will the Constitution allow they should by which the King may either be barred of the Allegiance Fealty and Obedience of his Subjects or be deprived and divested of the Counterpart of it inseparaby appendent unto and resident in himself namely of Trust and Power to rule and defend his People And should either a Parliament be so passionate and encroaching as to present and demand these Things in Bills or a King so weak or indiscreet as to raise them unto the Title of Laws by giving the Royal Assent to them yet they never would be good and legal Acts nor have the force and virtue of Laws though they carried the Name but they would ipso facto be void in themselves as being directly repugnant unto and perfectly subversive of the Constitution So that how large extensive and unlimitted soever the Power of a King and Parliament acting in conjunction may be yet there are some Essentials and Fundamentals of the English Government whereof a few relate to Privileges incident to the People of England as they are a free Nation and divers are intrinsical to the Royal Authority and inseparable from the Person and Dignity of the King that the very Constitution makes them Sacredly unchangeable and sets them out of the reach of King and Parliament to meddle with And should they ever attempt it they would thereby immediately destroy themselves and become divested of all the Power and Authority they have or claim because deriving all their Jurisdictions from the Constitution and having no other Title to them but what that gives whensoever that is overturned and subverted all other Powers sink and fall with it Nor is there any Thing more common in our Books than that notwithstanding the Almightiness of Parliaments yet there are some Things that cannot be taken away by them As no Attainder by Parliament lies against a King rightfully gotten into the Possession of the Crown but he stands ipso facto Guiltless and Innocent in the esteem and account of the Law Nor is it in the Power of a Parliament to take away or dispose of the Right of a Kingdom as the Case has it 1 Hen. 7. Neither can a Parliament barr a King of the Right of his Regality as that no Lands shall hold of him and therefore when there was an endeavour carrying on in the beginning of the Reign of King James the First to have taken away all Tenures by Act of Parliament it was resolved by all the Judges That such a Stature had it been enacted would have been a void Statute This might be enlarged in many other Instances but these are enough to illustrate and confirm what I have mentioned only before I dismiss this Head give me leave to make those Reflexions upon the two Revolutional Parliaments and their pretended Parliamentary Proceedings as will serve to set it in a Meridian Light That they have not only exceeded the Bounds prescribed in and by the Nature Frame and Quality of the Constitution but they have altered changed subverted and overthrown the very Constitution itself and thereby destroyed the Ancient Legal Government of England and have acted Traiterously towards their Country as well as Treasonably and Rebelliously against the King And to begin with some Instances in matter of Fact wherein they have departed from and have acted in opposition unto all those main Essentials of the Constitution which relate to the Community whose Trustees they were originally intended to be for the preserving the Constitution entire and inviolated to them and to their Posterity For Parliaments are so far from being by their primitive Institution appointed to be the Representatives of the People to destroy that which was and rightfully still is the English Government that the great end of their Ordination and of their being successively chosen trusted and empowered by the People is that they may assert maintain and uphold it Nor can Five or Six hundred Men though they were both elected by Six hundred thousand which I am sure is a far greater Number than all the allowed Electors of Members to Parliaments amounts unto and though they should receive Credentials and Authorities from those Electors to alter the Government stand empowered by those means to do it but they should and ought previously to the attempting of it to have either an antecedent Signification of the Will and Pleasure of the many Millions of the Community and the Nation besides those or to receive a Substitution by and from them by which they are made their Representatives and Plenepotentiaries to act for them in that matter as they in their Wisdom shall find to be most for the Safety Good and Interest of the whole Society or of the universal Body of the People But instead of this neither was the Community in the least consulted with either as to the knowing their Mind and Sense in that Affair or as to the obtaining from them a Deputation to act and do in their Names and Room whatsoever they in the Place and Quality of Deputies should judge to be necessary and most useful Nor yet came these Parliaments together authorised and empowered for any such matter by those few upon whom the Right of electing Members of Parliament is devolved for the transacting Affairs in subordination unto consistency with and subserviency to the maintenance of the Constitution Neither indeed could these Electors conveigh any such Right Authority or Power unto them seeing all that they stood in a Capacity to chuse them for was that they might be their Representatives for the preserving of the Constitution and for the upholding of the Government on the Basis and Foundation upon which it was originally established and did then stand And yet these Parliaments have in defiance of all the Rules and Measures of the Constitution and in a treacherous Violation of all the Trust and Confidence reposed in them by their Country changed the whole Essential and Fundamental Frame of the Government of England and from an Hereditary Monarchy have made it an Elective For abstracting from the barbarous and treasonable Injustice they have done the King till hereafter they have broken the Chain of the Lineal Succession and by dissolving that Link in the Instrument and Machine of our Government they have destroyed it as to what it was and what it still ought to be according both to the Fundamentals of our first Establishment into a Polity and the Common and Statute Laws of the Kingdom And this they are become guilty of before God and accountable for in their Lives and Fortunes to their Country not only by barring the Right of the Prince of Wales who is lineal lawful and immediate Heir to the King his Father and by their vesting the Regal Administration in the Prince of Orange previously unto the Claim and Title of the late Princess of Orange but by postponing and justling out of its natural lineal and due Place the Right of the Princess of Denmark And herein our unthinking
Whether the Parliament be not in Law dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange And how the Subjects ought and are to behave themselves in relation to those Papers emitted since by the Stile and Title of Acts With a brief Account of the Government of England In a Letter to a Country Gentleman as an Answer to his second Question THough you have exceedingly mistook your Man in demanding my Opinion about a Case that lies so much out of my Province and Circle that it hath hardly come within the Boundaries of my Conversation either with Books or Men. Yet not being altogether a Stranger to the Nature of the Government and the Rules of the Constitution under which I live nor wholy unacquainted with the ancient and modern Transactions of my Country neither utterly ignorant of the Practices of Ages as they remain registred in Histories I will rather both venture my own Reputation and run the Risque of being censured for straying beyond the Limits of my proper Studies than not obey your Command in what you were pleased to require of me and thereby give you fresh and repeated Evidence both of the Authority you have over me and of the Deference I pay to your Merit as well as to your Quality And though I will not pretend to say the hundredth part of what might or ought to be said on this Subject yet by what I shall be able to lay before you in relation to it you will easily guess what might have been done or what yet may by a better and more proper hand Nor can I now without a Forfeiture of my Credit and a Departure from Truth refuse to give you my Thoughts in this Matter having in my Answer to your first Question stated and pledged my Honour and Faith that I would also reply to your second and having also told you that I had brought under the compass of my thoughts and in effect digested whatsoever was needful towards a clear though brief Resolution of it And I do lay claim to no such Privilege as the breaking of my Word but am willing to leave the Credit or Infamy of that to the Authors and Publishers of Hague Delarations Now I am so far from quarrelling at Parliaments or detracting from the Esteem they ought to be in or from the Respect that is commonly paid them that I preserve for them all the Honour and Veneration imaginable while they confine themselves to the Uses and Ends unto which they were primitively ordained and govern themselves by the Measures chalked out for them in the Constitution They are of that early Original and ancient Standing that for any Thing I know they are in some sense and degree though under difference variety and distinction of Names coeval with or very little subsequent and posterior to our Government Their Antiquity is such though not always under the same Appellation and by the same Stile nor with the same Allowances of Power and Authority that Caput inter nubila condunt their beginning is immemorial So I will not dispute and much less controul the Testimonies which we have in the Commentarios upon Littleton fol. 100. namely That before the Conquest and from thence downward till the end of Hen. 3. there had been no fewer than Two hundred and eighty Sessions of Parliament which doth much exceed the Number during the Reigns of Eighteen Sovereign Kings and Queens that have ruled over this Kingdom since But were their Institution as modern as some Men will have it and were they at first illegitimately obtained and wrenched from the Crown by Insurrections Tumults and Wars yet having once acquired an Establishment by Law confirmed by Custom and ratified by Charters and sworn unto by our Kings our Title to the having of Parliaments for the Ends and Uses whereunto they were appointed is not now precarious but in right belongeth unto us For unquestionably many Things were at first vested in the Crown which it having afterwards alienated and parted with either for the ease and safety of the Monarchy or for the good and advantage of the People it were unjust as well as unwise for any King to reassume them Whatsoever comes once to be Legally established by a plenary and lawful Power is not reversable at the Prince's Will nor doth it lie under his Authority to annul it at his Pleasure And therefore all who have written with any Judgment of Governments Laws and Politicks do unanimously tell us That amplitudo restrictio-potestatis Regum circa ea quae per se mala injusta non sunt pendet ex arbitrio hominum ex conventione vel pacto inter Reges Regnum that the extent and restriction of Royal Power in and about such Things as are not intrinsically evil and unjust do result and proceed from Agreements Stipulations and Compacts between Kings and those Communities over which they rule See Suarez de Legib. lib. 1. cap. 17. And indeed our Magna Charta and other Charters as likewise many of our Statutes are no other than enacted and declared Limitations and Restrictions of the Sovereign and Royal Power nor can our Kings lawfully depart from or exceed the Confinements and Boundaries of the English Monarchy which are therein stipulated fixed and settled The Books of the 24 Ed. 3 65. Stamford's Prerogative of the Crown fol. 10. and Coke's Institutes fol. 73. tell us That the first Kings of this Realm had all the Lands of it in their own hands and were the sole Proprietors of the whole Ground but it being now alienated and transferred from them either as Recompences for Services or as Gifts on the score of Friendship and Bounty or by way of Sale for a valuable equivalent in Money they that are become Possessors cannot be disseized of them without a Violation of Law Honour and Justice So that Parliaments howsoever and whensoever they came to be instituted they are now incorporated into the Constitution of England as Apelles Picture woven into Minerva's Shield and cannot cease to have an Ingrediency into the Government without a dissolution of the whole Frame of it Nor will it ever be the Interest of a King of England to lay aside Parliaments were it within the reach of his Power to do it and as a good and wise King will never attempt it so a tyrannous and arbitrary one will not be able to effect it were he never so inclinable provided they behave themselves so as not to forfeit their Credit in the Nation The only danger we can fall into of having Parliaments abolished is the Peoples growing weary of them and their being provoked to hate them and this they both may and will have cause for when Parliaments become not only useless but hurtful When instead of preserving the Gravity of a Legislative Assembly and maintaining the Character of the Representative Body of a great and wise People they turn more Mobbish than a Dover Court and more rude and tumultuous than
some Judges eluded and we have not had the speedy and full Benefit of them but there was never a Law before these unhappy and disloyal Parliaments made one by which we were to be robbed of our Liberties without a Forfeiture of them and be made Prisoners without cause For by those Repeated Acts by which they suspended the Habeas Corpus Law they turned every English Man out of his Birth-right and stript him of the most valuable Blessing and Privilege of which he stood vested and possessed by the Fundamental Laws of the Government And by the Authority which they took upon them to conveigh to the Usurper a Power of imprisoning some and detaining them in Custody without either shewing Cause or allowing the Injured those Reliefs reserved for us in the Constitution he and his Ministers might have imprisoned One hundred thousand if they had pleased to say they suspected so many And that more were not thrust into Goals than there were was not from a narrowness of Power given to the Prince of Orange to whom they never gave any Thing confined within the bounds of Discretion and Modesty no more than of Justice but from a Scarcity of honest Men at that time in the Nation to merit his Jealousy And it doth deserve your Observation That by their suspending the Habeas Corpus Act they not only also suspended Magna Charta and the Petition of Right but they shut us out both from the Benefit of the whole Common Law so far as it related to Liberty and from all the Succours and Advantages to which we stood entitled by the Essentials of the Constitution upon which the Common Law is only a Comentary For by all these we had a Right either to sue out a Habeas Corpus or to betake our selves to some of the other Methods as those de homine repleviendo de odio atia c. which the Laws had provided for the Vindication and Recovery of our Freedom But by one Blow we were barred the relief and help of all the Laws of England and were not only brought into a State of Bondage and Villainage but were put into a worse Condition than Bondsmen and Villains are Seeing the Lord of a Villain could not command another to imprison his Villain without cause as appears in the two Book Cases of the 7 Ed. 3. fol. 50. and 32 Ed. 3. fo 253. But the Prince of Orange had a Power given him to require his Secretaries or the Members of his Privy Council to imprison whomsoever he or they pleased without the assigning of his Cause for it save that they thought fit to suspect them And whereas Villains when thrown into Prison by their Lords were not barred the suing out of a Habeas Corpus or of using some other legal means for the Recovery of their Liberty many of the Peers Gentry and Free-men of England have by two several Acts of these Revolutional Parliaments been precluded from all ways and means of regaining their Freedom in a course of Law and thereby were reduced during the time of the force and operation of those Statutes into a worse State than that of Slaves and Bondmen And it would seem they had a mind by those Acts to establish and confirm the Usurper's Conquest over the Kingdom and to make us as much his Vassals as the Lloyds and Burnets have endeavoured to render us and to the disgrace of the Nation have hitherto escaped the being impeached for it And as these Parliaments have in their Actings towards the People trangressed all the Bounds to which they were circumscribed and confined by the form and quality of the Constitution so they have departed more extravagantly from all the Fundamental Rules of our Government in those Things which they have acted traiterously and rebelliously against the King Nor is there so much as one step that they have taken in their Behaviour and Proceedings towards him but what is directly repugnant unto and utterly subversive of the Constitution It is true that by the Nature Kind and Quality of our Government every King of England ought to rule over us as over Free-men and according to those Laws which should at any time be enacted by our Sovereigns by and with the consent of their great Council but it was withall provided and taken care for in the very Mould and Frame of our Constitution that the Person of the King his Crown and Royal Dignity should be always sacred and inviolable I do not say that it was made Lawful for a King to oppress us or to treat us in what manner he pleased but instead of that he was taught by the very Form of our Government that he was to rule over us for our Safety and Good and to govern by such Laws as we should chuse Nor can any King do otherwise without becoming guilty before God both of great Injustice and of Infidelity in the Trust that was reposed in him But in case that through any intellectual and moral Defects in himself or through the Influence and Advice of evil Men about him he should be misled and carried to do otherwise all that is then allowed us is to address God by Prayers and him by Petitions and after our refusing to be our selves the Instruments in executing his Arbitrary and Illegal will both to complain of those that are and to persue all the Methods of Law for getting them punished We always may and ought to pray that our Kings may be good but we are to bear with and patiently to suffer under them if they be bad Bonos voto expetere qualescunque tolerare as Tacitus expresses it And he must be a very weak and unwise King that will not study to carry so as that his People may not wish another in his room But should they either be such bad Men themselves as be inclined in their own Natures to oppress their People or should they be so weak as to be the meer Properties of bad Men admitted into their Confidence like him of whom Tacitus says Cui non Iudicium non odium â—rat nisi indita Iussa who did nothing on his own Judgment and Choice but every thing at the Pleasure and Instigation of his Minions Yet we are to endure it and only to refer the revenging of our Condition to God who can make those Kings that are hurtful to their People either a terrour to themselves through inward Vexation and Horrour while they are here or take them hence and call them to a severe Account at his own impartial and righteous Tribunal Accordingly it hath always been the Opinion of our Lawyers save in Rebellious Times That though the King be under the Directive Power of the Laws yet he is not under the Coercive And suffer me to cite a Passage of Bracton's to this purpose where speaking of the King of England as he is and ought to be by the Constitution he says Nec potest ei necessitatem aliquis imponere
quod injuriam suam corrigat emendet cum superiorem non habeat nisi Deum satis erit ei ad paenam quod Dominum expectet ultorem None can correct the King in that he hath no Superior but God and that will be sufficient Punishment that he expect the Lord for his Avenger Indeed the Constitution both instructs Princes for what end we pitched upon this Species and Kind of Regal Government and directs them to rule for the Safety Interest and Prosperity of their Subjects but there is no Original Contract nor Stipulatory Agreement by which it is provided That if Princes do not as they should they do either forfeit their Sovereign Authority or that we may lawfully rebel against and dethrone them Nor do any Presidents or Examples of that kind as those of deposing Edward the Second and Richard the Second shew that it was lawful or a Thing that either the Constitution or subsequent Laws did authorise and countenance but they only declared what a provoked People will sometimes do though it be never so much against their Allegiance and Duty to their King and most highly offensive to God However vivendum est legibus non exemplis we are to live according to the Laws and not according to a few occasional ill Practices and Examples And via facti is not always via juris Nor will the Repetition of evil Things change the Nature of them and render them Justifiable For as Civilians say Multitudo criminum peccantium non parit crimini patrocinium What can be more inconsistent with the Legality of the Abdication than the King 's being vested by the Constitution with such Incidents to Government as lie in a direct Contradiction to our being allowed either a legal or moral Capacity of doing it namely That no act of Parliament can barr the King of his Regality and thereupon that the Allegiance and Fealty of his Subjects to him are indefeasable and that they can neither be lawfully withheld nor transferred from him That the Power and Right of Peace and War are wholy solely and unalienably in the King and that all the Subjects of England cannot make and denounce War Indicere bellum without him as Coke tells us in his 7 Rep. 25. Nor need we go farther for understanding the Nature of our Institution in this matter and for knowing what was involv'd and implied in it relative to the particular before us than to those many Statutes that are Declarative and Explanatory of the meaning of it As that 13 Car. 2. act 6. wherein it is enacted That the Sole Supreme Government Command and Disposition of the Militia and all Forces by Sea and Land c. is and by the Laws of England ever was the undoubted Right of the Kings and Queens of England And that both or either Houses of Parliament cannot nor ought not to pretend to the same nor can or lawfully may raise or levy any War offensive or defensive against his Majesty his Heirs and lawful Successors And that other Act 13 Car. 2. wherein it is ordained That whosoever shall hold that both Houses of Parliament or either House of Parliament have or hath a Legislative Power without the King shall incur the danger and penalty of a Premunire according to the Statute of the 16 Rich. 2. And that other of the same Year of Car. 2. Which made it Treason during his Life to compass imagine invent devise or intend to deprive and depose him from the Stile Honour or Kingly Name of the Imperial Crown of this Realm The President whereof we had 23 Eliz. namely That whosoever shall wish or desire the Death or Deprivation of the Queen that every such Offence shall be adjudged Felony To which I would only subjoyn that known Statute which makes it Treason to take up Arms against the King upon any Pretence whatsoever And to shew the Impudence that always attendeth Disloyalty notwithstanding all that these Parliaments have perpetrated they have suffered all these Laws to remain still unrepealed to remain Monuments of their Treasonable Guilt and to abide Warnings to all Kings that shall come after how little Safe they are under the Fence Covering and Protection of Laws when they have false and treacherous Men to deal with And that which heightens the Crime and enhaunceth the Guilt of those Parliaments is that they have usurped and exerted a Power inconsistent with and subversive of the Constitution in the abdicating and driving away a Prince who was the least chargeable with Miscarriages and Excesses in his Government of any that ever fat upon the Throne For as his greatest pretended Faults were rather Mistakes he was led into by others than Injuries he chose to do of himself so most of them proceeded from an excess of Love to his People and from an Ardour of making them happier than they were willing to be and not from Disaffection to them or a Design to render them miserable Nor did those flight Grievances of which his People so clamourously complained flow from his being a bad King but from the having bad and treacherous Friends about him For though no Prince did ever by Condescention Bounty and Confidence deserve to have had better Ministers and Friends yet with respect to too many about him few Princes ever less had them So that what Tacitus says of one may with a great deal of Truth be applied to his Majesty though not so much to his Dishonour as to the Infamy of those whom he employed and trusted namely That Amicos meruit magis quam habuit He was worthy of faithful Friends rather than had them I would not be thought to intend what I have said of all that had the Honour to be esteemed his Friends Ministers and Servants it being only designed to affect a few of them but they were such as had frequentest and nearest Access to him and greatest Interest in and Influence upon his Councils whom he trusted too much to be well served by them and put himself too much in their Power to have them remain Faithful For that of Tacitus will always hold true Nec unquam satis fida potentia ubi nimia est In a word never did a People run head-long into Rebellion and War upon so few and small Faults in Government and so easy to have been borne with or obviated in modest and legal ways So that had the means which we fled unto for Relief been Lawful whereas they were Criminal and Treasonable in the highest degree yet it was the height of Folly and Madness to use them upon such flight Occasions where the Remedy hath been a Thousand times worse than ever the Disease could have been Common Prudence had we renounced Loyalty should have taught us That Force is never to be practised where Laws and humble Applications would have served and that violent means should not have been used where gentle would have done Non utendum Imperio says Tacitus and I will add
multo minus bello ubi legibus agi possit And the mildest Character I can fasten upon our two Revolutional Parliaments abstracting from their Disloyalty and Treason is that they have been graviores remediis quam delicta erant they have almost ruined and destroyed the Nation on pretence of redressing Trifles Nor indeed was it any Thing he either had done or designed to do that threw us into that brutal and disloyal Rage but he was a Catholick and the Demagogues and Indendiaries had taught the weak and bigotted part of Protestants to hate him for his Religion invisâ— semel Principe seu bene seu male facta premunt When a Prince is once wormed out of the Love of his People whatsoever he then doth though it be never so much for the Benefit of his Subjects it will be misinterpreted as done to their hurt Nor will it ever cease to be an Aggravation of the Guilt of our Rebellion that we feared his Majesty's redressing what we had gotten represented unto and believed by the Nation to have been illegal grievous and arbitrary For most Men do now know That if the Submission which they of Magdalen College sent up to my Lord S to be laid before the King had come to his hands it would immediately have stopt all Proceedings against them and have restored them fully to his Favour and Grace But that Submission was concealed from his Majesty not only out of Treachery to him but out of Design to serve the Prince of Orange in keeping on foot one of the great Designs of his Invasion And although the King gave large and uncontroulable Proofs of having Royal Inclinations beyond what any King ever had that sat upon the Throne of this Kingdom of retracting and redressing all those Things which he came to be convinced of to have been done amiss and illegally yet that would not allay the Furious and Rebellious heats of those who had a mind to enrich themselves with the Spoils of the Crown and Kingdom And therefore when all Things were restored to the State and Condition which his most peevish Enemies would have wished or desired to have had them yet the traiterous Ferment was kept up still in the former height Nor doth any Thing better demonstrate how imprudently as well as wickedly we abdicated the King than that Four parts of Five of the Kingdom would be glad to have him here again upon the Terms he offered before we drove him away and very many would think themselves happy and account it a good Bargain to have him here upon any How little does the King's employing a few Catholicks in Civil and Military Trusts weigh and amount unto when laid in one Scale against all the Blood that has been spilt and all the Losses that have been sustained and all the Treasure that hath been consumed for supporting of this Rebellion when they are laid in the other Scale And the Exchange we have made so infinitely for the worse sheweth both our Folly and is a just Punishment of our Sin in making of it Nor wanted there Truth or good Sense in the Reply which a plain Country Farmer made to his Neighbour who was complaining of the grievous insupportable Taxes and of the many other Losses Pressures and Oppressions under which the Nation groaneth viz. That these were the Blessings and Advantages which we had gotten and obtained by swopping of Kings For this Man 's little Finger is much heavier than the King's Loins were His Majesty loved his People and would have been contented to have made them happy at the Expence of his own Prerogative and with some diminution of his Sovereign Rights But this Intruder into the Throne hates both Country and People and only useth us in the Service of his own ambitious Ends and to gratify the Rapacity and Covetousness of his beloved Dutch And in the same manner that Solomon distinguished the true Mother from the false namely by the compassionate tender yearning Bowels of the one and the inhuman barbarous Cruelty of the other may we distinguish our Rightful King from the Usurper and learn which of them we are in Duty to chuse and obey I might add as a further Aggravation of the Folly of those two Parliaments in what they have done That by their violating the Constitution to the Injury of the King they have set a Pattern as well as given Provocation to some brave and daring Prince that may hereafter sit upon the Throne to do the like in prejudice of the Subject For it is the same Injustice abstracting from Treason in the People to rob the King of his Crown and Royal Dignity as it would be in a King to invade the Liberties and Properties of his People Nor is it more unlawful for the one to overthrow the Constitution and change the Government than it is for the other to do it Not that such a Thing is to be feared though we have deserved it For though some Subjects may grow Rich by spoiling the Crown yet no King of England can ever become Great or Opulent by breaking in upon the Privileges of the People And therefore he will forbear it out of Interest if he should not out of Duty And he will keep to the Terms of the Constitution upon Motives of Wisdom should he not be inclined to do it upon Inducements of Justice For whensoever a King of Great Brittain insults over his People he immediately sinks himself into a Condition of being contemned and despised by all the World I might also Sir lay before you how that Parliaments are not only in the Exercises of their Parliamentary Power under the Direction and Confinement of the Essential and Fundamental Rules and Measures of the Constitution but how they are under the Regulations Limitations and Restrictions both of our Common and Statute Laws For as their being is a legal Being their Capacities under which they sit and act legal Capacities their Business and Employment a legal Employment and the Ends they come together for legal Ends So they are in all these and in all the Concernments they assemble consult or act about under the Influences Direction Conduct and Restriction of the Laws Though there be a Provision made in the Constitution that at Times and Seasons and upon necessary Exigencies and Occasions and for needful and indisputable Ends there should be Parliaments and that it is the Right and Due of the People of England to have them yet they do receive their actual Existence and come into Being by the Fiat of Sovereign Authority and by the King's Writs that raise and assemble them And they would according to the Common Law be a riotous and tumultuous Rout and not a Parliament or a legal Assembly should they meet without being called and raised into their Existence by the creative Writs of the King And suppose that those Laws of Ed. 3. were yet in force for our having Parliaments once a Year or oftner if there be
First they had a legal Right to continue to sit until both themselves should consent that they might be dissolved and until an Act were past for their dissolution I do confess that the Statute 1640. which I have mentioned was one of the greatest Encroachments upon the Regal Power that ever was and therefore in my Opinion was void in it self because of the direct repugnancy in which it lies to the Essential Rights of the Sovereign and of its Irreconcilableness to those Incidents which are inseparable from Royal Power And as it proved by the Event The day that King Charles gave the Royal Assent to that Bill he put the Scepter out of his own hand and the Sword into the hands of his Enemies Which made the Earl of Dorset salute the King the next Morning after his passing the Bill by the Stile of Fellow Subject because he had by that Act transferred Crown Sword and Scepter to the Parliament And Archy the King's Fool being asked whether the King had done well in passing that Bill Answered That he knew not whether the King was the greater Fool to pass it or they the greater Knaves to ask it And I have been told that the greatest Lawyers at that time in the Kingdom said That it was void in it self And indeed the Law presupposeth that all the Grants and Concessions of the King are to be construed to be made with this Proviso That they are granted salvo jure Coronae But to proceed in what I have undertaken to lay open and demonstrate namely That supposing the King to have been legally and justly Abdicated and Deposed and that his Son the Prince of Wales was rightfully and lawfully Barred and Precluded upon the Score and Foot of Supposititiousness from succeeding immediately to his Father though all that was done Traiterously and Rebelliously yet this Parliament ceased to exist and became dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange For these very Gentlemen will not deny neither can they upon their own Principles that upon the Abdication of the King and the Exclusion of the Prince of Wales the Princess of Orange became immediately vested in the Sovereignty as having therein an Estate Tayle unless she had been shut out by some Act or Statute expresly made to exclude and barr her though indeed such a Statute would have been in it self void and treasonable For according to the standing known and acknowledged Laws of this Kingdom the Crown of England upon every Voidance of the Throne is to descend to the next lineal and immediate Heir Female as well as Male and the said Heir according to their own disloyal Hypotheses unless barred by some Act of Parliament becomes actually vested in all the Rights of the Sovereignty Accordingly we have not only a Law in force at present by which it is declared that the Law of the Realm is and ever hath been and ought to be understood that the Kingly and Regal Office of this Realm and all Dignities and Prerogatives Royal c. being invested either in Male or Female are be and ought to be as fully wholy absolutely and entirely deemed judged accepted invested and taken in the one as in the other c. 2 Par. 1 Mar. cap. 1. but we have also another Statute in actual being stiled an Act of Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James viz. the First his Progeny and Posterity which containeth the Words following That we being bound thereunto by the Laws of God and Man do recognize and acknowledge that immediately upon the Dissolution and Decease of Queen Elizabeth the late Queen of England the Imperial Crown of the Realm of England and of all the Dominions and Rights belonging to the same did by inherent Birth-right and lawful and undoubted Succession descend and come to your most Excellent Majesty as being Lineally Iustly and Lawfully next Heir of the Blood-Royal of this Realm c. So that nothing can be more demonstratively Evident than that upon whatsoever Hypotheses or Principles the Conventionists and those who have succeeded them in this Parliament have acted yet that immediately upon the Voidance of the Throne by the abdication of the King and the barring the Prince of Wales to succeed the whole Royal Power became vested in the Princess of Orange And though the exercise and execution of that Power came to be lodged in the Prince her Husband yet that it was in the Administration of the Power of Sovereignty which by the Laws appertained unto and was essentially stated in her which they neither did nor pretended to take from her but the whole which they assumed and took upon them a Right to do was to make a Donation Communication and Conveyance of the same Royal Dignity with all its Powers Prerogatives and Jurisdictions unto him And whereas therefore the Regal Power was owned and acknowledged to reside likewise in the Princess thence it was that her Name was used in the whole executive Part of the Government and that not in Compliment and meerly to testify Respect and Deference but as indispensably Necessary on the foot of the Sovereignty Regal Authority and Power whereof she stood indefeasably seised possessed and vested So that unless her Name had been mentioned in all the executive Acts of Government all those Acts would have been in themselves void illegal and null through the want of the Stamp and Impression upon them of a Person that stood cloathed with the Sovereignty And as to that separating in the late Princess of Orange the exercise of the Regal Power from the Royal Dignity and from the Jurisdictions and Authorities belonging to the same it not only looks like unto and indeed is a plain and manifest Contradiction but it was done in revival of that old Republican and Traiterous Proposition and Notion of distinguishing and severing between the King's Person and his Authority and was intended by the crafty Suggestors of it for the Service of a Commonwealth Design when an Opportunity and a convenient Season do offer For if one Parliament can take the entire and full Exercise of the Royal Power and Government from and out of the hands of a Queen whom themselves acknowledge to have been vested in the Royal Dignities with all the Honours Stiles Titles Regalities Prerogatives to the same belonging another Parliament may by the same Right and with the like Justice take the whole executive Power and the entire Administration of the Government from any King or Queen whatsoever and may place it in both or in either of the Houses or in whom else they please So that a King of England may come in time and by this President if allowed cannot avoid it to be a meer Pageant a King having a glorious and guilded Title but made wholy useless to all the great Ends and Purposes of one and who will serve only to be gazed upon to have the Knee bowed to him and to be made a publick Mockery and
Princess of Denmark from her lineal and hereditary Right so long and while she had no way incapacitated and disabled her self to inherit nor had any Causes or Reasons alledged or produced against her for putting her by the Ascent to the Throne in the Order and Rank of Succession which God Nature and the Laws of the Realm had chalked out fixed and determined Nor could the Princess of Denmark depart from and surrender her Legal and Rightful Place and Room of succeeding to the Crown had she been never so inclinable and willing to have done it seeing it comes to her by the Constitution and by the Common and Statute Laws as a Right meerly to possess and enjoy but not to transfer and alienate For the Sovereignty and Regal Dignity descend not upon any King or Queen as an Estate or Property which they may at pleasure part with resign or make away to another but it comes to them as a Trust of which they are indeseasably Tenants for Life and the constituted and limitted Guardians for their next lineal and legal Heirs or Successors So that upon the Principles of all in the two Revolutional Parliaments that are not downright Republicans but who retain a Love and Zeal for Monarchy and the old English Constitution all that accrued to William by the Death of the late Princess is that he is now become a Robber an Usurper over and a Traitor against the Princess of Denmark as he was all those before in reference to the King and that under the highest Aggravations of Ingratitude Treachery and Unnaturalness that could possibly attend such Crimes Nor is he upon the Hypotheses of most who promoted and came into the Revolution any other since the Death of the late Princess than a King de Facto which being interpreted into English is no less nor better than an Usurper while in the mean time by their own Principles the Jus and Right is become settled and vested in the Princess of Denmark And they who are not direct Commonwealths Men if they will not pay a Loyalty Duty and Obedience to King James who is indeed the only Lawful and Rightful King of these Realms they ought if they have any Honour Justice or Conscience to yield them to her Royal Highness Princess Ann Nor do I believe any Man so void of Sense as to talk of William's continuing since the Death of his Wife to possess the Sovereignty by the Curtesy of England which entitleth a Husband in some Ceses to enjoy his Wives Estate for his Life after her decease Seeing as the Crown Throne and Sovereignty of England are both in themselves and descend to those that inherit them as a Depositum and Trust for the Peace Safety and Prosperity of the Kingdom and not as an Estate either real or personal So the Preclusion of King Philip of Spain on the Death of his Wife Queen Mary from all Right Claim and Pretence to the Regal Dignity and Crown shews the Vanity and Ridioulousness of such a Plea and Allegation should any have the Folly and Impudence to start and urge them in Favour and Justification of William's continuing to Exercise the Sovereignty But then I add in the second Place That allowing not only that William is Survivor to the late Princess which these Nations find by daily and woful Experience to be too true but admitting also that through his Survivorship the whole Regal Dignity which was before lodged with him and his Wife joyntly is now come to be vested in him alone yet this will signify nothing in favour of the present Assemblies at Westminster continuing to be a legal Parliament seeing as that they cannot pretend now to sit by any other Claim Title or Right than that by which they were at first called chosen and came together so it being made impossible by the Death of the late Princess in whose Name and by whose Sovereign Authority they were elected entrusted and assembled as well as in the Name and by the Authority of the Prince that they should continue to sit by the same Claim and Title as they did at first it therefore followeth That his Survivorship neither doth nor can advantage them any Thing in this Matter because it can neither give life to that which is dead nor revive that which irrecoverably is extinguished 'T is true he may as Survivor by new Writs give being to another Parliament but he cannot preserve and support this in its legal Existence by reason of the impossibility of continuing that in those Writs which is finally and irrecoverably departed from them namely the actual Sovereignty of the late Princess And according both to all our Laws and all the Maxims of Reason and good Sense for a Parliament to change its Claim and Title of sitting is to acknowledge some where or other a Demise in the Sovereigns that constituted it Yea the very mentioning the Prince of Orange's Survivorship is an Acknowledgment both that there was once a Sovereignty in the Person of Mary and that this Sovereignty which was once there is now departed thence which importing the whole that the Law intends by a Demise the Parliament that then was if we will either speak or act consistently with Law or with good Sense must thereupon be held taken and acknowledged to be dissolved For if it was not by a legal Authority solely wholy and exclusively of all others Resident in Prince of Orange that they met fat and acted at first then they cannot now by his coming as Survivor to be vested in the whole and sole Regal Dignity justify their remaining as a Parliament nor vindicate themselves from being Usurpers over the People in their continuing to sit and act And as they can have no more nor other Power now nor derive it from any other Persons or any other way than they had and derived it from the first Moment of their being elected and assembled together So that being by and since the Death of the late Princess become even physically impossible it is most arbitrary and illegal in them to continue to sit and to act upon that Bottom or any other that they vainly fancy themselves to be settled upon For it being in the Virtue Force and Authority of the Writs as they were at first issued out and according to the Tenor and Importance of the Words in which they were at first written and made authentick and legal that this Parliament came into Being and stood authorized to sit and act so the very mention of Survivorship in Regal Power makes it as plain and certain as any Problem in Euclid is That there is no possibility of either answering corresponding or complying with the Words and Tenor of the Writs or of subsisting and being upheld by the Identical Sovereignty that infused Virtue and Efficacy and stampt Power and Authority upon them and by consequence it immediately follows that since the Princess Death this neither was could be nor is a Parliament Having