithing-man is there sworn to be Attendant on the Constable and the Ale-Taster make Oath He will serve the King's Majesty and the Lord of the Leet in the Tasting of Good Ale and Beer But he might have been so fair here too as to have let us known what follows even in this Oath too of the Youngling and I Swear that I 'll be a true Liegeman and true Faith and Truth bear to Our Soveraign that now is and his Highness Heirs and Lawful Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm c. Assoon as any Treason shall come to my knowledge I shall make the same to be known to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors And even the first part of this very Clause he is pleased at last to recite in another page where he thinks it makes for his Sophisticated Sense because as I suppose after the Word Successors follows Kings and Queens ofthis Realm But because God only knows as he says who shall come to be so is it therefore no breach of our Oath to his Majesties Heirs to barr any one for ever from being King God knows too who will live to Succeed him and may we therefore without Perjury Associate to secure his Destruction Swear to expel and destroy him because he is but a possible Successor All these things may be done and justified but so has too the Deepest Treason and a Damn'd Rebellion let but any Impartial Soul consider the Sense of
that Supremacy that Allegiance he Swears to his present Soveraign and he 'll find all along he makes at the same time an Actual Promise an 〈◊〉 Faith to those too that are Possible Heirs and even PROBABLE ones according to the Ordinary descent of the Crown by Birth and Blood without any of the least Relation or Reference to any Extraordinary Settlement of Parliament Interruption or Exclusion and tho in strict propriety of Speech a man cannot be said to be an Heir to him that is Living and in possession of that to which he is to be an Heir after his Death yet I humbly conceive a man may be an Actual Heir to a Right tho he be but a possible one to the Possession and 't is that unalterable Right to the Crown we Swear to defend Inherent in the Blood ofthose that as yet have but a Possibility to the wearing it The Common Recoveries now too Commonly suffer'd to be really just sure supposes some Actual Heir and one to have some Right tho he is living to whom he is to make himself so for if there be no such Heir then also this feigned Recovery must be just against no Body if they will allow such an Heir to be then there must be also of one that 's living And I look upon the Crowns Customary descent stronger than any Tail His case of Excise is just such another Tale of a Tub and only tells us that tho 't is granted to the King and his Heirs the possible Successor can't put in at present for a Penny a pretty piece of Impertinence and well apply'd and were this all they would have Excluded his Highness from I believe they might have got his Vote to the Bill and so we say too that he could not have put in then for the Crown but if he would have consulted the Sense and meaning of those Legislators that past that very Act it would soon appear to him that what they designed for the Revenue of the Royal Heirs in General must as well be design'd for 's R. H. in Particular if ever he came to be an Actual Heir and so he might as well have told us that had his Parliament excluded the D. from being Heir to the Crown they had shut him out too from the Hopes of the Revenues that belong'd to it and in my Conscience those that had pay'd him off with such a Bill would never have pay'd him a Penny Excise The last Remark I shall make upon this their Maxim in the Law and this that our Florishing Divine celebrates so much for making those Heirs mentioned in our Oath to be meant only of such as Actually succeed at our Soveraigns death because they will have it according to their Exposition that he can have none while he Lives is only by way of Civil interrogatory what they think is meant by the word Heir in that Act that Declares it High-Treason to compass the Death of the Kings Eldest Son and HEIR for if their formidable thundering Aphorism must be play'd so furiously upon us we 'l for once force their own Engine upon our Foes If the King has no Heir while he is Living why is it made here Treason to destroy him if Heir must be here meant of him only that will be so Hereafter then that whole word Heir is impertinent for it would be Treason without it for he would be then de Facto King if Heir Relates to Eldest Son then even the Statute too understands it so as an Heir Possible for an Eldest Son is no more at the most and then we see that even in an Act of Parliament the word Heir shall refer to one that only may probably or Possibly be so in Futuro as well as to those that are de Facto such and so agrees with the very common acceptation Afortiori then we may even with the Consent of our Reverend Reader the Divine Lawyer admit of the Vulgar acceptation of the word when administred to us in an Oath so Solemn and Sacred if it does not relate to the Eldest but only to an Heir in general that may Actually Succeed then they must bring which to be sure they won't allow a Collateral as well as a Lineal Heir within the very Letter of the Law And whether they will allow him so or no for any thing they can say to the contrary a Collateral Heir may be within the Statute tho not exprest in the very Letter of the Law I don't doubt but that the same Intention they had of preserving the King's Eldest Son and Heir the same had those Legislators for the preservation of the next Heir of the Crown whether Lineal or Collateral and where their Intention may be presumed the same there the Remedy without doubt wasdesign'd the same too and that Intention of all Law-makers must beonly gathered from the parity of Reason for the making such a Law Now if there be the same Reason for the securing the Person of any Collateral Heir as well as the Kings Eldest Son and Heir as doubtless there is for the perpetuating the Succession of the Monarchy then we have Reason to believe too that such an Heir was also intended especially if we consider that but just before this Statute of the 25th it was held That Killing anyof the Kings Children was Treason all of them having a possibility of being Heirs Apparent and supplying the Crown with a Succession 'T is true ther 's nothing expressive of a Collateral Heir in the Letter of the Law so neither is there anything exprest of a Second Son or a Third when they should be come Eldest yet allthese are allowed to be intended too and if Eldest shall extend to any that shall afterward become so I don't see why the word Heir which I am sure is there more extensive might not without much stretching refer to any that may become the first Heir Admitting it otherways they must admit that this Law in this point is mighty Superfluous the very thing which it always endeavours to avoi'd for if the Prince must be only understood why then that word would have exprest it better or else Eldest Son alone as well and since Heir is superadded and a Rule in Law that Letter of it must have it's full Emphasis in Explication I cannot apprehend but the word Heir there must signifie somewhat more than Eldest Son There is no Provision made for the Queen Regent in that Statute Consort being only named yet the resolution has been That she is within that Statute as well as the King and that for the Parity of Reason And for my Life I could never apprehend the little Lords Sophistry of a Brother or Collateral Heir being but a Presumptive one it look't like a piece of State Metaphysicks to distinguish his Highness out of his Title with a Diminution and that in order for Excluding him from the Crown Time always best resolves the Sense of
Monarchy mixt and of this even Justin can tell us in one of his Books And for making their Monarchy more Divine did Romulus and Numa the Founder of their Religion as well as of Rome Officiate in it sometimes too So much did the Fathers of old prefer Monarchy to a Popular Government that Sir Walter Rawleigh tells us of the saying of St. Chrysostom that recommended even a Tyrant before no King at all and that is 〈◊〉 with a Sentence of Tacitus who tells us If the Prince be never so wicked yet still better than none And for that of a Commonwealth it was as bravely said by Agesilaus to a Citizen of Sparta discoursing about Government That such a one as a common Cobler would disdain in his House and Family was very unfit to Govern a Kingdom In short all the Presidents that Mr. Sidney has given us of the Romans driving out their Tarquins of the French rejecting the Race of Pharamond of the Revolt of the Low-Countries from Spain of the Scots killing James the Third and Deposing Queen Mary are all absolute Rebellions were ever Recorded so in History and will be Condemned for such by all Ages He should have mention'd for once too the murder of our Martyr'd Sovereign for to be sure he had the same sense of that upon which he was to have sate But if any thing can recommend their Commonwealth it must be only this That it cannot be so soon dispatch'd it being a Monster with many Heads to which Nero's Wish would not be so cruel That it had but one neck to be cut off at a blow The clamour this Republican made against Monarchs in general was whatever he suggests appli'd to our own in particular when he tells in the very same Page of the Power of the People of England and though he exclaims and all others do against this Arbitrary Power of Kings 't is certain themselves would make the People as Arbitrary The Question is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power but the Dispute is who shall have it there never was nor ever can be a People govern'd without a Power of making Laws and that Power so long as consonant to reason must be Arbitrary for to make Laws by Laws is Nonsense These Republicans by confession would fix it in many and the Multitude in Aristocracy 't is fix'd in a few and therefore in a Monarchy must be setl'd in ONE CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracies AND now that they may not think I have foully Libell'd them in a Mis-representation of the dangerous Principles of their Republicans I 'll be so fair as to prove upon them too the natural product of their own Notions and that is the Plots of the same Villains assoon as they have been pleas'd to set up for Rebels And these will appear from Chronicle and History the Records of Time and the best Tryers of Truth these will not be falsified with Reflection but be founded upon matter of Fact And of these this will fall in our way as the first About the Year 1559 there was promoted in France a Plot and Conspiracy against their King and that founded upon the same pretext so many of ours have been of late in England that is Religion but truly fomented by what has been always the spring the very fountain of Blood and Rebellion discontent and disgust toward the Government For upon the death of Henry the Second and the Succession of Francis his eldest Son to the Throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon thinking themselves neglected and despised thrust out of Office and Employment at Court and finding the Family of the Guises still prefer'd whom they always as mortally hated resolved to revenge themselves upon the Crown that is to turn Rebels Of these Vendosme and Conde were the principal Engagers and drew in the two Castillions the Admiral and his Brother who for the removal of the Duke De Montmorency their relation from that Court to which he had prefer'd them were as full also of resentment against the Crown as those that came to engage them with an invitation to invade it and after all their several seditious Assemblies after all the many Meetings they had made after all the Treasonable Consultations they had held no design was look'd upon by them more likely to prove effectual than the making themselves Head of the Hugenots And so hot were they upon this Project the pursuit of another kind of Holy War that among our modern Crusadoes has been nothing else but a Religious Rebellion that notwithstanding the coldness of the King of Navarr they drew in most of the Protesting part of France to be truly Rebels for the sake of their Seducers while they made them believe they had only engag'd themselves to fight for the Religion of those they had so wickedly seduc'd And so conducing then were the principles of a Republick to a Rebellions Plot that one 〈◊〉 that was forc'd to turn Renegado to his Country for Misdemeanors committed in it and fled to Geneva as a Sanctuary for Sedition after he had lurk'd there like a concealed Criminal abroad upon his Return sets up for an open Rebellion at Home after he had layn so long in the lake the sink of Democracy you may be sure was well instructed how to resist a Monarch He soon blows the coals that could easily keep up the Blood of the warm Princes that was already set so well a boyling Him they pitch upon as the fittest tool to work out their design and in my conscience coming from that Common-wealth the Statsemen judged not amiss when they took him for an able Artist With his help and their own it went so far that Moneys Men and Amunition was provided and a Petition drawn for a Toleration of Religion though indeed but a Treacherous vell to cover their Intended Treason which was to seize upon the Young King upon his denyal of what they knew he would not grant surprize the Queen that still opposed them and put the Guises to the Sword whom she favoured But the Court being advised of the Conspiracy had retired to the Castle of Amboise and so far did they prosecute their Plot that their Petitioners were admitted into it though their Arm'd Accomplices that were without were compelled to fight for their Lives which Renaudie with the rest of the Ring-leaders of them lost and the Rabble to save theirs was forc'd to fly This was the praeliminary Plot and an unhappy prelude to a long and bloody Civil War fomented first by the fury of a Faction that set up for Rebels only because not favoured as they thought sufficiently by the Court and then seconded even to an Assaulting of the Crown in the Siege of Paris and almost the Subversion of the Monarchy as some Learned Historians surmise from the secret Emissaries of the Republick of Geneva I need not touch on the particulars in which the
The King never Dies they made themselves all Dictators more Immortal They were summon'd in November and by the time that they had sate to May they had made of a Mighty Monarch a meer precarious Prince And in August following supposing he had sufficiently oblig'd the most Seditious Subjects which I think he might Imagine when he had made himself no King he sets out for Scotland to satisfie them as much there while the Senate of Sedition that he left to sit behind him resolv'd it self into a sort of Committee of Conspiracy and that of almost the whole House made a Cabal among themselves to to cast off the Monarchy which the Knaves foresaw could not be done but by the Sword and therefore cunningly agreed to second one another for the putting the Kingdom into a posture of Defence against those dangers abroad which they themseves should think fit to feign and fancy at home To carry on their Plot against the Bishops they put in all probability that lewd Leighton upon writing of his Plea which was Bring out those Enemies and slay them before him to smite those Hazaels under the fifth Rib For which in the Starchamber he was Fin'd and Imprison'd but for his Sufferings and the Dedication of his Book to the Commons they Vote him Ten thousand pound Upon the Kings return from his Northern Expedition which was to procure Peace only with a shew of War they having had a competent time for Combination and Plot were arriv'd to that exalted Impudence that notwithstanding he was received with Acclamations from all the common People of the Kingdom the People whom they were bound to represent the welcome from his Parliament was to present him with Remonstrances and Petitions which against his very express order they Printed and Publisht of such sort of Grievances that sufficiently declared they were griev'd at nothing more than his being their King They put upon his Account the thirty thousand pounds they had pay'd the Scots for Invading England that is they gave them the Moneys for Fighting of their King and then would have had the King paid his own Subjects for having against him so bravely Fought They should for once too have made him responsible and his Majesty their Debtor for the two hundred thousand pounds they paid the same Fellows at Newark to be gone whom with their thirty thousand pounds they had invited in before They should have made the King pay for his own purchase and answerable for the Price the Parliament had set upon his Head This seem'd such an unconscionable fort of Impudence that their hearts must needs have been Brass and seer'd as well as their Foreheads in offering it An Impudence that none but such an Assembly were capable of Impudence the Diana of these Beasts of Ephesus the Goddess of all such designing Democraticks that to be somewhat in the true sense of the Satyrist must defie a Dungeon These their Petitions they seconded with Tumult and Insurection sent the Justices of Peace to the Tower only for endeavouring to suppress these Forerunners of a Civil War when they had taken the Liberty to Impeach some of the King 's best Subjects for Traytors yet deny'd their Soveraign to demand their Members that had committed High Treason About the twenty eighth of January 1641 they humbly desire the Soveraignty and their Petition that BEGUN Most Gracious Soveraign ENDED only in this Make us your Lords for they 1st demand the Tower of London 2ly All other Forts 3ly The Militia and they should have put in the Crown too The stupid Sots had not the sense to consider or else the resolv'd blindness that they would not see that those that have the power of the Army must be no longer Subjects but the Supream power The King you may be sure was not very willing to make himself none and might well deny the deposing of himself tho' he after consented even to this for a time but what he would not grant with an Act they seiz'd with an Ordinance and though they took the Militia which was none of theirs by Force and Arms yet Voted against their King's Commission of Array that was settled upon him by Law they force him to fly to the Field and then Vote it a Deserting the Parliament they necessitate him to set up his Standard at Nottingham and then call it a Levying War they Impeach nine Lords for following their King and yet had so much nonsense as to call them Delinquents which the Law says none are but what adhere to his Enemies they send out their General fight their King and after various events of War force him to fly to the perjur'd Scot to whom they had paid an hundred thousand pounds to come in and were glad to give two to get out and for that they got the King into the bargain An Act of the Scot that was compounded of all the sublimated Vices that the Register of Sins or Catalogue of Villanies can afford feigned Religion forc'd Hypocrisie Falshood Folly Covetousness Cowardize Perjury and Treason for upon his refusal to Sign their Proposals they tell him the defence of his Person in the Covenant must be understood only as it relates to the safety of the Kingdom and upon the English profering them the Moneys they wou'd prettily perswade him that the promise their Army made him for his preservation could not be kept because the Souldiers and the Army were different things and the Army might promise what the Souldiers might refuse and were unwilling to perform But this purchase of their double Perjury was punisht with as much perfidiousness their Army got into their hands for nothing the poor Prince the Parliament thought they paid for too dear And as that Seditious Senate sought their Soveraign in the Name of King and Parliament so now the Souldiers of Fairsax set themselves to fight the Senate for the sake forsooth of the Parliament and Army Good God! Just Heavens that could visit such Vipers such Villains in the same villany they committed and make such Seditious Hypocrites suffer by as much Treason and Hypocrisie Their Agitators menace the King with Death and Deposition they make him their Prisoner move in the House their non-addresses make it Treason to confer with their King set up an Ordinance for his Tryal and there Sentence that against which Treason could only be committed as a Traytor to the State And here then With what face can the Faction justify such a Barbarous Rebellion or accuse their King for the beginning of the War Yet such a sort of Seditious Democraticks does our Land afford Sidney says Such a general revolt of the Subjects can not be call'd a Rebellion And Plato Our Parliament never did as they pretended make War upon the King Till such persuasions are rooted up out of their Rebellious hearts as well as they are in them no Prince under the Heavens can protect himself from such resolute Rebels as will
War upon him for fear he should make War upon them that 's the English trick of it And I can tell it them in a Spanish one too so Gondamor got Raleigh's Head he told them not for the mischief he had done them but for that which he might do But had not the Laws provided so particularly for the King this would be madness and cruel injustice even among common Subjects reduce us both into Hobs's his state of nature and his fear to kill every one we meet for fear of being kill'd or set our Neighbours House a fire for fear it should catch of it self and consume our own And now be witness even the worst and the most warm Assertor of a Common-wealth in this case be for once what you so much affect Judge between you and your King The King had his Court of Starchamber constituted by Common Law and confirmed by special Act of Parliament The Commons they send up a Vote and Bill for suppressing it The High Commission was establisht by the Statute of the Queen the Commons come and would put it down with a Vote The Court of Wards and Livery the tenures of which were even before the Conquest and drew Ward and Marriage after it was establisht by particular Act the Commons clamour to have it supprest which to please them is done The King had several priviledges that belong to the Clerk of his Market confirm'd by ancient Custom and several Statutes abolisht by the Parliament in the Year 1641. The King had the Courts of his Forests his Judge in it constituted of old by Writ then by Letters Pattents This was a grievance which was never before and therefore must and was supprest with the rest The Law required no person was to be Imprisoned or put out of his Lands but by due course and custom None to be adjudged to Death but by the Law establisht they confined several of the Kings Subjects send the Bishops by order of the House to the Tower and by special Bill attaint Strafford and Behead Laud with an Ordinance Resolved by all the Judges in Queen Elizabeths time that to levy War to remove evil Counsellors is High Treason against the King they past a Vote that the King was seduc'd by evil Counsellors against whom they levied War to remove There is a special Statute that says expresly that the Subjects that aid the King shall not be molested or questioned They publisht their Declaration That it was against the Laws and Liberty of the Kingdom to assist the King that the Sherriff of the County ought to suppress them The Law makes those Delinquents that adhere to the King's Enemies they Vote those that serve him in such Wars Traitors by a Fundamental Law The Statute provides that the Parliaments should assemble peaceably they by particular order bring Horse and Foot into the Palace Yard In short The Parliament first seizes the Militia against an express Act that setl'd it solely on the King The King sent out after his Comission of Array for which he was impower'd by Act of Parliament The Parliament order the raising an Army against the K. declared Treason by special Act The King then Summons his Subjects to his assistance at York and comes and sets up his Standard at Nottingham for that was warranted by the Laws of the Land and several Statutes of the Realm I have taken this pains both to prove that bloody War that general Revolt to be a plain Rebellion and that the War it self was begun by those that were the only Rebels the Parliament because you see that both those positions have been laid down among our Republicans either of which should it gain credit is enough to run us again all into Blood And both together as false as Hell and can be the Doctrine of none but what 's the Author of all Sedition the Devil These were the Plots which they practis'd upon that poor Prince whose Sincerity was always such that he could not suspect in Nature such a sort of designing Villains nor humane Wit well imagine such ingrateful Monsters that for their King 's continual Concessions to better the Conditions of his Subjects should still Plot upon him to render his own the worse Here we saw what all these Positions Principles Practises all their Preaching Praying Printing did tend to and terminate in the People enslav'd the Monarch murder'd the Government undermin'd But as these Maxims of our Democratick's were destructive to our Monarchy and produc'd as you have seen those Plots and conspiracies that subverted it so shall we see by subsequent Events and be inform'd from as much Matter of Fact what I have heretofore insinuated only from the force of Reason that the same Principles after they had set up their Commonwealth made them Plot too upon one another When the Parliament had imprison'd their King whom they bought for a Slave confin'd him with a merciless Cruelty at Holdenby-house then a Castle and Garrison and by that Act made him no more a Monarch but a Prisoner of War themselves no more his Subjects but his Masters and Sovereigns the Parliament having had so far the End of their Plot upon the King now the Army take their Turn to Plot upon the Parliament who when they had made their Monarch accountable to their Memberships might as well sure expect by their Servants to be call'd to account The Parliament when they had wrested the Sword out of the King's Hand knew themselves the Supream Power and were as certain they could as soon send him packing with his Supream Right The Soldiers now are sensible that the Members of the Army have that Sword in their Hand which the Parliament took out of the King 's and see no reason why they may not make themselves the Supream Parliament for this their Original Right of the People over the Magistrate will always I warrant you be appropriated to that part of it that has an Actual Power and that they found for Cromwel conspires with his Adjutators who like provok'd Beasts begin to be warm'd into a perception of their own Strength which even when a Horse comes to know to be sure he 'll throw his Rider For this he fools his Fellow-Senators with a Suggestion of his readiness to suppress any Soldiers Insurrection at the same time that he set them on to rise The Parliament had plotted by Subscription and Petitioning to advance their Power upon the King their humble Servants the Soldiers now subscribe petition that the Parliament would be pleas'd to submit to their Power send to the Good Houses at Westminster the Representation of their Army that they forsooth were the Delinquents now and that they be speedily purg'd of such Members as for Delinquency were not to sit there They make eleven of them Traytors impeach them of High-Treason to
they would not so much as suffer the secluded to sit among them now neither till the good General came and settl'd them himself and now tho' all the Villains were in again that had begun the War unless such as dy'd in the Rebellion tho' they saw all the sad effects and confusions they had brought upon the Kingdom yet so far were the Rebels from remorse that they justify by Vote the War with his Majesty and past two more out of a perfect Plot and Design to keep the Royalist from being returned in the Parliament that was to ensue their Dissolution but Dissolv'd they were and that in effect by the good General and their Plotting Votes against the Royalist and the Restauration prov'd as illusory and vain Thus the Principles and Positions of these discontented Democraticks and implacable Republicans made them still uneasie under those very Establishments they set up confounded them so that they did not know how to please themselves but still kept Plotting one anothers Ruin and Destruction The King was by miracle restored whom Heavens by its repeated Providence had preserv'd and one would have thought such a signal signification of the concern God himself had for so good a Government should have made even the Devil himself despair to undermine it when founded even by a divine fate and to destroy the Monarchy look'd like a Design to circumvent the Almighty But no sooner was our Sovereign Seated in his Throne but they Plot again to pull him out And the first was that of Venner and his Fift-Monarchy Men their Leader a silly Cooper that had liv'd sometime in New-England but come home set up a Conventicle in Coleman street and made their consult of Conspiracy in the very place they came to pay their Devotions endeavouring to reconcile as near as they could their very Religion to be Rebellion On Sunday the sixth of January the day before they design'd their excursion as if the Sabbath were to sanctifie Sacriledge and atone for Blood they linger'd it out a little too late in their Assembly so that their Landlord a little Jealous listning at the door perceives through the chink that this Godly Convention were doing the very work of the Devil and instead of their Sighs Groans and Tears and such harmless spiritual warfare their Sword of the spirit was turn'd all into steel and all Arming themselves with Back Breast and Head-piece of which he gives notice to some Officers but they in a little while after issuing out march through several parts of the City kill'd some of the Watch repell'd a Party of the Train-bands and so march't through Aldersgate to a place nere the City call'd Cane Wood. But on the Wednesday morning after they return to renew their Rebellious design they divided themselves into Parties and about Leaden-Hall fought it out obstinately and too stoutly with the Trainbands But some of the Guards Commanded then by the Duke of York and now our present Sovereign whom Heaven protect to defeat all Rebellions with the General and his more disciplin'd Soldiers soon made them give ground and retreat and at last run away in as much confusion Colonel Corbet routs another Party of them about Wood-street and such inveterate Villains had the Preaching these Principles render'd them that when they were broken and dispers'd they would refuse Quarter sixteen or seventeen being taken were at the Old 〈◊〉 Try'd Convicted Sentenc'd five or six Pardon'd andthe rest Executed In December was detected another Plot and Conspiracy carrying on One William Hill one of the Accomplices or a pretender to be so discovers it A Plot they had of confounding the Rogues as they call'd it at Whitehall imparted to him by one Baker one of Oliver's Yeomen of the Guard upon presumption that he would side with them who brings him acquainted with the rest of the Conspirators their Design was with four or sive hundred Men to surprize the Castle of Windsor Riggs one of the Conspirators told him of the Arms lodg'd in Crutchet Friers that five hundred had been dispers'd that they design'd a desperate assault on Whitehall to deliver them from the Tyranny of that Outlandish Dog for so they call'd the King That 〈◊〉 was to be their General that all other Officers were agreed on that the Tower was to be betrayed to them Letters dispersed to amuse the People with a Massacre from the Papists one of which on the Tryal of the Conspirators was produced in the Court they told him they determin'd to rid themselves of King Queen Dukes Bishops all should go one way as they call'd it and the Insurrection was to be on the Lord Mayor's Night Upon this Discovery one Tongue and five more were Arraigned of which one Phillips and Hind confest the Fact on their knees at the Bar were pardoned the other four Convicted Condemned and Executed In March 1663. a Plot was Discovered in the North of England the principal Contrivers of it being imparted to the King were secured from proceeding further And in 1666. when the King returned from Windsor to Oxford the Pestilence being abated tho' the Plague product of their Pestilential principles remained as raging Another Conspiracy of discontented Officers is detected for Conspiring the Death of the King Plotting the surprisal of the Tower Firing the City They had two Councils sitting one in London to issue out all Orders upon the place and another in Holland that assisted them with Instructions the third of September was sworn to be the day of Design for which eight several Persons were Sentenc'd and suffer'd Death In the same Year the Rebellion broke out in Scotland at Pentland Hills where the Covenanters fought the King's Forces and were defeated In 1675. the late Lord Shaftsbury a Person eminent even in the late Combustions and the Civil War a person that was but just before preferr'd by his Prince notwithstanding the many Services he did to the Rebels and an actual being in Arms for the Parliament But he thinking himself too little obliged by the Crown that had never deserv'd the least obligation Plots for the Dissolution of that Parliament that as it had settl'd so preserv'd the very frame of the Government from being dissolv'd and because he could not compass it from the King contrives that it should pass currant that it was Dissolv'd of course because Prorogu'd for fifteen Monhs contrary to the Acts of King Ed. the Third that required one to assemble once at least in twelve The Duke of Bucks is made to move it in the House seconded by Shaftsbury Salesbury and Wharton and for that all four sent to the Tower but however had dispers'd the Design so far that the Stalls were all cover'd with Papers and Pamphlets to prove them Dissolv'd which had it been then effected had only reduc'd us to those Confusions that the unhappy Dissolution in four years after did unfortunately bring about In March 1679. the same Incendiary the
our Kings took this power upon him is utterly false from these several instances First the very first King of his name in the Saxon succession left it so to his Son to succeed And Athelstan whom above this Gentleman recommended to the City of London for a Mon. and Illegitimate against the sense and silence of all Historians was declar'd King by the Command and last Will of his Father Edward the elder in the Reign of the Danes Canutus did the same bequeath'd Norway to Swain his eldest and England to his youngest Son and for the Norman Succession the very first King and who had the most right to do so from the Sword left to Rufus the right but of an Heir Testamentary tho followed by his Son Henry the first And Richard that had less reason so to do for his Daughter Maud by the Law of the Land would have been his Heir without the Legacy and so would to the latter his Nephew Arthur and tho both were by Rebellion rejected yet still sure their right remain'd But for this Edward the 6th disposing it by Will it was not only against the Customary Discent of the Realm in a right blood but of an Express Entail in several Acts of Parliaments I am so far of this Authors opinion that I believe it was no way warrantable but never the sooner for his Parliaments settlement had it not been at last upon the right Heirs for tho those Princes of ours heretofore took upon them to leave Successors by Will they still nominated those that by Blood were to succeed without such a Nomination so that the bequest was more matter of Form then Adoption only to let the Subjects know whom they look't upon to have the right of Succession rather than to superadd any thing of more right and that 's the reason or ought to be that we properly call the next in Blood the Kings Successor but the Crowns Heir 'T is a little prodigious Paradox to me that it must be such a receiv'd Maxim that a Parliament can do no wrong and that in plain Terms they tell us it can do any thing mollifying it only with an Exception that they can't make a Man a Woman yet that they bid pretty fair for too in these Presidents of Harry the 8th when they made Bastard Females of those that were Legitimate and then Legitimis'd again the same Bastards and 't is as mighty a Miracle to men unprejudic'd that our Parliament Patriots should contend for the disordering the Succession of the Crown who still labour for the Lineal Discent of their own Common Inheritance 〈◊〉 I will appeal to the breast of the most 〈◊〉 contender for this Power whether an Act made for the disabling one of their own Sons or design'd Successors would not by themselves be look't on as 〈◊〉 if not utterly defeasible and then 〈◊〉 sure prodigiously strange where so many Learned Heads tell us of a sort of 〈◊〉 from a power Divine where the 〈◊〉 Custom of the Kingdom has 〈◊〉 a constant course of Lineal Discent 〈◊〉 as has been shown a perfect 〈◊〉 interven'd And where themselves 〈◊〉 this sort of Succession has 〈◊〉 sometimes by Statute entail'd yet 〈◊〉 they should think that but Justice 〈◊〉 their Kings Successor which they 〈◊〉 resent as an Injury to their own 〈◊〉 they may vouch for it the common 〈◊〉 of Recoveries from a right Heir with too Cunning sort of vouching and 〈◊〉 too much practis'd but I am sure no way agrees with the Laws of Forraign Nations and has been a little 〈◊〉 by some learned Heads in our own 〈◊〉 some that have brought it into 〈◊〉 seem to have rais'd a Devil not soon to be put down in their Dialogue but however this Objection is 〈◊〉 analagous nothing of a Parallel 〈◊〉 for here is a Complication of both 〈◊〉 Concern'd and concluded upon 〈◊〉 both their Consents and where shall 〈◊〉 find the perfect Proprietor of 〈◊〉 and Scepters and when God has told us 〈◊〉 that by him they Reign that bear 〈◊〉 and they 'l hardly vouch the 〈◊〉 for a piece of Injustice But allowing for once a meer Human Constitution 〈◊〉 in their bandied Authority of Saint 〈◊〉 an Ordinance of Man and the 〈◊〉 Consent with his Parliaments to 〈◊〉 the Point yet still the great 〈◊〉 would call for a little longer 〈◊〉 than a Common Recovery 〈◊〉 not presently to cut off the right of Heir to three Kingdoms only 〈◊〉 commonly done at Westminster of 〈◊〉 to so many Cottages and besides 〈◊〉 that has been practis'd so long and 〈◊〉 the test of Time and this their 〈◊〉 would have been the first President And at last what has silenc'd their Advocates for ever the non-concurrence of the King and his Lords whose consent was by themselves suppos'd to be necessary because requir'd and will like those recognitions of some of our former Parliaments for an Hereditary Succession perpetuate that right in spight of the Laws of others that were made for altering it and should the Commons ever get such a Bill to pass 't is enough to say 't was once rejected by the Peers unless they can prove that the Question was put again Whether the lower House should take advice of the Lords in the Legislative power and that 't was Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be abolish't and Order'd that an Act be brought in for that purpose Queen Mary succeeds her Brother Edward with all the Right of Blood with all the Law of God and Man too on her side for whatever the Parliament pretended they could never 〈◊〉 that which was begotten in Matrimony celebrated according to the Laws of the Church and the Realm for whatsoever defect there was found subsequent to the Consummation of the Marriage in common reason and equity ought not to have extended to the making that Issue spurious which had all the requisites to the making it truly Legitimate 〈◊〉 perhaps the subsequent discoveries 〈◊〉 be sufficient to cause a Divorce and in the too Common Case of Adultery 't would be severe far from Equity to make Bastards of all that were born before the Conviction of the Fact but it may be reply`d to this That these were such Impediments as related to the Contract ab Juitio and where that 's 〈◊〉 there the Children begotten after 〈◊〉 be suppos'd Lawful Heirs when the Contract it self is against Law but tho 〈◊〉 I shall look upon that as a rigorous resolution when I think Innocents and Infants ought to be more favour'd especially when there is a Maxim in the Law even in the like Cases that the fact may be valid tho the doing of it can't be justifi'd and besides there being a Rule that obtains amongst Civilians That Marriage contracted without any preconceiv'd Impediment tho it after 〈◊〉 to be dissolv'd as unlawful yet 〈◊〉 begotten in such a state are reputed truly Legitimate and tho Appeals