I have mentioned seeing every thing beyond that would both be a detracting from the Glory of her Husband and to the damage and prejudice of the Community That which remains then to be done is to declare the Prince of Orange King and to settle upon him the Soveraignty and Regal Power allowing in the mean time unto the Princess the priviledge of being named with him in all Leases Patents and Grants This we owe him in point of Gratitude nor is his delivering the Nation to be otherwise requited than by calling him to Rule and Govern it His vindicating our Liberties and Laws deserves his being trusted with the Execution of the one and with the Defence of both And by how much he forbears to challenge it by so much is his Merit unto it the greater What he avoides claiming out of Temperance we ought to have the Generosity to give Nor is there any one so likely to sway the Scepter with Moderation when possessed of it as he who declined to snatch it when it lay within his reach His unchangeable adherence to what he promised in his Declaration as a Prince shews with what Sacredness he will observe his Oath as a King. Nor will he ever invade our Priviledges who hath exposed himself to so many hazards for restoring of them We owe it unto him also in point of Justice At the same time that it is a Gift and Benevolence it is a debt due unto his Vertue He hath all the Wisdom Moderation and Equity requisite in a King and all the Courage and Conduct needful in a General War and Peace are equally his Province and he stands imbu'd with all qualities both for swaying the Scepter and weilding the Sword. His very Passions plead for him and in nothing can we be kinder to our selves than in putting him into a condition of gratifying them The Ambition that Acts him of being the Head of the Protestant Interest in Europe tendeth no less to our benefit and safety than it doth to his honour and glory And the Recentment he retains of Injuries done him by the French King will lead him not only to avenge himself but this Kingdom also upon that common Enemy And to add one thing more the Crown ought to be bestowed upon Him on the score of Wisdom and Interest Nothing save the doing thus will cure the Evils we have felt and obviate those we fear or state us in the possession of all the good we need and desire For first we shall hereby restore the Body of the people of England to their ancient Right and reestablish the Government upon its Primitive and Original Foundation The pretence of a Divine Right of Succession which had almost destroyed us of late and which after two or three removes may again hazard our being Ruined will by this means stand for ever branded and condemned Nor will there be any cause of apprehending a storm hereafter towards the Kingdom from Spain or Savoy when once the Nation hath in its whole Political Body exercised the power belonging unto it of altering and ordering the Succession as it is found convenient for its own safety 2. We shall hereby shut and bolt the dore against the return and re-entry of the abdicated and withdrawn King. Neither himself nor Parizans will either hope or venture to break open a gate where so vigilant magnanimous wise and Martial a person stands Guardian as his Highness the Prince of Orange is by all men acknowledged to be 3. We shall hereby foreclose all Claim unto the Crown arising by the plea and pretence of an immediate Successor and a next Heir For by the exclusion of all Right to the Soveraignty in way of Descent there is no room left for any to challenge a Title to the Government upon that bottom and foundation And though it would be easie to demonstrate the suppositiousness of the pretended Prince of Wales and to lay open the unnatural and horrid Imposture of obtruding him upon the Nation as a Legitimate Son yet we shall by the Method proposed both deliver our selves from the necessity of that Inquiry and prevent the infamy with which the King must be eternally covered upon that detection 4. We shall by this one thing of bestowing the Soveraign Authority upon the Prince of Orange more effectually secure our retrieved Liberties and Priviledges than by all the Laws with which we Fence and Hedge them He that scornfully rejected the offer of Soveraignty over Holland when made unto him by the French King as the price of Betraying and Enslaving his Country can never become guilty of invading the Rights and Priviledges of England when trusted with their preservation and defence Nor will he ever abuse that power to the Nations prejudice which he receives and holds by its kindness and bounty His using to say that he cannot have so unworthy a Conception of God nor so base thoughts of Mankind as to believe that one person should ever be designed by the Supream and Almighty King to trample upon a Society and rule over it by way of oppression doth not only declare his knowledge of the Nature End and Principles of Government but how it is repugnant to his Nature and inconsistent with his avowed Judgment to wrong and injure a Society either by fraud or violence 5. We shall by this means become united among our selves and great and prosperous at home For as he can have no Interest either distinct or divided from that of the whole people so he can fall under no temptation either of quarrelling with the Community or of wheedling using and improving one party to the inconvenience and prejudice of another And though those of the National Communion may be fully assured of their being maintained and protetected in every thing which the Laws shall give them a Right and Title unto yet no man needs to fear that he whose glorious aim is to be the Head of the whole Protestant Interest will ever become so attached to one party as to become an Instrument and Tool of harassing and persecuting all others 6. We shall hereby become strong both in power and Allies abroad For besides the addition of the Force and opulency that will accrue unto the Kingdom during his Life and Reign by the Hereditary Principalities Dominions States and Territories that appertain unto him all the Princes and States of Europe with whom it is our Interest to be Confederated will be ambitious of becoming Leagued and Allied with us His greatness and power whensoever he is King of England will make them covet and desire it and his inviolate Sincerity in every thing he promiseth will make them trust unto and rely upon it He that in the station of Statholder of Holland could make that figure in the world as he hath done and be able to bring so many Princes of different Religions and Interests into an Union against the common Enemy of Europe what will he not be in a capacity to effect
the concurrence of the Two Houses of Parliament Dispose Settle and Entail the Crown as shall be thought most needful and convenient For this see Rastal's second Vol. 13 Eliz cap. 1. where the words of the Statute are as follows Be it Enacted that if any person shall in any wise hold and affirm or maintain that our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth the Queens Majesty that now is with and by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient Force and Validity to Limit and Bind the Crown of this Realm and the Descent Limitation Inheritance and Government thereof or that this present Statute or any other Statute to be made by the Authority of the Parliament of England with the Royal Assent is not or shall not or ought not to be for ever of good and sufficient force and validity to Bind Limit Restrain and Govern all persons their Rights and Titles that in any wise may or might claim any interest or possibility in or to the Crown of England in Possession Remainder Inheritance Succession or otherwise howsoever that every such person so Holding Affirming or Maintaining during the Life of the Queens Majesty shall be judged a high Traytor and suffer and forfeit as in cases of High-Treason is accustomed And that every person so holding affirming or maintaining after the decease of our said Soveraign Lady shall forfeit all his Goods and Chattels Nor was the Power and Authority of Parliament for conveying and disposing of the Crown ever questioned or gainsaid till a few Mercinary People about ten years ago endeavoured to obtrude upon us a pretended Divine and unalterable Right to the Sucâ—ession which was the more irrational strange and to be wondered at seeing all the Race of the Stewarts after Robert the first had no other Title to the Crown of Scotland but what they derived from an Act of Parliament in prejudice and preclusion of these of the Ligitimate and right Line For the said Robert having had three Sons and one Daughter by a Concubine named Elizabeth More whom he afterwards married to one Gifford himself at the same time taking into Marriage Eufemia the Daughter of the Earl of Ross by whom he had Issue Walter and David Earls of Athol and Strathern and Eufemia that was afterwards married to James Douglass Son to the Earl of Douglass The forementioned Robert did not only upon the Death of his Wife Eufemia and of Gifford the Husband of Elizabeth More take into Wedlock his former Concubine Elizabeth More but obtained by an Act of Parliament that the Children whom he had begotten upon her in Concubinate should be Entitled unto the Crown and that his Lawful and Legitimate Children by his Wife Eufemia should be precluded and debarred And it was heretofore the more surprising unto me to find the Pensionaries and Advocates of the late Duke of York plead for a Divine and unchangeable Right of Succession seeing all the claim that the Scots Race had to the Throne of England through their being descended from the eldest Daughter of Henry the Seventh was from and by an Act of Parliament which vested the said Henry in the Crown of this Realm For tho' the fore-mentioned Henry by reason of his Marriage to Elizabeth Daughter to Edward the Fourth of the House of York had a Legal Title to the Crown of England by the Common Law yet he was so far from insisting upon and allowing it that he chose to hold and possess the Crown in the force and vertue of an Act of Parliament For as his Title by the House of Lancaster was both originally unlawful and had particular flaws and defects in it so all the claim he could pretend unto that way was in the Right of his Mother who as she outlived his advancement to the Throne several years and so she was never admitted to the Royal Authority nor suffered to sway the Scepter But that which is more peculiarly my Province at present is to enquire what Power and Right the Peers and Commons of England have in and over the Crown for the Conveying Disposing and setling of it in case of a Devolution through the Thrones becoming by one means or another empty and vacant And as to this we stand provided with many and signal Presidents of the Crowns having been Conferred and Bestowed as the General Councils and Parliaments of the Kingdom judged most conduceable to the publick Safety and Benefit but still keeping within the Sphear and Circle of the Royal Family and Line The Saxon times afford several Instances and Examples in proof and confirmation hereof if it were either needful to recount them or if the brevity to which I am bound up and obliged would allow me to represent them in their full and due light and to adorn them with the circumstances that do belong unto and enforce them But all the Presidents I shall produce from thence shall be those of Alfred and Edward the Confessor of which the latter was last and the other the first Universal Saxon Monarch Horn assureth us in his Mirrour that the People of England after great Wars Tribulations and Troubles suffered for a long time by reason of their multiplicity of Kings did at last Elect and Choose one King to Reign over them whom they made to Swear that he should not only Govern them by Law but that he should be obedient to suffer Right as well as others of his people should be Accordingly Alfred acknowledgeth in his Will subjoyned unto his Life by Menevensis that he owed his Crown to the Bounty of his Princes and of the Elders of his People Principes cum Senioribus populi misericorditer ac benignè dederunt And for Edward the Confessor he could have no Right to the Crown save by the Grant and Gift of the People seeing the Claim by Descent and Common Law was in his Nephew Edward the Son of Edmond Ironside Accordingly all our Historians lodge the Confessors whole Title to the Soveaignty in his being Electus in Regem ab omni populo The power which the people of England had in the Disposal of the Crown during the time of Saxons is confirmed unto us by that Noble Record which Sir Henry Spelman hath cited Concil Vol. 1. pag. 291. For we do there find how that in a Parliament held at Calcuth An. 787. it was Ordained and Enacted in illo conventu pananglico ad quem convenerunt omnes Principes tam Ecclesiastici quam seculares unà cum populo Terrae That Kings should be Elected by the Parliament ut Eligantur à Sacerdotibus Senioribus populi and that being chosen they should have Prudent Councellers Fearing God Confiliarios prudentes Deum timentes And this Right over the Crown and about the disposal of it which our Ancestors challenged and exercised all the time of the Saxons they have maintained and exerted with no less courage and vigour in every Age since the coming in of
if he were once vested with the Royal and Soveraign Power of Great Britain and of the Dominions annexed and belonging thereunto And as he will be an infallible mean both of extinguishing all Enmity between us and these Provinces that emulate and rival us in Trade and of bringing us and them into a happy and indissoluble Confederacy so we may easily foresee the Advantages that will unavoidably attend upon a Conjunction of their and our Marine strength 7 ly We shall hereby become formidable to our forreign Enemies France will no longer be our dread but our scorn and contempt and we shall there erect the Trophies of our Liberty as well as of our Victory whence the Advice as well as Pattern came of Enslaving us With this Prince at the head of our Government and Armies in the quality of King of England we shall not only break the Chains with which that false and tyrannous Monarch would fetter Europe but avenge both our own quarrels and those of all Christendom upon that haughty and usurping Prince and reduce him within the limits from whence our late Kings help'd to raise him contrary to all the Rules of Policy as well as of Justice 8 ly We shall by this means revive the hopes and lay a foundation for the Redemption and Restauration of persecuted and exiled Protestants As 't was in order to the Preservation of the Reformed Religion in Britain that he undertook this late Expedition wherein God hath honoured him with so great success so there are no dangers which he will not chearfully submit unto and undergo for the vindicating Religion into Freedom elsewhere and for the setling Protestants in the quiet possession of those religious and civil Liberties of which they have been perjuriously and barbarously dispossessed The eyes of the poor exiled French are upon this approaching Convention and stand prepared to date their Deliverance and Redemption from the moment in which that Assembly shall tranfer and devolve the Soveraign and Royal Power of England upon his Highness the Prince of Orange who as he â—â—th been already their chief Patron Benefactor Refuge and Sanctuaâ—y so they look upon him as the only Person under God destined by Heaven to be their Saviour and from whose Compassion Courage and Zeal they may expect the Vindication of their Wrongs and their Restoration to the free Exercise of their Religion without let or molestation under their own Figg-trees and Vines The only Objection that can be advanced against what hath been here humbly proposed and offered is That the setling of the Crown and of the Soveraign Power upon the Prince of Orange would be to the prejudice of the Princess Ann in case her Royal Highness the Princess Mary should die before her Husband To which I briefly answer these six things 1. That where there is no Claim by Descent as in our present Case there can be no Injury done to any For there can be no Wrong in with-holding what a person hath no Right to challenge 2. 'T is too probable and that to our great Grief that his Highness the Prince will be the shortest lived of the three His indefatigable Cares as well as the Weakness of his natural Constitution give us too just and doleful fears of it Now should that come to pass which I pray God to prevent the Princess Ann will receive no Injury seeing all her pretence is posterior to that of the Princess Mary 3. 'T is not impossible but that the Prince and Princess of Orange may have Children and then all will confess that the Princess Ann can receive no wrong should she and Prince of Orange out-live the Princess Mary seeing if the Crown were to go in the direct order and in the way of lineal Descent it devolveth upon the Children of the Princess Mary after her death and not upon the Princess Ann. 4. There is no great likelihood that the Princess Ann should out-live her Royal Highness the Princess of Orange and then by setling the Crown as hath been humbly proposed no damage will actually accrue unto her 5. There is a Benefit and not a Prejudice arising to the Princess Ann by the Method that hath been here offered and chalk'd out for hereby all Claim of the present pretended Prince of Wales is debarred and shut out which I think does more in point of Benefit arising to the Princess Ann than countervail all the Damage she is capable of receiving by the putting the Prince of Orange first in the Act of Setlement and Entail 6. There is nothing here desired or advised in favour and behalf of the Prince of Orange but what we should be willing to have granted to Prince George in his turn Nor do I doubt but that the Princess Ann is so good a Womaâ— and so excellent a Wife that she will be desirous to purchase so great an Honour and so real a Benefit to the Prince her Husband at the cost of a small and little more than imaginary Damage to herself FINIS