his to come into England but such only as the King and the Lords should like The Poictovins landing at Boloign had much-a-do to gain passage into their own Countreys by reason that Henry de Montfort Son to the Earl of Leicester whose power was very great in France had followed them thither Rumours were spread amongst the people in England that the Earl of Gloucester was attempted to have been poyson'd and one of his Servants executed upon no other proof but presumption and every one that would complain of the Poictovins wanted no encouragement Richard Gray whom the Lords had made Captain of the Castle of Dover intercepted as much as he could of what the Poictovins carried over and enriched himself thereby The new Chief-Justice Hugh Bigod Brother to the Earl Marshal being chosen in the last Parliament by publick voice procured an order that four Knights in every Shire should enquire of the poor oppressed by great men and certifie the same to the Baronage under their hands and seals which were never found to have been certified And made an Order that no man should give any thing besides Provisions for Justice or to hinder the same and that both the corrupter and corrupted should be grievously punished Notwithstanding which pretended care the Lords enforceing the service of the King's Tenants which dwelt near unto them were as totidem Tyranni furnished the especial Fortresses of the Kingdom with Garrisons of their own sworn to the common State and took the like assurance of all Sheriffs Bailiffs Coroners and other publick Ministers with strict Commissions upon Oath to examine their behaviour And to make the King and his actions the more odious and their own more popular it was rumoured that the King's necessities must be repaired out of the Estates of his people and he must not want whilst they had it Whereupon the King to defend himself from such scandals was constrained to publish his Declaration to desire the people to give no credit to such false suggestions for that he was ready to defend all Rights and Customs due unto them Howsoever Montfort Gloucester and Spencer who had by the late constitution of the twenty-four Conservators drawn the entire managing of the Kingdom into their hands enforced the King to call a Parliament at London where the authority of the twenty-four Conservators was placed in themselves and order taken that three at the least should attend at the Court to dispose of the custody of Castles and other business of the Kingdom of the Chancellor Chief-Justiciar Treasurer and all other Officers great and small and bound the King to release to them their legal Obedience whensoever he infringed his Charter In the mean time the Earl of Cornwal King of the Romans being dispossest of that Kingdom or not well liking it returning into England the Barons send to know the cause of his coming and require of him an Oath before he should land not to prejudice their late established Orders of the Kingdom which he sternly refused saying He had no Peer in England being the Son and Brother of a King and was above their power and if they would have reformed the Kingdom they ought first to have sent for him and not so presumptuously have attempted a business of so high a nature The Lords upon return of such an answer sent to guard the Ports came strongly to the Coast prepared to encounter him and the King Queen and their Son Edmond in a more loving manner go to Dover to receive him but neither they nor the Earl of Cornwal were by them permitted to enter into the Castle for that it was the chief Fortress of the Kingdom But finding the Earl of Cornwal's Train small they suffered him to land and did upon his promise to take the propounded Oath bring him and the King into the Chapter-house at Canterbury where the Earl of Gloucester standing forth in the midst in the presence of the King called forth the Earl not by the name of King but Earl of Cornwal who in reverend manner coming forth took his Oath That he would be faithful and diligent with the Barons to reform the Kingdom by the counsel of wicked persons over-much disordered and to be an effectual Coadjutor to expel Rebels and disturbers of the same under pain of losing all the Lands which he held in England After which both parties strengthening themselves all they could the King for the assurance of the King of France ex praecepto consilio Domini Regis Angliae totius Baronagii sent the Earls of Gloucester Leicester Peter de Subaudia John Mansel and Robert Walerand to the Parliament of Paris de arduis negotiis Regna Angliae Franciae contingentibus carrying with them a resignation of the Dutchy of Normandy and the Earldoms of Anjou Poicteau Turaine and Mayne for which the King of France was to give him three hundred thousand pounds with a grant of all Guyen beyond the River of Garonna all the River of Xantoigne to the River of Charente and the Counties of Limosin and Quercy to him and his Successors dong his Homage and Fealty to the Crown of France as a Duke of Aquitain and a Peer of that Kingdom After whose return Montfort as he had incensed others so had he those that animated him against the King as Walter Bishop of Worcester and Robert Bishop of Lincoln who enjoyned him upon the remission of his sins to prosecute the cause unto death affirming that the peace of the Church of England would never be established but by the Sword But the people being oppressed and tired at length with those commotions part-takings and discords which by the provisions wrested from the King at Oxford and so many mischiefs and inconveniencies had harassed and almost ruined them and did help to increase rather than decrease those troubles and controversies which afflicted the Nation it having never been easie to bring those that were to be governed to rule with any modesty or moderation those that had enjoyed a governing power in authority established and appointed by God in a well-temper'd Monarchy and succession for many Ages or those that were to govern to obey the giddy and unjust dictates of those who were to obey them or to unite in any contenting harmony the various ambitions envies revenges hatreds partialities self-interests and designs of many or a multitude or such enforcements and contrivances to be lasting durable or pleasing and that all could not well rule or agree how to do it The King and Queen keeping their Christmas in the Tower of London cum suis consiliariis saith Matthew Paris elaboratum fuit tam à Regni Angliae pontificibus quam à Regni Franciae ut pax reformaretur inter Regem Angliae Barones ventumque est ad illud ut Rex Proceres se submiserunt ordinationi Regis Franciae in praemissis provisionibus Oxoniae nec non pro depraedationibus damnis utrobique
of King William the Second there was a great Councel De cunctis Regni principibus and another which had all the Peers of the Kingdom In the 7th Year of his Raign was a great Councel or Parliament so called at Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire Episcopis Abbatibus cunctisque Regni Principibus coeuntibus and a Year or two after the same King De statu Regni acturus called thither by his Command his Bishops Abbots and Peers of the Kingdom Anno 1106. Robert Duke of Normandy coming into England and seeking to be reconciled to his Brother King Henry the First which could not at Northampton be effected Magnatibus regni ob hoc Londonium edicto Regis convocatis the King by fair Words and Promises so frustrated the Dukes designs as Omnium corda sibi inclinavit ut pro ipso contra quemlibet usque ad capitis expositionem dimicarent Dux in Normanniam iratus perrexit Rex ipsum secutus est usque in Herchebrai Castellum trahens secum omnes ferè Proceres Normanniae Andegaviae robur Angliae Britanniae ut ipsum debellaret The Emperour having sent Ambassadors unto him to request his Daughter Maud in Marriage Tenuit ità que Rex apud Westmonasterium in Pentecosten Curiam suam quâ nunquam tenuerat splendidiorem wherein the Marriage was concluded Anno Domini 1114. Rex Anglorum Henricus fecit omnes suae potestatis Magnates as if there were no need of Commons which were then believed to be included in them fidelitatem jurare Willielmo filio suo At the Coronation of which King who had usurped his said elder Brothers Kingdom and stood in fear of his better Title it was said That all the People of the Kingdom of England were present but the Laws and Charter then made were Per commune concilium Baronum suorum confirmed and that Charter was attested by Mauritio Londoniensi Episcopo Willielmo Wintoniensi electo Odoardo Herefordiensi Episcopo Henrico Comite Simone Comite Waltero Gifford Comite Robert de Monti forti Rogero Bigod aliis multis Et factae sunt tot Chartae quot sunt Comitatus in Anglia Rege jubente positae in Abbatiis singulorum Comitatuum ad Monumentum In the 3d. Year of his Raign the Peers of the Kingdome were called without any mention of the Commons and Orders were at another great Councel made Consensu Comitum Baronum Florentius Wigorniensis saith that Lagam Edwardi Regis reddidit cum illis emendationibus quibus eam Pater suus emendavit concilio Baronum suorum After whose Death King Stephen having Usurped the Crown of England which did not at all belong unto him and Fought stoutly to keep it Concilium congregavit de statu Reipublicae cum Proceribus suis tractare studuit Anno Domini 1153 Justitiâ de Caelo prospiciente diligentiâ Theobaldi Archiepiscopi Cantuar ' aliorum Episcoporum regni King Stephen having no Issue Facta est concordia betwixt him and Henry Duke of Normandy after King Henry the Second who was by King Stephen acknowledged In conventu Episcoporum allorum Optimatum wherein it was accorded That Duke Henry saith Mathew Paris should Succeed him in the Kingdom Stephen only enjoying it for his Life if he should have no Children ex concessione Ducis Henrici ità tamen confirmata est pax quòd ipse Rex Episcopi praesentes cum caeteris Optimatibus regni no Commons jurarent quòd Dux post mortem Regis si ipsum superviveret Regnum fine contradictione aliqua obtineret King Henry the Second in the 10th year of his Raign held a great Councel or Parliament at Clarendon where some of the Customes and Constitutions of the Kingdom were Recognized which was an Assembly only of Prelates and Peers Anno 1118. in a Peace or League made betwixt him and Philip King of France it was agreed That in any Matters of Difference afterwards ariseing betwixt them they should abide by the Award of three Bishops and three Barons to be Elected on the King of France his part and the like on the King of Englands Anno Gratiae 1272. Venit Oxenford in generali Concilio ibidem celebrato constituit Johannem filium suum Regem in Hybernia concessione confirmatione Alexandri summi Pontificis in eodem concilio venerunt ad Regem Resus filius Gryphini Regulus de South-Wales David filius Owini Regulus de North-Wales qui Sororem ejusdem Regis Angliae in uxorem duxerat Cadwallanus Regulus de Delmain Owanus de Kavillian Griffinus de Bromfeld Madacus filius Gerverog alii multi de Nobilioribus Gualliae omnes devenêrunt homines Regis Angliae patris fidelitatem ei contra omnes homines pacem sibi regno servandam juraverunt In eodem concilio dedit Dominus Rex Angliae praedicto Reso filio Griffini terram de Merionith David filio Owani terram de Ellismore Deditque Hugoni de Lasci ut supradictum est in Hybernia totam Midam cum-pertinentiis pro servitio centum militum de ipso Johanne filio suo Chartam suam ei inde fecit And being to return an Answer to the Popes Letter inviting him to take upon him the Croysado and succour the Holy Land assembled a Parliament at London ubi dominus Rex Patriarcha Jerusalem Episcopi Abbates Comites Barones Angliae but no Knights Citizens or Burgesses thereof saith Mr. Pryn Willielmus Rex Scotiae David frater ejus cum Comitibus Baronibus terrae suae convenerunt Anno Domini 1162. without leave of Parliament or People Fecit jurare fidelitatem Henrico filio suo de haereditate suâ inter omnes Magnates Regni Thomas Cancellarius primus fidelitatem juravit salvâ fide Regi patri quamdiù viveret regno praeesse vellet In the 22d Year of his Raign held a great Councel at Nottingham by Archbishops Bishops Earls and Barons At Windsor Communi concilio with Bishops Earls and Barons And the like afterwards at Northampton King Richard the 1st held shortly after his Coronation upon the invitation of the King of France and his undertaking to do the like a great Councel or Parliament cum Comitibus Baronibus suis qui Crucem susceperant in generali Concilio constituti apud Londonias taking their Oaths for the recovery of the Holy Land hasting thither and passing into Normandy Elianor Regina mater Richardi Regis with whom he had left the care of the Kingdom and Alays Soror Phillippi Regis Franciae Baldwin Archbishop of Canterbury the Bishops of Norwich Durham Winchester Ely Salisbury Chester Geffry the Kings Brother elected Archbishop of York and John Earl of Morton the Kings Brother shortly after transfretârunt de Anglia in Normanniam per mandatum Domini Regis habito cum illis concilio Dominus Rex statuit Willielmum Episcopum Eliensem Cancellarium
by Torch-light into Pisa or Florence and so ever after lived peaceably and quietly in the neighbourhood of the Feudall Laws So as the One became Assistant unto the Other cohabited and would never after depart from each other and even the Late Commonwealth Rebells could not amongst all their new-Fangles and Devices forbear their being much in love with the Tryalls by Juries both in Civill and Criminall Actions which had both their Use and Foundation from the Civill and Feudall Laws And Oliver Cromwell could after he had over-reacht and Mastered them find no better expedient to maintain the Grandeur of his wickedly-gained Protectorship but to borrow and make use of that part of the Feudall Laws which allowed a subservient Peerage and therefore Created some of his Major-Generalls amongst whom were those grand States-men Hewson the Cobler Pride the Drayman and Kelsy the Bodiesmaker c. Members of an House of Peers which he would by another name have called the Other House as Superior to his House of Commons or Rebellion-Voters who having sate and executed as much Power as he could bestow upon them did after death had cropt his Ambition and carried him to his deserved severe accompt attend with their whole House in grevious melancholly and mourning his Funerall and Magnificent Charriott of State to be buried in Westminster-Abby to lye there untill the Hangman afterwards by a better Authority fetched away his Hipocriticall Carcass to a more proper Place with their long-mourning Train Supported by 6 or 8 of his nicknamed Peers And after those pullers down as much as they could of our Excellent Foundations to build up their Abominable Babell of murdering their King Destroying Massacring Plundering Sequestring and decimating of his Loyal Subjects ruining his Royal Posterity should after his Miraculous Restauration think it to be a great piece of service to themselves and the whole Nation to put under the shame and Ignominy of a tenure unto which our Laws never yet afforded any more then the lowest of Titles as Rusticks men holding by the service of the Plough and Villainage to teach the most Ignorant and Incapacious part of the People how to Master equall or abuse their betters or invite the Hogs and Swine into the Gardens and Beds of Spices to root up foul and trample upon the Lillyes of the Vallies and Roses of Sharon hoping thereby to frustrate the glorious actions of that great Generall Monke in the Restoring of the King unto his Just entire regall Rights and to lay a Foundation hereafter of binding him and our Kings in Chains and our Nobles in Fetters of Iron and to make an easy way for all the People of other Kingdoms to order and Govern their Kings as they hoped by transforming their Laws and Regalities into such evil and Ignorant shapes Interpretations and Constructions as the People 〈◊〉 like the Dogs in the Fable of Acteon might when they pleased be the Murderers of their Kings and Princes and of their own Laws and Liberties But that Great and Prudent Prince in the time of his travail and abode after his fathers death in the parts beyond the Seas and other great Actions done by him before he returned into England as Fleta a Lawyer of good accompt and not meanly instructed as well in the Civil as Common Laws or else Mr Selden would neither have Caused his Manuscript so long concealed in Libraries and passing from hand to hand of such as could be made happy by the view thereof to be Printed and Published with his learned Dissertations or Comment thereupon saith that there having been a Congress or Meeting at Montpellier in France upon the 16th day of November 1275 or some short time after in the year 1276 about the 4th year of his Reign between him and many other Christian Kings or their Embassadours Viz. Michael Paleologus Imperator Orientis Rodolphus Primus Occidentis Galliae Philippus Audax Castellae Leonis Alphonsus Decimus summus ille Astronomus Partitarum Author Scociae Alexander tertius Daniae Ericus octavus Poloniae Bodislaus Hungariae Uladislaus quartus Aragoniae Jacobus Boemiae Ottocarus Carolus Siciliae Hugo Hierosolonicorum alii Complures minoris nominis qui Regum Christianorum vocamme fruebantur wherein certain agreements and provisions were severally made touching the resumption of the Lands and Manors appertaining to their Crowns Kingdoms together with their Homage Rights Jurisdictions wherein although Mr Selden that great Diver and Searcher into antiquities seemeth to doubt of the truth thereof for that Scriptores de hoc Anno non Conveniunt and at that time Rodolphus Caesar had granted unto Pope Gregory the 10th Latifundia circumquaque amplissima quae antea Imperii pars insignis And saith that assertion or place in Fleta is locus prodigiosus the rather for that Azo Item Jurisconsulti illius aevi summi vecusti and our Bracton maketh no mention of it in his Chapter de donationibus nor Britton in his Compendium Juris neither is it found in any other Jurisconsults or in Fortescue who lived long after Howsoever Notwithstanding the great reverence and respect which every man of learning or well-wishers thereunto must or ought to bear unto our great Selden that Dictator of learning so universally acknowledged not only in England but in the parts beyond the Seas to be Decus gentis Anglorum I shall be of necessity constrained in this particular to Vâ—ndicate Fleta from what he chargeth upon him concerning the provisions and resolutions made and taken by our King Edward the 〈…〉 and â—â—e aforesaid Christian Kings and Princes who especially Alexander King of Scotland and the Kings of France Castill and Leon near neighbours to England or his French territories together with the Emperor of Germany and the King of Sicily by whom he had been Sumptuously Feasted in his Return from Jerusalem might probably not have been Ignorant of his own and his Fathers and Grandfathers troubles and Ill usage by some of his Rebellious Baronage and a party of the Ecclesiasticall and Common People depending upon them or allured unto their Ill usage of their Kings and Princes but to appeal to his own Vast reading and the Company of his large and Eminently furnished Library with his Collection and recherches of and into all the Records and Choice Manuscripts in England all the Uuiversities thereof and Forreign parts the Roman Vatican not excepted and what could be in that famous Library of Sr Robert Cotton whilst he lived truly believed to be the Esculapius Librorum And it will be undoubtedly certain that there hath never been since the Writings of the books of Sacred Scripture any Infallibility or absolute Certainty that a Gospell of St Thomas hath been assayed to be Imposed upon the Christian World that St Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews though by the Church admitted to be canonicall have met with some Jealousies who was the Author thereof the great Care of the Monks mentioned in the preface
his elder Brother Geffry's Son being at that time not able to carry it he would endeavour to obtain the Crown and therefore the safer way to prevent confusion was that the Land should rather make him King than he make himself and that the Election would be some tie upon him Or in or by the Books if extant which that King is said to have wrote entituled Leges pro Republicâ 2d Statuta Regalia 3d. in the Epistle which he wrote Ad Innocentium Papam contra Stephanum Langton Archiepiscopum Cantuariensem 4th Ad Stephanum Cantuariensem Episcopum 5th Ad Innocentium Papam contra Barones 6th Ad Londinenses pro Praetor 7th Super Charta Obligatoria Which if the devouring teeth of Time or corruptions of their Originals have not met with them might if perused be believed to make no opposition to that which should be in a well-ordered Regal Government Or in or by the Charter at Running Mead called Magna Charta Charta de Forestae wrested and enforced from him by a mighty Army of too many of the Barons of England with their innumerable adherents upon their Oaths solemnly taken upon the Altars never to desist until they had obtained a grant of their Laws and Liberties which they pretended to have been violated which saith Daniel the Historian might be wished to have been gained by those unruly Barons in a better manner Or by any of our Laws or any of the Charters or Liberties granted by any of our Kings or Princes before or after SECT II. Of the Indignities Troubles and Necessities which were put upon King JOHN in the enforcing of his Charters by the Pope and his then Domineering Clergy of England joyned with the Disobedience and Rebellion of some of the Barons encouraged and assisted by them THat unfortunate Prince so ill used by Hubert Walter Archbishop of Canterbury in the beginning of his Reign and as bad by Philip King of France who had given the Honour of Knighthood unto Arthur the Son of King John's elder Brother and taken his Homage for Anjou Poicteau Touraine Maine and the Dutchy of Normandy with an endeavour to make it the most advantageous for himself in regard that King John had neglected to do his Homage for those Provinces being Members of the Crown of France And in the third year of his Reign imposing 3 s. upon every Plough-land for discharge of a Dowry of 30000 Marks to be given in marriage with his Niece Blanch the collecting whereof the Archbishop of York opposed in his Province for which and refusing to come upon summons to his Treaty in France seizing his Temporalities the Archbishop Interdicted the whole Province of York and Excommunicated the Sheriff Into which County the King with his Queen Isabel afterwards making their Progress in their Journey towards Scotland and exacting great Fines of Offenders in his Forests the Archbishop his Brother refused him Wine and the Honour of the Bells at Beverly A reconciliation was notwithstanding made betwixt them by the mediation of four Bishops and as many Barons with a great sum of money and a promise to reform excesses on both parts When the King upon Easter after his return from the North was again Crowned at Canterbury and with him his Queen by the Archbishop Hubert and there the Earls and Barons of England were summoned to be ready with Horse and Armour to pass the Seas with him presently after Whitsontide but they holding a Conference together at Leicester by a general consent sent him word that unless he would render them their Rights and Liberties they would not attend him out of the Kingdom whereupon he required of them security by the delivering up unto him the principal of their Castles and began with William de Albany for his Castle of Belvoir who delivered unto him his Son as a Pledge but not the Castle And the King with the King of France being after solicited by the Popes Legate obtained a Subsidy of the fortieth part of all their Subjects Revenues for one year by way of Alms to succour the Holy Lands for the levying whereof in England Geffery Fitz-Peter Justiciar in England sent out his Writs by way of request and perswasion not as of due or by co-action to avoid example Howsoever the King of France declared for Arthur to whom he married his youngest Daughter required King John to deliver up unto him all his Provinces in France and by a peremptory day summon'd him to appear personally at Paris to answer what should be laid to his charge and abide the Arrest of his Court which he refusing was by sentence adjudged to lose all which he did hold in France of that Crown who thus beset with the King of France on the one side and his Nephew Arthur and the Barons of Anjou on the other who laid siege to Mirabel defended by Eleanor Mother of King John who by her intermedling turbulent and unquiet spirit had done him no good with great expedition relieved it by defeating the whole Army carrying away Prisoners Earl Arthur Hugh le Brun all the Barons of Anjou and 200 Knights Whereupon Arthur being shortly after murdered in Prison and the deed laid to his charge with the cruel execution of many of his Prisoners it so exasperated the Nobility of Britain and Poicteau as they all took Arms against him and summon'd him to answer in the Court of Justice of the King of France which he denying was condemned to forfeit the Dutchy of Normandy which his Ancestors had held by the space of 300 years and of that and all his other Provinces in France became wholly dispossest And with that disastrous success returning into England charged the Earls and Barons with the reproach of his losses in France and fined them to pay the fourth part of all their Goods for refusing their aid to which the feudal Laws and their tenures had obliged them Neither spared he the Church or Commonwealth in the like Imposition of which Geffery Fitz-Peter Justiciar of England was Collector for the Laity and Hubert Archbishop of Canterbury for the Clergy Which being not enough to supply his occasions for War in France where great Estates of many of the English Nobility then lay a Parliament was convoked at Oxford wherein was granted two Marks and a half of every Knights Fâ—e for Military Aid the Clergy promising to do the like on their part In anno 8o. of his Reign another Imposition was laid of the 13 th part of all the moveables of the Clergy and Laity which was again opposed by the Archbishop of York who solemnly accursed the Receivers thereof within his Province and departed out of the Kingdom Unto which also was added a miserable breach betwixt Legiance and Authority for Hubert Archbishop of Canterbury being dead a great controversy happened betwixt the King and the Pope upon the Monks of Canterbury's who were sent about it to Rome election of Stephen Langton a Cardinal who
and all the exiled Bishops and Monks of Canterbury should in peace return to their own but refused to make satisfaction for their Goods taken away They depart unsatisfied which made the Pope more Imperious to constrain him to do whatsoever he desired and to that end Absolved all his Subjects upon what occasion soever from all their obedience strictly forbidding them under pain of Excommunication Board Councel and Conference Who preparing to suppress an Insurrection of some of the Welsh had intelligence that if he proceeded therein he would either be killed or betrayed whereupon he returned to London required Pledges of the Nobility and had them Eustace de Vescy and Robert Fitz-Walter being accused of the Conspiracy fled the one into Scotland the other into France and the Pope pronouncing the Kings absolute Deposition from the Regal Government of the Kingdom wrote to the King of France a perfidious dangerous enemy of King John's That as he looked to have remission of his Sins he should take the charge upon him to expel him out of the Kingdom of England and possess the same to Him and his Heirs for ever and sent Letters to the Princes and great Men of other Nations That they should aid the King of France in the dejection of that contumacious King of England in revenge of the Injuries done to the Universal Church granting like remission of their Sins as if they undertook the Holy War The King of France thereupon making great preparations against him and with that Commission the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other exiled Bishops with Pandulphus the Popes Legate being sent unto him private instructions were given by the Pope to Pandulphus his juggling Legate at his returning into England out of the King of France's great Army prepared against him that if upon the Preparation and Forces gathered by the King of France for his dejection he could work the King of England to such conditions as he should propound Absolution and Restauration should be granted unto him Who thus distressed not only granted restitution and satisfaction of whatever had been taken from the Archbishop and Monks of Canterbury and the Bishops of London Bathe and Lincoln who were fled into France to the Archbishop but also laid down his Crown Scepter Sword and Ring the Ensigns of his Regality at the feet of Pandulphus as a Livery and Seizin of the Kingdom of England to the Pope and submitted himself to the judgment and mercy of the Church which being two days after or as some have written six restored unto him upon an agreement made at the receiving thereof upon his Oath Non sine dolore saith Matthew Paris tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis in praesentia Pandulphi se judicio sanctae Ecclesiae pariturum sexdecim cum eo Comites Barones ex potentioribus Regni in animam ipsius Regis juraverunt Quod si fortè facti paeniteret ipsi eum pro possibilitate compellerent And thereupon convenerunt decimo tertio die Maii apud Doveriam viz. die Lunae proximo ante Ascensionem Domini Rex Pandulphus cum Comitibus Baronibus turba multa nimis no House of Commons certainly ubi in pacis formam unanimitèr consenserunt And in the King's Name and under his Seal it was declared by the Title of Iohannes Dei Gratiâ not of the Pope or People and four of the Barons viz. William Earl of Salisbury his Brother Reginald Earl of Boloigne William Earl of Warren and William de Ferrariis juraver ant in animam suam i. e. Regis That they should bonâ side in every thing observe that Peace and Agreement And he did likewise solemnly and absolutely swear stare mandato Domini Papae to stand to the will and command of the Pope and his Legate or Legates aforesaid in all things for not doing whereof he was excommunicated by him and that he should not molest Stephen Archbishop of Canterbury William Bishop of London Eustace Bishop of Ely Giles Bishop of Hereford Iosceline Bishop of Bath Hubert Bishop of Lincoln the Prior and Monks of Canterbury Robert Fitz-Walter whose Castle of Baynard in or near London the King had before seized with all his other Lands and Estate proclaiming him a Traytor and Eustace de Vescy with all other Clarks and Laicks which had adhaered unto them but continue in a firm peace and good accord with them and should publickly take his Oath before the said L gate or his Delegate that he should not hurt or cause them to be molested in their Persons Lands Goods or Estates but should receive them into his grace and favour and pardon all their Offences not hinder the said Archbishops and Bishops in their jurisdictions and execution of their Office but they might fully execute their Authority as they ought and should grant to the Pope Archbishops and Bishops his Letters Patents thereof upon Oaths to be taken by the Bishops Earls and Barons and their Letters Patents given that they would firmly and truly hold and keep the said Peace and Agreement and if he by himself or others should infringe it they in the behalf of the Church should oppose the Violators of the said Peace and Agrement and he should lose the benefit of the Custody of their Churches in the vacancy thereof and if he could not perswade others to keep the last part of the Oath that is to say by himself or others should contradict or go against it they should put in execution the power of the Church and Apostolick Command and did by his Letters Patents further oblige himself to quit and renounce all his Rights and Patronage which he had in any of the Churches of England and the said Letters Patents should be transmitted and delivered to the said Archbishop and Bishops before their coming into England the said Archbishop and Bishops with a Salvo honore Dei Ecclesiae giving caution by their Oaths and Letters Patents that neither they nor any on their behalf should attempt or do any thing against his Person or Crown whilst he observed and secured unto them the Peace and Agreement as aforesaid And as to what was taken from them should make unto them full Restitution with Damages for all that had been done as well to Clerks as Laicks intermedling in those Affairs not only as to their Goods and Estates but all Liberties which should be preserved unto them and to the Archbishop and Bishop of Lincoln from the time of their Consecrations and to all others from the time of the aforesaid Discords nor should there be any hindrance to the living or dead by any of his grants or promises before made neither should he retain any thing by way of Service due unto him but only the Services which should hereafter be due unto him all Clerks and Laicks imprisoned upon that occasion should be restored to Liberty And the King should presently after Absolution given to him by him that should do it cause to be
his Castles of Killingworth Northampton Nottingham and Scarborough and the Castellanies or Governours sworn to obey them and after a general pardon granted to them and all their adhaerents mutual Oaths should be taken on both sides in solemn manner for the inviolable observing the Articles and the King's Letters Patents sent to all the Sheriffs of the Kingdom to cause all men of what degree soever within their several Shires to swear to observe those Laws and Liberties granted by his Charter and was compell'd so far to suffer those Conservators to proceed in their Conservatorships as in the same yearthey took their Oaths to perform those their new Offices the Earls of Arundel Gloucester and Warren with Hubert de Burgh and many Barons and great men took their Oaths also to obey and assist them But in the mean time Gloucester and Spencer being the chief of the Twenty-four Conservators did draw the entire managing of the Kingdom into their own hands compel the King to summon a great Councel at London where the authority of the Twenty-four Conservators was deliver'd over unto themselves and it was ordained that Three of them at the least should attend at the Court to dispose of the custody of the Castles and other business of the Kingdom with those of the Chancellor Justiciar and Treasurer and of all Offices great and small and bound the King to loose and renounce to them their legal Obedience whensoever he should infringe his Charters which might as unto a great part of them be certainly believed to have been the very spawn and breed of those long-after-reviv'd high and mighty Nineteen Propositions which were endeavour'd to have been enforced upon the late Blessed Martyr King CHARLES and of the late design'd Association in the Reign of His Son King CHARLES II. But that hoped pacification being made saith the Historian Jealousies and Discontents did again kindle and break out on both sides the one part to keep what they had undutifully gained and the other to get loose of what for fear he had too much yielded unto the King wanting none to enflame the perturbations and anguish of his mind to tell him that he was now a King without a Kingdom a Lord without Dominion and a Subject of his Subjects the Discords like a Wound or Sore ill-cur'd fester'd again and broke out SECT III. Of the succeeding Jealousies Animosities Troubles and Contests betwixt King John and his over-jealous Barons after the granting of his Charters and his other Transactions and Agreements with them at their tumultuous meeting at Running-Mead with the ill usages which he had before received of them during all the time of his Reign HE retir'd into the Isle of Wight whence by Agents sent to Rome he procured a definitive Sentence to condemn and nullifie what was done and the Pope's Excommunication of the Barons who kept about the City of London and under colour of Tournments and other Martial exercises invited as many other as they could to their assistance but did not seek to surprize his Person or intercept his Agents although they had strength to do it but only to enjoy those Liberties which they had spoiled and discredited by gaining them by violence wherein the fear of the power of an enraged Prince made them the more desperately careful to defend themselves and finish their designs whilst the King tarried three months in the Isle of Wight whence the Bishop of Worcester Chancellor of England Bishop of Norwich with others were sent with his Seal to procure Foreign Forces and to bring them to Dover whither after some small prizes taken by him and he returning his Agents abroad brought him an Army of Foreigners from Gascony Lovaine Poicteau and Brabant many of them being his French Subjects with whose help notwithstanding the loss of 40000 Men Women and Children who were drowned at Sea as they were bringing unto him by Hubert de Burgh from Calice He besieged and took Rochester Castle marched over most part of the Kingdom and within half a year got in all the Barons Castles even to the borders of Scotland and was Master of all England except the City of London which he would not adventure upon in regard of the Barons united Forces which lay near unto it marched to St. Albans where he proclaimed the Pope's Excommunication of the Barons who seeing Themselves and their Wives and Children like to be ruined and depriv'd of their Estates which were given away to strangers desperately fell into another extreme solicited Lewis the French King's Son to take upon him the Crown of England wherein they promised by a free Election to invest him and to send Pledges for the performance which Message being well received a Parliament was called at Lyons by Philip the Father of Lewis and the business resolved upon whilst Lewis besides the hop'd-for the title of Election by those trusty Conservators of the Peoples Liberties for their own particular Interest more than the Peoples supposed that he had another title from his Wife Blanch Daughter of the Sister of the prosecuted King In whose behalf the Pope wrote to the King of France not to invade the King of England but rather to defend him in regard he was a Vassal of the Roman Church and the Kingdom by reason of Dominion appertaining unto it whereunto the King of France answered probably by the advice of the contending English Baronage That the Kingdom of England never was nor is nor ever shall be the Patrimony of St. Peter That King John was never lawfull King thereof and if he were he had forfeited it by the Murder of his Nephew Arthur for which he was condemned in his Court and could not give it away without the consent of the Barons who were bound in an Oath to defend the same and if the Pope should maintain this errour it would be a pernicious example Wherewith the Pope's Agents departing unsatisfied Lewis sent his Commissioners to Rome to declare his Rights and justifie his undertaking sets forth from Callis with 600 Ships and 80 other Vessels and landed with his Army at Sandwich King Iohn being then at Dover who upon notice of his great power and distrusting his Mercenaries committed the keeping of Dover Castle to Hubert de Burgh forsook the Field and with it himself and retired first to Worcester and after to Gloucester whereby Lewis having subdued the whole County of Kent Dover excepted came to London where he was joyfully received of the Barons and upon his Oath taken to restore their Laws and recover their Rights had Homage and Fealty done unto him Guallo the Pope's Agent follow'd the King to Gloucester shews him the Pope's care of him pronounced Excommunication against Lewis and all that took part with him Notwithstanding which small comforts in so many and great extremeties pressing hard upon him most of his Mercenaries left him and either returned into their own Countreys with such spoils as they had gotten or betook
themselves to the service of their Countrey-men But he was not yet so forsaken for that he had power enough to infest though not to subdue his enemies and some faith was found amongst many of his Subjects that well executed their trusts Dover Castle with a small company held out against all the Force which Lewis could bring against it Windsor Castle did the like against the Barons Nottingham and Lincoln Castles made resolute resistance The most fertil places of the Kingdom as about Gloucester the Marches of Wales Lincolnshire Cambridgeshire Norfolk Suffolk Essex Kent and all about London were the stages of the War and the Ruins of the Kingdom were every where heard and felt which continuing all that Summer about the latter-end of October then next following that distressed King oppressed with as many sorrows as enemies and a grief conceived for the loss of his Carriages and other necessaries of War sunk in the Sands passing the Washes betwixt Lyn and Boston fell sick of a burning Feaver taken as some writers have recorded it by a surfeit of eating Peaches and drinking new Ale out of a Cup with the Venom prick'd out of a Toad put into it given him by a Monk at Swinsted Abbey in Lincolnshire who after leave given by the Abbot and assoiled or absolved from the doing thereof was content to poyson himself as he did and bringing the Cup unto the King sitting at meat said Wassail for never in all your lyfe drancke yee of so goode a Cuppe To whom the King said drincke Monch which he doing and the King having drunk a great draught did set down the Cup. The Monk retired into the Infirmatory where his Bowels brake assunder The King finding himself ill at ease and his Belly beginning to swell and being told that the Monk was dead commanded the Table to be taken away and a Truss to be provided for him of which vulgata fama Ranulphus Cestrensis Henry de Knighton the Book of St. Albans printed by Caxton in the year 1502. in his Chronicle and Mr. William Pryn in his late History of the Pope's Usurpations in England in the Reign of King John have given a probable account though many of the Monks and the then Romish Clergy fatned and grown great by the Pope's and their extravagant and never-to-be-proved Authority over Kings and Kingdoms were so unwilling to acknowledge it as they did all they could to stifle and over-cast with Lies the Truth of it Whence in great weakness he who was so little enclined to Paganism or the Religion of Miramolin King of Africk Morocco and Spain or guilty of sending Embassadors unto him after or before the surrender of his Kingdoms to the Pope with an offer to be his Tributary and of his Religion of which saith Mr. Pryn upon a most diligent search no vestigia or manner of evidence is to be found amongst the Records of this Kingdom it being a meer scandal and slanderous invective forged against him to make him odious was conveyed to Newark where after he had received the Eucharist and taken order for the succession of his Son Henry he departed this life and was buried at Worcester and such a care was taken by the Abbot of Swinsted for the safety of the poysoning Monk's Soul as five Monks until the dissolution of that Abbey which was 300 years after were from time to time stipended to sing a Requiem for it SECT IV. The many Affronts Insolencies and ill usages suffered by King Henry III. until the granting of his Magna Charta and Charta de Forestae WHich tragical end of King John although it much altered the state of the Kingdom yet not as to the miseries and troubles thereof for King Henry his Son being solemnly crowned as a King by Succession and not Election was committed to the care and tutelage of Marescal Earl of Pembroke as Good and Wise as he was Great a main Pillar of the Father and a Preserver of the Crown to his Son who with Guallo the Pope's Legate the Bishops of Winchester Bath and Worcester did work all means to bring the Barons to an accord excommunicated Lewis and his adhaerents and caused great satisfaction in the minds of some who before were disgusted with the insolency of the French and the more upon the confession of one of the Nobility of France who upon his death-bed touch'd with compunction revealed the intention of Lewis to enslave or extinguish the English Nation whom he thought not fit to be trusted in regard that they had forsaken their Sovereign Lord which wrought so great an aversion in the English as they who before were afraid for the shame of inconstancy and the danger of their Sons and Pledges carried into France and there remaining did now resolve to relinquish their Homage and sworn Fidelity and forsake him and made as much hast to send him out of England as they did to call him into it So as after a years trouble with his Wars and Depraedations and all the help the City of London could give him he was enforced to come to an accord quit the Kingdom take 15000 Marks for the charges of his Voyage abjure his claim to the Kingdom promise by Oath to procure as far as in him lay his Father to restore all such Provinces in France as appertained to the Crown of England and when he came to be King to resign them in a peaceable manner King Henry taking an Oath and for him the Legate and Protector to restore to the Barons and other his Subjects all their Rights and Heritages with their Liberties for which the Discords began between the late King and his People whereupon a general Pardon was granted and all Prisoners freed on both sides Lewis after so long abode with his Army in England being honourably attended to Dover departed the Kingdom and about Michaelmas after upon the death of his Father was received and crowned King of France and Guallo the Legate well paid for his Negotiation returning to Rome carried with him 12000 Marks a great sum of money in those times And no sooner had that provident Protector of the Kingdom the Earl of Pembroke quieted the many troubles of the Nation but as much wanted as greatly lamented by the People he dyed The Bishop of Winchester with many other great Councellors being made Protectors of the young King and his Kingdoms but the King of France being after requested to make restitution of what he had usurped answered That what he had gotten by the forfeiture of King John upon an accusation of murdering his Nephew Arthur right Heir to the Crown of England he would hold Howsoever Peace being made with Scotland to whose King the King's Sister being married Wales revolted and an Insurrection being made in Ireland did put the King to much trouble and charge who being come to some years of understanding was in a Parliament holden at London put in mind by the Archbishop of
Canterbury in the behalf of the State of his Oath made and taken by others for him upon the Peace made with Lewis for confirmation of the Liberties of the Kingdom for which the War was begun with his Father without which the whole State would again fall assunder and they would have him to know it betimes to avoid those miserable inconveniencies which might happen William Brewere a Councellor urging it to have been acted by constraint and therefore not to be performed Notwithstanding which it was at that time being the 7th year of his Reign promised by the King to be ratified and a Commission was granted by Writs unto Twelve Knights in every Shire to examine What were the Laws and Liberties which the Kingdom enjoyed under his Grandfather and return the same by a certain day which saith the learned and judicious Sir Henry Spelman were never returned or could not be found In the mean time the Earls of Albemarl Chester and divers of the Nobility assemble together at Leicester with intent to remove from the King Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justiciar and other Officers that hindred their motion but the Archbishop of Canterbury by his Spiritual Power and the rest of the Nobility being careful to preserve the Peace of the Kingdom stood to the King and would not suffer them to proceed therein so as they were constrained to come in and submit themselves And the King in Parliament resumed such alienations as had been made of the Lands appertaining to the Crown by any of his Ancestors to the end he might live of his own and not be chargable to the People The next year after being the 8th year of his Reign another Parliament was holden at Westminster where the King required the Fiftieth part of all the movables both of the Clergy and Laity but Mat. Paris more probably saith the Fifteenth for the recovering of those parts in France which had been held from the Crown being one and the same which is said in Magna Charta to have been granted as a grateful acknowledgment for the grant of their Liberties which though it concerned the Estates of most of the Nobility that had Lands therein would not be yielded unto but upon confirmation of their Liberties atque his in hunc diem prosecutis Archiepiscopus concilio tota Episcoporum Comitum Priorum habita deliberatione Regi dedere responsum quod Regis petitionibus gratunter ad quiescerent si illas diu petitas libertates concedere voluisset annuit itaque Rex cupiditate ductus quod petebant Magnates Chartisque protinus conscriptis Regis sigillo munitis in the next year after for the Charters themselves bear date in the 9th year of his Reign And the several Charters or Copies thereof were sent to the Sheriffs of every County and Twelve Knights were out of every County chosen to divide the Old Forests from the New and lay open all such as had been afforested since the first Coronation of King Henry II. Although at the same time or a little before or after it some of the Nobility who had formerly crowned Lewis of France King and had been the cause of King John's death for which they were banished the Realm endeavouring to return into England and to set up again the French King's Interest and domineer over the King and his faithful Councellors by circumventing Pope Honorius Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justice of England the Earl of Chester and seven other of the King's Councellors sent an Epistle to the Pope desiring him to assist the King and them and prevent those dangerous Plots and Designs And the King having sent also his Proctors to Rome upon the like occasion they returned him an account of a new Confederacy betwixt his discontented Barons and the French King to invade England and dispossess him of the Crown thereof adding thereunto quod Gallici praedicabant omnibus quod majores Angliae obsides offerebant de reddendo siâ—i terram â—um primo venire curaret ad illam adjicientes Si aâ—iquid in curia Romana contra voluntatem Regis Franciae attemptaretur incontmenter Rex transfretaret in Angliam Nor could any such authority accrue to them in or by those Charters called Magna Charta and Charta Forestae granted by King Henry III. his Son which were in very many things but the exmeplaria or patterns of that of King John in the like method and tenour containing very many Liberties and great Priviledges which were by King Henry III. as those Charters do declare of his own free accord granted and confirmed in the 9th year of his Reign to his Subjects and People of England Liberis hominibus Free-men or Free-holders for otherwise it would have comprehended those multitudes of Villains Bondmen and Bond-women which the Nation did then and long after employ and make use of and those very many men accounted by the Laws of England to be as dead men viz. Monks Fryers Priors and Abbots to be holden to Them and their Heirs of Him and his Heirs for ever But in those Charters or his confirmation of them in the 21st and 28th year of his Reign could not procure to be inserted or recorded those clauses which they had by their terrours gained from his Father in these words viz. Nullum scutagium vel auxilium ponam in Regno nostro nisi per commune consilium Regni nostri ad corpis nostrum redimendum ad primogenitum filium nostrum militem faciendum ad primogenitam filiam nostram semel maritandam ad hoc non fiet nisi rationabile auxilium simili modo fiat de auxiliis de Civitate Londinensi quod omnes aliae Civitates Burgi Villae Barones de quinque portubus omnes portus habeant omnes libertates omnes liberas consuetudines suas Et ad habendum commune concilium Regni de auxiliis assidendis aliter quam in tribus casibus praedictis scutagiis assidendis submoneri faciemus Archiepiscopos Episcopos Abbates Comites majores Barones Regni singillatim per literas nostras Et praetereà faciemus submoneri in generali per Vicecomites Ballivos nostros omnes alios qui in capite tenent de nobis ad certum diem scilicet ad terminum quadraginta dierum ad minus ad certum locum in omnibus literis submonitionis illius causam submonitionis illius exponemus sic facta submonitione negotium procedat ad diem assignatum secundum consilium eorum qui praesentes fuerint quamvis non omnes submoniti Nos non concedimus de caetero alicui quod capiat auxilium de liberis hominibus suis nisi ad corpus suum redimendum ad faciendum primogenitum filium suum militem ad primogenitam filiam suam semel maritandam ad hoc non fiat nisi rationabile auxilium but were constrained to omit altogether and forgo those clauses and provisions which
being crowded into King John's Charter were never either granted or confirmed by King Henry III. Edward I. or any of our succeeding Kings nor as Sir Henry Spelman repeating the same omissions saith is therein that of paying the Debts of the Deceased probably of those that died leaving their Heirs in Ward to the Jews and others although Matthew Paris so much mistakes as to affirm that those Charters of King John and his Son Henry III. were in nullo dissimiles Which well-interpreted could signifie no more than that King John in his great necessities and troubles pressing upon his Tenants in capite the great Lords and others by taxing them proportionably according to their Knights Fees they endeavoured by those Charters all that they could to restrain him from any such Assesments which should go further then a reasonable aid unless in the cases there excepted and aim'd at no more then that a Common-Councel which was not then called a Parliament should be summon'd not annually of all Archbishops Bishops Abbots Earls and greater Barons and all the Tenants in capite being those that were most concerned therein nor as our Parliaments now but only as to their aids and services as Tenants in capite were upon forty days notice to appear at the same time and place given in general by the King's Sheriffs and Bailiffs sic factâ submonitione negotium procedat ad diem assignatam secundum consilium eorum qui prae sentes fuerint quamvis non omnes submoniti venerint and could not be intended of our now House of Commons in Parliament many years after first of all and never before introduced or constituted that praefiction of Forty days probably first creating that opinion which can never arrive unto any more then that every summons of such a Councel or Meeting was to be upon so many days notice or warning which Mr. Pryn upon an exact observation of succeeding Parliaments hath found to be otherwise much of the boisterousness haughty and long after unquiet minds of some of those unruly Barons being to be attributed to the over-strained promises and obligations of William the Conquerour before he was so to his Normans and other Nations that adventured with him upon an agreement and Ordinance made in Normandy before his putting to Sea which the King of France had in the mean time upon charges and great allowances made unto him undertaken to guard and long after by the command of King Edward III. then warring in France in the 20th year of his Reign was by Sir Barth Burghersh and others sent from thence in the presence of the Keeper or Guardian of England and the whole Estate declared in Parliament as a matter of new discovery and designs of the French happened in the traverse and success of those wars which probably might make the Posterity of some of them although the Ancestors of most of them had been abundantly recompenced by large shares of the Conquest Gifts and Honours granted by the Conquerour to a more than competent satiety extended to the then lower Ranks of his Servants Souldiers or Followers as that to de Ferrariis the Head afterwards and chief of a greater Estate and Family in England than they had in Normandy and might be the occasion of that over-lofty answer of John de Warrennis Earl of Surrey in his answer to some of the Justices in Eyre in the Reign of King Edward I. when demanded by what warrant he did hold some of his Lands and Liberties he drawing out a rusty Sword which he did either wear or had brought with him for that purpose said By that which he helped William the Conquerour to subdue England so greatly to mistake themselves as to think which the Lineage of the famous Strongbow Earl of Pembroke and some eminent Families of Wales in the after-Conquest of Ireland never adventured to do that the Ancestors of them and others that left their lesser Estates in Nòrmandy to gain a greater in England to be added thereunto had not come as Subjects to their Duke and Leige-Lord but Fellow-sharers and Partners with him which they durst not ever after claim in his life-time or the life of any of his Successors before in the greatest advantages they had of them or the many Storms and Tempests of State which befel them but might be well content as the words of the Ordinance it self do express That they and their Progenies should acknowledge a Sovereignty unto the Conquerour their Duke and King and yield an Obedience unto him and his far-fam'd Posterity as their first and continued Benefactors And those their Liberties and Priviledges freely granted by those Charters and not otherwise to be claimed were so welcome and greatly to be esteemed by the then Subjects of England as they returned him their gratitude and thankfulness for them in a contribution of the fifteenth part of all their Moveables with an Attestation and Testimony of the Wiser more Noble and Powerful part of the Kingdom viz. the Archbishop of Canterbury Eleven other Bishops Nineteen Abbots Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justice Ten Earls John Constable of Chester and Twenty-one Barons men of Might and great Estates amongst which there were of the contending and opposite Party Robert Fitz Walter who had been General of the Army raised and fighting against his Father the Earls of Warren Hereford Derby Warwick Chester and Albemarl the Barons of Vipont and Lisle William de Brewere and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford who afterwards fought against that King and helped to take him Prisoner That those Charters were given and granted unto them and other his Subjects the Free-men of his Kingdom of his own free will and accord And as to that of being not condemned without Answer or Tryal which in the infancy of the World was by the Creator of all Mankind recommended to its imitation as the most excellent Rule and Pattern of Justice in the Tryal and Sentence of Adam and Eve in Paradise are not to be found enacted or granted in King Edward the Confessor's Laws or the Charters or Laws of King Henry I. the people of England having no or little reason much to value or relie upon the aforesaid Charters of King John gained indirectly by force about two years after his as aforesaid constrained Resignation of his Kingdom of England and Dominion of Ireland to hold of the Pope and Church of Rome by an yearly Tribute being not much above Thirty years before and not then gone out of memory SECT V. Of the continued unhappy Iealousies Troubles and Discords betwixt the discontented and ambitious Barons and King Henry III. after the granting of his Magna Charta and Charta de Forestâ ALmost two years after which the King in a Parliament at Oxford declaring himself to be of full age and free to dispose of the affairs of the Kingdom cancelled and annulled the Charter of the Forests as granted in his
that the Orders concluded in Parliament were not observed in the levying and disposing of the Subsidy and over-strict courses had been taken in the valuation of mens Estates William Valence the Queens Uncle was grown the only man with him and nothing was done without him the Earl of Provence his Father a poor Prince was invited to come into England to participate of the Treasure and Riches thereof Symon de Montfort a French man born banished out of France by Queen Blanch was entertained in England preferred secretly in marriage with the King's Sister Widow of William Earl of Pembroke the great Marshal made Earl of Leicester and Steward of England in the right of his Mother Amice Daughter of Blanchmains Earl of Leicester Which incensing many of the Nobility and in them not a few of the common people did begin to raise a Commotion wherein they procured Richard Earl of Cornwal Brother to the King and Heir-apparent the King having then no Child to head their Party and manage their Grievances which amongst many pretended were That he despised the counsel of his natural Subjects and followed that of the Pope's Legate as if he had been the Pope's Feudatory Upon which harsh Remonstrance the King having sent to sound the affections of the Londoners found them to be against him Summoned a Parliament in the 22d year of his Reign at London whither the Lords came armed both for their own Safety and to constrain him if he refused to the keeping of his promises and reformation of his courses wherein after many debatements the King taking his Oath to refer the business according to the order of certain grave men of the Kingdom Articles were drawn sealed and publickly set up under the Seals of the Legate and divers great Men But before any thing could be effected Symon Montfort working a Peace for himself with the Earls of Cornwal and Lincoln with whom he and the other Barons had been before displeased the Earl grew cold in the business which the other Lords perceiving nothing more was at that time done Symon Norman called Master of the King's Seal and said to be Governour of the affairs of the Kingdom had the Seal taken from him and some others whom the Nobility maligned displaced And in the same year an Assassinate attempting to kill the King as he was in Bed instigated thereunto by William de Marisco the Son of Jeffrey de Marisco was for the Fact drawn in pieces with Horses and afterwards hang'd and quarter'd And some years after the King having a Son born his Brother the Earl of Cornwal having likewise Issue did by permission of the State which before he could not obtain undertake the Cross and with him the Earl of Salisbury and many other Noblemen The Earl of March the Queen-Mother and certain Lords of Poicteau incited the King to make a War with France to which some of the English who claimed Estates therein were very willing but the matter being moved in Parliament a general opposition was made against it the great expences thereof and the ill suceess it lately had and it was vehemently urged That it was unlawful to break the Truce made with the King of France who was now too strong for them notwithstanding many of the Peers in the hopes of recovering their Estates so prevailed as an Aid demanded for the same was granted but so ill resented by others as all the King's supplies from the beginning of his Reign were particularly and opprobriously remembred as the Thirteenth Fifteenth Sixteenth Thirtieth and Fortieth part of all mens Movables besides Carucage Hydage Escuage Escheats Amerciaments and the like which would as they said be enough to fill his Coffers in which considerations also and reckonings with the Pope's continual exactions and the infinite charge of those who undertook the Holy War were not omitted besides it was declared how the Thirtieth lately levyed being ordered to be kept in certain Castles and not to be issued but by the allowance of some of the Peers was yet unspent the King no necessary occasion for it for the use of the Commonwealth for which it was granted and therefore resolutely denyed to grant any more whereupon he came himself to the Parliament and in a submissive manner craving their aid urged the Popes Letter to perswade them thereunto but by a vow made unto each other all that was said was not able to remove their resolutions insomuch as he was driven to get what he could of particular men by Gifts or Loans and took so great a care of his poorer Subjects at or about the same time as he did by his Writ in the 23d year of his Reign command William de Haverhul and Edward Fitz-Odo That upon Friday next after the Feast of St. Matthias being the Anniversary of Eleanor Queen of Scotland his Sister they should cause to be fed as many Poor as might be entertained in the greater Hall of Westminster and did in the same year by another Writ command the said William de Haverhull to feed 15000 Poor at St. Peters in London on the Feast-day of the Conversion of St. Peter and 4000 Poor upon Monday next after the Feast of St. Lucie the Virgin in the great Hall at Westminster And for quiet at home whilst he should be absent in France contracted a marriage betwixt his youngest Daughter Margaret and Alexander eldest Son of Alexander III. King of Scotland but his expedition in France not succeeding his Treasure consumed upon Strangers the English Nobility discontented and by the Poictovins deceiving his Trust in their not supplying him with money he was after more than a years stay the Lords of England leaving him constrained to make a dishonourable Truce with the King of France and to return having been relieved with much Provisions out of England and Impositions for Escuage a Parliament was in the 28th year of his Reign assembled at Westminster wherein his Wars the revolt of Wales and Scotland who joyned together and the present occasions of the necessary defence of the Kingdom being pressed nothing could be effected without the assurance of Reformation and the due execution of Laws whereupon he came again himself in person and pleaded his own necessities but that produced no more than a desire of theirs to have ordained that four of the most grave and discreet Peers should be chosen as Conservators of the Kingdom and sworn of the Kings Council both to see Justice observed and the Treasure issued and ever attend about him or at least three or two of them That the Lord Chief-Justiciar and Lord Chancellor should be chosen by the general voices of the States assembled or else be of the number of those four and that there might be two Justices of the Benches two Barons of the Exchequer and one Justice for the Jews and those likewise to be chosen by Parliament that as their Function was publick so should also be their Election At which time the
Bathenia propriae familiae omnem indignationem omnem rancorem quem erga ipsum Henricum pro quibuscunque transgressionibus usque ad diem Dominicam proximam post festum translationis beati Thomae Martyris anno c. tricesimo quinto ita tamen quod pro remissione illa dabit nobis praedictus Henricus duo millia marcarum unde solvet nobis ducentas marcas per annum videlicet in Festo Sancti Michaelis anno eodem cent ' marc ' ad Pasch ' prox ' sequen ' cent ' marc ' sic de anno in annum ad eosdem terminos cent ' marc ' donec praedicta duo millia marc ' nobis fuerint persoluta si forsitan contigerit quod praefat ' Henr ' medio tempore in fata concesserit antequam praedicta pecunia nobis fuerit persoluta haeredes sui eandem solutionem facient ad eosdem terminos sicut praedictum est perdonationis eidem Henr ' amerciamentum in quod incidit per attinctam quam Thomas de Muleton arramavit versus ipsum de ten ' in Holbech Querpilan ' idem etiam Henr ' juri omnibus de eo conqueri volentibus etiam nobis in Curia nostra secundum Legem Consuetudinem Regni nostri in cujus c. Teste Rege apud Wodestock octavo die Julii T. Johanne Mansel Richardo Fil Nicholai In the mean time Lewis King of France warring in the Holy-Land and being taken Prisoner the Pope solicited him to take upon him the Cross to rescue him Alphonsus the King of Castile undertaking to accompany him and the captive King offering to restore Normandy to the King of England for his assistance which the French disdaining and undertaking themselves to procure his Ransom upon the Pope's granting a Tenth to be leavied upon the Clergy and Laity for three years the King undertakes notwithstanding the Cross upon the hopes of getting the money which saith Matthew Paris being collected would have amounted unto 600000 l. as was then believed more than to perform his promise Whereupon shortly after a Parliament was holden about the Tenth granted by the Pope for the recovery of the Holy-Land where the Bishops notwithstanding that he had for the ease of his Subjects severely accused in Parliament Henry de Bathonia one of his Justices for receiving of Bribes were first dealt withal absolutely denied it and the Lords alledging they would do as the Bishops did the City of London was again compelled to the contribution of 2000 l. The Gascoigns likely to revolt if a speedy remedy were not provided general Musters were made and command given that every one that could dispend 13 l. per annum should furnish out an Horseman which together with his extreme wants occasioned another Parliament who finding it to be better for the people to do it in the usual way than force him to those extravagant as they call'd them courses which he took were after fifteen days consultation in the 37th year of his Reign although they could not be then ignorant that he had but lately grievously punished and expelled the Caursini the Pope's Bankers or money-Collectors and Brokers and could not deny his own wants which appeared in the pawning of his Jewels and Ornaments and in the end as Sir Robert Cotton if he were the Author of the short view of that King's Life and Reign hath recorded it had not means to defray the diet of his Court but was constrained to break up House-keeping and as Mat. Paris saith with his Queen cum Abbaâ—ibus Prioribus satis humilitèr hospitia prandia quaerere to satisfie the King's necessities but so as the reformation of the Grievances and ratification of their Laws might be once again solemnly confirmed A Tenth was granted by the Clergy for three years to be distributed by the view of certain Lords and three Marks Scutage for every Knights Fee to be charged upon the Laity for that year insomuch as those often-confirmed Charters were again agreed to be ratified in the most solemn and religious way that Relion and State could ever devise to have it done after this manner viz. the King who in all Excommunications was with the Lords Temporal by the Laws and reasonable Customs of England to give their assent before it could sortiri effectum or have any validity with many of the great Nobility of England all the Bishops and chief Prelates in their Reverend Ornaments with Candles or Tapers in their hands walking in a direful Procession through Westminster hall into the Abbey-Church of Westminster there to hear the terrible Sentence of Excommunication pronounced against the Infringers of the aforesaid Charters granted by him At the lighting of which Candles the King having received one in his hand gave it to a Prelate that stood by him saying It becomes not me being no Priest to hold the Candle my heart shall bear a greater Testimony and withal laid his hand upon his breast the whole time that the Sentence was reading which was pronounced autoritate de omni potentis c. Which done he caused the Charter of King John his Father granted by his free consent to be likewise openly read and the rest of the company throwing away their Candles which lay smoaking on the ground all cried out So let them who incur the Sentence be extinct and stink in Hell The King with a loud voice saying as God me help I will as I am a man a Christian a Knight a King Crowned and Anointed inviolably observe those things which Ceremony ended the Bells rung out and all the people shouted with joy But it is not to be forgotten although Matthew Paris Samuel Daniel and all other Writers but Mr. William Pryn make no mention of it in this astonishing and dreadful Ceremony in the like whereof never were Laws saith Mr. Daniel amongst men except the Decalogue from Mount-Sinai promulgated and pronounced with more Majesty of Ceremony to make them heeded reverenced and respected than were those that wanted Thundring and Lightning from Heaven acompanied with an Earth-quake shaking the very Foundations thereof The King did not desert his own regal Rights and Preheminencies but did at the same time when in that dreadful manner he joyned in the Pronunciation of that Sentence of Excommunication with his own mouth publickly except out of it all the Ancient and Accustomed Liberties of the Realm and the Dignities and Rights of the Crown and the same day caused a Record thereof to be made yet extant in the Tower of London in these words viz. Noverint Universi quòd Dominus Henricus Rex Angliae Illustis R. Comes Norf. Marshallus Angliae H. Comes Horeford Essex J. Comes de Warren Petrus de Sabaudia caeterique Magnates Angliae concesserunt in sententiam Excommunicationis generaliter latam apud Westmonasterium tertio decimo die Maii Anno Regni Regis predicti 37. in hac forma scilicet quòd vinculo
praefatae sententiae ligentur omnes venientes contrà libertates contentas in ehartis communium libertatum Angliae de foresta omnes qui libertates Ecclesiae Angicanae temporibus Domini Regis Praedecessorum suorum Regum Angliae optentas usitatas scienter malitiosè violaverint aut infringere praesumpserint omnes illi qui pacem Domini Regis Regni perturbaverint similiter omnes qui jura libertates Domini Regis Regni diminuere infringere seu immutare praesumpserint quòd omnes venientes contrà praemissa vel eorum aliqua ignoranter legitimè moniti infra quindenam post monitionem praemissam dictam transgressionem non emendaverint ex tunc praedictae sententiae excommunicationis subjacebunt ità tamen quod Dominus Rex transgressionem illam per considerationem curiae suae faciat emendari sciendum autem quod si in scriptis super eadem sententia à quibuscunque confectis seu conficiendis aliud vel alitèr appositum vel adjectum fuerit aut articuli aliqui alii in eis contenti inveniantur Dominus Rex praedicti Magnates omnes communicatas populi protestantur publicè in praesentiâ venerabilium patrum B. Dei Gratiâ Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi totius Angliae Primatis nec non Episcoporum omnium in eodem colloquio existentium quòd in ea nunquam consenserunt nec consentiunt sed de plano eis contradicunt praetere à praefatus Dominus Rex in prolatione praefat ' sententiae omnes libertates consuetudines Regni sui autiquas usitates Dignitates jura Coronae suae ore proprio specialiter sibi Regno suo salvavit excepit In cujus rei memoriam in posterum veritatis testimonium tà m Dominus Rex quam praedicti Comites ad instantiam aliorum Magnatum Populi praesenti scripto sigilla sua apposuerunt Gascoign a great Province in France having been before the King had any Son granted by him by the counsel of the Lords to his Brother Richard Earl of Cornwal who was there received as their Lord and so continued until the King had Issue of his own after which revoking his Grant and conferring it upon his Son Edward the Earl though he were deprived of his Possession not being willing to forgo his Right the King in great displeasure commanded him to resign his Charter which he refusing to do the Citizens of Burdeaux were commanded to take and imprison but would not adventure thereon Notwithstanding money being offered and like to effect more than his command the Earl in danger to be surprized came over into England whereupon the King assembled the Nobility of Gascoign promised them 30000 Marks to renounce their homage and fealty to his Brother which being not accepted he sent Symon Montfort Earl of Leicester a rough and martial man in revenge thereof to be their Governour under him for six years and furnished him with 1000 Marks in order thereto whom Montfort by a stern Government so discontented as they and the Archbishop of Burdeaux accused him of heinous Crimes which was a cause of Montford s sending for over And the King resolute in maintaining the Gascoigners that sturdy Earl Montfort who had forgotten that he was an Alien himself and had received of the King large Gifts Preferments and Honours both in France and England unto whom the Earl of Cornwal with the discontented part of the English Baronage joyning complained as much of the Aliens viz. William of Valence Earl of Pembroke Guy de Lusignan the King's half-brothers by his Mother and the many French and Poictovins that over-much governed him and his Counsels as they did again complain of the breach of the Great Charter which was seldom omitted out of the Reer of their grievances which at last came to such an undutiful contest as Montfort upbraiding the King with his expenceful service wherein he alledged he had utterly consumed his Estate and said that he had broken his word with him the King in great rage told him That no promise was to be observed with an unworthy Traytor wherewith Montfort rose up and protested that he lyed in that word and were he not protected by his Royal Dignity he would make him repent it The King commanded his Servants to lay hold of him which the Lords would not permit wherewith Montfort growing more audacious the King told him He never repented of any thing so much as to have permitted him to enter into his Kingdom and to have honoured and instated him as he had done But shortly after the Gascoigns being again encouraged by the King against Montfort and that Province given to his Son Edward and Montfort sent thither a Governour again though with clipt wings grows enflamed as much as the Gascoigns were one against another but Montfort by his great Alliance with France overcame them who in the 38th year of the King's Reign being discharged of the Government retired from thence and refusing an offered entertainment by the French King returned into England where the King besides Gascoigny having given Ireland Wales Bristol Stamford and Grantham to the Prince and consumed all that ever he could get in that and the former expeditions which he had made which was reckoned to have cost him Twenty seven hundred thousand pounds which were said to have been more than the Lands endeavoured to have been regained were worth if they were to be sold. A Parliament was called in Easter-Term following which brought a return of grievances and complaints of the breach of Charters and a demand for former pretended rights in electing the Justiciar Chancellor and Treasurer whereupon after much debate to no purpose the Parliament was prorogued until Michaelmas next after when likewise the King's motion for money was disappointed by reason of the absence of many Peers being not as was alledged summoned according to Magna Charta In the mean time the Pope to destroy Manfred Son to the Emperour Frederick who was in possession of the Kingdom of Sicily and Apulia sent the Bishop of Bononia with a Ring of investiture of the Kindom of Sicily to Edmond the King's second Son with the hopes of which his Praedecessor Innocent IV. had before deluded the King himself And the King being offered to be absolved from his Oath of undertaking the holy Wars so as he would help to destroy Manfred the Emperour Frederick's Son who being Victorious had no mind to be so ill used The Legate returned with great gifts and a Prebendary of York but could not obtain his design of collecting the Tenths in England Scotland and Ireland to the use of the Pope and the King for that the Clergy growing jealous m that the 〈…〉 g and the Pope were confederate therein protested rather to lose their Lives and Livings than to be made a prey to either the Pope in the mean time having upon that vain hope cunningly wrapt him in an obligation of 15000 Marks Upon
of any such opinion are to shew what other provisions made at Oxford in the Reign of King Henry III. were referred unto him or condemned by him It being not to be understood by any that will not make their ignorance self-conceitedness designs and evil purposes to be the rules of their reason that the exception of King John's Charter was to be extended to the collateral security and when they have sweat and laboured at it beyond any the rules of Reason and Learning will never be able to entice or draw any religious good wise or learned men to subscribe to such a paradox That twenty-five Conservatorships should be intended or understood to be only Twenty-four and those subcommitted to Four that the King 's putting into his rebellious Barons hands four of the strongest Castles which he had as pledges and security with power for all that would to take Oaths to distrain and take arms and set the common people upon him were or are within the true meaning or construction of that Magna Charta or that it was ever within the meaning intention or words of that Magna Charta granted by him unto his Subjects to be holden of him and his heirs in capite that the word or notion of Liberties mentioned therein should or could beget a Law Rule or Custom that those that were the Grantees and to be governed should rule their Governours which no where appeareth to be consonant to that Reason Iustice and Order which God Himself praescribed and gave as a rule for the better ordering of the Sons of men and all their Generation or that the granter of those Liberties in those Charters did thereby ever intend or so express or understand that by the grant of those Liberties and Benefits the Subjects of England were entituled to a Right or Authority to govern their King and if he do not therein behave himself according to the Interests or Votes of a giddy multitude who are as seldom to be pleased as they are to be brought into one and the same opinion humour interest or design should be vested with a power or authority to compel him When no Histories Annals or Records of the Nation or Writer new or old except such as had been fooled and infatuated by Jesuitical Principles fitted and dress'd up for some wickedly silly Presbyters and Fanaticks in the time of that popular Frenzy in England betwixt the years 1640 and 1661 and drank deep of that Circaean Cup and intoxicated themselves with the ungodly gains of Rebellion against their Sovereign by Murder Plunder and Sequestration of Him and their more loyal and honest fellow-Subjects can tell us any News of such Rights and Liberties or inform us where any such were granted duly registred or authenticated other than in or by the Records or Memorials of Wat Tyler Jack Cade Ket and their Rabble-rout Nor was it probable that so great a Council of wise or learned men should in the penning or wording the King of France's aforesaid decree or award in or with the exception of King John's Charter so much err if they had understood that it had made void the whole award or that the Pope would have confirmed a nothing or such an award as should signifie no more or that the opposite Barons would have taken it so ill or believed that it had been so much against them as Henry Knighton related it That the King of France had awarded all for the King if they had not understood the aforesaid provisions made at Oxford to have been ipso facto null and void neither can it by any men of Law Reason or Learning be adjudged that that award could be as to the whole a nullity by reason of that exception when the civil or Caesarean Law that excellent method of universal reason by which the greatest part of the world was then before and ever since contented to be guided hath taught us that exceptii est quaedam exclusio quae interponi actioni cujusque rei solet ad excludendum id quod in intentionem condemnationem vè deductum est For excipere propriè est detrahere exceptio est quae partem aliquam de universo Actoris jure detrahat And these Laws have declared that exceptio obscura nihil est momenti obscurè excipere est nihil excipere And our English Laws and reasonable Customs have allowed us to say and believe that exceptio firmat regulam in casibus non exceptis that a matter or thing not excepted is the more strengthened and confirmed by what is excepted and severed from it But it seems saith Mr. Pryn that that award of the King of France was not full and satisfactory to all parties although the King's permission thereupon afterwards made chargeth the dissatisfaction on the Barons part whom to content as well as he could he and the Barons by mutual consent did by their Letters Patents submit as he said that award to H. Bishop of London H. le Despencer Justiciar of England Bartholomew Earl of Anjou Cousin-jerman to the King of France and the Abbot of Beck to amend or correct by way of addition or detraction in or to the said award whatever they should judge meet for the settling and securing of Peace And the King was so great a lover of Peace and well-wisher of the good of his people as after he had granted unto them more Liberties than they could claim and in modesty could ask of a Sovereign that would preserve that Superiority and those Rights which God had given Him for His own and the Peoples good which can never be without an Obedience of Subjects and a care of a Prince to protect them by doing justice to Himself as well as to Them and was so willing to give them satisfaction in any thing just or reasonable to be desired as he was content to wave and lay aside the advantage which he fairly gained by the aforesaid award or ordinance of the King of France in defence and maintenance of his own just Rights and therein of his means to govern and protect them which no Prince in Christendom at that time would have done and at the same time adventure the censure or ill will of a neighbour Potent Prince that would not take it kindly to have an award made with so much Justice Judgment and care to be reviewed by a part of his People and such as were no friends to the Rights of Kings and had been long in opposition to their King and encouraged a long and lasting Rebellion against him and by such a new reference or review subjecting himself to the Excommunication and Ecclesiastical Censures of the Pope's Legate by which He and his Kingdom had already so greatly suffered Yet in that so great a Storm and Tempest of State would not so much injure Himself his Dignity and occasional or necessary emergent affairs of Government as not to provide that they should not so much as speak treat or
ordain any thing circa emendationem ordinationis seu pacis praedictae per quod Regnum Angliae per alios quà m indigenas gubernetur nec castrorum custodia seu alia balliva Regno praedicto aliis quà m indigenis fidelibus non suspectis committetur which with a clause next following might also probably be inserted to please the Earl of Leicester and to secure him from after or former objections that he was himself an Alien or that such allegations might not be any hinderance to him or William de Valence to have the custody of any of the King's Castles who had yet some Provinces in France and was not without Subjects that as to England were Aliens as the ensuing Commission or Letters Patents in order thereunto will demonstrate Rex Angliae S. de Monteforti Comes Leicestr ' Gilbertus de Clare Comes Gloucestr ' Hereford ' Johannes filius Johannis Johannes de Burgo senior Willielmus de Monte Canisio Henricus de Hastings Gilbertus de Gaunt caeteri Barones Magnates Angliae no COMMONS universis Christi fidelibus ad quos praesentes literae pervenerint salutem in Domino cum super praeteritis guerrarum discriminibus in Regno Angliae subortis quaedam ordinatio seu forma pacis de nostro Praelatorum totius communitatis Regni praedicti unanimi voluntate assensu provida deliberatione inita fuerit quam nuper Domino Regi Franciae fecimus praesentari quam Deo gratam nobis Regno nostro credimus opportunam ac quidam ut intelleximus facti veritatem minus plene intelligentes ordinationem ipsam seu pacis formam minus sufficientem asserentes de quibusdam articulis in eddem insertis non fuerint contenti Nos ad pacem tranquilitatem Regni praedicti totis vi 〈…〉 us sicut tenemur laborare volentes ut justitia nostra fac 〈…〉 ritas patefaceat singulis plenius innotescat plenam damus poâ—estatem venerabili Patri H. London ' Episcopo Nobili viro Hugoni le Despencer Iustic ' Angliae Nobilibus viris Bartho ' Com' Audeg praedicti Regis Franc ' germano Abbati de Beccon inspiciendi examinandi formam ordinationis seu pacis praedictae addendi detrahendi eidem emendandi si quid addendum detrahendum seu corrigendum viderint providendi omnem securitatem quam viderint opportunam ea omnia quae ordinanda seu statuenda duxerint firmiter observandi Nos autem omnia singula quae ipsi ad emendationem observationem pacis ejusdem ordinaverint rata habebimus accepta subjiciendo nos jurisdictioni coertioni venerabilis Patris G. Sabin ' Episcopi Apostolicae sedis Legati ut ipse per sententiam excommunicationis omne genus censurae Ecclesiasticae nos omnes fingulos compellere possit si forte ordinationem praedictorum in aliquo praesumpserimus contrahere si praedictus Com' Audeg ' praesens non fuerit vel negotium istud in se assumere noluerit volumus quod Dominus de Neele vel Dominus Petrus de Camberleng ' loco ejusdem Com' subrogetur quod si praedicti quatuor in aliquo articulo pacis praedictae discordes fuerint judicio majoris partis eorundem stetur si Pares in discordia fuerint volumus ut venerabilis pater Archiepiscopus Rothomag ' eis associetur quod à majori parte eorundem quinque concorditer fuerit ordinatum firmiter obâ—â—rvetur Nolumus autem quod aliquid liceat eis dicere ordinare seu statuere circa emendationem ordinationis seu pacis praedictae per quod Regnum Angliae per alios quam per indigenas gubernetur nec castrorum custodia seu alia balliva in Regno praedicto aliis quam indigenis fidelibus non suspectis committetur volumus etiam modis omnibus quod pax inter nos Regem Angliae praefatum Com Leicestr ' super personalibus specialibus Querelis questionibus contentionibus quas contra eundem Comitem habemus ipse adversus nos de quibus posuimus nos in praedictum Regem Franc ' fiat assecuretur antequam pax seu ordinatio praedicta finaliter compleatur In cujus rei testimonium huic scripto nos Rex Angliae Com Leicestr ' Gloucestr ' Jo. Johannes Willielmus Henr ' Egidius pro nobis caeteris Baronibus communitate Regni Angliae sigilla nostra apposuimus Dat' apud Cantuar ' die Jovis prox ' post festum Nativ ' beatae Virginis an' Dom ' 1263. In assistance whereof saith Mr. Pryn the King and the Barons having by common consent entred into Articles of agreement under their hands concerning the reformation of the Realm of England and referred themselves therein to the determination of the King of France and the Pope's Legate he did constitute three Procurators to conclude and consent on his behalf to whatsoever should be therein agreed with submission to the Legate's Ecclesiastical Censures and Excommunications to compel him to the performance thereof in these words following viz. Rex Angliae omnibus ad quos c. salutem Noverint universitas vestra quod nos ordinamus constituimus venerabiles Patres W. Wygorn ' J. Winton ' Episcopos Nobilem virum Petrum de Monteforti Procuratores Nuntios nostros solempnes dantes eis potestatem tractandi in praesentiâ magnifici principis Domini L. Dei gratiâ Regis Franc ' illustris venerabilis Patris G. Sabin ' Episcopi Apostolicae Legati vel alterius eorum super reforma tione status Regni Angliae quod in hâc parte provisum fverit acceptandi firmandi seu etiam compromittendi super hoc in certas personas si viderint expedire ac omnem securitatem faciendi quam negotii qualitas requirit quam nobis seu Regno praedicto viderint optimum dantes in super praefato Petro potestatem jurandi in animam nostram quòd nos quicquid ipsi tres in praemissis nomine nostro duxerint faciendum ratum habebimus acceptum subjiciendo nos jurisdictioni coertioni praedicti Legati ut ipse per sententiam excemmunicationis omne genus censurae Ecclesiasticae nos compellere possit ad observatlonem praemissorum In cujus c. Dat' apud Cantuar ' die Jovis praedicta anno praedicto Wherein iâ—â—s to be observed that that was but upon the matter a re-referrence to the King of France the change being only in the assistant Councel the most part whereof were French under his obeysance and it was to be but as an emendation correction or altering of some part not all of the award which was made before which was not by this latter referrence found or declared to be void or so much as contradicted in any of the particulars of the provisions made at Oxford adjudged against the Barons or any thing to be defective or redundant nor was there any addition
praesentibus ad hoc vobis his quos vobiscum ducetis salvum securum conductum as much as a Prisoner could aford praebemus in cujus c. Teste Rege apud Sanctum Paulum London Sexto pie Junii Upon the twenty seveneth day of July Anno 48o. of his Reign being at St. Pauls in London a Letter was written to the King of France in these words Regi Franciae Rex Angliae Salutem serenitatis vestrae Literas per Willielmum Charles militem nostrum nobis porrectas receperimus inter caetera contimentes quod vobis multum complaceret qùod firmam utilem pacem nobis Regno nostro ad honorem Dei nostri cum Baronibus nostris haberemus qùod aliquos de concilio vestro usque Bonon mittetis ad diem Veneris ante assumptionem beatae Mariae quòd ipsis tunc intendentes sitis prope celsitudini vestrae quantas possumus gratiarum referimus actiones per hoc manifestè perpendentes quòd circà commodum honorem nostrum nec non tranquillitatem pacem Regni nostri solliciti estis intenti nos autem die Jovis prox post festrum Sancti Petri ad vincula erimus apud Dover ita quòd nuntii nostri Baronum nostrorum dicta die Veneris 〈…〉 ud Bonon Domino concedente ad tractand faciend de dictâ— pace pâ—â—â—â— nobis significâstis quia negotium istud tam coeteros Principes quam Nos tangit in ordinatione pacis praedict ' ad honorem Dei nostri Haered ' nostrorum honori indempnitati ac tranquillitati Regni nostri liberalitèr benignè si placet providere velitis Teste Rege apud Sanctum Paulum London Vicesimo septimo die Julii Within three dayes after being the Thirtyeth of Iuly in the same Year a Letter was sent in the Name of that Captive King to Simon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford who were the Chief of the Party who had subdued taken and kept him Prisoner in the Form following viz. Rex dilectis fidelibus suis Simoni de Monteforti Com' Leicestr ' Gilberto de Clare Com' Glocestr ' Hertford ' Salutem Cum nupertr anscriptum literarum Domini Regis Franciae quod vobis pridiè transmisimus manifestè perpendere possitis quod si cum praesato Rege a special friend of their own Party aliis de partibus transmarinis tractatum pacis habere debeamus oportet quod solempnes Nuncii de Concilio nostro vestro as if they were Partner Kings sint apud Bonon ' die Veneris prox post festum Sancti Petri ad vincula scilicet die Veneris ante Assumptionem Beatae Mariae in occursu Nunciorum praesati Regis quòd Nos ipso die vel die Jovis praecendenti simus apud Dover sicut praefato Regi de concilio Magnatum qui sunt nobiscum litteratoriè significavimus vos propter brevitatem temporis distantiam locorum personaliter vix adesse possitis tempestivè vos rogamus quatenus statu Regni nostri mandato praesati Regis Franciae periculis quae nobis Regno nostro ex prorogatione dicti negotii poterunt imminere diligenter pensatis visis literis provideritis de Nuntiis solempnibus idoneis usque Bonon ' mittendis ad dâ—em Veneris supradictum cum eis ad Nos mittatis dilectum fidelem nostrum Petrum de Monteforti the Earl of Leicester's near Kinsman a most insolent domineering Adversary cum formâ potestate tractandi firmandi pacem melius salubrius fuerit faciend ' mittatis etiam ad Nos aliquos ad eundum nobiscum usque Dover ad concilium impendendum responsum Nuntiis euntibus redeuntibus nobiscum de concilio vestro faciendum quousque personaliter veniatis quia praesens negotium summam et inestimabilem requirit Celeritatem eò quòd tempus breve est ultra modum vos ambo si quomodo fieri possit vel alter vestrum statim visis literis ad nos veniatis et si Edwardus filius noster èt Henricus de Almaine nepos noster nobiscum essent apud Dover certi sumus quòd celerem et satis bonam pacem haberemus et ideò si placet ipsos tanquam Obsides in statum quo nunc sunt ib ' venire Fac. T. c. XXX die Iulii Upon the 4 th day of September in the same year and time of the King's Imprisonment all that he could do was upon his Petition as the Record slovenly and undutifully intimateth to get licence that Henry the Son of Richard King of Almaine who was kept as a Prisoner in Dover Castle as a Pledge for his Father might go into France to treat with that King their Old Confederate and Friend for a Peace to be made betwixt the King and his Barons upon his Oath to do no prejudice to the disloyal Barons and that he might abide there until the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin at Night or within two or three days after upon a new Licence of those Barons and Bayl given by the Envoys or Embassador of the King of France resident in England that he should not be detained in France upon an undertaking also of the said Henry de Alemannia to forfeit all his Lands and Possessions which he had or might have in England by Inheritance or otherwise and to be utterly deprived thereof and the several Bonds or Recognisances severally given of the Bishops of London Lincolne Worcester Winchester Chichester Coventry and Lichfield with the Bishop Elect of Bath in 20000 Marks in Silver a piece that he should return and rendeâ— himself a Prisoner as aforesaid as the Record thereof in the Words ensuing doth testifie Rex omnibus c. Cum dilectus et fidelis noster Henricus filius Regis Almannia Germanus noster Charissimus sub custodia dilecti et fidelis nostri Henrici de Monteforti Constabularis castri nostri Dovoriae sub certâ formâ Obses constitutus suisset pro pace Regni nostri conservanda et ad Petitionem nostram pro pace inter Nos et Barones nostros praelocuta tractanda pleniùs et finienda ad Dominum Regem Franc. Illustrem in partes proficisceretur transmarinas idem Henricus Almannia obtenta ab eis quibus Obses datus fuerat super praedictis transfretandi licentia in praesentia nostra et venerabilium Patrum H. London R. Lincoln W. Wigorn ' J. Winton ' S. Cicest ' R. Covent ' et Lich ' W. Say ' Episc. et W. electi Bathon ' promisit bonâ fide et tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis juravit quod cum omni studio et diligentiâ pacem praedictam procurabit et nihil omninò faciat vel proponat verbo vel facto vel aliquo alio modo clà m vel palà m quod possit esse contra pacem praedictam seu per quod pax
bearing the Sword before him to the Church where they Crowned him and after a Frown of Fortune did stoutly by the help of the Lancastrian Party give Battle to King Edward the Fourth at Barnet-field where but for a Mistake of Oxford's and Warwick's Soldiers and their Banners and Badges fighting one against the other in a Mist instead of King Edward the Fourth's Men they had in all Probability prevailed against him And the Interest Alliance and Estate of that Earl of Oxford was so great notwithstanding shortly after in the Kingdom as although he had very much adventured suffered and done for King Henry the Seventh led the Vanguard for him at Bosworth field against King Richard the Third and eminently deserved of him as the Numbers and Equipage of his Servants Reteiners Dependants and Followers did so asfright that King and muster up his Fears and Jealousies as being sumptuously Feasted by him at Hedingham Castle in Essex where he beheld the vast Numbers goodly Array and Order of them he could not forbear at his Departure telling him That he thankt him for his good Cheer but could not endure to see his Laws broken in his Sight and would therefore cause his Attorney General to speak with him which was in such a manner as that magnificent and causelesly dreadful Gallantry did afterwards by Fine or Composition cost that Earl Fifteen-Thousand Marks Did notwithstanding their great Hospitalities Magnificent manner of Living founding of Abbies Monasteries and Priories many and large Donations of Lands to Religious Uses and building of strong and stately Castles and Palaces make no small addition to their former Grandeurs which thorough the Barons Wars and long lasting and bloody Controversies betwixt the two Royal Houses of York and Lancaster did in a great Veneration Love and Awe of the Common People their Tenants Reteiners and Dependants continue in those their grand Estates Powers and Authorities until the Raign of King Edward the Fourth when by the Fiction of common Recoveries and the Misapplied use of Fines and more then formerly Riches of many of the common People gathered out after the middle of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth by the spoil of the Abbey and religiously devoted Lands in which many of the Nobility by Guifts and Grants of King Henry the Eighth King Edward the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth in Fee or Fee-tail had very great shares brought those great Estates of our famous English Baronage to a lower condition than ever their great Ancestors could believe their Posterities should meet with and made the Common People that were wont to stand in the outward Courts of the Temple of Honour and glad but to look in thereat fondly imagine themselves to have arrived to a greater degree of Equality than they should claim or can tell how to deserve And might amongst very many of their barbarously neglecting Gratitudes remember that in the times in and after the Norman Conquest when Escuage was a principal way or manner of the Peoples Aides especially those that did hold in Capite or of Mesne Lords under them to their Soveraign for publick Affairs or Defence the Lords Spiritual and Temporal being then the only parts of the Parliament under their Soveraign the sole Grand Councel of the Kingdom under him did not only Assess in Parliament and cause to be leavied the Escuage but bear the greatest part of the Burden thereof themselves that which the common People did in after times in certain proportions of their Moveables and other Estates or in the Ninth Sheaf of Wheat and the Ninth Lamb being until the Dissolution of the Abbies and Monasteries in the latter end of the Raign of King Henry the Eighth when they were greatly enriched by it did not bear so great a part of the Burdens Aides or Taxes or much or comparable to that which lay upon the far greater Estates of the Nobility there having been in former Times very great and frequent Wars in France and Scotland no Escuage saith Sir Edward Coke hath been Assessed by Parliament since the 8th Year of the Raign of King Edward the Second Howsoever the Commons and Common People of England for all are not certainly comprehended under that Notion their Ancestors before them and their Posterities and Generations to come after them lying under so great and continued Obligations and bonds of an eternal Gratitude and Acknowledgement to the Baronage and Lords Spiritual and Temporal of England and Wales for such Liberties and Priviledges as have been granted unto them with those also which at their Requests and Pursuits have been Indulged or Permitted unto them by our and their Kings and Princes successively will never be able to find and produce any Earlier or other Original for the Commons of England to have any Knights Citizens or Burgesses admitted into our Kings and Princes great Councels in Parliament until the aforesaid imprisonment of King Henry the Third in the 48th and 49th Year of his Raign and the force which was put upon him by Symon Montfort Earl of Leicester and his Party of Rebels SECT XII That the asoresaid Writ of Summons made in that King's Name to Elect a certain Number of Knights Citizens and Burgesses and the Probos homines good and honest Men or Barons of the Cinque Ports to appear for or represent some part of the Commons of England in Parliament being enforced from King Henry the Third in the 48th and 49th Year of his Raign when he was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and under the Power of him and his Party of rebellious Barons was never before used in any Wittenagemots Mikel-gemots or great Councels of our Kings or Princes of England FOr saith the very learned and industrious Sir William Dugdale Knight Garter King of Armes unto whom that Observation by the dates of those Writs is only and before all other Men to be for the punctual particular express and undeniable Evidence thereof justly ascribed which were not entered in the Rolls as all or most of that sort have since been done but two of them three saith Mr. William Pryn instead of more in Schedules tacked or sowed thereunto For although Mr. Henry Elsing sometimes Clerk to the Honourable House of Commons in Parliament in his Book Entituled The ancient and present manner of holding Parliaments in England Printed in the Year 1663. but Written long before his Death when he would declare by what Warrants the Writs for the Election of the Commons assembled in Parliament and the Writ of Summons of the Lords in Parliament were procured saith That King Henry the Third in the 49th Year of his Raign when those Writs were made was a Prisoner to Symon de Montfort and could not but acknowledge that it did not appear unto him by the first Record of the Writs of Summons now extant by what Warrant the Lord Chancellor had in the 49th Year of the Raign of that King caused
sed sic eas accepi quemadmodum judicaverunt omnes Optimates Regni Anglorum to wit in a full Parliament which then consisted only of the King and his Nobility Anno Domini 944. King Edmond granted many large liberties and the Mannor of Glastonbury to the Abby thereof cum concilio consensu Optimatum suorum made it seems saith Mr. Pryns in Parliament and a clear evidence that the Nobles of that age were the Kings great Councel and Parliament without any Knights Citizens or Burgesses of which he found no mention in History or Charters Anno 948. there was a Parliament or Councel holden at London under King Edred Cùm universi Magnates Angliae per Regium edictum Summoniti tà m Archiepiscopi Episcopi Abbates quà m caeteri totius Angliae Proceres Optimates Londini convenissent ad tractandum de negotiis publicis totius Regni in which Parliament no Knights Citizens or Burgesses are said to have been present Anno 965 or 970. King Edgar with his Mother Clito his Successor the King of Scots both the Archbishops caeterisque Episcopis omnibus Regni proceribus Subscribed his Charter granted to the Abby of Glastonbury communi Episcoporum Abbatum Primorumque concilio generali assensu Pontificum Abbatum Optimatum suorum concilio omnium Primatum suorum without any Commons present assistants and attendants only excepted Anno 975. King Edgar and his Queen Elferus Prince of Mercia Ethelinus Duke of the East-Angles Elfwold his Kinsman Arch-Bishop Dunstan cum caeteris Episcopis Abbatibus Bricknotho Comite cum Nobilitate totius Regni held a Councel at Winchester without any Commons Anno 977. in the Councel of Calne under King Edward omnes Anglorum Optimates were present together with the Bishops and Clergy but no Knights or Burgesses for ought is Recorded Anno Christi 1009. by King Ethelreds Edict Universi Anglorum Optimates at Eanham acciti sunt convenire not the Commons A Parliament was Summoned by King Edward the Confessor concerning Earl Godwyn at Gloucester where Totius Regni Proceres etiam Northumbriae Comites tunc famosissimi Sywardus Leofricus omnisque Anglorum Nobilitas convenêre Et Anno 1052. at London Rex omnes Regni Magnates ad Parliamentum apud London tunc fuerunt Mr. Pryn declaring his Opinion That the former and ancient Parliaments consisted of our Kings and their Spiritual and Temporal Lords without any Knights Citizens or Burgesses Summoned to Assist or Advise with them or to Assent unto what they Enacted or Ordained In the 25th Year of his Raign granted Lands and Liberties to Saint Peters Church at Westminster Cum concilio decreto Archiepiscoporum Episcoporum Comitum aliorumque suorum Optimatum And from the Conquest until that forced something like but not to be accounted a Parliament in the 49th Year of the Raign of King Henry the Third divers Learned good Authors Summae incorruptae fidei no diminishing or additional Record-makers have assured and given Posterity and after Ages such an exact Account of our Parliaments as will leave no ground or foundation of Truth or Reason for any to believe That an Elected part of the Commons were before that Imprisonment of King Henry the Third in the 49th Year of his Raign made or Summoned to be a part of our English great Councels or Parliaments The Charter of William the Conqueror to the Abby of Battel was made Assensu Lanfranci Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis Stigandi Episcopi Cicestrensis Concilio etiam Episcoporum Baronum suorum And that great Conqueror had in the 4th Year of his Raign Concilium Baronum suorum confirmavit Leges Edwardi Confessoris posteaque Decreta sua cum Principibus constituit In the 10th or 11th Year of his Raign Episcopi Comites Barones Regni Regiâ potestate ad universalem Synodum pro causis audiendis tractandis convocati fuerunt Separated the Courts Temporal from the Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Communi concilio concilio Archiepiscoporum suorum caeterorum Episcoporum Abbatum omnium Regni sui and in the Register of Winchelsey Arch-Bishop of Canterbury it is Recorded That Rex Angliae Gulielmus Conquestor in concilio Archiepiscoporum Abbatum omnium Procerum Regni did forbid the Leges Episcopales to be used in any Hundred or other secular Courts And in the 21st Year of the Raign of King Edward the Third Mr. Selden saith There is mention made of a Great Councel holden under the said King William wherein all the Bishops of the Land Earls and Barons made an Ordinance touching the Exemption of the Abby of Bury from the Bishops of Norwich In that great and notable Pleading for three Dayes together at Pynnendon in Kent in the Raign of King William the Conqueror who as Mr. Selden repeats it out of the Leiger Book or Register of the Church of Rochester Anglorum regnum armis conquisivit suis ditionibus subiugavit in the great Controversy betwixt Lanfranc Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and Odo Bishop of Baieux and Earl of Kent the Conquerors half Brother for many great Mannors Lands and Liberties of a great yearly Value which Lanfranc claimed to appertain to his Arch-Bishoprick of which that potent Norman Bishop and Earl had injustly disseized him the King commanded the whole County without any delay to Assemble together as well French as English and more especially such as were well Skilled and Learned in the ancient Laws and Customs of England as Gosfridus Episcopus Constantiensis qui in loco Regis fuit justitiam illam tenuit Elnothus Episcopus de Rovercestria Aegelricus Episcopus de Cicestria Vir antiquissimus legum terrae Sapientissimus qui ex praecepto Regis advectus suit ad ipsas antiquas legum Consuetudines discutiendas edocendas in una Quadrigâ Ricardus de Tonebregge Hugo de Monte Forti Gulielmus de Acres Haymo Vicecomes alij multi Barones Regis ipsius Archiepiscopi aliorum Episcoporum homines multi whose Decisions made by many Witnesses Evidences and Reasons being certified to the King Laudavit laudans cum consensu omnium Principum suorum confirmavit ut deinceps perseveraret firmitèr praecepit Upon a Rebellion of Rafe de Guader a Norman made Earl of Norfolk by the Conqueror Confederating with some discontented English whilst he was absent in Normandy upon Notice thereof given hasted into England where omnes ad Curiam suam Regni Proceres convocavit legitimos Heroes in fide probatos Unto which may be added That in the Agreement betwixt King William Rufus and Robert Duke of Normandy his elder Brother touching his Claim to the Kingdom of England being of great Concern to the People wherein the King assured to the Duke All that he could Claim from his Father except England it is said Pactum juramento confirmârunt duodecim Principes nomine Regis and 12. Barones nomine Ducis In the 2d Year
suum Justitiarium Angliae Granted to Hugh Bishop of Durham Justitiam à fluvio Humbri usque ad terram Regis Scotiae made his Brothers John Earl of Morton and Geffry elect Archbishop of York to swear tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis that they would not come into England within three Years then ensuing nisi per licentiam illius but suddenly after released his Brother John of his Oath and gave him leave to return into England taking his Oath quòd fidelitèr ei serviret In Crastino Exaltationis Sanctâ— Crucis apud Pipewel Archiepiscoporum Episcoporum aliorum Magnatum suorum fretus concilio benignè concessit Galfrido fratri suo Archiepiscopatum Eborum circa dies istos iturus ad Terram sanctam per concilium Magnatum suorum Gerardum Archiepiscopum Auxisnem Richardum de Canvill c. Justiciarios constituit super totum navigium Angliae Normanniae Britanniae Pictaviae Et tradidit illis Chartam suam in hac forma Richardus Dei gratia Rex Anglorum omnibus hominibus suis per mare ad Terram sanctam ituris salitem Sciatis Nos de proborum concilio virorum has Justitias statuisse being certain severe Sea Laws illas Consuetudines ab omnibus observandas quòd singuli Justitiariis obedirent fecit Sacramento confirmari Eodem tempore in the Kings absence ad instanciam Comitis Johannis fratris ipsius Regis convenerunt apud Pontem de Leodune inter Radingum Windeleshores ad colloquium Magnates Angliae de magnis arduis Regis Regni negotiis tractatur ' in crastino autem tà m Archiepiscopus Rothomagensis quà m Eboracensis Episcopi omnes apud Radingum convenerunt colloquio interessent The Bishop of Roan being sent thither by the King to take and give him an account thereof Anno Domini 1290. Rex Anglorum Richardus ad natale Domini fuit in Normanniam apud Burum ibi tenuit solenne festum cum Primatibus terrae illius post natale habitum est Colloquium betwixt the Kings of France and England where the Expedition was agreed upon and a Peace made and sworn betwixt the two Kingdoms and the Comites Barones utriusque Regni none of the Commons did swear That they would remain faithful to both the Kings and make no Warr until fourty dayes after their return and the Archbishops and Bishops utriusque Regni juraverunt to denounce sentence of Excommunication against the Transgressors In which Warrs in the East for recovery of the Holy Land after many glorious Victories obtained against the Infidels King Richard being shipwrackt and with a small company escaping cast upon the Territories of the envious Duke of Austria his incensed Aemulator for that he had caused his Standard which he had set up before his at the taking of the Town of Joppa to be taken downe and thrown into a Jakes was discovered way-laid taken and delivered or sold to the Emperour of Germany for 60000l of Silver ad pondus Coloniensium And the Emperour to whom his Brother John who had in his Absence endeavoured to usurp his Kingdomes and with the King of France his Confederate offered great summs of Money whereof the latter would have paid 50000 Marks of Silver and the former 30000 to have him detained Prisoner detesting their Practises and shewing to King Richard their Letters after much Respects and Kindness to such a magnanimous Prisoner agreed to take for his Ransom 140 thousand Marks of the same kind of Money which he paid to the Duke of Austria without any thing to be paid for the Expenses of himself or any other but an Oath was first taken by the Bishops Dukes and Barons that as soon as the Money should be paid continuò liber proprium regrederetur ad regnum which being together with the Emperours Letter published in England by the Bishop of Ely his Chancellor suddenly after Exiit edictum à Justiciariis Regis ut omnes Episcopi Clerici Comites Barones Abbatiae Prioratus quartam partem Redituum suorum ad redemptionem Regis conferrent insuper ad illud Pietatis opus Calices aureos argenteos sustulerunt And upon his delivery by the Archbishops of Mentz and Cologne into the hands of Queen Elianor his Mother on the behalf of the Emperour gave Sureties or pledges until all the Money should be paid Walter Archbishop of Roan Savarick Bishop of Bath Baldwin de Wac alios multos filios Comitum Baronum suorum de pace servanda Imperatori Imperio suo omni terrae suae dominationis The Bishop of Norwich dimidium pretij de Calicibus sumpsit de rebus habitis Regi donavit and the Cistertian Monks being alwayes before by Priviledge freed from any Contributions Bona sua universa ad Regis redemptionem dederunt Anno gratiae 1200. King Richard being dead Rex Francorum Philippus Rex Anglorum Johannes inter Wailan Butavius castella ad colloquium convenerunt ubi convenit inter eosdem Reges cum concilio Principum utriusque Regni quòd Ludovicus filius Regis Francorum haeres duceret in uxorem filiam Aldefonsi Regis Castellae Neptem Regis Johannis Rex Anglorum pro hoc matrimonio contrahendo daret Ludovico cum nepte sua nomine Blanca in maritagio Civitatem Ebroicarum cum toto comitatu insuper 30000 marcarum Argenti Rex Johannes post completa negotia in partibus transmarinis transfretavit in Angliam veniens autem Londonias apud Westmonasterium Huberto Archiepiscopo Cantuariensi Magnatibus Regni praesentibus Gaufridus Archiepiscopus Eborqcensis cum Rege pacificatus est quo tempore Rex Johannes significavit Willielmo Regi Scotorum ut veniret ad eum ad Lincolniam ut ibidem de jure suo sibi satisfaceret in Crastino sancti Eadmundi Ubi convenerunt Rex Anglorum Johannes Rex Scotorum Willielmus cum universa Nobilitate tà m Cleri quà m populi utriusque Regni whence he directed his Writ to the Barons and those which did hold of him in Capite to come unto him with Horse and Armes to Northampton die Dominiâ—â proximè ante Pentecosten in formâ sequente Rex c. Henrico c. Mandamus tibi quòd in fide quam Nobis debes ficut Nos corpus honorem Nostrum diligis omni occasione dilatione postpositis sis ad Nos apud Northampton die dominica proximè ante Pentecosten paratus Equis Armis aliis necessariis ad movendum cum corpore Nostro standum Nobiscum ad minus per duas quadragesimas ità quòd infra terminum illum à Nobis non recedas ut tibi in perpetuum in grates seire debeamus T. c. And in the same year Summoned the Peers but no Commons to a great Councel or Parliament not for Military Aid in these words Rex c. Episcopo Sarum Mandamus vobis
Elizabeth King James and King Charles the 1. And our Annalls Historians and Records can appaâ—ently evidence that Queen Elizabeth in the designed Invasion of England by the King of Spain with a formidable Navy and Army in the Year 1588. did not by any of her Councells Judges Delegates or Lawyers great or small limit in the raising of Forces either by Land or Sea the Numbers Time of Continuance or Wages and it hath been a part of the Jus Gentium or Law of Nations not to contradict but allow the Seizing of Ships of Merchants and Strangers in the Potts or Havens of a Prince like to be Assailed and in Danger of War when every man ought to fight tanquam pro Aris Focis And that magnanimous great and wise Princess could not without that Power inhaerent in her Monarchy have aided with Men and Arms the great Henry King of France and the distressed Belgick Provinces checked the Papall Powers and Plots and Planted and Supported the Protestant Religion in most of the parts of Christendom holding by a steddy hand the Ballance thereof and so well understood her own Rights and the true methods of Government as she blaming some of the House of Commons for flying from their Houses near the Sea Coasts in the affright of the Spanish Invasion did Swear by the Almighty God that if she knew whom in particular she would punish and make them Examples of being the Deserters of their Prince and Countrey King James asked no leave of his Subjects in Parliament to Raise and Send Men and Arms into the Palatinate being his Son in Law 's Inheritance for the Defence thereof under the Command of Sr Horatio Vere and an Army for the same purpose also under the Command of Count Mansfelt a German Prince King Charles that blessed Martyr by a Company of accursed Rebells furnished to Sea 3. severall Armies and Navies in aid of the distressed Protestants at Rochell in France in whose Reign all the Judges of England subscribed to their Opinions that the King was to prevent a danger impending upon the Commonwealth might impose a Tax for the furnishing out of Ships and was to be the sole Judge thereof which had but a little before been inrolled in all the Courts of Justice in Westminster and in the Chancery as the opinion of all the Judges of England under their hands which in the leavying but of Ten Shillings being Cavilled at by Mr Hamden a man of 3 or 4000 l. per Annum one of the grand Sedition-Mongers who as a Member of the House of Commons in Parliament had by an Execrable Rebellion almost Ruined destroyed England Scotland and Ireland to pacify which that Pious Prince being willing to satisfie their scruples as much as the Laws and Constitutions of the Kingdom as he hoped might Allow and being a Principall part of the Monarchy the Arcana's whereof Queen Elizabeth believed not fit to be sacrâ—ficed unto Vulgar and Publick disputes and hammered upon the Anvills of Lawyers arguments tending unto more what could then should be sayd and therefore did in some of her grants or rescripts insert the words as King James afterwards did de quo disputari nolumus a maxima which the great Henry the Fourth of France in his Government strictly observed and which every Sea or Land Captain hath through many Ages and traverses of the world ever experimented to be necessary and usefull Insomuch as licence was given to frame a Case or question thereupon that never was before done in England through all its Changes of our Monarchs under the Brittish Roman Saxon Danish and Norman Races or in all the Empires and Kingdoms of the habitable World for amongst the Israelites there was an outward Court for the Common People there was a Sanctum Sanctorum there was no dispute suffer'd about their Urim and Thummim or the dreadfuly delivered Decalogue and the Ancilia and vestall fire at Rome were not to be pried into by the Common People neither would the vast Ottoman Empire suffer the secrets of Mahomets Pidgeon or the laying the Foundations of their Religion or Alcoran vast Empire to be disputed or exposed unto vulgar Capacities that would sooner mistake or abuse then assent unto truth or the most certified reason In the way unto which our fatality and ever to be lamented sad Consequences that followed the late long Parliament Rebellion Mr Oliver St John and Mr Rober Holborne two young Lawyers affecting a Contrariety to the approved sence and Interpretation of our most known and best old Laws and to Criticise and put doubtfull Interpretations upon the ever to be reverenced and wholsome Laws and Constitutions of the Kingdom did to that end expend much Time in the search of all the Records of the Kingdom The first of which laboured to propagate his design of Ruining the Kings Power of taxing Ship Mony and leavying it in Case of necessity for the defence of his Kingdom and Subjects but Mr Holbornes better opinion after all could not but leave him an earnest Assertor of the Kings Rights and Power therein So as of the 12 Judges upon the debates of the Kings learned Councell and the Peoples Lawyer Mr St John and others dispute arguing Pro and Contra One against the Other Ten of the Judges giving their Judgements therein against the said Mr Hamden that that unhappy aforesaid Ten Shillings ought to be leavyed upon him Notwithstanding Justice Hattons and Justice Crokes dissenting opinions who did afterwards forsake that begun and after long continued paths of Rebellion And that good and great man that prepared the Act of Parliament for the Converting Tenures in Capite into free and Common Socage that took away the strength of our Israel and worse then the folly or ill managed love of old Pelias Daughters to make their aged Father young again whether misled by his friend Oliver St John or overmuch in love of the well poysed temper of his so much admired the Roman Pomponius Atticus needed not to have been so over Severe in the astringent penalties nailed and fastned upon that Act of Parliament and the breaking of that Socage Act by adding to that much better of the tenures in Capite no less then the affrightfull penalty of that of a Praemunire when it was not likely to be so great a Stranger to his memory that the Learned Judges of the Kingdom had at severall times in the Reigns of King James and King Charles the Martyr declared their well weighed opinions that the Tenures in Capite were so fundamentall a part of our Laws as no Act of Parliament could be able or have force to repeal change or take them away And that in all the Icarian attempts and high Flights of the long called Parliament Rebellion and even in their Hogen Mogen unparaleld Nineteen Propositions made unto their King which if granted had taken away from him all the Power of a King and a Father or to govern or defend
of his Royall Ancestors had untill the aforesaid Imprisonment of his Father constantly and successively walked did Resolve as long as he could to continue therein Insomuch as 3. E. 1. Indictum est Parliamentum Londoniis ubi Leolinus princeps Walliae being summoned to come to do his Homage pretended that he durst not come without hostages which the King taking ill refused to give sed tamen dissimulato negotio inceptum Parliamentum consummavit post Parliamentum vero Rex raised an Army to subdue him hoc Anno solvit populus Regi quinto decimam bonorum quae patri suo dicebatur praeconcessa Anno. 5. E. 1. in subsidium guerrae Wallensis concessa est Regia populo vicesima pars bonorum Anno 6 tenuit Parliamentum Gloverniae in quo edita sunt Statuta quae Gloverinae appellantur and it appeareth by the Act of 7. E. 1. that the Prelates Earls and Barons were present at the making thereof 2. E. 1. Habitum est Parliamentum Salopiae in quo per deputatos ad hoc Justiciariis David the Brother of the Prince of Wales sine condemnatus tractus suspensus Eodem Anno tenuit Rex Parliamentum apud Acton Burnell ubi editum est statutum quod a loco cognominatum est 18. E. 1. Upon the death of Margaret daughter of the King of Norway by the daughter of Alexander King of Scotland ad quam jure haereditario defuncto avo patruo matre regnum Scotiae devolvi debebat quis fuit justus haeres Scotiae apud omnes in dubium vertebatur and there being many competitors amongst which there were of the English Baronage Johannes de Hastings Dominus Abergavenny Johannes de Vescy vice patris sui Nicholaus de Sules Willielmus de Ros and the Pope claiming the superiority and the determination of the Title Eodem Anno post Pascha Rex Angliae Scotiam apprcpinquans Parliamentum tenuit apud Northumbr ubi consultis Praelatis ac utriusque juris peritis wiser and fitter men then Common people use to be revolutisque priorum temporum Annalibus and the memorialls of the Abbies and Monasteries vocari fecit Praelatos Majores Regni Scotiae corameis in Ecclesia parochiali de Northumbr jus suum in superius dominium Regni Scotiae fideliter declaravit petivitque ut haec recognoscerent protestando se jus Coronae suae usque ad effusionem sanguinis suae defensurum And the Kings Right and Superiority being fully evidenced all the pretenders to that Crown did under their Hands and Seals not only acknowledge his Superiority but that they would hold that firm and stable which he should declare therein and yeild the Kingdom to such as he should adjudge which no where appears to have been done by the consent of the Common people of England and Scotland and was of the greatest concernment to those of Scotland And in another Charter of the same date declaring Cum autem non possit praefatus Rex Angliae isto modo cognitionem facere nec complere sine judicio nec indicium debeat esse sine executione nec executionem possit debito modo facere sine possessione seisina ejusdem terrae Castrorum did deliver seisin to the King as the Supream Lord untill the Right should be determined Ita tamen that before the seisin taken he should give good Security to deliver it back to such as should be adjudged to have Right to the Kingdom of Scotland cum tota Regalitate dignitate dominio libertatibus consuetudinibus Justiciis legibus usibus quibuscunque cum pertinentiis in eodem Statu c. So as an account and Restitution be made within 2 Months after to those that should be adjudged to have Right unto that Kingdom of the issues and profits thereof salvo Regi Angliae homagio illius qui Rex erit Quo facto although Ericus King of Norway did at the same time by his Attorneys or Procurators appear coram concilio Regis Angliae with his Commission omnibus inspecturis to claim 100000l Sterling a penalty for not admitting the said Margaret his daughter to be heire to the Kingdom of Scotland and 700 marks per Annum dowry which he gave with her c. who being heard and severall days given and refusing ulterius prosequi post diligentem hujus negotii disquisitionem inter caeteros competitores de assensu communi Rex Angliae without any license or confirmation of his Parliament post varias disceptationes vendicantium regnum illud adjudged it to John de Baylioll as descended from the Eldest Daughter of David King of Scotland excluso Roberto de Brus who claimed from a younger received his homage and fealty and caused him to be Crowned sitting super lapidem Regalem said by these people to have been the Stone upon which Jacob Slept when he journeyed from Barsheba to Aran. About the same time 200 Ships or Barks of Normandy sailing homewards with Wines from Gascony Domineering as if sibi solis maris cessisset libertas they were by 60 English Ships taken and 15000 of their men slain and the King of France by his Embassadours demanding Satisfaction or to have the matter determined in his Court in Gascony being of a very great concernment to the English Nation the King deliberato habito concilio sending the Bishop of London adjunctis sibi aliis viris prudentibus to the King of France suo concilio offered that if any found themselves aggrieved they should upon a safe conduct come for Justice ad Curiam suam quae nulli subjecta fuit whereupon a great contention arising betwixt the two Kings and the King of France seising divers Castles of the King of England in Gascony and citing him personally to appear at his Court at Paris to answer for that transgression which being upon a safe conduct performed and a peace thereupon concluded and that shortly after cavilled at by the King of France The King in the 22 year of his Reign convocato Londoniis Parliamento cui Johannes Rex Scotorum interfuit being in the same year and Parliament to which he had by his writs caused some of the Commons of England to come to assent unto what should be there ordained de concilio Praelatorum Procerum consentium without any mention of the Community agree that terram sub-dole ablatam recuperandam fore gladio And thereupon the King not the Parliament sent his Embassadours again unto the King of France and declared that since he had Violated the Leagues and Agreements made betwixt them and their Royall Progenitors Non videbatur sibi his great Councel and Parliament not being at all named quod ipsum Regem Angliae ducemque Aquitaniae hominem suum reputabat nâ—c ipse homagio suo astringi ulterius intendebat And mandavit Justic. suis hic breve suum patens in haec verba Edwardus Dei Gratia Rex Angliae Dominus Hiberniae
like Answers that they were conclusive but only reported unto them to have their opinion first and then their assent by vote after deliberation which should necessarily precede their assent and the Answerers were properly the Lords in the Kings name And the Debate was in the Kings presence for saith he I have seen the fragments of the journal tempore H. 7. which directly sheweth that the King himself was present at the Debate of divers Bills or Petitions that were exhibited to the Commons and the Parliament being kept in the Kings house and near his own lodgings The Commons Petition that the Sheriffs be allowed in their accounts for Liberties c. Unto which was answered The Lords were not advised to assent unto that which may turn to the decrease of the antient Farms of the Realm or damage of the Crown for ever seeing the King is within his tender Age. The Commons exhibited two Bills against the Ryots of Cheshire and Wales c. To which was answered by the assent of all the Lords and Peers when all the Lords and Peers in Parliament were charged in the Kings behalf whereupon they have of their own good grace and free will promised to aid according to their power In the 18th year of the Raign of King Edward third divers Answers were made accord c. not naming by whom and some were general with only let this Petition be granted yet the Statute touching Pleas to be held before the Marshal doth expound the practice of that age when it saith that the King by the assent of the Praelates great men and the Commons granted the same In the Act for moderation of the Statute concerning Provisors the Commons are named and the Lords wholly omitted and yet in the next Parliament Anno 2. H. 4. upon a complaint of the Commons that the said Act was not truly entred the Lords upon examination granted by the King upon protestation that it should not be drawn into example and the King remembring that it was well and truly done as it was agreed upon in Parliament did affirm that it was truly entred taking no exceptions at the said omission but said it was entred au maniere come il fuest parlz accords par le Roy es Commons Anno 17 E. 3. The Commons petitioning that Children born beyond the Seas might be inheritable of Lands in England that Statute was not inrolled in the same year the Archbishop of Canterbury demanded of all the Praelates and Grandees then present whether the Infants of our Lord the King being born beyond the Seas should be inheritable in England the which Praelates and Grandees being every one examined by himself gave their Answers that the Kings Children are inheritable wheresoever they be born but as touching the Subjects Children born out of the Kings Service they doubted and charged the Judges to consider thereof against the next Parliament the Petition was entred in the Parliament Roll. The Commons do pray that where many Parceners use an Action Auncestrel and some are summoned and have served their Writs alone without naming the others who have recovered and in the same manner that it may be done of Jointenants To which the King answered il sue al conseil qu'il foit faire par le mischeif qu' ad esteentiels cas lieur heirs And therefore saith Mr. Noy Let the Lawyers puruse those Parliament Rolls viz. 17 20 21 22 29 40 46. 51 E. 3. wherein no Statutes at all were made Annis 47 and 50 E. 3. Statutes were made yet very many of the Petitions were not granted but omitted and doubts not but they will find divers granted which demanded Novelley and yet not observed for Law because they were omitted in the Statute and that therefore the Commons have petitioned for some of the same things again in subsequent Parliaments which they would not have done except touching Magna Charta if they had had the grant of their former Petitions been in force In the 11th year of the Raign of King H. fourth The Commons do pray that no Chancellor Treasurer c. nor no other Officer Judge or Minister of the Kings taking fees or wages of him do take any manner of gift or brocage of any man upon a grievous pain To which was answered le Royle voet which being entred in the Parliament Roll in the margent was written Respectuatur per dominum principem concilium whereby it was not made into a Statute nor ever observed for a Law In the same year they Petition against Attorneys Prothonataries and Filacers which being likewise granted and entred in the Parliament Roll hath in the margent also written the like Respectuatur and so no Statute made thereon at any time But in the next Parliament 13 H. 4. The Clerks and Attorneys exhibiting their Petition to repeal that of 11 H. 4. did alledge that the Petition and Answer if they be enacted in manner aforesaid into a Statute and put in execution would be grievous insupportable and impossible and therefore prayed a modification To which was answered Let the Petition touching the Prothonataries and Filacers be put in suspence until the next Parliament and in the mean time let the Justices be charged to inter-commnne of this matter and report their advice therein And the reason is because an Ordinance is of a lower nature than a Statute and cannot repeal a Statute which is of an higher and that Ordinances of Parliament are seldom published by Proclamation as the Statutes were whereby the Subjects might know how to direct their actions The Statute of 15 E. 3. being never used or put in practice was repealed by a bare Ordinance in the next Parliament In the Statutes or Acts of Parliament concerning London Anno 28. E. 3. and Anno 38. E. 3. and Cap. 6. concerning Coroners and Takers of Wood Cap. 7. concerning Sheriffs Anno. 25. E. 3. Cap. 1. concerning Pourveyors and Cap. 4. concerning Attachments and Cap. 2. concerning Treasons the assent of the Lords in the Parliament Rolls is wholly omitted and yet the Statutes the best Interpreters do mention their Assent In the 21 E. 3. the Commons pray that the Petitions delivered in the last Parliament be dispatched and answered this Parliament without any delay c. To which the King answered The shortness of the time will nor suffer that those things be dispatched before Easter and therefore it pleased the King that those other things be dispatched The King in Anno 22. of his Raign greatly prospering in his Wars in France and besieging Calice sent unto his Parliament in England to demand a Subsidy putting them in mind of their promise to aid him in those Wars with their bodies and their purses whereupon they granted him two fifteens the King shortly after informing them of more successes and that he had granted to the King of France a Truce and demanding another Subsidy and to make them the more willing thereunto required their
upon their Soveraign at his Court at the three great Feasts of the year viz. Christmas Easter and Whitsontide as the excellently Learned Sir John Spelman hath informed us where the Bishops might give an accompt as in so many Parliaments which needed no Summons Prorogations or Adjournments for it was not to be doubted but that almost every man might understand when those Grand Feasts or Solemnities began or ended what had been done or was to be done in their several Diocesses and the Earls within their several Counties and Provinces of which Anciently they had a Subordinate Government and were to render accompts thereof When though not praecisely the very same in number as to the Festivals of the year wherein our Old King Alfred and many of our succeeding Kings and Princes used to be yearly attended by their Bishops Earls and Nobility whereby they might the better often understand the Circumvolutions and various Accidents in their Kingdom in every year might have some resemblance with that of the great Charles or Charlemain the hugely as Eginard who was his principal Secretary witnesseth powerful valiant and vertuous King of France which Kings Daughter Bertha our Saxon King Ethelbert is said to have married and at her Instance upon the preaching of Augustine the Monk to have converted himself and all his Subjects to the Christian Faith and Religion and celebrated with great Solemnity and Magnificence the great Festivals of Christmas and Easter which with the addition of another being the Feast of Pentiost was never omitted to be sumptuously kept by all our succeeding Kings until the latter end of the Raign of our K. H. the 3d. The French with great Solemnity holding their Parl. or great Coun at their 2 great Festivals of Christmas Easter Unless any other great Affairs caused them to summon those their great Councels at other times which coming after the Raign of 〈…〉 H. 3. to be 10 laid aside by reason of their many voyages into Normandy long lasting often Wars with France or Scotland troubles discords at home as Parliaments especially when after the 48th year of the Raign of King Henry the third the attendance upon Parliaments was much more troublesom to the Commons in Parliament after their admissions into that great assembly though they had their charges and expences in going tarrying and returning allowed them by King Edward the first which was first begun 〈◊〉 mon Montfort and his rebellious partners only in 〈◊〉 H. 3. When the King was their Prisoner in the 〈◊〉 two Knights of the Shire for the County of York wh 〈…〉 those that were afterwards permitted to be present by 〈◊〉 Edward 1. in the 22 year of his Raign and in the Raign of our succeeding Kings did esteem it to be a damage to to them in their other employments affairs and loss of time better becoming their capacities until the impressions and effassinations of Pride Fear Flattery Ambition and Self-Interest had within a small time after their aforesaid admission into Parliament incited or inticed them to be packt by Roger Mortimer Earl of March in the Raign of King E. 2. to Grant Aids to help to advance his wicked and accursed purposes as is expressed in one of the Articles and Charges against the said Earl in the 4th year of the Raign of King E. 3. or to set up for a Trade or Factory for themselves or their Friends or such as they could purchase as a lamentable experience hath of late years told us And we find no such Doings or Factorings before that or 49. of King Henry the 3d. For King Athelstone held a Parliament at Exeter and the succeeding Saxon and Danish Kings Summoned and held their Parliaments at several places and Dissolved and Met again as their occasions and the more weighty and extraordinary Affairs of the Kingdom required The Norman Conquerour and William Rufus and Henry the 1. other than at their aforesaid Grand Festivals did neither restrain themselves to certain times or places either as to the Summoning Continuing Proroguing or Adjourning of their more than common or ordinary business which requiring short Councels and an hasty Prosecution or putting into Actions what their deliberate Advices had resolved upon could necessarily produce no long continuances but were not seldom without Prorogations or Adjournments as Mr. Pryn and all our Ancient and Contemporary Writers and Historians have plentifully testified In the 9th year of the Raign of King Henry the 2d A Parliament was called at Westminster where by reason of the frowardness of the Archbishop Becket and his Suffragan Bishops the King was displeased and the Parliament ended In the 20th year of the Raign of that King he called a general Assembly of the Bishops and Nobility at Clarendon where John of Oxford the Kings Clerk was President of that Councel and a charge was given for the King that they should call to memory the Laws Ecclesiastical of his Grandfather King Henry the 1st and to reduce them to writing which was done the Archbishop and Bishops putting their Seals thereunto and taking much against the Arch-bishops will their Oaths to observe them In the 33th year of his Raign a Councel of Bishops Abbots Earls Barons both of the Clergy and Laity was holden at Gaynington sub Elemosinae titulo vitium rapacitatis included therein saith Walsingham requiring Aid towards the Wars of Jerusalem the Kings of England and France resolving to go thither in Person the King of England taking upon him and wearing the white Cross. A Parliament was called at Nottingham by King Richard the first after his return from his Captivity which continued but four days a Parliament in 7. Johannis a great Councel or Parliament was holden at London and Adjourned to Reading whither the King not coming at the day appointed it was three days after Adjourned to Wallingford In the Raign of King Henry the 3d. His Great Councels or Parliaments were many times Prorogued or Adjourned in whose Raign the Popes Nuncio Summoning the Praelates of England to give an Aid to the Pope they excused themselves and alledged that the King was sick and the Arch-bishops and Bishops were absent and that sine iis respondere non possunt nec debent whereupon the Nuncio endeavouring to adjourn that Convocation they refused to come again after Summons without the Kings License in 6 H. 3. a Parliament 7. a Parliament in 8. a 3. Anno 10. a 4th Anno 11. a 5th a Parliament in 16. another in 17. Anno 19. a Parliament Anno 21. a Parliament Anno 22. a Parliament Anno 25. a Parliament Anno 28. 2 Parliaments Anno 35. a Parliament 36. a Parliament 37. a Parliament in 38. another being called in Easter Term which by reason of the absence of some Lords who pretended they were not Summoned according to Magna Charta was Prorogued to Michaelmas following Anno 42. another Parliament at London
according to the great Charter nulli vendemus Justitiam unto which the King answered such as be of course shall be so and such as be of grace the King will command the Chancellour to be therein gracious Neither doth it appear that the Lords Spiritual who in the Raign of King Stephen held three several Councels in Secular Affairs and of King Henry the 2d were sundry times Mediators employed by him in Treaties betwixt him and the King of France or that the Lords Temporal the other part of the House of Peers and Baronage of England subordinate under their King and Soveraign did ever take esteem or believe the Members of the House of Commons in Parliament jointly or separately to be a 3d. Estate of the Kingdom for they neither had or enjoyed that Title or supposed Power In Anno 17. of King John in the Rencounter or Rebellion at Running Mede when in a pacification there made with some of his robustious Barons it was agreed that if the Conservators none of them which were then nominated to be the Conservators of the Kingdom being then called the Estates could not obtain a just performance of that constrained agreement by a complaint made unto the King or his Chief Justice of the Kingdom populus not then dreamed to be a 3d. Estate might â—um pravare with a salvo or exception to the Persons of him his Wife and Children do it and were not so imagined to be when the Popes Legat had by his Excommunication of that King and Interdiction of the use of Christianity in the whole Nation constrained him to do Homage to the Pope by an Investiture of the Sword Crown and Scepter and an yearly Tribute of 1000 Marks for the Kingdom of England and Ireland to the Church and See of Rome that Engine or Trick of Soveraignty Inhaerent in the People or a 3d. Estate representing for them in Parliament not then being thought necessary for a ratification of those that would magnifie themselves with that Factious and Fictitious Title of a 3d. Estate which they durst not adventure to make use of or mention in our Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta freely granted by King Henry the 3d. his Son and that more than thirty times Confirmations for the first whereof they believed they had made a good bargain when they had given unto that King the 15th part of their moveables and were not a 3d. Estate or called so in the 42 year of the Raign of that King when the Derogatory Act of Parliament to Kingly Government was enforced from him at Oxford in the 42 year of his Raign Anno 13. E. 3. The Bishop of Durham and Sir Michael de la Poole came from the King with a Message to the whole Estates which probably were then none other than the Lords Spiritual and Temporal concerning his Victories atchieved in France The Lords upon the Kings want of Money grant to the King the tenth Sheaf of Corn their Bond or Bond-Tenants excepted their 〈…〉 h Fleece of Wooll and 〈…〉 h Lamb for two years the Commons then not stiled Estates require time to go into their Countries to advise with those that sent them the Commons not Estates return their Assent and make several demands with a request that the Sheriffs of every County may in the next Summons to Parliament return two Knights girt with Swords A general Proclamation was made that all Persons having Charters of Pardon should resort to the Sea-coast for the Kings Service upon pain to forfeit the same The Commons do give the King for his Relief 30000 Sacks of Wooll upon conditions expressed in a pair of Indentures whereupon the Lords promised to send to the King to know his pleasure after long Debating the Commons promise to give presently to the King 2500 Sacks of Wooll so as if the King liked the conditions aforesaid the same should run in payment if not they would freely give it to him Remembrances of things not finished in one Parliament to be done in another They granted unto the King the ninth of their Grain Wooll and Lamb for two years to be Levyed out of all Towns-men the ninth of their Goods of such as dwelled in Forests and Wasts a Fifteenth upon condition the King would grant their Petitions contained in a Schedule so willing were the Commons to obtain and get what they could from the King and so little did they think themselves to be a 3d. Estate or an entire or any part of Soveraignty Sundry Bishops Lords and Commons were appointed daily to sit until they had reduced the aforesaid Grant into the form of a Statute and was agreed upon by the King and the whole Estates which could not be expounded that the King was one of those Estates or the other any more than the Lords Spiritual and Temporal leaving the Commons to be no more than they were in suis gradibus no 3d. Estate which beginneth To the Honour of God c. And such Articles as were to continue but for a time the King exemplified under the great Seal Know ye that with our Bishops Earls c. Certain Bishops and Lords requiring to be saved harmless against the Duke of Brabant for great sums of Money wherein they stood bound for the King if the Duke of Cornwal married not the Daughter of the said Duke which was granted and all which Letters Patents were inrolled in Chancery And for that the King in his Stile was named King of France and had changed his Arms whereby The Abridger of the Parliament Rolls or Records or Mr. Pryn the Rectifier or misuser of them hath given us a curtailed Abbreviation of the Parliament Remembrances in 14 E. 3. wherein all that the Abridger or Rectifier was pleased to give us was that Subjects were no longer bound to him than as King of France the Kings Letters Patents of Indempnity were granted beginning Edwardus c. Know ye that where some people intend c. When as in the Printed Statute according to the Parliament Record for so it may better be understood to have been the Abridger or Rectifier so miscalled might have seen that the King by the Title of King of England and France and Lord of Ireland by his Letters Patents under the great Seal of England reciting that whereas some people did think that by reason the Realm of France was devolved to him as Right Heir of the same and for as much as he is King of France the Realm of England should be put in Subjection of the King and of the Realm of France in time to come he having regard to the Estate of his Realm of England and namly that it never was nor ought to be in Subjection to the obeysance of the Kings of France which for the time have been nor of the Realm of France and willing to provide for the Surety and Defence of the Realm of England and of the Leige people of the same doth will and grant
and stablish for him and his heirs and Successors by the Assent of the Praelates Earls Barons and Commons wherein if the Commons had in themselves an inhaerent Right of Soveraignty they would neither have been troubled with any such fears of the French Government or needed any such provision against it of his Realm of England in this present Parliament in the 14th year of his Raign of England and first of France that by the cause or Colour of his being King of France and that the said Realm to him pertaineth or that he came to be named King of France in his Stile or that he hath changed his Seal or Arms nor for the Commandments which he hath made or shall make as King of France his said Realm of England nor the people of the same of what Estate or condition they shall be shall not at any time to come be put in Subjection nor in obeysance of him or his Heirs nor Successors as Kings of France nor be subject or obedient but shall be free and quit of all manner of obeysanee as they were wont to be in the time of his Progenitors For that Trick or Engine of metamorphosing the Soveraignty of the King into that of the people and by excluding the Bishops and Lords Spiritual out of the House of Peers in Parliament unto which ab ultimo Antiquitatis seculo since Christianity abolished Paganisme they were as justly as happily entituled and put our Kings and their Regalities in their places whereby to create unto themselves a co-ordination and from thence by the Intrigues of Rebellion a Soveraignty in themselves which was not in the former and better Ages ever entertained or believed by our Parliaments when no Original pact or agreement hath been or can yet be discovered how or when the House of Commons came to be entituled unto their pretended inherent Soveraignty or to be seized thereof by their representation of the people or from whom they had it or who gave it unto them when it may be believed God never did it for he that never used or was known to contradict himself hath in his holy word declared and said per me Regis regnant which should not be misinterpreted and believed to be conditionally if the people should approve or elect them for which the Gentlemen of Egregious Cavillations if they would be believed should search and see if in all the Books of God and Holy Writ they can find any revocation of what God himself hath said and often declared for an undeniable truth or that he ever discharged and renounced it by as infallible Acts and Testimonies But if any one that believes Learning and the inquires after Truth Right Reason and what our impartial Records and Historians will justify how or from whence that Aenigna or mystical peice of Effascina of the Members of the House of Commons making themselves to be a 3 Estate of the Kingdom and a Creed of the late Factioâ—s and Rebelling ever to be deplored Parliament or from what Lernean Lake or Spawn of Hydras came It may besides the Pride and Ambition of many that were the fomenters or Nurses of them be rationally 〈◊〉 understood to have none other source or Original besides don Lancifer himself then for Sir Edwards Cokes unhappy stumbling upon his reasonless admired forged Manuscript and Imposture called Modus tenendi Parliamentum in Anglia in King Edward the Confessors Raign there having been neither any Author or Record as Mr. Pryn hath truly observed to Justify or give any credit thereunto but was as he hath abundantly proveâ— a meer Figment and Imposture framed by Richard Duke of York 31. and 32. H. 6. by the Commons Petition and the Duke of Yorks Confederates by the Rebellion and Insurrection of Jack Cade and his Rebellious levelling party to make him that Duke of York Protector and Defender of the People which ended in the dethroning of King Henry 6. and though Mr. Hackwel of Lincolns-Inne a learned Antiquary hath adventur'd to say that he hath seen an Exemplification of a Record sent from England into Ireland to establish Parliaments there after the form or Method of that Modus yet when the learned Archbishop Usher pressed him much to see it he could neither shew the exemplication nor the Record it self neither of which are yet to be seen in England or Ireland only Sir Edward Cokes Copy remains but when or from whence he had it he was never yet pleased to declare 13. E. 3. At the request of the whole Estate which may most certainly have been thought to have been made to the King not to themselves those Articles were made Statutes and the Conditions were read before the King and the Chancellor Treasurer Justices of both Benches Steward of the Kings Chamber and others were all sworn upon the Cross of Canterbury to perform the same 17. E. 3. The cause of summoning the Parliament being declared amongst the other things to be touching the Estate of the King who was often absent in the Wars of France and for the good government which they whom the erring Abridger hath stiled the 3 Estates viz. 1. The Lords Spiritual 2. The Lords Temporal 3. The Commons in Parliament were to consult of so as if the Commons could be a third Estate the King and his Estate and the government were necessarily and only then and always to be understood and believed to be the 4th Estate principal Superior and Independent 18. E. 3. At which Parliament and Convention sundry of the Estates saith that ill Phrasing Abridger or Translator whoever he was were absent whereat the King was offended and charged the Archbishop of Canterbury for his part to punish the defaults of Clergy and he would do the like touching the Parliament whereof Proclamation was made and being not absent was neither likely to be angry with himself or resolving to punish himself The Chancellor in full Parliament declaring the cause of summoning the Parliament viz. The Articles of the Truce with the French King the breaches in particular thereof the whole Estates mistakenly so stiled were willed the King that willed or commanded being no part of them unless it could be believed that himself willed or commanded himself as well as others to advise upon them give their opinion thereof by the Monday next following 20 E. 3. After the reading of the Roll of Normandy and that the King of France his design to extirpate the English Nation the Messengers that were sent by the King required the whole Estate no such Title being in the Original whereof the King could then be no part if it was said to be the whole Estate without him for he could not be with them when he was absent in France and had sent his Messengers unto them to be advised what Aid they would give him for the furtherance of his Enterprise And Mr. John Charleton one of the Messengers aforesaid likewise bringing Letters from the Bishop of
the Kings Brother and Chancellor of England in the behalf of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of calling the Parliament and taking for his Theme Multitudo Sapientum learnedly resembled the Government of the Realm to the Body of a man the Right-hand to the Church the Left-hand to the Temporalty and the other Members to the Commonalty of all which Members and Estates the King not deeming himself to be one was willing to have Councel The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England by the Kings commandment declaring the cause of the Summoning the Parliament and taking for his Theme Regem honorificate shewed them that on necessity every Member of mans Body would seek comfort of the Head as the Chief and applyed the same to the honouring of the King as the Head And in that his Oration mentioning the Lords Spiritual and Temporal Knights Citizens and Burgesses giveth them no Title of Estates but the Kings Leiges In the presence of John Duke of Bedford Brother of the King Lieutenant and Warden of England and the Lords and Commons the Bishop of Durham by his commandment declared that the King willed that the Church and all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which could not include the King It was ordained that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties without the words Concessimus which could not comprehend the King who granted it to them but not to himself The Chancellor at the first assembling of the Parliament declared that the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which must be intended to others that were his Subjects and not to himself that was none of them The Archbishop of York Chancellor of England declaring the cause of Summoning the Parliament said the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties in which certainly he well knew that the Person willing or granting was not any of the Persons or Estates to whom he willed and granted that they should enjoy their Liberties The Duke of Gloucester being made Guardian or Keeper of England by the King sitting in the Chair the Archbishop of York being sick William Linwood Doctor of Laws declaring the cause of summoning the Parliaâ—ent said that the King willed that every Estate should enjoy their due Liberties which properly enough might be extensively taken to Military men and Soldiers the Gentry Agricolis opificibus all sorts of Trades Labourers Servants Apprentices Free-holders Copy-holders Lease-holders single Women and Children Tenants at Will and which never were themselves Estates but the several sorts and degrees thereof wherein if any Law Reason or Sense could make the King to be comprehended an inextricable problem or question would everlastingly remain unresolved who it was that so willed or granted The King sitting in his Chair of State John Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the Bishops Lords and Commons by the Kings Commandment declared the causes of summoning the Parliament taking for his Theme or Text the words sussipiant montes Pacem Colles Justitiam divided it into three parts according to the three Estates by the Hills he understood Bishops and Lords and Magistrates by little Hills Knights Esquires and Merchants by the People Husbandmen Artificers and Labourers By the which third Estates by sundry Authorities and Examples he learnedly proved that a Triple Political vertue ought to be in them viz. In the first Unity Peace and Concord In the second Equity Consideration Upright Justice without maintenance In the third due Obeysance to the King his Laws and Magistrates without grudging and gave them further to understand the King would have them to enjoy all their Liberties Of which third Estates the Chancellor in all probability neither the King or they that heard him did take or believe the King himself to be any part The 15th day of August the Plague beginning to increase the Chancellor by the Kings Commandment in the presence of the 3 Estates the Clerks Translator or Abridger being unwilling to relinquish their Novelty or Errors of which the commonest capacity or sense can never interpret the King to be one Prorogued the Parliament until the Quindena of St. Michael The Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of the Summons of Parliament said that the King willed that all Estates should enjoy thâ—â— Liberties which might intitle the King to be the Party willing or granting but not any of the Parties who were to take benefit thereby It was enacted by the whole Estates which may be understood to be the King Lords Spiritual and that the Lords of the Kings Councel none of theirs should take such order for the Petition of the Town of Plymouth as to them should seem best Letters Patents being granted by the King to John Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury of divers Mannors and Lands parcel of the Dutchy of Lancaster under the Seal of the Dutchy were confirmed by the whole Estates for the performance of the last Will and Testament of King H. 5. though it was severed from the Crown and was no part of the concernment thereof nor had any relation to the Publick or any Parliamentory Affairs the King himself that granted the Letters Patents could not be interpreted to be one of those whole Estates which were said to have confirmed them By the whole Estates were confirmed King Henry the 6th Letters Patents of the Erection and Donation of Eton Colledge and also of Kings Colledge in Cambridge with the Lands thereunto belonging which might well conclude the King although he being the Donor could not be believed to be any part of the whole Estates who by their approbation are said to have confirmed his Letters Patents The Chancellor in the name of all the Lords in the presence of the King protested that the Peace which the King had taken with the French King was of his own making and will and not by any of the Lords procurations the which was enacted And it was enacted that a Statute made in the time of King H. 5. that no Peace should be taken with the French King that then was called the Dolphin of France without the assent of the three Estates of both Realms should be utterly revoked and that no Person for giving Counsel to the Peace of France be at any time to come impeached therefore which may demonstrate that neither the Dolphin of France nor the King of England were then accompted to be any part of the several 3. Estates of the said Kingdoms The King by his Chancellor declared that he willed that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties it cannot be with any probability supposed that either he or his Chancellor intended that himself was one of the said Estates The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England in the presence of the King gave thanks in his behalf to the 3. Estates wherein no
Grammar or Construction of Reason or Sense will ever be able to comprehend the King The 17th day of December the Chancellor in the presence of the King and the 3 Estates which is surely to be understood to consist of other Persons separately and distinct from the King Prorogued the Parliament until the 20th day of January then next ensuing at Westminster and upon the 28th day of April was likewise Prorogued to the 5th day of May next following The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England in the presence of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of Summoning the Parliament said that the Kings pleasure was that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which could not signifie that the King himself was one of those Estates to whom he granted that favour The 25th day of December the Chancellor in the presence of the King and the 3. Estates by the Kings Commandment giving thanks to the 3. Estates the King being then by the Chancellor or any other Master of Reason or Common Sense not understood to be any one of the 3. Estates to whom the thanks were given dissolved the Parliament An Act of Parliament was made wherein was declared that King Edward the 4th was the undoubted King of England from the 4th day of March last before and that all the Estates yielded themselves obeysant Subjects unto him and his Heirs for ever the late never to be maintained Doctrine of the pretended co-ordination of the House of Commons in Parliament as Subjects with their Soveraign in Parliament and the Government being not than that established or ever to be evidenced otherwise then God hath ordained a co-ordination betwixt the King and his Subjects which is that the People as Subjects should obey their King and the King as their Soveraign Protect Rule and Govern them and affirmed the Raign of King Henry the 4th to be an Intrusion and only Usurpation The Chancellor the King sitting in his Royal State in the presence of the Lords and Commons made an Eloquent Oration wherein he declared the 3. Estates to comprehend the Governance of the Land the preheminence whereof was in the Bishops the second to the Lords Temporal which the learned and men of that Age and other Chancellors understood to be no other than two separate and distinct Estates the one Temporal and the other Spiritual and the King to be Superiour The Bishop of London Chancellor of England in the presence of the King and the 3. Estates the King being none of them but Superior over them all Prorogued the Parliament to the 6th of June ensuing For where the Abridger or Mr. Pryn possessing himself to be the Rectifier or Corrector amongst his other faults and mistakings in his Epitomizings made it to be in the Parliament Rolls of 6 Edwardi 3. that many failing to come to the Parliament upon the Summons of the King did put a charge upon the whole Estate by a reassembly he will find neither words or matter for it All that appears of the Title of Estates in the Parliament and Statute Rolls of that year is no more than the Prelats grants gentz du Commune or les Prelats Counts Barons gentz des Countez gentz de la Commune No whole Estate mentioned in the Parliament Roll all that is said n. 42. is no more than a les requests des grantz come de ceuâ— de la Commune de le Clergie That which is translated the Estate of the King is no more in the Parliament Roll n. 5. than les beseignes nostre seigneur le Roy de son Royame Where the Abridger saith the Parliament was to treat and advise touching the Estate de nostre Seigneur le Roy le Governement le salnette de sa terre d' Angleterre de son people relevation de lour Estate there is no other mention of Estates than the Prelatz grantz Commons de son roiame and charged les Chinalers des Countes and Commons to assemble in the Chamber de Pinct A quel Jour vindrent les Chivalers des Counties autres Commons and gave their advice in a Petition in the form ensuant a tres excellent or tres honorable Seigneur les gentz de vostre Commun soy recommandent a vous obeysantment en merciant se avant come leur petitesse powre suffice de tant tendrement pervez a quer maintenir la pees a la quiete de vostre people c. Et en maintenance des autres Leyes as autres Parliaments devant ces heures grantees vostre poure Commons sil vous plaist sa gree semble a la dite Commune totes autres choses poent suffisantement estre rewelez Terminez en Bank le Roy Commune Bank devant Justices as Assises prendre nisi les delayes nient covenable soient aggregez oustez ore a ce Parliament per estatut En. Ro. Parl. 18. E. 3. Where the King desired the names of the absent Lords that he might punish them there is no mention of the Clergy or Commons or of any Estates and the King afterwards desiring their advice touching his Treaty with France charged the Prelats Countz Barons et Communs to give their advice therein Which they all did without naming themselves or being stiled Estates The Kings Letters of Credence sent out of France to his Parliament in England were directed a toutes Erchevesquis evesques Abbes Priours Counts Barons toutz autres foialx le Roy vendront au dit Parlement troter sar les beseignes le Roy whereupon he demanded an Aid of the said Prelats grantz Communs And the Lords without the Title of Estates having granted it the Chivalers des Counties Citizens Burges des Cities Burghs Prioront de avoir avisement entre eux and in Answer thereunto delivered a Petition unto the King for redress of Grievances not by the name of the Estates but a nostre Seigneur le Roy a son conseil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gentz de la Communes de sa terre ausi bien des 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de Counties Where it was supposed that a Pardon was granted and a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to Sir John Matrevers of all his Lands by the whole Estates there appeareth no more in the 〈…〉 ment Roâ—â— than that he Petitioned A nostre Seigneur le Roy a son bon conscil wherein he recited that Restitution had been granted de poiar royal nostre Seigneur le Roy par bor accord 〈◊〉 Common assent des Prelatz Co 〈…〉 es Barons de son Roialme par plusieurs causes appearing in the 〈…〉 ings Charter of Pardon and prayed quil p 〈…〉 st a nostre dit Seigneur le Roy a son bon conscil par la boâ—dance de sa Noble Seignorie granter la restitution scisdite pâ—usse estre ore renovelle en cest Parlement quelle Petition lue fut respondue
illatis who had been so good a friend to the rebellious Barons and so great a favourer of them as after his expulsion out of England whither they had invited him toaid and assist them against K. John and an agreement made with K. Henry III. his Son to restore unto him the Dutchy of Normandy and the other Provinces which he had from him in France as he denied to re-deliver them until the Liberties claimed by the English Barons his old Friends should be confirmed unto them by whose Quarrels with their Sovereigns he had gained many great advantages to the wrong and damage of the Crown of England And was all the while a very great enemy both to the King and his Father who notwithstanding was with the Prince his Son Richard Earl of Cornwal King of the Romans with others of the Loyal Nobility of the Kings part and the contending Rebellious Lords of the other side by mutual Oaths tactis sacrosanctis Evangeliis in the 47th year of his Reign did undertake to perform and abide by his award so as it were made and pronounced betwixt that and the Feast of Pentecost then next ensuing unto which none of the Commons of England do appear to have been parties Whereupon the King of France taking upon him the said arbitration congregato in crastino sancti Vincentii Ambiomis populo penè innumerabili coram Episcopis Comitibus aliisque Francorum proceribus solemniter dedit sententiam pro Rege Angliae contra Barones Statutis Oxoniae provisionibus ordinationibus ac obligationibus penitus annullatis hoc excepto quod antiquas Chartas Regis Johannis Angliae universitati concessas per illam sententiam in nullo intendebat penitùs derogare And made his award accordingly in writing an exemplification or authentick Copy whereof is yet to be seen amongst the Records in His now Majesty's Treasury at Westminster Quae quidem exceptio Comitem Leicestriae coeteros qui habebunt sensus exercitatos saith Matthew Paris compulit in praeposito tenere firmitèr Statuta Oxoniae que fundata fuerant super illam Chartam Et eo tempore redierint à Francia qui Parliamento Regis Francia interfuerant Rex videlicet Angliae Henricus Regina Eleanora Archiepiscopus Cantuariensis Bonifacius Petrus Herefordensis Episcopus Johannes Mansel qui Baronibus saith that Monk of St. Albans mala quanta potuerunt non cessabant machinari Which exception could neither absolve them from their Oaths so solemnly taken to perform the award which the King of France had made or purge them from their former and after Rebellions against King Henry III. or their ill usage of him SECT VI. That the Exceptions mentioned in the King of France's award of the Charter granted by King John could not invalidate the whole award or justifie the provisions made at Oxford which was the principal matter referred unto him FOr that the contrivance of the twenty-four Conservators and what else was added thereunto by the aforesaid Provisions and constrained Ordinances made at Oxford was never any part of the Magna Charta or the Charta de Foresta enforced from King John but a security seperate and collateral thereunto framed and devised at the same time for the better observation and performance of those Charters which the preamble of that security of which Matthew Paris hath at large left unto posterity an exemplar may abundantly evidence in the words following viz. Cum autem pro Deo ad emendationem Regni nostri ad melius sopiendam discordiam inter nos Barones nostros haec omnia concessimus volentes ea integra firma stabilitate gaudere facimus concedimus eis securitatem subscriptam viz. quod Barones eligant viginti quinque Barones de Regno nostros quos voluerint c. and doth greatly differ both in the material and formal parts thereof from the provisions afterwards enforced at Oxford as by a just collation and comparison of that collateral security with those provisions may appear where care is taken but for twenty-four Conservators twelve to be chosen by the King and twelve by those factious Lords who would likewise engross to themselves and their party the nomination of the Chancellor Treasurer two Chief-Justices two of the Justices of both the Benches and Barons of the Exchequer and have the making of the Chief-Justice of the Iews to which the King and his Son the Prince were sworn but to the Running-Mead unkingly shackles or security the King and those masterly Barons were only sworn and that not thought sufficient without some principal Castles of the Kings were to be put into hands of those Conservators and that upon complaint made to the King or his Chief-Justice if reformation were not made within a time limited the Conservators and the common people were to distrain gravere eum which would amount to a licensed Rebellion with a salvis personis only of the King and his Queen and Children all the great men of the Kingdom and the common people and as many as would being also to take their Oaths to be aiding and assisting to those Conservators in a kind or much resembling the late ASSOCIATION who were themselves to take their Oaths well and truly to execute their multiplied Kingships and clip as much as they could the more just Authority and Rights of their Sovereign But in those of Oxford there was so much kindness shewed to themselves and care taken of their own tender consciences as not to be sworn at all and must needs be an excellent contrivance for the invisible good of the Kingdom and a rare performance of their Homage Fealty and Oaths of Allegiance to take the power and authority from a King which should enable him to perform his Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta freely granted unto them and put it into their own hands to break those Charters and his Oaths and to protect and do Justice unto his people as oft as their malice ambitious envies avarice revenge interests designs corruptions or domineering passions of themselves and their Wives being not a few in number and their numerous adhaerents should incite or persuade them unto and were so confident of their over-ruling party no provision being at all made in those which were made at Oxford if any discords should arise in the election of the one twelve or the other or in the continuance of their agreements together shares or parts in the Government of their King and fellow-Subjects as believing that the power of the twelve Barons chosen by themselves would be either praedominant over the twelve which were to be named by the King or their newly-usurped authority would be so complaisant and well-pleasing unto all the twenty-four as flattery fear or interest would so quiet any to be supposed discords as they should not need to fall out at a Feast or divide disturb or destroy themselves by Factions the security given at Running-Mead ordaining only twenty-five
Expedition into Gascoigne and that he might levy the like upon his Tenants gave One Hundred Twenty Pounds more And of no less Power and Authority with and over the Common People were the rest of our English Nobility which took up Armes with the King or stood Neutrals or at a Gaze until they saw what would become of him witness that of the Earl of Chester who executed the Office of Sheriff by his Deputies for the Counties of Salop and Stafford in the 2d 3d 4th 5th 7th and part of the 8th of Henry the third for the County of Lancaster in the 3d. 4th 5th 6th and the latter end of the 16th was seized of the whole County and Lands of Chester with Royal Jurisdiction Tenenda per Gladiune it à liberè sicut Rex ipse tenebat Angliam per Coronam at the time of the general Survey of the Conqueror was Count Palatine thereof had nine Mannors in Barkshire in Devonshire two in Yorkshire seven in Wiltsshire six in Dorsetshire ten in Somersetshire four in Suffolk thirty-two in Norfolk twelve in Hantshire one in Oxfordshire five in Buckinghamshire three in Gloucestershire four in Huntingtonshire two in Nottinghamshire four in Warwickshire one in Leicestershire twenty-two fifteen great Men of Estate in Cheshire his Barons holding Lands of him and his Heirs as Willielmus Malbane Gislebertus de Venables Rad Venator c. and was seized of that Mountainous part of Yorkshire and Westmoreland called Stanemore Unto one of whose Descendants or Family King Stephen gave the City and Castle of Lincolne with License to Fortify the Town thereof and to enjoy it until he rendred unto him the Castle of Tickhil in Yorkshire granted likewise unto him the Castle of Belvoir with all the Lands thereunto belonging all the Lands of William de Albini Grantham with all its Soke thereunto belonging Newcastle in Staffordshire with the Soke of Roely in com' Leic ' Corkeley in Lincolnshire the Town of Derby with the appurtenances Mansfield in com' Nott ' Stonely in Warwickshire with their appurtenances the Wapentake of Oswardbeck in com' Nott ' and all the Lands of Roger de Busty with the Honour of Blythe and all the Lands of Roger de Poictou from Northamptom to Scotland excepting that which belonged to Roger de Montbegon in Lincolnshire all the Lands betwixt the Rivers of Ribble and Merse in Lancashire the Lands which he had in Demesne in the Mannor of Grimsby in com' Lincolne and all the Lands which the Earl of Gloucester had in Demesne in that Mannor the Honour of Eye Nottingham Barony and Castle Stafford and the whole County of Stafford except the Fees of the Bishop of Chester Earl Robert Ferrers Hugh de Mortimer Gervase Paganel and the Forrest of Canoc the Fees of Alan de Lincolne Ernise de Burun Hugh de Scoteny Robert de Chalz Rafe Fitz Oates Norman de Verdun and Robert de Staford Odo Bishop of Baieux William the Conquerors half Brother had one hundred eighty-four Mannors given him in Kent thirty-nine in Essex thirty-two in Oxfordshire in Hartfordshire thirty-three in Buckingham thirty in Worcestershire two in Bedfordshire eight Northamptonshire twelve in Nottinghamshire five in Norfolk twenty-two in Warwickshire six in Lincolnshire seventy-six amounting in the whole to Five Hundred Forty-Nine whereof two hundred eighty he gave saith Mr. Selden to his Nephew de Molbraio Earl John afterwards King of England had in the Life time of King Richard the First his Brother the Earldomes of Cornwall Dorset Somerset Nottingham Derby and Lancaster with the then large Possessions thereof and had in Marriage with Isabel Daughter and Heir to the Earl of Gloucester that Earldom together with the Castles of Marleburgh Ludgersel Honours of Wallingford Tickhil and Eye John Earl of Surrey and Sussex had in Yorkshire the great Lordship of Connigsburgh in the Soke whereof were near twenty-eight Towns and Hamlets Westtune in Shropshire in Essex twenty-one Lordships in Suffolk eighteen in Oxfordshire Maple Durham and Gaddington in Hantshire Frehinton in Cambridgeshire seven in Buckinghamshire Brotone and Cauretelle in Huntingtonshire Chevevaltone with three other Lordships in Bedfordshire four and in Norfolk one hundred thirty-nine and the Castle of Rigate in Surrey Yale and Bromfeild with their large Extents in Shropshire and was at the Battle of Lewes on the King's part Ralph de Mortimer had given him by the Conqueror in Berkshire five Mannors in Yorkshire eighteen besides divers Hamlets in Wiltshire ten in Hantshire thirteen in Oxfordshire one in Worcestershire four in Warwickshire one in Lincolnshire seven in Leicestershire one in Shropshire fifty in Herefordshire nineteen besides the Castle of Wigmore And Roger de Mortimer Earl of March a Descendant of the same House and Family was in the Raigns of King Edward the First and Second besides their former large Estates in Lands seized of the Town of Droitwick and Chace of Malverne in com' Wigorn ' the Chase of Cors in com' Glou ' the Castle of Trym in Ireland with its large Territory and Appurtenance and in VVales the Castles of Kentlies Dominion of Melenith and Comott of Duder Castle of Radnor with the Territory of VVarthre and Mannors of Prestmede or Presteigne and Kineton Castles of Ruecklas and Pulith Castles and Lordships of Bledleveny and Bulkedinas Castle and Mannor of Nerberth Comots of Amgeid and Pennewick Castles and Dominions of Montgomery and Bulkedinas Mannor and Hundred of Cherbury Castle of Dolvaren and Territory of Redevaugh Town and Territory of Ewyas Castles of Kery and Rodewin Castle of Dynebegh Castle and Cantred of Buelch Comots of Ros Rowenock Konuegh and Diomam and in Somersetshire the Castle of Brugwater with three Mannors Bayliwick of the Forrests of North Pederton Exmore Noreech Chich Mendip and Warren of Somerton three Mannors in Kent one in com' Buck ' and one in Staffordshire and kept in his House a constant Table in imitation of King Arthurs Round Table for one hundred Knights King Henry the Third after the Battle of Evesham gave unto his Son Edmond to hold to him and the Heirs of his Body the Earldom Honour and Lands of Leicester and Stewardship of England the Earldom Honour and Lands with the Castles Mannors and Lands of Robert de Ferrers Earl of Derby and Nicholas de Segrave the Custody of the Castles of Caermarden and Cardigan and Isie of Lundy the Castle of Sherborne in com' Dors ' the Castle of Kenilworth in com' VVarwick with all the Lands thereunto belonging the Honour Earldom Castle and Town of Lancaster and was Count Palatine thereof with their Appurtenances together with the Castle of Tutbury with its great Appurtenances in the County of Stafford the Honour and Castle of Monmouth the Honour Town and Castle of Leicester with all the Lands and Knights Fees which Symon de Montfort had Whose Son and Heir Thomas Earl of Lancaster having as an addition to the great Estates in Lands remaining unto him after his Father divers
those Writs of Summons to Parliaments to be made Howbeit most certain it is saith Sir William Dugdale That those Writs of Election made in the Name of King Henry the Third to send Knights and Burgesses to the Parliament were by a Force put upon his Great Seal of England as much as upon himself when they had him as a Prisoner of War in their Custody and kept him so as our Chronicles Historians and Annals have Recorded it for an Year and a quarter carrying him about with them to countenance their rebellious Actions for the Battle of Lewis wherein he was made a Prisoner was upon the 14th of May in the 48th and that of Evesham which released him the 4th day of August in the 49th Year of his Raign And there is no Testimony or Record to be found of any other the like Writ of Election made afterwards untill the 22d Year of King Edward the First although there were several Parliaments or Magna Concilia convocated and held in the mean time and if our Ancestors had not been so misled and abused by the Rebels in the Raign of King John and his Son King Henry the Third there are enough yet alive who can sadly remember how a more transcendantly wicked hypocritical Party have since adventured to make out and frame until they had Murthered him counterfeit Writs Commissions and Summons of Parliament in the Name of our Religious King CHARLES the Martyr and make as much as they could His Royal Authority to Fight against His Person And there is no Certainty or pregnant Evidence saith Mr. William Pryn who being a Lawyer and a long and ancient Member of the House of Commons in Parliament did so much adore the Power and Preheminence thereof as adventuring the Loss of his Estate Body and Soul with them therein could find no better a Foundation or Pedigree to bestow upon them than the Captivity and Imprisonment of a distressed unfortunate King but saith That there were not any Knights Citizens Burgesses or House of Commons in the Confessors or Conquerors Raigns or any of our Saxon or Danish Kings nor before the latter end of King Henry the Third's Raign for although Polydore Virgill and others do refer the Original of our Parliaments to the Council holden at Salisbury in the 16th Year of King Henry the First there is not one Syllable in any of our ancient Historians concerning Knights Citizens and Burgesses present in that Councel as saith the Learned Sir Henry Spelman in these words viz. Rex perindè qui totius regni Dominus est Supremus regnumque universum tà m in personis Baronum suorum quà m è subditorum Ligeancia ex jure Coronae suae subjectum habet Concilio assensu Baronum suorum Leges olim imposuit universo regno consentire inferior quisque visus est in persona Domini sui Capitalis prout bodiè per Procuratores Comitatûs vel Burgi quos in Parliamento Knights and Burgesses appellamus Habes morem veteram quem Mutâsse ferunt Henricum Primum Anno regni sui sextodecimo plebe ad concilium Sarisberiense tunc accitâ haec vulgaris opinio quam typis primus sparsit Polydorus Virgilius acceptam subsequentes Chronâ—graphi nos ad authores illius seculi prouocamus And refuting that Opinion by Neubrigensis who lived about that time and relates the purpose of that Great Councel in these words Facto concilio eidem Filiae suae susceptis vel suscipiendis ex eis nepotibus ab Episcopis Comitibus Barombus omnibus qui alicujus videbantur esse momenti and likewise by Florentius Wigorniensis Eadmerus and Huntington further saith Ludunt qui Parliamenta nostra in his quaerunt sine ut sodes dicam collegisse mecentenas reor conciliorum coitiones tenoresque ipsos plurimorum ab ingressu Gulielmi 1 mi ad excessum Henrici 3 i existentium nec in tanta multitudine de plebe uspiam reperisse aliquid ni in his delituer it Seniores sapientes populi which he conceives to be only Aldermanni Sapientes or Barones Magnates regni not the Commons And it hath been well observed by the learned Author of the Notae Adversaria in historiam Mathaei Parisiensis That in the ancient Synods before the subduing of England by William Duke of Normandy conficiebantur chartae donationum publicae de gravaminibus Reipublicae brevitèr inter Regem Magnates Episcopos Abbates consultabatur id enim tunc dierum erat Synodus quod nunc ferè Parliamentum nisi quod non rogabantur leges per plebiscita nec sanciebantur Canones per suffragia minoris Cleri And was as novel and new as it was unexpected no such Writ having ever before been framed or made use of to such or any the like purpose And Mr. Selden likewise saith That the Earls and Barons mentioned or directed by those compelled then Writs of Summons to come to that pretended Parliament were only the Earls of Leicester Gloucester Oxford Derby Norfolk Roger de Sancto Johannis Hugh le Despencer Justiciar ' Angliae Nicholas de Segrave John de Vescy Robert Basset G. de Lucy and Gilbert de Gaunt Of which the Earls of Leicester Gloucester Norfolk Oxford and Derby were notoriously known to have been in open Armes and Hostility against the King The whole Number of the Temporal Lords therein named not amounting unto more than Twenty-Three with a Blank left for the Names of other Earls and Barons which have not been yet inserted or filled up And all the other which were in that constrained Writ of Summons particularly and expresly named were no other than H. de le Spencer Justicar ' Angliae John Fitz-John Nicholas de Segrave John de Vescy Rafe Basset de Drayton Henry de Hastings Geffery de Lucie Robert de Roos Adam de Novo Mercato Walter de Colvill and Robert Basset de Sapcott which together with the then Bishops of London and Worcester Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and Steward of England H. de Boun juvenis Peter de Monteforti S. de Monteforti juvenes Baldwin Wake William le Blond William Marescallus Rafe de Gray William Bardolff Richard de Tany or Tony and Robert de Veteri Ponte made up the Number of the opposite Party to that King in the aforesaid Reference to the King of France And Mr. Selden hath observed That the Preambles of the ancient Parliament-Writs for the Snmmoning of the Baronage sometimes so varied that some eminent occasions of the calling of the Parliament were inserted in the Writs to the Spiritual Barons that were not in those to the Temporal and often times no more than a general and short Narrative of our King's Occasion of having a Parliament with much variation in the Writs of that nature with many differences of slighter Moment expressed and sometimes in all a Clause Against coming attended with Armes and that until the middle of the
of Wards and Liveries with other the Premises And all Tenures of any Lands holden of the King or any others shall be turned into free and Common Socage and be discharged of all Homage Escuage Voiages Royal Wardships and Aide Pour file marier pour faire fitz Chivaler livery ouster le maine all Statutes repealed concerning the same all Tenures hereafter to be created by the King his Heirs or Successors shall be in free and Common Socage Provided that that Act extend not to take away Rents certain Herriots or Suits of Court belong ing to any other Tenures taken away or altered by that Act or other Services incident to common Socage or any Releifes due and payable in cases of free and common Socage or of any Fines for Alienations holden of the King by any particular Customes of Lands and Places other then of Lands holden immediately of the King in Capite Nor extend unto any Tenures in Franck Almoigne or by Copy of Court Roll honorary Services by grand Serjeanty other then what are before dissolved or taken away Provided that this Act nor any thing therein contained shall infringe or hurt any Title of Honour feodal or other by which any person hath or may have right to sit in the Lords House in Parliament as to his or their Title of Honour or Sitting in Parliament and the Priviledges belonging to them as Peers And that that Act extend not to any the Rights and Priviledges of His Majesty in his Tynn Mines in Cornewal In recompence whereof the King shall have the Excise of Ale Beer Perry and Syder Strong and Distilled Waters setled by that or some other Act of Parliament touching the Excise upon the King during his Life and a Moyety only after his death to His Heirs and Successors And are by Sir Henry Spelman said to be non solùm jure positivo Sed Gentium quodammodo Naturae not only by positive but the Laws of Nations and Nature Especially when it was not to arise from any compulsory incertain way or involuntary Contribution or out of any personal or movable Estate cases of Relief only excepted but to fix and go along with the Lands as an easy and beneficial Obligation and Perpetuity upon it and was so incorporate and inherent as it was upon the matter a Co-existence or Being with it Glanvil and Bracton being of Opinion with the Emperour Justiniam that the King must have Armes as well as Laws to govern by and not depend ex aliorum Arbitrio and therefore the Prelates Earles and Commonalty of the Realm did in a Parliament in the 7th Year of the Raign of King Edward the 1st declare it to be necessarily belonging unto him and to none other Judge Hutton in his Argument in the case of the Shipmony in the Raign of King Charles the Martyr and diverse other Learned Judges and Lawyers have declared Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service to be so inseparable from the Crown as not to be aliened or dissolved by any Act or Authority of Parliament Some of whom could not forget that a Design having been presented and offered unto King James when the Scots had by their importunityes much enfeebled the Royal Revenue by some who neither understood our Fundamental Laws or the Constitution of our Government and having considerable Estates in the County of York and Bishoprick of Durham and being Members of the House of Commons in Parliament and mischievous enough in the long Rebellious Parliament a Revenue of Two hundred thousand pound per Annum to dissolve his Courts of Wards and Liveries and release his Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service and the King liked so well of those Hopes of augmenting his overwasted Revenue as he with Promises of great Rewards to the Designers ordered a Table to be purposely kept at White-Hall for them untill they had brought their undertakings to perfection unto which the Reverend Judges being summoned by the King to deliberate and give their Opinions could find neither Law or right Reason for the taking away of those Tenures with their incidents even by an Act of Parliament Insomuch as the Design and Table were laid down and no more thought of until the unhappy Fate and Misery of forsaking and destroying Fundamentals did so drive it on afterwards as it hath done by our abandoning the old ways and the Truths thereof into those very many Misfortunes which it hath brought us into already and will more and more into the Prophet Jeremiah's Lamentations And so greatly resembled that very antient way of the great Councels or Parliaments in France drawn and derived from their Ancestors the Francks and other their Northern Progenitors in and of that Kingdom long before there inhabiting until the miseries brought by the English Conquests and their own Divisions upon that people by those Warrs and their seeking in the interim to govern their Kings and Domineer over them in the midst of their Troubles Necessities and Disabilities to protect them had constrained some of their after Kings as Lewis the 11th one of their Kings to find the way to govern so Arbitrarily as they have since done with a continual so limited Parliament as it signifieth little more than an extraordinary Court of Justice and verify the Edicts of his prerogative Power with a car tel est nostre plaisir Insomuch as those kind of Tenures and beneficial Mutualites might not improbably have been here introduced by the Saxons from one and the same or a like Radix or Original before the Normans Atcheivements and Acquests either here or in France or by what they had learned or practised of the Feudal Laws in the Empire or after the Normans had brought England their long before Compatriots into subjection and in the Reigns of some of their after Kings continued Masters of Normandy Aniou Aquitaine Mayne and Poicteau and of so many other great parts and Provinces of the French Dominions as in process of time they gained a full Possession of the residue and in a short time after lost them all by our own Domestick Ambitions and Discords So as one Egg of the same kind cannot commonly be more like in it's external Form and Likeness to an other then the antient and ever-to-be-approved Method of our and their former great Councels or Parliaments were Wherein may warrantably without any suspicion of an Arbitrary Government be vouched and called the learned Sieur du Fresne a man of vast Reading and Litterature and not only Learned in all the Roman and Northern Antiquities but in our Old English Saxon Laws and the allowed classical and veritable Authors and Writers of our Nation and to whom the Learned Works of our Glanvil Bracton Littleton Fortescue Coke Stamford Spelman and Selden were no Strangers when in his Glossary or Comment upon the word Pares he represents unto us the Figure or lively Picture of our own ancient Customes and Usages in our great Councels
Writs or in that which Mr. Elsing hath left unto the World In formâ praedictâ subscribitur Abbatibus Prioribus subscriptis c. without any Christian Names or Additions formerly used Sub data apud Woodstock 14. die Decembris In formâ praedictâ mandatum est Comitibus aliis Subscriptis dat' apud Woodstock viz. Comiti Leicester Comiti Glou ' Comiti Norff ' Marescal ' Angliae Comiti Oxon ' Comiti Derby Rogero de sancto Johannis Hugo de Spencer Justiciar ' Angliae Nich ' de Segrave Johanni de Vescy Robert Basset G de Lucie Gilbert de Gaunt of which the Earls of Leicester Gloucester Norfolk Oxford and Derby were notoriously known to be in open Armes and Hostility against the King the whole number of the Temporal Lords therein named not amounting unto more than Twenty-Three with a Blanck left for the names of other Earls and Barons which have not been yet inserted or filled up And all the other which were in that constrained Writ of Summons particularly and expressly named were no other than H de le Spencer Justiciar ' Angliae John Fitz John Nicholaus de Segrave John de Vescy Rafe Basset de Drayton Henry de Hastings Geffery de Lucy Robert de Roos Adam de novo Mercato Walter de Câ—lvill and Robert Basset de Sapcott those which together with the then Bishops of London and Worcester Symon de Montfort Earl of Leicester and Steward of England H. de Boun Juvenis Peter de Monte forti S. de Monte forti Juvenes Baldwin Wake William le Blond William Marescallus Rafe de Gray Will ' Bardoff ' Richard de Tany or Tony Robert de â—â—teri Ponte made up the Number of the opposite Party to the King in the aforesaid Reference to the King of France And Mr. Selden hath observed That the Preambles sometimes so varied that some eminent Occasions of the calling of the Parliament were inserted in the Writs to the Spiritual Barons that were not in those to the Temporal and oftentimes no more than a general and a short Narrative of the Resolution of having a Parliament with much variation in the Writs of that nature with many Differences of slighter Moment sometimes against making of Proxies and at other times a Licence to make them and sometimes in all a Clause against coming attended with Armes and saith That until the middle of the Raign of King Richard the Second when Dukes Earles and Barons were created by Letters Patents of our Kings that the names of the Barons to be Summoned to Parliament were Written from the King's Mouth at his Direction and Command and in that agreeth with Mr. Eâ—sing who saith it was ad libitum Regis for surely none but the King can Summon a Parliament and that is the Reason that Henry the Fourth having taken King Richard the Second his Leige Lord Prisoner the Twentieth of August in the 21st Year of his Raign did cause the Writ of Summons for the Parliament wherein he obtained the Crown to bear Date the Nineteenth day of the same Month and the Warrant to be per ipsum Regem Concilium and himself to be Summoned by the name of Henry Duke of Lancaster And the Warrants have been divers sometimes per breve de privato sigillo but commonly per ipsum Regem or per ipsum Regem Concilium SECT XV. That the Majores Barones or better sort of the Tenants in Capite Justly and Legally by some of our Ancient Kings and Princes but not by any positive Law that of the enforced Charter from King John at Running Mede being not accounted to be such a Law were distinguished and separated from the Minores or lesser sort of the Tenants in Capite FOR it could be no design in the Framers or Contrivers of his Charter to make any distinction betwixt the Majores or Minores Barones of the Kingdom or to leave to Posterity a definition of either of them or a Rule for after Ages for that would have unpolitickly very much disturbed and distracted that rebellious Assembly at Running Mede or could be likely to obtain any more thereby as to their meeting in our Kings great Councels the word Parliament being not then in use amongst us than to have a Common Councel shortly called to settle the manner of Assessment of Aides upon Knights Fees and to that only end to Summon the Tenants in Capite which were not all of that sort being not the Majores or Magnates then and yet understood by our Nation to be the Barons long before and ever since at the good Will and Pleasure of our Kings usually Called and Summoned by them to their Great Councels upon urgent Occasions the Majores Barones being to be there present to advise thereupon Which for after Assemblies of that nature constantly to be holden would have been very Numerous Troublesom Chargeable and Dangerous if the Tenants in Capite had been Threescore Thousand as Ordericus Vitalis hath Recorded them or but Thirty Two Thousand as our great Selden hath more probably estimated them And although the Learned Sir Henry Spelman was enclined to believe that the distinction betwixt the greater and lesser Baronage had its Foundation in that Charter and the Learned Cambden from a very good Authority as he thought asserted That King Henry the Third Post Magnas perturbationes enormes vexationes inter ipsum Symonem de Monte forti ex tanta multitudine quae seditiofa turbulenta fuit Optimates quosque rescripto ad Comitia evocaverit yet Mr. Selden saith That in all that he hath met with since the making of that Charter he found no mention of any Interest which those other Tenants in Chief eo nomine had in our Kings Great Councels or Parliaments who doubtless were the Persons that were excluded from it and was perswaded to give little Credit unto the Author cited by Mr. Cambden but rather to conclude That not long after that grand Charter of King John like enough in that time some Law was made that induced the utter Exclusion of all Tenants in Chief from Parliaments besides the Ancient and Great Barons and Baronies which Mathew Paris saith King Henry the Third reckoned to be Two Hundred and Fifty and such other as the King should in like sort Summon and that there were Barons by Writ as well as Barons by Tenure cites a Testimony out of Mathew Paris who speaking of King Henry the Third saith That in the Twenty Nineth Year of his Raign Rex edicto publicè proposito de submonitione generaliter factâ fecit certificari per totam Angliam ut quilibet Baro tenens ex Rege in Capite haberet prompta parata Regali praecepto omnia servitia Militaria quae ei debentur tam Episcopi Abbates quà m Laici Barones Barons holding in Capite as if some held not so which must be such as were Barons by Writ only
the provisions Derogatory to Kingly Government made at Oxford in the Raign of King Henry the third and constrained of King Edward the second And might have happened into a question unanswerable what mischief our Magna Charta or Charta de Foresta had done unto our Nation or upon what other cause or reason those excellent Laws were granted by our King Henry the 3d and so dearly beloved as they thought themselves utterly undone if they had not with the 15th part of their Moveables obtained them eisdem modo forma without any substraction or addition the same which have been continued confirmed by their several Kings and Princes above thirty times and was such a caution in one of their Parliaments as the Bishops in their several Diocesses were impowered to Anathematize all the Infringers thereof and King Henry the 3d in that direful Procession was constrained to walk through Westminster-Hall the Abby-Church of Westminster with all the Bishops Earls Barons and Nobility of England and Wales holding burning Tapers in their hands the King only refusing after the reading of the aforesaid Magna Charta's freely granted by that King and likewise that enforced upon King John his Father and throwing down their Tapers wishing that the Souls of the Infringers thereof might so burn and fry in Hells everlasting fire being such a cursed obligation as was never enforced upon any King or Prince by their people in any Nation of the World and might if Right had been done unto that distressed King have been deeply censured in foro Animae gratitudinis And if those Magna Charta's have been such a darling of the people as they seemed to value it as their Blood and Estates how could they fall so much out of their love as they would do all that they could to be rid of them as if they had been Circe's Swine tearing them in peices when they are for the most part a compleat System or figure of our Antient Monarch Feudal Laws and every Chapter therein loudly proclaim them to be no otherwise And what have we got in Recompence of the overturning of our beneficial and ever to be praised Feudal Laws but the forfeitures of all our Lands and Estates if God and the King should be extream and mark what is done amiss Or can any man of Learning Reason or Understanding or any but one that is or hath been mad without Lucid Intervals believe that St. Edward the Confessors Laws have not deduced their Original for the most part if not all from the Feudal Laws when by the solemnest and greatest Jury of the World impannelled by King William the Conqueror they appeared sine dolo malo ingenio to be no other than our Feudal Laws by which the Soveraignty did appear to be in the King not the People by which our Kingdom had been Governed and did bear as near a resemblance thereunto as one Hen Egg doth or can unto another in shape or figure And what strange kind of Imaginary Soveraignty radically or otherwise at any time was believed to reside in the people when the Pope and his Legate Pandulphus made our affrighted King John to do homage by laying down his Crown and Scepter at the feet of his Legate multum dolente Archiepiscopo Cantuariensi saith Matthew Paris nor was the Tribute paid or thought fit to be paid thereupon for the Kingdoms of England and Ireland though demanded of King Henry the third his Son or Edward the first his Grandson but by all our Kings and Princes neglected it being an allowed Maxime in our Law that Angliae Rex nunquam moritur which could not be if all the People had been understood to have been Soveraigns Or can any man believe that our English Ancestors did not think St. Edward the Confessors said Laws to be tantum sacrae when they hid them under his Shrine in the Church of Westminster-Abby and afterwards precibus fletibus obtained of him to be Governed by them Which William the Conqueror would not have granted until he had by the aforesaid grand Jury examined and compared them per sapientes viros in Lege eruditos and the People of England and Wales have ever since being about 619 years never believed their Lives Estates and Posterities to be in any kind of safety if the Conqueror and all the succeeding Kings and Princes did not at their several Coronations take their Oaths to observe most especially St. Edward the Confessors Laws which they never failed to do and hath been so taken both by his late Majesty and this our present King And it would be a strange forgetfulness of Duty and our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy upon which and no other our Feudal Laws are built to forget them and the care of our Souls which the Britaignes in Armorica in France could never do since the dread and fear of the cruel Invasion of the Scots and Picts making them forsake their Native Countrey of England and retire where they now are where they yet retain their Antient Feudal Customs used in England which is that Ligeance est ordinaire en tous fiefs la quelle de sa nature emporta obeyssance du vassal foy homage autre les droits devoirs contenus en l'infeodation anciens advouz tenures L'homage lige ce fera en ceste forme scavoir que le vassal l' Espee Esperons ostez teste nue ayant les mains entre celles de son Seigneur se enclynant dira telles paroles mon Seigneur Je deviens vostre home Lige pour telles choses lesquelles Je releve tien de vous ligement en tiel vostre fief Seigneurie lesquelles choses me sont advenues par tels moyens a cause de quoi Je vous doy la foy homage lige vous promittes par ma foy serment vous estre Loyal feable porter l' honneur obeysance envers vous me gouverner aynsi que noble homage de foy lige doit faire envers son Seigneur Le Seigneur respondra come sensuit vous devenus mon home pour rayson de tales choses par vous dites de choses en tel me promittant que vous me serra feal obeysant home vassal si que vostre fief le requier le Subject respondra Je le promets ainsi lors le Seigneur dira Je vous y recen sauf mon droit de l' autrui Insomuch as when all the aforesaid concurrences of the Laws of God and Man Records and Annals Truth and rectified Reason shall be united and laid together he must be an ill Subject and a very great INfidel that cannot with great assurance believe that the Blessed Martyr King Charles the first and his late Royal Majesty and our now Gracious Soveraign have been much wronged in their Regal Rights Revenue and Authority and had as their Blessed Father been made likewise Martyrs if
180. Dugdale's Baronage tit Mortimer 141 in margine c Ro. claus 22. E. 1. m. 4. in dorso d Pryns Animadversions upon Sir Edward Cokes 4 part of the Institutes p 2. and in his Register or Survery of Parliamentary writs 304. e Spelmaus Glossar ' tit Parliament f Neubrigensis g Mat. Paris 41. H. 3. p 1283. Selden tit honor 716 and 719. h Dors. Ro. Claus. 2. E. 1. Dors. claus 50 E. 3. part 2. m. 6. i Elsings ancient and present Manner of holding Parliaments ca. 2. p. 22. 23 and 24. k Hist. Eadmeri l Spelmani concilia Ecclefiastic 347. m Placita Coron 21. E. 1. Ro. 27. Kanic Placita Coron 13. E. 1. Ro. 80. n Dugdale ' s Baronage 1 Tem. 27. o Johannes Spelman filius Henrici Spelmani eraditissimus in vita Alfredi Regis lib. 2. 115. 116. Mat. Paris 1453. p Selden tit Honor 3 part ca. 5. 632. Sect. 6. Hist Eadmeri q Bracton delegibus con suetudinibus Angliae Elsings ancient and present manner of holding Par liaments in England 22â— r 1. H. Ro. Parl. m. 79. s Seldens Tables of Honor. t Spelmans Glossar in verbo Baro. u Seldens tit ' honour 639. 2 part ca. 5. Sect. 28. w LL Longobard l. 3. tit 8. l. 4. Conrad imper in Knilenbrogio x Spelman in verbo Pares Foedus Aelfredi cum Guthrun LL Henrici 1. ca. 31. 33. 57. y Scholia Jacobi Spiegel in lib. 2. Ligurini Guntheri 301. 302 Limâ—oeus de jure publici imperii Romano Germanici 1 Tom. ca. 9. Sect. 49. 51. 52. Spelman glossar ' in verbis Baro Pares Parliament a Harmanus Conringius de imper ' German ' 14. 15. Elsingss ancient and p 〈…〉 lent manner of holding Parliaments in England 16 17. al 〈…〉 b Selden tit Honour 795. part 2. ca. 5. Sect. 8. c Mat. Paris 200. d Selden tit Honor. 795. part 2. ca. 5. Sect. 20. e Fabian Philips tenenda non tollenda f L'Oyseau des Off 〈…〉 〈◊〉 aux ca. 2. 231. 232. g Martinus Magerus a Schomberg de armata militia 15. 316. 8â—4 idem ibidem 13. 268. 999. idem ibidem 221. 222. 596 idem ibidem 13. 245. 598. LL. Edward 〈◊〉 Heretochiâ—â— â—â—7 h Spelmane gloffar 216. tit Feodum sive feudum Gerardus Niger Obertus de Oâ—â—o de Feudis Herbert van Beaumont de origine feudi Hollandioe Frisiaeque Occidentalis 2. 3. 4 Paurmester de jurisdictione imperii Rom ' 40. 41 42 43 44 45. Craig de feudis Cuiacius lib. 8. Coldendorp Vulteius Wesenbachius 17. E. 2. i Spelmans glossar 217. Joannes Joachimus a Rusdorff Resentâ—al in Synops ' Feud in prefat ' ad lett Feltman de feudis in Epist. Feltman de Feudis Sect 2. Ca ' and 9. Feltman in teat de feudis 127. 25. 26. Feltman Tract de feudis p. 14 Capit. 8. 9. Idem pag 125 ca. 16. Ibm. p. 133. ca. 6. p 134. ca. 7. Littletons Tenures and Coke in his Comment thereupon ca. 1. tit Homage Sect. 85. Littletons Tenures tit ' Escuage Cokes 1 part Institutes tit Fee simple Ca. 11. Sect. 1. S. H. 7. 11 19. E. 3. 35 24. E. 3. 65 66 44. E. 3. 5. 48. E. 3. 2. Spelmans glosar Le grand Custum de Normandie in additione Du Fresne gloffar Tom. 1. p. 147. in verbo Alodiaiii Jo. Koppen in Rangensdorff in decisionibus question Illustrium in Germania Vincent and York Catalogue of Nobility tit Norfolk Schwedâ—râ—s part special ' ca. 5. de Electoribus Germ ' Imperii Forsterus de Advocatis Livy Plutarichs lives 12. Car. 2. k Spelman's Glossar ' l Fabian Philips tenenda non tollenda Justinian's Institutes 7. E. 1. m Fresne in verbo Pares LL. Alâ—man tit 9â— capitl car ' m. lib. 3. ca. 71. 72. Apud Marenlsum lib. 1. formul 32. n Paur Meister de jurisdict Imperij Rom. 45. tit de legibus Conrad Forcat in com de seudis o Du Fresne Tom. 3. 13â— p Du Fresne Gloffar tom 1. 492. 49â— q Du Fresne Idem 138. in Tom. 3. r Charta Regis Edwardi Confestoris Ecclesiae S. Petri Wellmon 25 Râ—gni sui Anno Domini 1066. E. 1. H. 9. ca. 10. s Ro. Parl. 2â— t Elsiag's Ancient and Modern manner of holding Parliaments ca. 1. p. 46. and 47. u Elsing ca. 2. 51. w Sigonius de antiquo jâ—re Civium Rom. lib. 2. ca. 2. x Concilia Spelman 32. 34. y Spelmaâ—l concilia 60 z Spelmanni concilia 119. Selden tit honour 632. Bede Hist Eccles lib. 2. ca ' 5. a Pryns 1st part of an historical collection of the antient Parliaments of Eng land 6. Spelmanni concilia 441. b Spelâ—an Concil c Pryns Part of historical collections of the antient Parliaments of England LL Saxonis d Pryns historical collections of the Antient Parliaments of England Secunda Charâ—â— E. Confessor S. Petri Westmonaster in Concil collect per H. Spelman e Sir Robert Filmers Freeholders grand Enquest Seldeni ad Eadmerum notae spicilegium 167 LL Gulielmi Conquest in Hist. Ecclesiastgentis Anglorum ex Beda LL Saxonis per Abrahamum VVhelocum f Seldeni ad Eadmerum notae spicilegium 198 199. h Mat. Paris 16. i Selden tit honor k Mat. Paris 60. 64 68. l Mat. Paris 51. 5. LLH 1. ca. 2. m Ordericus vitalis lib. 13. 930. n Mat. Paris 100. o Mat. Paris p Hovedeni Anpales parte posteriore 566 and 567. q Prrte 1st part of a brief Register of Parliamentary writs r Mat. Paris 98. 154. 158. 166. s Hoveden 376. 378. 413. t Mat. Paris 154. Mat. Paris 156. u Mat. Paris 158. w Idem 172 173. x Hoveden 417. y Hoveden 417. z Mat. Paris 173. a Mat. Paris 199. 200 204. 206. b Ro. claus 6. Johanni m. 2. 〈◊〉 c Ro. claus 6 Johannis m. 3 in dors d Mat. Paris 298 299. e Mat. Paris 304. Idem ibidem 310. 316. g Mat. Paris 316. h Mat. Pariâ— 316. and 318. i Mat. Paris 324. Mat. Paris 328. 336. 〈◊〉 Mat. Paris 421. Mat. Paris 336. l Mat. Paris 333. 429. 435. Idem 363. m Idem 372. n Mat. Paris Idem 421. 422 Mat. Paris 421. 422. 468. p Mat. Paris â—79 Mat. Paris 639. r Mat. Paris 681. s Idem 89â— Idem 325. P. 324. 32â— 693. Mat. Paris 709. 720. 7â—7 730. Mat Paris 709. Idem 749. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈…〉 Idem â—â—5 326 t Mat. Paris 881. u Ibedem 887. Mat. Paris 911. 913. 939. 946. 963. 964. 965. 968. Mat. Paris 971. u Mat Paris 974. w Mat. Paris 978. 981. 〈◊〉 x Mat. Paris 983. 984 985 986 987. Mat. Paris in vita Henrici 3. y Continua 〈…〉 Mat. Paris 980. 99â— 991 992 〈◊〉 z Mat. Paris a Mat. Paris b Mat. Paris c Mat. Paris 1002. Glossat ' Du Fresne in verbo seu tit Baro 485. 486. Isidor ' de orig ' verborum Angustini Serm. 48 ad fratres in eremo