and does hereby Dissolve it and from this time excuses your farther attendance here but with his repeated Thanks for your Service hitherto and with the assurance of his Satisfaction in you so far that he should not have parted with you but to make way for this new Constitution which he takes to be as to the Number and Choice the most proper and necessary for the uses he intends them And as most of you have Offices in his Service and all of you particular Shares in his Favour and good Opinion so he desires you will continue to exercise and deserve them with the same Diligence and good Affections that you have hitherto done and with confidence of his Majesty's Kindness to you and of those Testimonies you shall receive of it upon other occasions Therefore upon the present Dissolution of this Council his Majesty appoints and commands all those Officers he hath named to attend him here to morrow at Nine in the Morning as his Privy-Council together with those other Persons he designs to make up the number and to each of whom he has already signed particular Letters to that purpose and commands the Lord Chancellor to see them issued out accordingly which is the Form he intends to use and that hereafter they shall be signed in Council so that nothing may be done unadvisedly in the Choice of any Person to a Charge of so great Dignity and Importance to the Kingdom Names of the Lords of His Majesty's most Honourable Privy-Council HIS Highness Prince Rupert William Lord Archbishop of Canterbury Heneage Lord Finch Lord Chancellor of England Anthony Earl of Shaftsbury Lord President of the Council Arthur Earl of Anglesey Lord privy-Privy-Seal Christopher Duke of Albemarle James Duke of Monmouth Master of the Horse Henry Duke of Newcastle John Duke of Lauderdale Secretary of State for Scotland James Duke of Ormond Lord Steward of the Houshold Charles Lord Marquess of Winchester Henry Lord Marquess of Worcester Henry Earl of Arlington Lord Chamberlain of the Houshold James Earl of Salisbury John Earl of Bridgewater Robert Earl of Sunderland one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State Arthur Earl of Essex first Lord Commissioner of the Treasury John Earl of Bath Groom of the Stole Thomas Lord Viscount Falconberg George Lord Viscount Hallifax Henry Lord Bishop of London John Lord Roberts Denzil Lord Holles William Lord Russel William Lord Cavendish Henry Coventry Esq one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State Sir Francis North Knight Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Sir Henry Capell Knight of the Bath first Commissioner of the Admiralty Sir John Ernle Knight Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Thomas Chicheley Knight Master of the Ordnance Sir William Temple Baronet Edward Seymour Esquire Henry Powle Esquire Whitehall April 11. 1679. HIS Majesty being this day in Council did cause such of the aforementioned Lords and others who were then present to be Sworn Privy-Counsellors which being done they took their places accordingly His Majesty was also pleased to declare that he intended to make Sir Henry Capell Knight of the Bath Daniel Finch Esquire Baronets Sir Thomas Lee Sir Humphrey Winch Sir Thomas Meers Edward Vaughan and Edward Hales Esquires Commmissioners for the Execution of the Office of Lord High Admiral of England And his Majesty being afterwards come into the House of Peers in his Royal Robes and the House of Commons attending his Majesty was pleased to make this Speech My Lords and Gentlemen I Thought it requisite to acquaint you with what I have done now this day which is That I have Established a new Privy-Council the Constant number of which shall never exceed Thirty I have made choice of such Persons as are Worthy and able to Advise Me and am Resolved in all My Weighty and Important Affairs next to the Advice of my Great Council in Parliament which I shall very often Consult with to be Advised by this Privy-Council I could not make so great a Change without acquainting both Houses of Parliament And I desire you all to apply your selves heartily as I shall do to those things which are necessary for the good and safety of the Kingdom and that no time may be lost in it The Message from the King by Mr. Secretary Jenkins to the Commons on the 9th of November 1680. CHARLES R. HIs Majesty desires this House as well for the satisfaction of His People as of Himself to expedite such Matters as are depending before them relating to Popery and the Plot and would have them rest assured That all Remedies they can tender to his Majesty conducing to those Ends shall be very acceptable to him Provided they be such as may consist with preserving the Succession of the Crown in its due and legal course of Descent The Address to his Majesty from the Commons Saturday November 13. 1680. May it please your most Excellent Majesty WE Your Majesty's most Loyal and Obedient Subjects the Commons in this Present Parliament assembled having taken into our most serious Consideration Your Majesty's Gracious Message brought unto us the ninth day of this instant November by Mr. Secretary Jenkins do with all thankfulness acknowledge Your Majesty's Care and Goodness in inviting us to expedite such Matters as are depending before us relating to Popery and the Plot. And we do in all Humility represent to Your Majesty that we are fully convinced that it is highly incumbent upon us in discharge both of our Duty to Your Majesty and of that great Trust reposed in us by those whom we represent to endeavour by the most speedy and effectual ways the Suppression of Popery within this Your Kingdom and the bringing to publick Justice all such as shall be found Guilty of the Horrid and Damnable Popish Plot. And though the Time of our Sitting abating what must necessarily be spent in the choosing and presenting a Speaker appointing Grand Committees and in taking the Oaths and Tests enjoyned by Act of Parliament hath not much exceeded a Fortnight yet we have in this Time not only made a considerable Progress in some things which to us seem and when presented to Your Majesty in a Parliamentary way will we trust appear to Your Majesty to be absolutely necessary for the Safety of Your Majesties Person the effectual Suppression of Popery and the Security of the Religion Lives and Estates of Your Majesties Protestant Subjects But even in relation to the Tryals of the Five Lords impeached in Parliament for the Execrable Popish Plot we have so far proceeded as we doubt not but in a short time we shall be ready for the same But we cannot without being unfaithful to Your Majesty and to our Country by whom we are entrusted omit upon this occasion humbly to inform Your Majesty that our Difficulties even as to these Tryals are much encreased by the evil and destructive Councels of those Persons who advised Your Majesty first to the Prorogation and then to the Dissolution of the last
With several other Informations concerning other Fires in Southwark Fetter-Lane and elsewhere 27 5. Votes and Addresses of the Honourable House of Commons assembled in Parliament made 1673. concerning Popery and other Grievances 49 6. A Letter from a Parliament-man to his Friend concerning the Proceedings of the House of Commons this last Session begun the 13th of October 1675. 53 7. A Speech made by Sir William Scroggs one of His Majesty's Serjeants at Law to the Right Honourable the Lord Chancellor of England at his admission to the Place of one of His Majesty's Justices of the Court of Common-Pleas 56 8. A Discourse upon the Designs Practises and Councels of France 59 9. An Answer to a Letter written by a Member of Parliament in the Countrey upon the Occasion of his reading of the Gazette of the 11th of December 1679. wherein is the Proclamation for further proroguing the Parliament till the 11th of November next ensuing 67 10. The Right Honourable the Earl of Shaftsbury's Speech in the House of Lords March 25. 1679. 71 11. The Instrument or Writing of Association that the true Protestants of England entred into in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth 73 12. The Act of Parliament of the 27th of Queen Elizabeth in Confirmation of the same 74 13. A Word without doors concerning the Bill for Succession 76 14. A Collection of Speeches in the House of Commons in the Year 1680. 81 15. A Copy of the Duke of York's Bill 91 16. Some particular Matters of Fact relating to the Administration of Affairs in Scotland under the Duke of Lauderdale 93 17. The Impeachment of the Duke and Dutchess of Lauderdale with their Brother the Lord Hatton presented to his Majesty by the City of Edenburgh The matters of fact particularly relating to the Town of Edenburgh humbly offered for His Majesty's information 96 18. His Majesty's Declaration for the dissolving of His late Privy Council and for constituting a New One made in the Council-Chamber at White-hall April 20. 1679. 99 19. The Mâ—ssage from the King by Mr. Secretary Jenkins to the Commons on the 9th of November 1680. 102 20. The Address to His Majesty from the Commons on Saturday the 13th of November 1680. Ibid. 21. The Address of the Commons in Parliament to His Majesty to remove Sir George Jeffreys out of all publick Offices 103 22. His Majesty's Message to the Commons in Parliament relating to Tangier 104 23. The Humble Address of the Commons assembled in Parliament presented to His Majesty on Monday the 29th of November 1680. in answer to that Message ibid. 24. The Humble Address of the House of Commons presented to His Majesty on Tuesday the 21st of December 1680. in answer to His Majesty's Gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament upon the 15th day of the same December 107 25. The Report of the Committee of the Commons appointed to examine the Proceedings of the Judges c. 109 26. The Report from the Committee of the Commons in Parliament appointed by the Honourable House of Commons to consider of the Petition of Richard Thompson of Bristol Clerk and to examine Complaints against him And the Resolution of the Commons in Parliament upon this Report for his Impeachment for High Crimes and Misdemeanors on Friday the 24th of December 1680. 116 27. Articles of Impeachment of Sir William Scroggs Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench by the Commons in Parliament assembled in their own Name and in the name of all the Commons of England of High Treason and other great Crimes and Misdemeanors 119 28. The Humble Petition of the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor Aldermen and Commons of the City of London in Common Council assembled on the 13th of January 1680. to the King 's Most Excellent Majesty for the sitting of the Parliament prorogued to the 20th then instant together with the Resolutions Orders and Debates of the said Court 122 29. Vox Patriae Or the Resentments and Indignation of the Free-born Subjects of England against Popery Arbitrary Government the Duke of York or any Popish Successor being a true Collection of the Petitions and Addresses lately made from divers Counties Cities and Burroughs of this Realm to their Respective Representatives chosen to serve in the Parliament held at Oxford March 21 1680. 125 30. The Speech of the Honourable Henry Booth Esq at Chester the 2d of March 1680 1 〈◊〉 his being elected One of the Knights of the Shire for that County to serve in the Parliament summon'd to meet at Oxford the 21st of the said Month. 147 31. An Account of the Proceedings at the Sessions for the City of Westminster against Thomas Whitfield Scrievener John Smallbones Woodmonger and William Laud Painter for tearing a Petition prepared to be presented to the King for the sitting of the Parliament with an Account of the said Petition presented on the then 13th Instant and His Majesty's Gracious Answer 150. 32. The Judgment and Decree of the Vniversity of Oxford passed in their Convocation July 21 1683. against certain pernicious Books and damnable Doctrines destructive to the Sacred Persons of Princes Their State and Government and of all Humane Society 153 32. The Case of the Earl of Argyle Or an Exact and Full Account of his Tryal Escape and Sentence As likewise a Relation of several Matters of Fact for better clearing of the said Case 151 33. Murther will out Or The King's Letter justifying the Marquess of Antrim and declaring that what he did in the Irish Rebellion was by direction from His Royal Father and Mother and for the Service of the Crown 217 34. Vox Populi Or The Peoples claim to their Parliaments sitting to redress Grievances and to provide for the Common safety by the known Laws and Constitution of the Nation 219 35. The Security of English-mens Lives Or The Trust Power and Duty of the Grand Juries of England explained according to the Fundamentals of the English Government and the Declarations of the same made in Parliament by many Statutes 225 36. The Speech and Carriage of Stephen Colledge before the Castle at Oxford on Wednesday Aug. 31. 1681. taken exactly from his Mouth at the place of Execution 255 37. The Speech of the late Lord Russell to the Sheriffs together with the Paper delivered by him to them at the place of Execution July 21. 1683. 262 38. To the King 's Most Excellent Majesty the Humble Petition of Algernoon Sidney Esq 266 39. The very Copy of a Paper delivered to the Sheriffs upon the Scaffold on Friday Dec. 7. 1683. by Algernoon Sidney Esq before his Execution there 267 40. Of Magistracy 269. Of Prerogatives by Divine Right 270. Of Obedience 271. Of Laws 272. By Mr. Samuel Johnson 41. Copies of two Papers written by the late King Charles II. published by His Majesty's Command Printed in the Year 1686. 273. 42. A Letter containing some Remarks on the Two Papers writ by His late Majesty King Charles II. concerning Religion 274
43. A Brief Account of particulars occurring at the happy death of our late Soveraign Lord K. Ch. 2d in regard to Religion faithfully related by his then Assistant Mr. Jo. Huddleston 280 44. Some Reflections on His Majesty's Proclamation of the Twelfth of Feb. 1686 7. for a Toleration in Scotland together with the said Proclamation 281 45. His Majesty's Gracious Declaration to all his Loving Subjects for Liberty of Conscience 287 46. A Letter containing some Reflections on His Majesty's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience Dated April 4. 1687. 289 47. A Letter to a Dissenter upon Occasion of His Majesty's Late Gracious Declaration of Indulgence 294 48. The Anatomy of an Equivalent 300 49. A Letter from a Gentleman in the City to his Friend in the Countrey containing his Reasons for not reading the Declaration 309 50. An Answer to the City Minister's Letter from his Countrey Friend 314 51. A Letter from a Gentleman in Ireland to his Friend in London upon ocasion of a Pamphlet entituled A Vindication of the Present Government of Ireland under his Excellency Richard Earl of Tyrconnel 316 52. A Plain Account of the Persecution laid to the Charge of the Church of England 322 53. Abby and other Church Lands not yet assured to such possessors as are Roman-Catholicks dedicated to the Nobility and Gentry of that Religion 326 54. The King's Power in Ecclesiastical matters truly stated 331 55. A Letter writ by Mijn Heer Fagel Pensioner of Holland to Mr. James Stewart Advocate giving an Account of the Prince and Princess of Orange's thoughts concerning the Repeal of the Test and the Penal Laws 334 56. Reflections on Monsieur Fagel's Letter 338 57. Animadversions upon a pretended Answer to Mijn Heer Fagel's Letter 343 58. Some Reflections on a Discourse called Good Advice to the Church of England c. 363 59. The ill effects of Animosities 371 60. A Representation of the Threatning Dangers impending over Protestants in Great-Britain With an Account of the Arbitrary and Popish ends unto which the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in England and the Proclamation for a Toleration in Scotland are designed 380 61. The Declaration of his Highness William Henry by the Grace of God Prince of Orange c. of the Reasons inducing him to appear in Arms in the Kingdom of England for preserving of the Protestant Religion and for restoring the Laws and Liberties of England Scotland and Ireland 420 62. His Highnesses Additional Declaration 426 63. The then supposed Third Declaration of his Royal Highness pretended to be signed at his head Quarters at Sherborn-Castle November 28. 1688. but was written by another Person tho yet unknown 427 64. The Reverend Mr. Samuel Johnson's Paper in the year 1686. for which he was sentenc'd by the Court of Kings-Bench Sir Edward Herbert being Lord Chief Justice and Sir Francis Wythens pronouncing the Sentence to stand Three times on the Pillory and to be whipp'd from Newgate to Tyburn which barbarous Sentence was Executed 428 65. Several Reasons for the establishment of a standing Army and Dissolving the Militia by the said Mr. Johnson 429 66. To the King 's Most Excellent Majesty the Humble Petition of William Archbishop of Canterbury and divers of the suffragan Bishops of that Province then present with him in behalf of themselves and others of their absent Brethren and of the Clergy of their respective Diocesses with His Majesty's Answer 430 67. The Petition of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal for the calling of a free Parliament together with His Majesty's Gracious Answer to their Lordships Ib. 68. The Prince of Orange's Letter to the English Army 431 69. Prince George his Letter to the King 432 70. The Lord Churchill's Letter to the King 432 71. The Princess Ann of Denmark's Letter to the Queen 433 72. A Memorial of the Protestants of the Church of England presented to their Royal Hignesses the Prince and Princess of Orange 433 73. Admiral Herbert's Letter to all Commanders of Ships and Seamen in His Majesty's Fleet. 434 74. The Lord Delamere's Speech 434 75. An Engagement of the Noblemen Knights and Gentlemen at Exeter to assist the Prince of Orange in the defence of the Protestant Religion Laws and Liberties of the People of England Scotland and Ireland 435 76. The Declaration of the Nobility Gentry and Commonalty at the Rendezvouz at Nottingham November 22. 1688. 436 77. His Grace the Duke of Norfolk's Speech to the Mayor of Norwich on the 1st of December in the Market-place of Norwich 437 78. The Speech of the Prince of Orange to some principal Gentlemen of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire on their coming to join his Highness at Exeter Novemb. 15. 1688. 437 79. The True Copy of a Paper delivered by the Lord Devonshire to the Mayor of Darby where he Quartered Novemb. 21. 1688. 438 80. A Letter from a Gentleman at Kings-Lynn Decemb. 7. 1688. to his Friend in London With an Address to his Grace the most Noble Henry Duke of Norfolk Lord Marshall of England Ibid. 81. His Grace's Answer with another Letter from Lynn-Regis giving the D. of Norfolk's 2d Speech there Decemb. 10. 1688. 439 82. The Declaration of the Lord 's Spiritual and Temporal in and about the Cities of London and Westminster Assembled at Guild-Hall Decemb. 11. 1688. Ibid. 83. A Paper delivered to his Highness the Prince of Orange by the Commissioners sent by His Majesty to treat with him and his Highness's Answer 1688. 440 84. The Recorder of Bristoll's Speech to his Highness the Prince of Orange Monday Jan. 7. 1688. 441. 85. The Humble Address of the Lieutenancy of the City of London to his Highness the Prince of Orange Decemb. 12. 1688. 442 86. The Humble Address of the Lord Mayor Aldermen and Commons of the City of London in Common-Council Assembled to his Highness the Prince of Orange 443 87. The Speech of Sir Geo. Treby Knight Recorder of the Honourable City of London to his Highness the Prince of Orange Decemb. 20. 1688. Ibid. 88. His Highness the Prince of Orange's Speech to the Scotch Lords and Gentlemen with their Advice and his Highness's Answer with a true Account of what past at their meeting in the Council Chamber at White-Hall Jan. 7. 1688 9. 444 89. The Emperor of Germany's Account of K. James's Misgovernment in joining with the K. of France the Common Enemy of Christendom in his Letter to K. James 446 90. The Declaration of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons Assembled at Westminster concerning the Misgovernment of K. James and filling up the Throne Presented to K. William and Q. Mary by the Right Honourable the Marquess of Hallifax Speaker to the House of Lords with His Majesty's Most Gracious Answer thereunto 447 91. A Proclamation Declaring William and Mary Prince and Princess of Orange to be King and Queen of England France and Ireland c. 449 92. The Declaration of the Estates of Scotland concerning the Misgovernment of K. James the 7th
or two Months and then they assure the Court since they can get no good by them they shall take no harm and therefore to stop them from some worthy Undertaking they by their feigned Zeal against Court Corruptions put them upon Impeaching some Treasurer Councellor or Minister of State and having spent half our time about this the rest is spent for the Clergy upon Church-Work which we have been so often put upon and tired with these many Sessions Though Partiality unbecomes a Parliament who ought to lay the whole Body that we represent alike easie Nonconformists as well as Conformists for we were chosen by both and with that Intention that we should oppress neither To lay one part therefore of the Body on a Pillow and the other on a Rack sorts our Wisdom little but our Justice worse You now see all our Shapes save only the Indigents concerning whom I need say but little for their Votes are publickly saleable for a Guinea and a Dinner every Day in the Week unless the House be upon Money or a Minister of State For that is their Harvest and then they make their Earnings suit the Work they are about which inclines them most constantly as sure Cliants to the Court. For what with gaining the one and saving the other they now and then adventure a Vote on the Country side but the dread of Dissolution makes them strait tack about The only thing we are obliged to them for is that they do nothin Gratis but make every Tax as well Chargeable to the Court as burthensom to the Countrey and save no Mans Neck but they break his Purse And yet when all is said did but the Countrey Gentry rightly understand the Interest of Liberty Let the Courtiers and Indigents do what they could they might yet at last deserve the Name of a worthy English Parliament which that we may do is not more passionately your Desire then it also is of SIR Your most Humble Servant T. E. A SPEECH MADE BY Sir William Scrogg ONE OF HIS Majesties Sergeants at Law To the Right Honourable the Lord High Chancellor Of ENGLAND AT HIS Admission to the Place of One of His Majesties Justices of the Court of Common-Pleas My Lord THAT the King's Favour is the Effect of the Duty I have paid him which your Lordship is pleas'd to call Service is the most welcome and pleasing part of his Kindness and I trust we shall still see such Times that no Man shall hope to have it or keep it on any other Account The right Application of Rewards and Punishments is the steady Justice of a Nation where though the Rewards of Kings exceed what a Subject can merit they should never reach him that demerits To return Good for Evil may be an Obligation of Charity It is never of Bounty And the taking off as they call it of an Ambitious and therefore a Factious Man by Favours is the worst way to stop or open his Mouth for he will whisper one way louder then he will speak the other And when you think you gain one Enemy you make many On such an Occasion as this I think it very proper to give your Lordship some Account what Considerations I have had in order to the Discharge of my Duty in this Place since the King 's first Intimations of his Pleasure And that respects Matters either as they stand betwixt the King and his People or betwixt Man and Man As for the First I know that the Law gives such Prerogatives to the King that to endeavour more were to desire worse and it gives to the People such Liberties that more would be Licentious What then hath a Man to do that hath Courage enough to be Honest but to Apply his Understanding to the Ministration of those Laws justly to both wherein I may say that the Cases will be rare that will be difficult in themselves They may be made so from sinister Causes when Men thinking to serve a Turn or like Pilate to please the People deliver up that which is Right to be Crucified Then they are fain to rack their Fancies to make good their Faults This makes such nice Distinctions and such strained Constructions till they leave nothing plain in the World Whereas in truth the Duty we owe to the King and his People is like the Duty we owe to God not hard to understand whatever it is to Practise This Court My Lord 't is true is properly a Court of Meum and Tuum where Prerogative and Liberty are seldom Plaintiffs or Defendants but yet 't is certain that even in private Causes Matter of Government many times intervenes and the Publick is concern'd by Consequence And therefore I think it fair and like English Honesty and Plainness something to unveil one's self in that particular that Men may know before-hand what they may expect And herein I do declare I would no more wrong or lessen the People's Liberties then I would sacrifice up my Son But then I will no more derogate from the King's Prerogative then I would betray my Father My Lord In time when Faction is so bold as to be bare-fac'd and false and seditious News is openly talk'd and greedily embrac'd when the King 's reasonable Demands are disputed and turned into Cavils and those that oppose 'em talk confidently and those that should maintain 'em speak fearfully and tenderly when the Reverence we owe to the King is paid to the People the Government is beset the King is in Danger and there is nothing wanting but Opportunity But when to prevent that Opportunity Men are afraid and hold it dangerous to avoid the Danger when we dare not call a Crime by its right name and for some find none and a Mischief must be effected before we will think it one When dangerous Attempts are minc'd and by some trivial difference Treason is distinguish'd into a Trespass when Men are forward and ventrous enough in what thwarts the Government but in supporting it seem grave and cautious nice and timorous and so fill'd with Prudentials till they are as wise as fear can make 'em The Law is enervated and becomes useless to its greatest end which is the Preservation of the whole 'T is true in Publick Causes the same Integrity is necessary as in Private But that is but part of a Judge's Duty He must be Magnanimous as well as Virtuous And I acknowledge it to be a main and principal part of my Duty as it relates to the King and his People with hearty Resolution to suppress all open Force and private Confederacies not thinking any thing little that attempts the Publick Safety for when the Motives are small the Danger is greater when Discontents exceed their Causes And for the Discharge of my Duty betwixt Party and Party it is impossible to be performed without these two Cardinal Virtues Temper and Cleanness of Hands Temper comprehends Patience Humility and Candor It seems to me that Saying Be quick
His Majesty's Royal Person the good Government of the Nation by Law and in securing our Rights and Liberties for your real Endeavours herein we joyntly return our hearty Thanks and have now chosen you again to be our Representatives in this Parliament And though we have not the least Suspicion or Doubt of your Wisdom and Integrity in Acting for our Common Good now as we apprehend in great danger yet we judge it expedient to discover our Minds and hearty Desires in the Particulars following viz. I. That you 'll continue vigorously to prosecute the horrid Popish Plotters and endeavour thay may be brought to condign punishment especially all Sham-Plotters which we esteem the worst of Villains II. That you will insist on a Bill for excluding all Popish Successors to the Crown which we believe an effectual Means under God for preserving the Protestant Religion His Majesty's Life and Tranquillity with the well established Government of the Kingdom and securing it to our Posterity III. That you endeavour passing a Bill for Regulating Elections and the Frequency of Parliaments for dispatch of those weighty Affairs of the Nation that shall from time to time be before them which we judge the best prevention of an Arbitrary Power IV. That you perservere in Asserting our Right of Legal Petitioning for removing our just Grievances and pass a Bill if there be no Law to punish such that shall obstruct it V. That you will use your utmost Endeavours to bring in a Bill against Pluralities of Church-Livings Non-residency and Scandalous Ministers of which there are too many in most Counties VI. That you will endeavour to preserve His Majesty's Person to root out Popery and prevent Arbitrary Government and use your utmost Endeavours to unite His Majesty's Protestant Subjects VII Lastly That you will not consent to any Money-Bill till the foresaid Particulars be effected and in so doing we hereby promise to stand by you with our Lives and Fortunes The Address of the Free-holders of the County of Leicester To the Right Honourable Benet Lord Sherrard and Sir John Hartopp Baronet as it was audibly read in Court by the Sheriff and unanimously approved of by the said Free-holders immediately after their Election 24 Febr. 1680 1. WE the Free-holders of the County of Leicester having chosen you to be our Representatives in the Two last Parliaments being highly sensible of the care you have taken to secure his Majesty's Royal person the Protestant Religion our Liberties and Properties as also your Endeavours further to discover and prosecute the horrid Popish Plot spread over the Realm of England and others of His Majesty's Dominions with your zealous promoting an happy Union of all good Protestants in this Land not only by good and wholesome Laws for that End but by Repealing those which were destructive to it and especially for your persisting in the Exclusion of James Duke of York and all other Popish Successors from inheriting the Imperial Crown of England which we esteem the only Security under God of His Majesty's Person and Dominions Likewise your Vindicating our fundamentally Right of Petitioning His Majesty for frequent Sitting of Parliaments by your particular Marks of Displeasure laid upon the Opposers of it For all which and other good Laws you were about to make we give you most hearty Thanks And having now again Unanimously chosen you for the ensuing Parliament if you shall continue the prosecution of the aforementioned absolutely necessary Things we shall stand by you with our Lives and Fortunes The Address of the Gentry and Free-holders of the County of York publickly read in Court and fully consented to by the whole Assembly by a general Acclamation at their Election March 2. To the Right Honourable Charles Lord Clifford and Henry Lord Fairfax May it please your Lordships THe Assurance we had of your Fidelity and Activity for the Service of our King and Country in the Parliament which began at Westminster the 6th of March 1678. Was the only Reason of our Choice of you to Represent us in the last Parliament and our experience of your Faithfulness and Diligence in the same Service the last Parliament is the only Ground of our uncontradicted Choice of you again this Day into the same Trust for the ensuing Parliament appointed to meet at Oxford the 21th instant And we judge it our Duty as good Protestants Loyal Subjects and True Englishmen not only to express our hearty Concurrence with you in but also to return you our real and publick Thanks for the many good Things you did and were about to do in both the last Parliaments and more especially for your seasonable Addresses to His Majesty your Necessary Votes Resolutions Orders and Bills whereby you have endeavoured 1. To preserve the Protestant Religion His Majesty's Person and the Kingdoms of England and Ireland from the many Dangers which threaten them 2. To Exclude a Popish Successor 3. To Unite all His Majesty's Protestant-Subjects 4. To purge out the Corruptions which abound in Elections of Members to serve in Parliament And 5. To secure us for the future against Popery and Arbitrary Power And we intreat you to proceed in a Parliamentary way to the Accomplishment of these Excellent Things and we assure you that these things being done we shall with great chearfullness be willing to supply His Majesty to the utmost of our Ability with Money for the securing of His Interest and Honour both at home and abroad A Letter agreed upon by the Mayor and Inhabitants of the Borough of Bridgwater to be sent to their Burgesses chosen on the 26th of February Sir Halswel Tynt and Sir John Malet WE greet you both with our most humble and hearty Service and by these inform you that on Saturday the 26th past with all becoming Calmness and Fairness we Elected you to be our Burgesses and Representatives in the ensuing Parliament We do also Unanimously approve of that great Care and indefatigable Industry which the last Parliament took in and toward the securing of the Protestant Religion than which nothing is more dear to us His Majesty's Sacred Person and Government together with the Vindication and Preservation of our Native Rights Liberties and Priviledges For their utmost Endeavour to bring the Betrayers of the same together with all the principal Conspirators in that most damnable and hellish Popish Plot to condign punishment not omitting our grateful Acknowledgments of those many Good Bills which they had prepared And moreover for all those worthy Votes Resolutions and orders made and past in that most Loyal and never-to-be-forgotten Parliament whereof one of you in the last and both of you in former Parliaments to our great comfort and encouragment approved your selves faithful Members We do also humbly and heartily Desire and Petition you to follow their good Precedent and Example in this ensuing Parliament to do your utmost to secure the King's Person with the Protestant Religion which we apprehend with deep sense
STATE TRACTS Being a Farther COLLECTION OF Several Choice Treatises Relating to the GOVERNMENT From the YEAR 1660. to 1689. Now Published in a Body to shew the Necessity and clear the Legality of the Late REVOLUTION and Our present Happy SETTLEMENT under the Auspicious Reign of Their MAJESTIES King William and Queen Mary LONDON Printed and are to be Sold by RICHARD BALDWIN near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane MDCXCII PREFACE to the READER THE Main and Principal Design of making this following Collection was to preserve entire in this Second Volume some other Excellent Tracts of equal esteem and value with the former which made that Book so much obtain among the Learned and Curious as that the whole Impression of it is already near sold And as it cannot but be very entertaining to Vs in the reading of them who do yet so sensibly remember what we then felt and looked for worse to fall on us every day than other so it will certainly be of great Benefit and Advantage to our Posterities in future who may considerably profit themselves by our Misfortunes This is a Collection that in the general will set forth the true and Legal Constitution of our Ancient Famous English Government which of all the Countries in Europe Memoirs of Philip de Comines Kt. lib. 5. cap. 18. p. 334. in Octavo Printed 1674. where I was ever acquainted says the Noble Lord of Argenton is no-where so well managed the People no-where less obnoxious to Violence nor their Houses less liable to the Desolations of War than in England for there the Calamities fall only upon the Authors 'T was a true Observation that this Great Man made of the Justice of our Gallant Ancestors in his days how miserable the Successive Generations have deviated from the vertue of their steps how much the strict Piety of their Manners and the noble Bravery of their Spirits Tempers and Complexions have been enervated and dissolved by the later looseness supine carelesness and degeneracy the present Age hath great reason to bewail and 't is hoped that those to come will be hereby cautioned to grow wiser and better by those past Follies and Miscarriages In particular Here will be seen the dangerous Consequences of keeping up a standing Army within these Kingdoms in a time of Peace without consent of Parliament The Trust Power and Duty of Grand Juries and the great Security of English-mens Lives in their faithful discharge thereof The Right of the Subject to Petition their King for Redress of their Wrongs and Oppressions and that Access to the Sovereign ought not to be shut up in case of any Distresses of his People The Spring of all our late private Mischievous Councils and Cabals and the Special Tools that were thought fittest for Preferment to be imployed under a colour of Authority to put all those concerted Designs in motion and execution The Parliament's Care in appointing a Committee to examine the Proceedings of the Forward and Active Judges upon several Cases that were brought before them of grand importance to the Common-weal Peace and Safety of the Nation ☞ and the Resolution of the House of Commons upon their Report That the Judges said Proceedings were Arbitrary and Illegal destructive to Publick Justice a high and manifest Violation of their Oaths a Scandal to the Reformation an usurpation of the Legislative Power to themselves and a means to subvert the Fundamental Laws of this Kingdom And the several Grievances that this Nation hath long been labouring under for the Advancement of Popery Arbitrary Dominion and the unmeasurable Growth and Power of France There are likewise interspersed in this Volume several Matters of Fact relating to the Male-Admininistration of Affairs in Scotland under Duke Lauderdale and his Favourites as also a Large and Faithful Account of the late Earl of Argyle's Tryal Escape and Sentence with divers other things for the better clearing of his Case In a word This Collection will discover to us the Mysteries of the Monarchy in the two Late Reigns and the Abused Trust of Government in those Princes by a Dispencing Power both in Ecclesiastical and Civil Matters to Tyrannize over their Subjects who in the mean while were taught by sâ—me Passive-Obedience and Non-Resistance Doctrine-holders That all their Duty was tamely to submit to and patiently sigh under their daily Sufferings and Oppressions and I think we bore them so long till we were within one throw more of loosing all our good old Laws and Constitutions and even the Government it self Our Miseries were lately so great and many as you will find here that it is impossible for any one better and more fully to express them than in the words of a very Learned and Judicious Author who hath thus given us a just and lively Representation of them Our Laws says he were trampled under foot and upon the matter abolished to set up Will and Pleasure in their room under the Cant and Pretence of Dispencing Power Our Constitution was overthrown by the Trick of New Charters and by closetting and corrupting Members of Parliament Men were required under pain of the highest Displeasure to consent Some Considerations about the most proper way of raising Money in the present Conjuncture Printed Octob. 1691. and concur to the sacrificing their Religion and the Liberty of their Countrey The worthiest honestest and bravest Men in England had been barbarously murthered and to aggravate the Injustice which was done them all bad been varnished over with a Colour of Law and the Formality of Tryals not unlike the Case of Naboth and Ahab Those whom the Law declared Traytors were in defiance of the National Authority introduced into our Councils and the Conduct of Affairs put into their hands Our Vniversities were invaded by open Force those who were in the lawful possession of the Government of Colledges turned out and Papists sent thither in their room And if that Attempt had throughly prospered the Churches and Pulpits would soon have followed It were vain to go about to enumerate Particulars In a word the Nation was undone All was lost The Judges were suborned or threatned to declare that the King was Master of all the Laws and the Bishops were required to publish this New-created Prerogative in all the Churches of England by the Mouths of the Clergy which when some of them refused to do representing to the King with the utmost submission and modesty that neither Conscience nor Justice permitted them to do what he desired they were prosecuted at Law as if they had been guilty of some great Crime Letters were written and intercepted by which it appeared evidently that the change of our Religion was determined and that Popery was to be brought in with all speed least the opportunity should be lost And for the better compassing this pious design our Civil and Parliamentary Rights were to be taken away in Ordine ad Spiritualia And when the Nation and those who were concerned
be grantable against the Commissioners upon the Statute of 2 H. 5. if they do not deliver the Copy of the Libel to the Party Whereto they all answered That that Statute is intended where the Ecclesiastical Judge proceeds ex Officio ore tenus Thirdly Whether it were an Offence punishable and what Punishment they deserved who framed Petitions and collected a multitude of hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King That if he denied their Sute many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented Whereto all the Justices answered That it was an Offence finable at Discretion and very near to Treason and Felony in the Punishment For they tended to the raising of Sedition Rebellion and Discontent among the People To which Resolution all the Lords agreed And then many of the Lords declared That some of the Puritans had raised a false Rumor of the King how he intended to grant a Toleration to Papists Which Offence the Justices conceived to be heinously finable by the Rules of the Common Law either in the Kings Bench or by the King and his Councel or now since the Statute of 3 H. 7. in the Star-Chamber And the Lords severally declared how the King was discontented with the said false Rumor and had made but the Day before a Protestation unto them that he never intended it and that he would spend the last drop of Bloud in his Body before he would do it and prayed that before any of his Issue should maintain any other Religion than what he truly professed and maintained that God would take them out of the World I doubt not but yourself and every English Protestant will joyn with this Royal Petitioner and will heartily say Amen But you desire to know if I think the Resolution of the Judges in this case ought to deter us from humbly Petitioning his Majesty that this Parliament may effectually sit on the 26th day of January next In order to this give me leave to observe to you As it is most certain that a great Reverence is due to the Unanimous Opinion of all the Judges so there is a great difference to be put between the Authority of their Judgments when solemnly given in Cases depending before them and their sudden and extrajudicial Opinions The Case of Ship-money it self is not a better proof of this than that which you have now read as you will now see if you consider distinctly what they say to the several Questions proposed to them As to their Answer to the first Question it much concerns the Reverend Clergy to enquire whither they did not mistake in it And whether the King by his Proclamation can make new constitutions and oblige them to obedience under the Penalty of Deprivation Should it be so and should this unhappy Kingdom ever suffer under the Reign of a Popish Prince he might easily rid himself of such obstinate Hereticks and leave his Ecclesiastical Preferments open for Men of better Principles He will need only to publish a Proclamation that Spittle and Salt should be used in Baptism that Holy-water should be used and Images set up in Churches and a few more such things as these and the Business were effectually done But if you will believe my Lord Chief Justice Cook 12. Co. 19. 12. Co. 49. he will tell you that it was agreed by all the Judges upon Debate Hill 4to Jacobi that the King cannot change his Ecclesiastical Law and you may easily remember since the whole Parliament declared That he could not alter or suspend them I have the uniform Opinion of all the Judges given upon great Deliberation Co. Mag. Char. 616. Mich. 4to Jac. to justifie me if I say that our Judges here were utterly mistaken in the Answer which they gave to the second Question I will not cite the numerous subsequent Authorities since every man knows that it is the constant practice of Westminster-Hall at this Day to grant Prohibitions upon refusal to give a Copy of Articles where the Proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Courts are ex Officio You see there was a kind of ill Fate upon the Judges this day as usually there was when met in the Star-chamber and that they were very unfortunate in answering two of the three Questions proposed to them let us go on to consider what does principally concern us at present their Answer to the last Question You have just done reading it and therefore I need not repeat to you either the Doubt or the Solution of it but one may be allowed to say modestly that it was a sudden Answer 'T is possible the Lords then present were well enough inform'd when they were told that such kind of Petitioning was an Offence next to Treason and Felony but I dare be so bold as to say That at this Day not a Lawyer in England would be the wiser for such an Answer they would be confounded and not know whether it were Misprision of Treason which seems an Offence nearest to Treason or Petty-larceny which seems nearest to Felony You will be apt to tell me that I mistake my Lords the Judges and they spoke not of the nature of the crime but the manner of the Punishment but this will mend the matter but little for since the Punishments of those two Crimes are so very different you are still as much in the dark as ever what these ambiguous words mean Well but we will agree that the Crime about which the Enquiry was made was a very great one When Men arrive to such Insolence as to threaten their Prince it will be but little excuse to them to call their Menaces by the soft and gentle Name of Petitions But you would know for what and in what manner we are at present to Petition 13 Car. 2. c. 5 and I will give you a plain and infallible Rule It is the Statute 13 Car. 2. c. 5. Be it enacted c. that no person or persons whatsoever shall solicite labour or procure the getting of hands or other consent of any persons above the number of twenty or more to any Petition Complaint Remonstance Declaration or other Addresses to the King or both or either Houses of Parliament for alteration of matters established by Law in Church or State unless the matter thereof have been first consented to and ordered by three or more Justices of the County or by the major part of the Grand Jury of the County or Division of the County where the same matter shall arise at their publick Assizes or General Quarter-Sessions or if arising in London by the Lord Mayor Aldermen and Commons in Common Council assembled and that no person or persons whatsoever shall repair to His Majesty or both or either of the Houses of Parliament upon Pretence of presenting or delivering any Petition Complaint Remonstrance or Declaration or other Addresses accompanied with excessive Number of People not at
by certain Noblemen and others of our Kingdom of Ireland suggesting Disorders and Abuses as well in the Proceedings of the late begun Parliament as in the Martial and Civil Government of the Kingdom We did receive with extraordinary Grace and Favour And by another Proclamation in the 12th year of his Reign Procl 12 Jac. he declares That it was the Right of his Subjects to make their immediate Addresses to him by Petition and in the 19th year of his Reign he invites his Subjects to it And in the 20th year of his Reign Procl Dat. 10 July 19. Jac. Procl Dat. 14. Feb. 20. Jac. he tells his People that his own and the Ears of his Privy Council did still continue open to the just Complaints of his People and that they were not confined to Times and Meetings in Parliament nor restrained to particular Grievances not doubting but that his loving Subjects would apply themselves to his Majesty for Relief to the utter abolishing of all those private whisperings and causless Rumors which without giving his Majesty any Opportunity of Reformation by particular knowledge of any Fault serve to no other purpose but to occasion and blow abroad Discontentment It appears Lords Journ Anno 1640. that the House of Lords both Spiritual and Temporal Nemine contradicente Voted Thanks to those Lords who Petitioned the King at York to call a Parliament And the King by his Declaration Printed in the same year Declar. 1644. declares his Royal Will and Pleasure That all his Loving Subjects who have any just cause to present or complain of any Grievances or Oppressions may freely Address themselves by their humble Petitions to his Sacred Majesty who will graciously hear their Complaints Since his Majesty's happy Restauration Temp. Car. 2. the Inhabitants of the County of Bucks made a Petition That their County might not be over-run by the Kings Deer and the same was done by the County of Surry on the same Occasion 'T is time for me to conclude your trouble I suppose you do no longer doubt but that you may joyn in Petition for a Parliament since you see it has been often done heretofore nor need you fear how many of your honest Countreymen joyn with you since you hear of Petitions by the whole Body of the Realm and since you see both by the Opinions of our Lawyers by the Doctrine of our Church and by the Declarations of our Kings That it is our undoubted Right to Petition Nothing can be more absurd than to say That the number of the Supplicants makes an innocent Petition an Offence on the contrary if in a thing of this Publick concernment a few only should address themselves to the King it would be a thing in it self ridiculous the great end of such Addresses being to acquaint him with the general desires of his People which can never be done unless multitudes joyn How can the Complaints of the diffusive Body of the Realm reach his Majesty's Ears in the absence of a Parliament but in the actual concurrence of every individual Person in Petition for the personal application of multitudes is indeed unlawful and dangerous Give me leave since the Gazette runs so much in your mind Stat. 13. Car. 2. c. 5. to tell you as I may modestly enough do since the Statute directs me what answer the Judges would now give if such another Case were put to them as was put to the Judges 2 Jacobi Suppose the Nonconformists at this day as the Puritans then did should sollicite the getting of the hands of Multitudes to a Petition to the King for suspending the Execution of the Penal Laws against themselves the present Judges would not tell you that this was an Offence next to Treason or Felony nor that the Offenders were to be brought to the Council-board to be punished but they would tell you plainly and distinctly That if the hands of more Persons than twenty were solicited or procured to such a Petition and the Offenders were convicted upon the Evidence of two or more credible Witnesses upon a Prosecution in the Kings-bench or at the Assizes or Quarter Sessions within six Months they would incur a Penalty not exceeding a 100 l. and three Months Imprisonment because their Petition was to change a matter establisht by Law But I am sure you are a better Logician than not to see the difference which the Statute makes between such a Petition which is to alter a thing establisht by Law and an innocent and humble Petition That a Parliament may meet according to Law in a time when the greatest Dangers hang over the King the Church and the State The Right Honourable the Earl of Shaftsbury 's Speech in the House of Lords March 25. 1679. My Lords YOU are appointing of the Consideration of the State of England to be taken up in a Committee of the whole House some day next Week I do not know how well what I have to say may be received for I never study either to make my Court well or to be Popular I always speak what I am commanded by the Dictates of the Spirit within me There are some other Considerations that concern England so nearly that without them you will come far short of Safety and Quiet at Home We have a little Sister and she hath no Breasts what shall we do for our Sister in the day when she shall be spoken for If she be a Wall we will build on her a Palace of Silver if she be a Door we will inclose her with Boards of Cedar We have several little Sisters without Breasts the French Protestant Churches the two Kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland The Foreign Protestants are a Wall the only Wall and Defence to England upon it you may build Palaces of Silver glorious Palaces The Protection of the Protestants abroad is the greatest Power and Security the Crown of England can attain to and which can only help us to give Check to the growing Greatness of France Scotland and Ireland are two Doors either to let in Good or Mischief upon us they are much weakened by the Artifice of our cunning Enemies and we ought to inclose them with Boards of Cedar Popery and Slavery like two Sisters go hand in hand sometimes one goes first sometimes the other in a doors but the other is always following close at hand In England Popery was to have brought in Slavery in Scotland Slavery went before and Popery was to follow I do not think your Lordships or the Parliament have Jurisdiction there It is a Noble and Ancient Kingdom they have an illustrious Nobility a Gallant Gentry a Learned Clergy and an Understanding Worthy People but yet we cannot think of England as we ought without reflecting on the Condition therein They are under the same Prince and the Influence of the same Favourites and Councils when they are hardly dealt with can we that are the Richer expect better usage for 't is
Nature and consequently the Ordinance of God but that the different forms of Government whether to reside in One Few or Many or whether it shall be continued by Succession or by Election together with the different measures and limitations of Power and Authority in Governours of the same kind in several Countries all these things I say are ordained by and purely depend upon positive and humane Laws From whence it will necessarily follow That the same human Authority residing in King Lords and Commons here in England which gave Being to those Laws for the good of the Community is Superintendent over them and both may and ought to make any Addition to or Alteration of them when the publick Good and Welfare of the Nation shall require it unless you will admit That an Human Authority establishing any thing intentionally for the common good of the Society which in tract of time by reason of unforeseen circumstances and emergencies proves destructive of it has by that Act concluded it self and made that accidental Evil moral and unchangeable which to affirm is sensless and repugnant And now Sir I hope by this time said the old Gentleman you begin to think that the Bill for disabling the Duke was not so unjust and unreasonable as was pretended and that the course of Succession being founded upon the same bottom with other Civil Constitutions might likewise as justly have been altered by the King Lords and Commons as any other Law or Custom whatever And here I might conclude but because a late Pensionary Pen has publickly arraign'd the Wisdom Loyalty and Justice of the Honourable House of Commons on the account of this Bill I will ex abundanti add a word or two more to that particular Whereupon he pluck'd a Paper out of his Pocket entituled Great and weighty Considerations relating to the Duke and Successor of the Crown c. Which as soon as he had read unto us You see here said he the true Temper of those men of whom I first gave you caution There never was an Endeavour though in a Legal and Parliamentary way after any Reformation either in Church or State but the Promoters of it were sure to be branded by them with the odious imputations of Fanaticism and Faction Nay if the Country-Electors of Parliament-men will not pitch upon such Rake-hells of the Nation as are usually proposed by them but on the contrary make use of their Freedom and Consciences in chusing able upright and deserving persons and if good men thus chosen do but according to their Duty in the House enquire into publick Grievances pursue in a legal course notorious Offenders and consult and advise the Security of the Government and Protestant Religion the high Church-man immediately swells and in a passion tells you That all this proceeds from the old Phanatick Leven not yet worn out amongst the People That we are going back again to Forty One and acting over afresh the Sins of our Forefathers Thus ignorantly do they complement the Times and Persons they endeavour to expose by appropriating to them such Virtues as were common to good men in all Ages But enough of this In the next place pray observe how hypocritically the Considerer puts this Question viz. Whether Protestant Religion was not settled in this Nation by the same mighty hand of God that establish'd Jeroboam in the Kingdom of Israel And then adds Whether we like that wicked King should so far despair of God's Providence in preserving the work of his own Hands as never to think it safe unless it be establish'd on the Quick-sands of our own wicked Inventions viz. the Bill against the Duke And throughout his whole Discourse he frequently calls all Care of preserving our Religion a Mistrust of God's Providence and on that score calls out to the Nation O ye of little Faith c. Now I will allow him That the least Evil is not to be done that the greatest and most important Good may ensue But that the Bill for disabling the Duke is highly justifiable both by the Laws of God and Constitution of our Government I think by my former Discourse I have left no room to doubt And the Considerer having scarce attempted to prove the contrary it 's preposterously done of him to give us his Use of Reproof before he has clear'd his Doctrine However I owe him many thanks for putting me in mind how Protestant Religion was first establish'd here in England it was indeed by the mighty Hand of God influencing the publick Councils of the Nation so that all imaginable care was taken both by Prince and People to rescue themselves from under the Romish Yoke and accordingly most excellent Laws were made against the usurpation and tyranny of that Man of Sin Our noble Ancestors in those days did not palliate a want of Zeal for their Religion with a lazy pretence of trusting in God's Providence but together with their Prayers to and Affiance in Heaven they joyned the Acts of their own Duty without which they very well knew they had no reason to expect a Blessing from it But now be pleased to take notice of the Candor of this worthy Considerer nothing less will serve his turn than the proving all the Voters for the Bill guilty of the highest Perjury For says he they have all sworn in the Oath of Allegiance to bear Faith and true Allegiance to His Majesty his Heirs and Successors but the Duke is Heir ergo c. A very hopeful Argument indeed But what if it should happen as it is neither impossible nor very improbable to imagin it that the next Heir to the Crown should commit Treason and conspire the Death of the present Possessor and for this Treason should not only be attainded by Parliament but executed too Pray Mr. Considerer would the Parliament in this case be guilty of Murder and Perjury I am confident you will not say it If therefore the next Heir become obnoxious to the Government in a lower degree why may not the same Authority proportion the Punishment and leave him his Life but debar him of the Succession This I say only to shew the absurdity of his Argument My Answer is this No man can bear Allegiance to two persons at the same time nor can Allegiance be ever due to a Subject and therefore my Obligation by the word Heir in the Oath does not commence till such Heir has a present Right to or actual Possession of the Crown which if he never attains either by reason of Death or any other Act that incapacitates and bars him then can my Obligation to him by the word Heir in the Oath never have a beginning But besides all this it cannot be denied but Mr. Considerer's Doctrine does bring great Inconveniences on Succession for the next Heir by his way of arguing is let loose from all the Restrictions and Penalties of Humane Laws and has no other tyes upon him not to snatch the Crown
Is he a wise man who if his house be falling by reason of too much weight upon the roof will lay more upon it rather than propt it up and take off some of the weight So they who take the Church to consist of Ceremonies must pardon me that I am not of their opinion since the word of God warrants no such thing and my reason tells me that they are too much interested in the cause to be fit judges for with them he is accounted a good Son of the Church who keeps a great stir about Ceremonies though he live never so ill a life and perhaps is drunk when he performs his Devotion but if a man seem to be indifferent as to Ceremonies and make them no more than indeed they be yet in Practice Conforms more than he that makes a great noise about them though he live never so godly a life and as near as he can to the rule of God's word yet he is a Fanatick and an enemy to the Church but God Almighty tells us he will have mercy and not Sacrifice Gentlemen They who accuse me for an enemy to the King and Church have left you out of the story but I hope I shall not forget you but remember on whose errand I am sent and as I have hitherto stuck to your interest I hope nothing will draw me aside from it and if I know my own heart I am perswaded that neither rewards threats hopes nor fears will prevail upon me I desire nothing but to promote God's glory and the interest of the King and people and if it shall please God to let me see the Protestant Religion and Government established I shall think I have lived long enough and I shall be willing at that instant to resign my breath Gentlemen I thought good to say this to you and I thank you for your patience and hope I shall so behave my self in your Service that I shall make it appear I am sensible of the honour you have done me I humbly thank you all An Account of the Proceedings at the Sessions for the City of Westminster against Thomas Whitfield Scrivener John Smallbones Woodmonger and William Laud Painter for Tearing a Petition prepared to be presented to the King's Majesty for the Sitting of the Parliament With an Account of the said Petition presented on the 13th instant and His Majesty's Gracious Answer IT being the undoubted Right of the Subjects of England Vide the Resolutions of the Law Cook Jurisdict of Courts 79. Hobart 220. Vel. Magna Chart. Exl. Spencer 51. Vide the Proclamations of K. Charles I. and warranted by the Law of the Land and the general Practice of all former Times in an humble manner to apply themselves to His Majesty in the Absence of Parliaments by Petition for the Redress of their Grievances and for the obtaining such things as they apprehend necessary or beneficial to the safety and well being of the Nation And it being their Duty to which they are bound by the expres words of the Oath of Allegiance * I do Swear from my Heart That I will hear Faith and true Allegiance to His Majesty His Heirs and Successors and Him and Them will Defend to the uttermost of my power against all Conspiracies and Attempts whatsoever which shall be made against His or Their Persons Their Crown and Dignity And will do my best endeavour to disclose and make known unto His Majesty His Heirs and Successors all Treasons and Trayterous Conspiracies which I shall know or hear of to be against him or any of them to represent to Him any danger which they apprehend Threatning His Royal Person or His Government divers Persons in and about the City of Westminster considering the too apparent and unspeakable Danger His Majesty and His Kingdoms are in from the Hellish Plots and Villainous Conspiracies of the Bloody Papists and their Adherents and conceiving no sufficient or at least so fit Remedy could be provided against it but by the Parliament by whom alone several Persons accused of these accursed Designs can be brought to Tryal did prepare and sign a Petition humbly representing to His Majesty the imminent danger His Royal Person the Protestant Religion and the Government of this Nation were in from that most damnable and hellish Popish Plot branched forth into several the most Horrid Villainies For which several of the principal Conspirators stand impeached by Parliament and thereby humbly praying that the Parliament might Sit upon the 26th of January to try the Offenders and to Redress the important Crievances no otherways to be redressed of which Thomas Whitfield John Smallbenes and William Laud Inhabitants in Westminster taking notice upon the 20th day of December last they sent to Mr. William Horsley who had signed and promoted the Petition and in whose custody it was to bring or send it to them for that they desired to sign it And thereupon Mr. Horsley attended them and producing the Petition in which many Persons had joyned he delivered it at their request to be by them read and signed but Mr. Whitfield immediately tore it in pieces and threw it towards the Fire and Smallbones catching it up said That he would not take 10 s. for the Names and then they declared that they sent for it for that very purpose and owned themselves all concerned in the design Upon Mr. Horsley's complaint hereof to a Justice of the Peace a Warrant was granted against them and they being taken thereupon after examination of the matter were bound to appear and answer it at the next quarter Sessions of the Peace for the City of Westminster and upon Friday the 9th of January instant the Sessions being holden and there being present several Justices of the Peace that are eminent Lawyers the matter was brought before them and the Grand Jury Indicted the said Whitfield Smallbones and Laud as followeth viz. The City Borough and Town of Westminster in the County of Middlesex THe Jurors for our Soveraign Lord the King upon their Oath do present that whereas the Subjects and Liege People of the Kings and Queens of this Realm of England by the Laws and Customs of the Realm have used and been accustomed to represent their Publick Grievances by Petition or by any other submissive way And that the 20th day of December in the one and Thirtieth Year of the Reign of our Soveraign Lord Charles the Second by the Grace of God of England Scotland France and Ireland King Defender of the Faith c. at the Parish of St. Martin's in the Fields within the Liberty of the Dean and Chapter of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter of the City Borough and Town of Westminster in the County of Middlesex a Petition written in paper was prepared and Subscribed with the hands of divers the said King's Subjects and Liege People to the Jury unknown and to our said Soveraign Lord King Charles the Second Directed and to our said Soveraign Lord
That Parliaments are part of the frame of the Common-Law which is laid in the Law and Light of Nature right Reason and Scripture 2. That according to this Moral Law of Equity and Righteousness Parliaments ought frequently to meet for the common peace safety and benefit of the People and support of the Government 3. That Parliaments have been all along esteemed an essential part of the Government as being the most ancient honourable and Sovereign Court in the Nation who are frequently and perpetually to sit for the making and abolishing Laws Redressing of Grievances and see to the due administration of Justice 4. That as to the place of Meeting it was to be at London the Capital City the Eye and Heart of the Nation as being not only the Regal Seat but the principal place of Judicature and residence of the chief Officers and Courts of Justice where also the Records are kept as well as the principal place of Commerce and Concourse in the Nation and to which the People may have the best recourse and where they may find the best accommodation 5. The Antiquity of Parliaments in this Nation which have been so ancient that no Record can give any account of their Beginning my Lord Coke thus tracing them from the Britains through the Saxons Danes and Normans to our days So that not to suffer Parliaments to sit to answer the great ends for which they were Instituted is expresly contrary to the Common Law and so consequently of the Law of God as well as the Law of Nature and thereby Violence is offered to the Government it self and Infringement of the Peoples fundamental Rights and Liberties Secondly What we find hereof in the Statute-Law The Statute Laws are Acts of Parliament which are or ought to be only Declaratory of the Common Law which as you have heard is founded upon right Reason and Scripture for we are told that if any thing is Enacted contrary thereto it is void and null As Coke Inst l. 2. c 29. f. 15. Finch p. 3. 28 H. 8. c. 27. Doct. and Stud. The first of these Statures which require the frequent Meeting and Sitting of Parliaments agreeable to the Common Law we find to be in the time of Ed. 3. viz. 4 Ed. 3. ch 14. In these words ' Item It is accorded that a Pariament shall be holden every year once or more often if need be The next is in the 36 of the same K. Ed. 3. c. 10. viz. Item For the maintenance of the said Articles and Statutes and Redressing of divers Mischiefs and Grievances which dayly happen a Parliament shall be holden every year as at another time was ordained by a Statute viz. the aforementioned in his 4th year And agreeable hereto are those Statutes upon the Rolls viz. 5 Ed. 2. 1 R. 2. No. 95. By which Statutes it appeareth That Parliaments ought annually to meet to support the Government and to redress the Grievances which may happen in the Interval of Parliaments That being the great End proposed in their said Meetings Now for Parliaments to meet Annually and not suffered to sit to Answer the Ends but to be Prorogued or Dissolved before they have finished their Work would be nothing but a deluding the Law and a striking at the foundation of the Government it self and rendering Parliaments altogether useless for it would be all one to have No Parliaments at all as to have them turn'd off by the Prince before they have done that that they were called and intrusted to do For by the same Rule whereby they may be so turn'd off one Session they may be three Sessions and so to threescore to the breaking of the Government and introducing Arbitrary Power To prevent such intollerable Mischiefs and Inconveniencies are such good Laws as these made in this King's time and which were so Sacredly observed in after times That it was a Custom especially in the Reigns of H. 4. H 5. H. 6. to have a Proclamation made in Westminster-Hall before the end of every Session * An honest and a necessary Proclamation to be made every Parliament That all those who had any matter to present to the Parliament should bring it in before such a day for otherwise the Parliament at that day should Determine Whereby it appears the People were not to be eluded nor disappointed by surprizing Prorogations and Dissolutions to frustrate and make void the great ends of Parliaments And to this purpose saith a late Learned Author That if there was no Statute or any thing upon record extant concerning the Parliaments sitting to redress grievances yet that I must believe that it is so by the fundamental Law of the Government which must be lame and imperfect without it For otherwise the Prince and his Ministers may do what they please and their Wills may be their Laws Therefore it is provided for in the very Essence and Constitution of the Government it self and this saith our Author we may call the Common-Law which is of as much value if not more than any Statute and of which all our good Acts of Parliament and Magna-Charta it self is but Delaratory so that though the King is intrusted with the formal part of summoning and pronouncing the Dissolution of Parliaments which is done by Writ yet the Laws which oblige him as well as us have determined how and when he shall do it which is enough to shew that the King's share in the Soveraignty that is in the Parliament is cut out to him by Law and not left at his disposal The next Statute we shall mention to inforce this fundamental Right and Privilege 25 Ed. 3. c. 23. Statute of Provisors is the 25th Ed. 3. ch 23. called the Statute of Provisors which was made to prevent and cut off the Incroachments of the Bishops of Rome whose Usurpations in disposing of Benefices occasioned intollerable Grievances wherein in the Preamble of the said Statute it is expressed as followeth Whereupon the Commons have prayed our said Soveraign Lord the King that sith the Right of the Crown of England and the Law of the said Realm is such that upon the Mischiefs and Damage which happeneth to his Realm be ought and is bounden of the accord of his said People in his Parliament thereof to make Remedy and Law in avoiding the Mischiefs and Damage which thereof cometh That it may please him thereupon to provide Remedy Our Soveraign Lord the King seeing the Mischiefs and Damage before-named and having regard to the said Statute made in the time of his said Grand-Father and to the Causes contained in the same which Statute holdeth always his force and was never defeated or annulled in any point and by so much is bound by his Oath to do the same to be kept as the Law of this Realm tho that by Sufferance and Negligence it hath since been attempted to the contrary And also having regard to the grievous Complainte made to him by his
People in divers Parliaments holden heretofore Willing to ordain Remedy for the great Damages and Mischiefs which have happened and dayly do happen by the said Cause c. By the assent of all the great Men and Commonalty of his said Realm hath Ordained and Established c. In which preamble of the Statute we may observe 1. The intollerable grievance and burden which was occasion'd by the illegal Incroachments of the See of Rome 2. The many Complaints the People had made who in those dark times under Popery were sensible of groaning under those Burdens 3. The Endeavours used in vain by former Parliaments to Redress the same and to bring their Laws in being to have their Force and Effect 4. The acknowledgment of the King and Parliament that the Obligation hereto was upon the King 1. From the Right of the Crown which obliged every King to pass good Laws 2. The Statute in force 3. The King's Oath to keep the Old and pass New Laws for his Peoples safeguard which they should tender to him 4. From the sence of the People expressed in their Complaints and 5. From the Mischief and Damage which would otherwise ensue And therefore by the desire and accord of his People He passes this famous Law The Preamble whereof is here recited Another Statute to the same purpose you find 2 R. 2. No. 28. Also the Commons in Parliament pray That forasmuch as Petitions and Bills presented in Parliament by divers of the Commons could not heretofore have their Respective Answers That therefore both their Petitions and Bills in this present Parliament as also others which shall be presented in any future Parliament may have a good and gracious Answer and Remedy ordained thereupon before the departing of every Parliament And that to this purpose a due Statute be ensealed or Enacted at this present Parliament to be and remain in Force for all times to come To which the King replied The King's Answer THE King is pleased that all such Petitions deliver'd in Parliament of things or matters which cannot otherwise be determined A Good and Reasonable Answer shall be made and given before the departure of Parliament In which excellent Law we may observe 1. A Complaint of former remisness their Bills having aforetime been pass'd by their Grievances Unredressed by unseasonably Dissolving of Parliaments before their Laws could pass 2. That a Law might pass in that very Parliament to rectifie that Abuse for the future And 3. That it should not pass for a temporary Law but for perpetuity being of such absolute Necessity that before the Parliaments be dismissed Bills of common Right might pass And the King agreed hereto Suitable hereto we have my Lord Chief Justice Coke that great Oracle of the Law in his Instit 4. B. p. 11. asserting Petitions being truly preferr'd though very many have been Answered by the Law and Custom of Parliament before the end of Parliament This appears saith he by the Ancient Treatise De Modo tenendi Parliamentum in these Words faithfully Translated The Parliament ought not to be ended while any Petition dependeth undiscussed or at the least to which a determinate Answer is not made Rot. Par. 17. E. 3. No. 60. 25 E. 3. No. 60. 50 E. 3. No. 212. 2 R. 2.134 2 R. 2. No. 38. 1 H. 4.132 2 H. 4325.113 And that one of the principal ends of calling Parliaments is for redressing of Grievances that daily happen 36 E. 3. c. 10. 18 E. 3. c. 14. 50 E. 3. No. 17. Lyons Case Rot. Par. 1 H. 5. No. 17. 13 H. 4. No. 9. And that as concerning the departing of Parliaments It ought to be in such a manner faith Modus Tenendi viz. To be demanded yea and publiekly Proclaimed in the Parliament and within the Palace of the Parliament whether there be any that hath delivered a Petition to the Parliament and hath not received Answer thereto if there be none such it is to be supposed that every one is Satisfied or else Answered unto at the least so far forth as by the Law be may be And which custom was observed in after Ages as you have heard before Concerning the Antiquity and Authority of this Ancient Treatise called Modus tenendi Parliamentum saith my Lord Coke whereof we make often use in our Institutes Certain it is that this Modus was Rehearsed and Declared before the Conqueror at the time of his Conquest and by him approved for England and accordingly he according to Modus held a Parliament for England as appears 21 E. 3. so 60. Whereby you clearly perceive that these wholsome Laws are not only in full agreement with the Common Law and declarative thereof but in full accord with the Oath and Office of the Prince who has that great trust by the Law lodged with him for the good and benefit not hurt and mischief of the People viz. First These Laws are very suitable to the Duty and Office of a Ruler and the end for which he was instituted by God himself who commands him to do Judgment and Justice to all especially to the Oppressed and not to deny them any request for their relief protection or welfare 2 Sam. 22.3 1 Chron. 13.1 to 5.2 Chron. 9.8.19.5 c Est 1.13 Our Law-Books enjoyning the same as Bracton Lib. 1. c. 2. Lib. 3. c. 9. fol. 107 c. Fortiscue ch 9. fo 15. c. 7. fol 5.11 Coke 7. Book Reports Calvin's Case f. 11. Secondly They are also in full Harmony with the King's Coronation Oath solemnly made to all his Subjects viz. To grant fulfill and defend all rightful Laws which the Commons of the Realm shall choose and to strengthen and maintain them after his Power Thirdly These Laws are also in full agreement and oneness with Magna Charta it self that Ancient Fundamental Law which hath been Confirmed by at least Forty Parliaments viz. We shall deny We shall defer to no Man Justice and Right much less to the whole Parliament and Kingdom in denying or deferring to pass such necessary Bills which the Peoples needs call for Object But to all this which hath been said it may be objected That several of our Princes have otherwise practised by Dissolving or as laterly used by Prorogucing Parliaments at their pleasures before Grievances were Redressed and Publick Bills of Common Safety Passed and that as a Privilege belonging to the Royal Prerogative Answ To which it is Answered That granting they have so done First It is most manifest that deth not therefore create a right to them so to do according to that known Maxim a facto ad jus non valet Consequentia especially when such Actions are against so many express and positive Laws such Principles of Common Right and Justice and so many particular Tyes and Obligations upon themsâ—â—es to the contrary Secondly But if it had been so yet neither can Prerogative be pleaded to justify such Practices because the King has no Prerogative but what the Law gives
days neither one way nor another never knew any suâ—â— persons nor ever had such Communication with any man hitherto I know of no Plot in the World but the Popish Plot and that every man may know as much as I. If I had had such a design as these men have sworn against me to have seiz'd his Majesty either at London or this place at Oxford I take God to witness as I 'm a dying man and upon the terms of my Salvation I know not any one man upon the face of the Earth that would have stood by me and how likely it was that I should do such a thing my self let the whole World judge Dugdale swears That I spoke Treason to him treasonable words in the Coffee-house and in the Barbers shop by the Angel even he could not pretend to see me any where else but it is false and a very unlikely thing that I should speak Treason to him I must confess I was in his company at the Coffee-house and that Barbers shop before I went out of Town but there could be no Communication between us for he was writing at one end of the Room and eating a piece of bread and I lighted a Pipe of Tobacco at the other end and took it till Sir Tho. Player and Sir Rob. Clayton came to me and we went to my Lord Lovelace's out of Town that night so when they came we took horse and went out of Town with the rest For my part I can't sum up my Witnesses I was under most strange Circumstances as ever any man was I was kept Prisoner so close in the Tower that I could have no Conversation with any though I was certain the Popish Lords had it every day there but I could have none I could not tell the Witnesses that were to swear against me I could not tell what it was they swore against me for I could have no Copy of the Indictment nor no way possible to make any preparation to make my Defence as I ought to have done and might have done by Law I had no liberty to do any thing as I am a dying man And as to what Dugdale Smith Turbervile and Heyns swore against me they did swear such Treason that nothing but a mad man would ever have trusted any body with and least of all to Papists every one of them that had been concerned with Plots and Treasons among their own party and under the greatest Tyes and Obligations of Damnation and to be Sainted if they kept it secret and to be damned if they revealed it If these men will not keep things secret for their own Party how could I trust them I take God to witness and do freely acknowledge I have sought my God with Tears several times to inform me if so be I had with any word transgressed at any time I knew not of any part of what they swore against me till such time as I heard it swore against me at the Bar. This is very hard Gentlemen but this is the Truth And there be a great many other strange Reports that I have heard since I have been a Prisoner That I should be a means to convert the Countess of Rochester by bringing one Thompson a Priest to her Truly all that I was concerned in was some fifteen or sixteen years ago I lodged at Col. Vernon's that married my Lady Brookes The Family were Papists the Brookes were Papists and there was this Thompson and I did suppose him a Priest in the House though I never saw him at Popish Service or Worship though I was there half a year but coming afterwards to my Lord Rochester's about some business I had to do for him and several other persons of Quality he sent for me one afternoon from the Parsonage in Adderbury to his House and his Lady and he stood together He sent to me and ask'd me if my Horse were at home said he I would have you carry this Letter to Mr. Thompson if you are at leisure this afternoon My Lord I am at leisure to serve you So I took a Letter from his hand and his Lady 's too as I remember he made an offer that way sealed with his own Seal and carried it to Thompson and delivered it to him and he told me that he would wait upon my Lord for it was for some Lands my Lord did offer to raise Money for some occasions This is the Truth of that Scandal It is said that I had a Priest several years in my House viz. Serjeant that came over from Holland to discover About some ten years ago that very same man came to me but was a stranger to me and he came to me by the name of Dr. Smith a Physician and there was an Apothecary in the Old-baily and a Linnen-draper within Ludgate that came with him they brought him thither and took a Chamber and lay about half a year or three quarters at times by the name of Dr. Smith and as a Physician This is the Truth of that and no otherwise This is the Entertainment of Serjeant So the occasion of my coming to Oxford I do say was voluntary The Parliament-men last Parliament at Westminster and several Lords dined together the day before they sate the last Sessions of Parliament at Wistminster they sent for me to the Sun-Tavern behind the Exchange and when I came the Duke of Monmouth and several Lords were together and I believe above a hundred Parliament-men of the Commons The Duke of Monmouth called me to him and told me he had heard a good Report of me and that I was an honest man and one that may be trusted and they did not know but their Enemies the Papists might have some design to serve them as they did in King James's time by Gun-powder or any other ways And the Duke with several Lords and Commons did desire me to use my utmost skill in searching all places suspected by them which I did perform and from thence I had as I think the popular name of the Protestant Joyner because they had intrusted me before any man in England to do that Office The same Haynes one of them that swore against me had discovered to me and several others as to Macknamar and his Brother and this Ivy who are now all of another stamp That the Parliament was to be destroyed at Oxford and that there was a design to murther my Lord Shaftsbury by Fitzgerald and his Party and that they did endeavour to bring Macknamar over to him and said Then it would be well with him and they would not be long before they had Shaftsbury's life And he made Depositions of this to Sir Geo. Treby as I heard afterwards for I was not with him when it was sworn I wish the Commons of England as well as I wish my own heart and I did not understand but when I serv'd the Parliament I serv'd his Majesty too and let them be miserable that make the Difference
Land to cut off these workers of Iniquity whose Religion is Rebellion whose Faith is Faction whose practice is murthering of Souls and Bodies and to root them out of the Confines of this Kingdom VII All the Judges of England are bound by their Oath 18 Edw. III. 20 Edw. III. Cap. 1.2 and by the duty of their place to disobey all Writs Letters or Commands which are brought to them either under the little Seal or under the great Seal to hinder or delay common Right Are the Judges all bound in an Oath and by their places to break the 13 of the Romans VIII The Engagement of the Lords attending upon the King at York June 13. 1642. which was subscribed by the Lord Keeper and Thirty Nine Peers besides the Lord Chief-Justice Banks and several others of the Privy-Council was in these words We do engage our selves not to Obey any Orders or Commands whatsoever not warranted by the known Laws of the Land Was this likewise an Association against the 13 of the Romans IX A Constable represents the King's person and in the Execution of his Office is within the purview of the 13 of the Romans as all Men grant but in case he so far pervert his Office as to break the Peace and commit Murther Burglary or Robbery on the Highway he may and ought to be Resisted X. The Law of the Land is the best Expositor of the 13 of the Romans Here and in Poland the Law of the Land There XI The 13 of the Romans is receiv'd for Scripture in Poland and yet this is expressed in the Coronation Oath in that Country Quod si Sacramentum meum violavero Incola Regni nullam nobis Obedientiam praestare tenebuntur And if I shall violate my Oath the Inhabitants of the Realm shall not be bound to yield me any Obedience XII The Law of the Land according to Bracton is the highest of all the Higher Powers mentioned in this Text for it is superior to the King and made him King Lib. 3. Cap. 26. Rex habet superiorum Deum item Legem per quam factus est Rex item Curiam suam viz. Comites Barones and therefore by this Text we ought to be subject to it in the first place And according to Melancthon It is the Ordinance of God to which the Higher Powers themselves ought to be subject Vol. 3. In his Commentary on the Fifth Verse Wherefore ye must needs be subject not only for Wrath but also for Conscience sake He hath these words Neque vero haec tantum pertinent ad Subditos sed etiam ad Magistratum qui cum fiunt Tyranni non minus dissipant Ordinationem Dei quam Seditiosi Ideo ipsorum Conscientia fit rea quia non obediunt Ordinationi Dei id est Legibus quibus debent parere Ideo Comminationes hic positae etiam ad ipsos pertinent Itaque hujus mandati severitas moveat omnes ne violationem Politici status putent esse leve peccatum Neither doth this place concern Subjects only but also the Magistrates themselves who when they turn Tyrants do no less overthrow the Ordinance of God than the Seditious and therefore their Consciences too are guilty for not obeying the Ordinance of God that is the Laws which they ought to obey So that the Threatnings in this place do also belong to them wherefore let the severity of this Command deter all men from thinking the Violation of the Political Constitution to be a light Sin Corollary To destroy the Law and Legal Constitution which is the Ordinance of God by false and arbitrary Expositions of this Text is a greater Sin than to destroy it by any other means For it is Seething the Kid in his Mothers Milk CHAP. IV. Of LAWS I. THere is no Natural Obligation wereby one Man is bound to yield Obedience to another but what is founded in paternal or patriarchal Authority II. All the Subjects of a patriarchal Monarch are Princes of the Blood III. All the people of England are not Princes of the Blood IV. No Man who is Naturally Free can be bound but by his own Act and Deed. V. Publick Laws are made by publick consent and they therefore bind every man because every man's consent is involved in them VI. Nothing but the same Authority and Consent which made the Laws can Repeal Alter or Explain them VII To judge and determine Causes against Law without Law or where the Law is obscure and uncertain is to assume Legislative power VIII Power assumed without a Man's consent cannot bind him as his own Act and Deed. IX The Law of the Land is all of a piece and the same Authority which made one Law made all the rest and intended to have them all Impartially Executed X. Law on One Side is the Back-Sword of Justice XI The Best Things when Corrupted are the Worst and the wild Justice of a State of Nature is much more desirable than Law perverted and over-rul'd into Hemlock and Oppression Copies of Two Papers Written by the Late King CHARLES II. Published by His MAJESTIES Command Printed in the Year 1686. The First Paper THE Discourse we had the other Day I hope satisfied you in the main that Christ can have but one Church here upon Earth and I believe that it is as visible as that the Scripture is in Print That none can be that Church but that which is called the Roman Catholick Church I think you need not trouble your self with entring into that Ocean of particular Disputes when the main and in truth the only Question is Where that Church is which we profess to believe in the two Creeds We declare there to believe one Catholick and Apostolick Church and it is not left to every phantastical man's head to believe as he pleases but to the Church to whom Christ left the power upon Earth to govern us in matters of Faith who made these Creeds for our Directions It were a very Irrational thing to make Laws for a Country and leave it to the Inhabitants to be the Interpreters and Judges of those Laws For then every man will be his own Judge and by consequence no such thing as either right or wrong Can we therefore suppose that God Almighty would leave us at those uncertainties as to give us a Rule to go by and to leave every man to be his own Judge I do ask any ingenuous man whether it be not the same thing to follow our own Fancy or to interpret the Scripture by it I would have any man shew me where the power of deciding matters of Faith is given to every particular man Christ left his power to his Church even to forgive Sins in Heaven and left his Spirit with them which they exercised after his Resurrection First by his Apostles in these Creeds and many years after by the Council at Nice where that Creed was made that is called by that name and by the power which they
pinches he is really concerned that Ireland is not altogether an independent Kingdom and in the Hands of its own Natives he longs till the Day when the English Yoak of Boudage shall be thrown off Of this he gives us broad Hints when he tells us That England is the only Nation in the World that impedes their Trade That a Man of English Interest will never Club with them as he phrases it or project any thing which may tend to their Advantage that will be the least Bar or Prejudice to the Trade of England Now why a Man of English Interest unless he will allow none of that Nation to be an able and just Minister to his Prince should be partial to ruine one Kingdom to avoid the least Inconveniency of the other contrary to the positive Commands of his King I cannot imagine For since it is the Governour 's Duty to Rule by Law and such Orders as he shall receive from His Majesty I know no Grounds for our Authors Arraigning the whole English Nation in saying That no one Man among them of what Perswasion soever will be true either to the Laws or his Majesty's positive Orders which shall seem repugnant to the smallest Conveniencies of England This is a glory reserved only as it seems for his Hero my Lord Tyrconnel The Imbargo upon the West India Trade and the Prohibition of Irish Cattel are the two Instances given It were to be wished indeed for the Good of that Kingdom that both were taken off and I question not but to see a Day wherein it shall seem proper to the King and an English Parliament to Repeal those Laws a Day wherein they will consider us as their own Flesh and Blood a Colony of their Kindred and Relations and take care of our Advantages with as little Grudging and Repining I am sure they have the same and no stronger Reason as Cornwal does at Yorkshire There are Instances in sevral Islands in the East-Indies as far distant as Ireland is from England that make up but one Kingdom and govern'd by the same Laws but the Wisdom of England will not judge it time fitting to do this till we of Ireland be one Mans Children either in Reality or Affection we wish the latter and have made many Steps and Advances towards it if the Natives will not meet us half way we cannot help it let the Event lie at their own Doors But after all I see not how those Instances have any manner of relation to the English Chief Governors in Ireland they were neither the Causes Contrivers nor Promoters of those Acts. The King and an English Parliament did it without consulting them if they had 't is forty to one my Lord of Ormond and the Council whose Stake is so great in Ireland would have hindred it as much as possible Our Author's Argument proves indeed That 't is detrimental to Ireland to be a subordinate Kingdom to England and 't is plain 't is that he drives at let him disguise it as much as he will but the conclusion he would prove cannot at all be deduced from it Shortly I expect he will speak plainer and in down right Terms propose That the two Kingdoms may be governed by different Kings Matters seem to grow ripe for such a dilloyal Proposition If these Acts and not the Subjection to an English King were the Grievances they would be so to the British there as well as to the Natives but though we wish them Repealed we do not repine in the mean time if the British who are the most considerable Trading part of that Nation and consequently feel the ill Effects of those Acts more sensibly can be contented why the Natives should not acquiesce in it unless it be for the forementioned Reasons I cannot see Our Author allows that there are different ways of obeying the King 't is a Point gained for us and proves there may be such a Partiality exercised in executing his Majesties Commands as may destroy the very Intent of them and yet taking the Matter strictly the King is obeyed but a good Minister will consider his Masters Intentions and not make use of a Word that may have a double Sence to the Ruine of a Kingdom nor of a Latitude of Power wherewith he is intrusted to the Destruction of the most considerable Party in it Far be it from us to think it was his Majesties Intentions to depopulate a flourishing Country to undo Multitudes of laborious thriving Families in it to diminish and destroy his own Revenue to put the Sword into Mad-mens Hands who are sworn Enemies to the British No! His Majesty who is willing that Liberty of Trade as well as Conscience should equally flourish in all parts of his Dominions that recommends himself to his Subjects by his Impartiality in distributing Offices of Trust and from that Practice raises his greatest Argument to move his People to Repeal the Penal Laws never intended that some general Commands of his should be perverted to the Destruction of that People his Intention is to protect His Majesty Great as he is cannot have two Consciences one calculated for the Latitude of England another for Ireland We ought therefore to conclude in respect to the King that his Commands have been ill understood and worse executed and this may be done as our Author confesses and the King undoubtedly obeyed but such an Obedience is no better than a Sacrifice of the best Subjects the King has in this Kingdom Our Author has given very good Reasons why the Natives may be well content with their present Governor but I cannot forbear laughing at those he has found out to satisfie the poor British with My Lord Tyrconnel's most Excellent Charitable English Lady His high sounding Name TALBOT in great Letters a Name that no less frightens the Poor English in Ireland then it once did the French a Name which because he is in possession of I will not dispute his Title to but I have been credibly informed that he has no relation to that most Noble Family of Shrewsbury though my Lord Tyrconnel presumes to bear the same Coat of Arms a Name in short which I hope in time Vox praetereae nihil A Second Reason is drawn from his Education We have heard and it has never yet been contradicted that my Lord Tyrconnel from his Youth upwards has constantly born Arms against the Brittish If our Author will assure us of the contrary I am apt to believe â—i Excellency will give him no thanks who lays the foundation of his Merit upon the Basis of his constant adherence to the Iâ—ish Party What use of Consolation can be drawn from this head by the Brittish is beyond my skill to conâ—preâ—â—nd A third Reason is drawn from his Stake in England the Author would do well to shew us in what Country this lies that we may know where to find Reprisals hereafter for since he offers this for our Security 't is fit
it hath been to cut the Tacklings and to steer contrary to the Pilot's Directions he thinks such safer by far shut up under Hatches then set at Liberty or employ'd to do mischief As for his supposition of 30000 men to be sent out of Ireland into Handers I cannot tell what to make on 't Let them crack the Shell that hope to find the Kernel in it For my part I despair though the readiness of the English Souldiers of Ireland who at twenty four hours warning came into England to serve His Majesty in the time of Monmouth's Rebellion ought to have been remembered to their advantage and might serve to any unprejudic'd person as a Pattern of the Loyalty and good Inclinations of all the Protestants in that Kingdom if his Majesty had had occasion for them VVhether the Parliament will Repeal the Test for those several weighty Reasons our Author says are fitter for contemplation than Discourse tho methinks it would be pleasant to see a House of Common sit like the Brethren at a silent Meeting is not my Province to determine As likewise VVhether they will so much consider that Grand Reason the King will have it so for his Conscience and theirs may differ or what the diffenters will do I cannot tell One thing I am sure of there will be no such Stumbling-block in the way of the King's desires when they meet as the present condition of Ireland they will be apt when His Majesty tells them they shall have their equal shares in Employments when they have Repealed the Laws to say Look at Ireland see what is done there where the Spirit of Religion appears bare fac'd and accordingly compute what may become of us when we have removed our own legal Fences since they now leap over those Hedges what may we expect when they are quite taken away Poyning's Law is a great grievance to our Author and here in one word he discovers that 't is the dependance this Kingdom has on England he quarrels at 'T is fit the Reader should understand that Law enacted when Poynings was Lord Deputy makes all the English Acts of Parliament of force in Ireland we are therefore so fond of that Law and cover so much to preserve our dependance on England that all the Arguments our Author can bring shall not induce us to part with it I will not reflect in the least on the Courage of the Irish I know there are several brave men among them but they have had the misfortune to fall under the Consideration of as our Author softens it but the plain sence is been beaten by a warlike Nation And I question not unless they behave themselves modestly in their Prosperity they will again fall under the Consideration of the same Nation 't is better we should live in peace and quietness but the Choice is in their hands and if they had rather come under our consideration again than avoid it let them look to the Consequence Another advantage which may accrue to Ireland by a Native as a Governour our Author reckons to be His personal knowledge of the Tories and their Harbourers and his being thereby better capacitated to suppress them Malicious People would be apt to infer from this Suggestion that his Excellency had occasion formerly to be familiarly acquainted with such sort of Cattle I have heard indeed that one of our bravest English Princes Henry the during the Extravagancies of his youth kept Company with publick Robbers and often shar'd both in the Danger and Booty But as soon as the Death of his Father made way for his Succession to the Crown he made use of his former acquaintance of their Persons and Haunts to the extirpating and dissolving the greatest knot of Highway-men that ever troubled England My Lord therefore in imitation of this great Prince no doubt will make use of his Experience that way to the same end And I readily assent to the Author that no English Governour can be so fit to clear that Kingdom of Tories and that for the same reason he gives us There are two other Advantages remaining one is his Excellency's having already made different Parties in that Kingdom the Objects of his Love and Hatred let the Offences of the one or the Merits of the other be never so conspicuous Whether the Brittish can draw any comfort from his Excellency's knowledge of them this way is fit to be debated The other is the probality of his getting the Statute for benefit of Clergy in favour of Cow-Stealers and House Robbers Repealed and where by the way there is a severe Rebuke given to our English Priests for their ill-placed Mercy to Irish Offenders A fault I hope they will be no more guilty of Whether these Advantages be so considerable as to move his Majesty to continue a Man for other more weighty Reasons absolutely destructive to this Kingdom or whether some of them might not be performed by an English Governour His Majesty is the only Judge Only this I am sure of The King if he were under any Obligations to His Minister has fully discharged them all and has shewed himself to be the best of Masters in giving so great and honourable an Employment to his Creature and continuing him in it so long notwithstanding the decrease of his own Revenue and the other visible bad effects of his Management the Impoverishment of that Kingdom amounting to at least two Millions of Mony And His Majesty may be now at liberty without the least imputation of Breach of promise to his Servant to restore us to our former flourishing condition by sending some English Nobleman among us whose contrary Methods will no doubt produce different effects To conclude methinks the comparison between His Majesty and Philip of Macedon when he was drunk is a little too familiar not to say unmannerly and that between Antipater and my Lord Tyrconnel is as great a Complement to the latter But provided my Lord be commended which was our Author's chief design he cares not tho' the comparison does not hold good in all points 't is enough that we know we are Govern'd by such a Prince that neither practises such Debauches himself nor allows of them in his Servants But we are not beholding to the Author for the knowledge of this should a Foreigner read his Pamphler or get it interpreted to him he would be apt and with reason to conclude that His Majesty as much resembled Philip in a Debauch as my Lord Tyrconnel doth sober Antipater I have now done with all that seems of any weight in our Author's Pamphlet and can see nething in his Postscript that deserves an Answer All that I will say is That his Recipes bear no proportion to our desperate Disease and he will prove not to be a Physitian but a pretending Quack who by ill applied Medicines will leave us in a worse Condition than he found us I shall conclude with telling you That your Letter which enclosed
the Pamphlet whereof I have here given you my thoughts was more than a Fortnight on the way or else you had received this sooner I am Dubâ—â— 1688. SIR Your most Humble Servant A PLAIN ACCOUNT OF THE PERSECUTION Laid to the CHARGE of the Church of England THE Desire of Liberty to serve God in that Way and Manner which Men judge to be most acceptable to him is so Natural and Reasonable that they cannot but be extreamly provoked against those who would force them to serve him in any other But the Conceit withal which most Men have that their Way of Serving God is the only acceptable Way naturally inclines them when they have Power to use all Means to constrain all other to serve him in that way only So that Liberty is not more desired by all at one time than it is denied by the very same Persons at another Put them into different Conditions and they are not of the same Mind but have different Inclinations in one State from what they have in another As will be apparent by a short View of what hath passed in these Churches and Kingdoms within our Memory II. Before the late Civil Wars there were very grievous Complaints made of the Bishops that they pressed the Ceremonies so strictly as to inflict heavy Censures upon those called Puritans who could not in Conscience conform to them Now no sooner had those very Persons who thus complaned got their Liberty to do as they pleased but they took it quite away from the other and suquestred all those who would not enter into their Holy League and Covenant for the reforming all things according to the Model which they propounded Nay they were not willing to bear with Five Dissenting Brethren among themselves who could not conform to the Presbyterial Government And when these Dissenting Brethren commonly known by the Name of Independants had got a Party strong enough which carried all before them they would not allow the use of the Common Prayer in any Parish no not to the King himself in his own Chappel not grant to one of the old Clergy so much Liberty as to teach a School c. Which things I do not mention God knows to reproach those who were guilty of them but only to put them in mind of their own Failings that they may be humbled for them and not insult over the Church of England nor severely upbraid them with that which when time was they acted with a higher Hand themselves If I should report all that the Presbyterians did here and in Scotland and all that the Independants did here and in New England it would not be thought that I exceed the Truth when I say they have been more Guilty of this Fault than those whom they now charge with it Which doth not excuse the Church of England it must be confessed but doth in some Measure mitigate her Fault For the Conformable Clergy having met with such very hard Usage in that disinal Time wherein many of them were oppressed above Measure no wonder if the Smart of it then fresh in their Minds something imbittered their Spirits when God was preased by a wonderful Revolution to put them into Power again III. Then a stricter Act of Vnifamity was made and several Laws pursuant to it for the enforeing that Uniformity by severe Penalties But let it be remembred that none were by those Laws constrained to come to Church but had Liberty left them to serve God at Home and some Company with them in their own Way And let it be farther remembred that the Reâ—ion why they were denied their Liberty of meeting in greater Assemblies was because such Assemblies were represented as greatly endangering the publick Peace and Safety as the Words are in the very first Act of this Nature against â—uakers in the Year 1662. Let any one read the Oxford Act as it is commonly called made in the Year 1665. and that at Westminster in the Year 16â—â— and he will find them intended against Sedâ—â—ous Conventicles That is they wâ—â—â— made them were perswâ—dâ—d by the Jâ—suâ— Iâ—terest at first to look upon such Meetings as Nurseries of Sedition where bad Principles were infused into Mens Minds destructive to the Civil Government If it had not been for this it doth not appear that the Contrivers of these Laws were inclined to such Severities as were thereby enacted but the Nâ—nconformists might have enjoyed a larger Liberty in Religion It was not Religion alone which was considered and prerended but the publick Peace and Settlement with respect to which they were tyed up so straitly in the Exercise of their Religion Which to deal clearly I do not believe would have raught Rebellion but this was constantly insinuated by the Court Agents and it is no wonder if the Parliament who remembred how the Ministers of that Perswasion though indeed from the then Appearance of Popery had been the Principal Incouragers of that Defensive War against the King were easily made to believe that they still retained the same Principles and would propagate them if they were suffered among the People Certainly it is also that the Court made it their Care to have those Acts passed though at the same time they hindred their Execution that they might keep up both Parties in the height of their Animosities and especially that they might make the Church of England be both hated and despised by the Dissenters IV. Thus things continued for some time till wise Men began to see into the Secret and think of a Reconciliation But it was always hindred by the Court who never thought of giving Liberty by a Law but only by the Prerogative which could as casâ—ly take it away There was a time for instance when a Comprehension c. was projected by several great Men both in Church and State for the taking as many as possible into Union with us and providing Ease for the rest Which so netled the late King that meeting with the then Arch-bishop of Canterbury he said to him as I perfectly remember What my Lord you are for a Comprehension To which he making such a Reply as signified he heard some were about it No said the King I will keep the Church of England pure and unmixed that is never suffer a Reconciliation with the Dissenters And when the Lords and Commons also had not many years ago passed a Bill for the Repealing of the most heavy of all the Penal Laws against Dissenters viz. the Statute of 35 Eliz. 1. which by the Parliament is made against the Wicked and dangerous Practices of Seditiâ—â—â— Sectaries and disloyal Persons his late Majesty so dealt with the Clerk of the Parliament that it was shuffled away and could not be found when it was to have been presented to him among other Bills for his Royal Consent unto it A notable Token of the Abhorrence the Court then had of all Penal Laws and of their great Kindness to Dissenters V. Who may
while ago to see connived at in the exercise of their Worship in private Houses are allowed now to practise their Idolatry openly in our chief Towns and in the Metropolitan City of the Kingdom to usurp the publick Churches and Cathedrals Those Catholick Gentlemen whom heretofore it was matter of surprise to see countenanced with the private Favour of the Prince are now advanced to the supream Commands in the Army and the principal Trust in Civil Affairs The Recusant Lords whose enlargement out of the Tower we could not but look upon as an unpresidented Violation both of the Laws of the Land and of the Rights and Jurisdiction of Parliament being committed thither by the Authority of the House of Lords upon a Charge and Impeachment of High Treason by the Commons of England in Parliament assembled were now honoured to be Members of the Privy Council and exalted to be chief Ministers of State They whom the Statutes of the Realm make subject to the severest Penalties for Apostacy to Rome are not only protected from the edg of the Laws but maintained in Parochial Incumbencies and Headships of Colledges Our Orthodox Clergy are not only inhibited to preach against Popery but are illegally Reprimanded Silenced and Suspended for discharging that Duty which their Consciences Offices Oaths and the Laws of the Kingdom oblige them unto And such whom neither the Ecclesiastical nor Westminster Courts can arraign and proceed against we have a new Court of Inquisition erected for the adjudging and punishing of them So that it is not the Dissenters who are the only Persons to be struck at and ruined but the Conformists are to be treated after the same manner and to share in the common Lot whereunto all honest and sincere Protestants are destined and designed Even they who were the Darlings of Whitehall and St. Jameses and recompensed with Honours and Titles for betraying the Rights and Priviledges of Corporations persecuting Dissenters and heading Addresses wherein Parliaments were reproached the Course of Justice against Popish Offenders was slandered the illegal and arbitrary procedures of the Court applauded and justified and all that were zealous for our Laws and Liberties stigmatized with the names of Villains and Traitors are now themselves for but discouraging Popish Assemblies and attempting to put the Laws in execution against Priests who had publickly celebrated Mass not only check'd and rebuked but punished with Seisure and Imprisonment Nor are our Religion and Civil Liberties meerly supplanted and undermined by illegal Tricks glossed over with the Varnish of judicial Forms but they are assaulted and battered in the face of the Sun without so much as a palliation to give their procedures a plausible figure And the King being brought to a despair of managing the Parliament to his barefaced Purpose of Popery and Arbitrariness and of prevailing with them to establish Tyranny and Idolatry by Law notwithstanding their having been as industriously pack'd and chosen to answer such a Design as Art Bribery and Authority could reach and notwithstanding their having been obsequious in their first Session to an excess that has proved unsafe to themselves and the Nation he became resolved not to allow them to meet any more but to set up a-la-mode de France and to his personal Commands seconded with the Assent of his durante-beneplacito-Judges to be acknowledged and obeyed for Laws So that they who were formerly seduced into a good Opinion of him are not only undeceived but provoked to warm Resentments for having had their credulity and easiness of belief so grosly abused And as the converting so vast a number of well-meaning but wofully deluded People who had suffered themselves to be hoodwink'd and fatally hurried to betray their Religion Country and Posterity to the Ambition and Popish Bigottry of the Court was a design becoming the Compassion Mercy and Wisdom of God so the Method's and Means whereby they are come to be enlightned and proselyted are a signal vindication of the Sapience and Righteousness of God in all those tremendous steps of his Providence by which our Enemies have been emboldned to detect and discover themselves For though their continuing so long to have a good opinion of the present King and their abetting him so far in the undermining our Religion and invading our Liberties may seem to have proceeded not so much from their Ignorance as from their Obstinacy and Malice yet God who penetrates into the Hearts of Men may have discovered some degrees of sincerity in their Pretentions and Carriages though accompanied with a great deal of folly and unmanliness Nor are the Lords ways like to ours to give Persons over as unteachable and irreclaimable upon their withstanding every measure of Light and the resisting even those Means which were sufficient and proper for their Conviction but he will try them by new and extraordinary Methods and see whether Feeling and doleful Experience may not convert those upon whom Arguments and Moral Evidence could make no impressions And there being among those formerly misled and deluded Protestants many who retained a Love for their Country a Care for their Posterity and a Zeal for the Gospel and Reformed Religion even when their Actions imported the contrary and seem'd to betray them the singling and weeding out such from among the Court-Faction and Party is a compensation both for the defeatment of all endeavours for the prevention of the Evils that have overtaken us and for the Distresses and Calamities under which we do at present lie and groan And if there be joy in Heaven upon the conversion of a Sinner with what thankfulness to God and joy in themselves should they who have so many years wrestled against the encroachments of Popery and Arbitrariness and who have deeply suffered in their Names Persons and Estates upon that account welcome and embrace their once erring and misled but now enlightned reclaimed and converted Brethren And in stead of remembring or upbraiding them with the opposition and rancour which they expressed against our Persons Principles and Ways let there be no Language heard from us but what may declare the joy we have in our selves for their conversion and the entire trust and confidence which we put in them The first Duty incumbent therefore upon Dissenters towards those of the Church of England is to believe that notwithstanding there have been many of them so long Advocates and Partisans for the Court through ignorance of what was aimed at and intended they are nevertheless as really concerned as any others and as truly zealous for the preservation of the Protestant Religion and for maintaining the legal Rights and Liberties of the Subject and when occasion shall offer will approve themselves accordingly 'T is a ridiculous as well as a mischievous Fancy for one Party to confine all Religion only to themselves or to circumscribe all the ancient English Ardor for the common Rights of the Nation to such as are of their particular Fellowship and Perswasion
till after the expiration of twenty Years In the same manner when he had resolved to Repeal the Edict of Nantes and had given injunction for the Draught by which it was to be done he at the same season gave the Protestants all assurances of Protection and of the said Edicts being kept Inviolable To which may be added that shameful and detestable Chicanery in passing his Sacred and Royal Word that no violence should be offered any for their Religion tho at that very moment the Dragoons were upon their March with orders of exercising all manner of Cruelties und Barbarities upon them So that his Majesty of Great Britain hath a Pattern lately sent him and that by the Illustrious Monarch whom he so much admires and whom he makes it his Ambition and Glory to imitate Nor are we without proofs already how insignificant the King's Promises are except to delude and what little confidence ought to be put in them The disabling and suspending the 13th Statute of his late Parliament in Scotland wherein the Test was Confirmed and his departing from all his Promises Registred in his Letter as well as from those contained in the Speech made by the Lord Commissioner pursuant to the Instructions which he had undoubtedly receiv'd together with his having forgotten and receded from all his Promises made to the Church of England both when Duke of York and since he came to the Crown are undeniable evidences that his Royal Word is no more Sacred nor Binding than that of some other Monarchs and that whosoever of the Protestants shall be so foolish as to rely upon it will find themselves as certainly disappointed and deceived as they of the Reformed Religion elsewhere have been And while they of the Established way find so small security by the Laws which the King is bound by his Coronation Oath to observe the Dissenters cannot expect very much from a naked Promise which as it hath not a solemn Oath to enforce it so 't is both Illegal in the making and contrary to the principles of his Religion to keep Nor is it unworthy of observation that he hath not only departed from his Promises made to the Church of England but that we are told in a late Popish Pamphlet Intituled A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty Published as it self says by Authority that they were all conditional to wit by vertue of some Mental Reservation in his Majesty's Breast and that the Conformable Clergy having failed in performing the Conditions upon which they were made the King is absolved and discharged from all Obligation of observing them The Church of England says he must give his Majesty leave not to nourish a Snake in his Bosom but rather to withdraw his Royal Protection which was promised upon the account of her constant fidelity Which as it is a plain threatning of all the Legal Clergy and a denunciation of the unjust and hard measure they are to look for so it shakes the Foundation upon which all credit unto and reliance upon his Majesty's Word can be any ways placed For tho Threatnings may have tacit Reserves because the right of executing them resides in the Threatner yet Promises are incapable of all latent conditions because every Promise vests a Right in the Promisee and that in the virtue of the words in which it is made But it is the less to be wondred at if his Majesty fly to Equivocations and Mental Reserves being both under the conduct of that Order and a Member of the Society that first taught and practised this treacherous piece of Chicanery However it may inform the Dissenters that if they be not able to answer the End for which they are depended upon or be not willing in the manner and degree that is expected or if it be not for the Interest of the Catholick Cause to have them indulged in all these cases and many more the King may be pronounced acquitted and discharged from all the Promises he hath given them as having been merely stipulatory and conditional And as he will be sure then finem facere ferendae alienae personae to lay aside the disguise that he hath now put on so if they would reflect either upon his temper or upon his Religion they might now know haud gratuitam in tanta superbia comitatem that a person of his pride would not stoop to such Flattery as his Letter to Mr. Alsop expresseth but in order to some design But what need other proof of the fallaciousness of the two Royal Papers and that no Protestants can reasonably depend upon the Royal Word there laid to pledge for the continuation of their Liberty but to look into these too Papers themselves where we shall meet expressions that may both detract from our belief of his Majesty's sincerity and awaken us to a just jealousie that the Liberty and Toleration granted by them are intended to be of no long standing and duration For while he is pleased to tell us that the granting his Subjects the free use of their Religion for the time to come is an addition to the perfect Enjoyment of their Property which has never been invaded by His Majesty since his coming to the Crown He doth in effect say that His Fidelity Truth and Integrity in what he grants in reference to Religion is to be measured and judged by the Verity that is in what He rells us as to the never having Invaded our Property And that I may Borrow an Expression from Mr. Alsop and to no less Person than to the King himself namely That tho we pretend to no refined Intellectuals nor presume to Philosophise upon Mysteries of Government yet we make some pretence to the Sense of Feeling and whatever our Dullness be can discern between what is exacted of us according to Law and what we are rob'd of by an Exerclse of Arbitrary Power For not to insist upon the violent Seisure of Mens Goods by Officers as well as Soldiers in all parts of England which looks like an Invasion upon the Properties of the Subject nor to dwell upon his keeping an Army on foot in time of Peace against the Authority as well as without the Countenance of Law which our Ancestors would have stiled an Invasion upon the whole Property of the Kingdom I would fain know by what Name we are to call his Levying the Customs and the Additional Excise before they were granted unto him by the Parliament all the legal Establishment of them upon the Nation having been only during the late King's Life till the Settlement of them upon the Crown was again renewed by Statute It were also worth his Majesties telling us what Titles are due to the Suspending the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge a Beneficio and the turning the President of Magdalen's in Oxford out of his Headship and the Suspending Dr. Fairfax from his Fellowship if there be not an Invasion upon our Property seeing every part of this is against all
appeared both during the Queens Pretended Biggness and in the manner in which the Birth was managed so many just and visible Grounds of Suspition that not only we our selves but all the good Subjects of those Kingdoms do vehemently suspect that the Pretended Prince of Wales was not born by the Queen And it is notoriously known to all the World that many both doubted of the Queens Biggness and of the Birth of the Child and yet there was not any one thing done to satisfie them or to put an end to their Doubts And since our Dearest and most Entirely Beloved Consort the Princess and likewise we our selves have so great an Interest in this Matter and such a Right as all the World knows to the Succession to the Crown since also the English did in the Year 1672. when the States General of the United Provinces were Invaded in a most unjust War use their utmost Endeavors to put an end to that War and that in Opposition to those who were then in the Government and by their so doing they run the Hazard of losing both the Favor of the Court and their Imployments And since the English Nation has ever testified a most particular Affection and Esteem both to our Dearest Consort the Princess and to our selves We cannot excuse our selves from espousing their Interests in a matter of such high Consequence and from Contributing all that lies in us for the Maintaining both of the Protestant Religion and of the Laws and Liberties of those Kingdoms and for the Securing to them the continual Enjoyment of all their just Rights To the doing of which we are most earnestly solicited by a great many Lords both Spiritual and Temporal and by many Gentlemen and other Subjects of all Ranks Therefore it is that we have thought fit to go over to England and to carry over with us a Force sufficient by the Blessing of God to defend us from the Violence of those Evil Counsellors And we being desirous that our Intentions in this may be rightly understood have for this end prepared this Declaration in which as we have hitherto given a true Account of the Reasons inducing us to it So we now think fit to Declare that this our Expedition is intended for no other Design but to have a free and lawful Parliament assembled as soon as is possible and that in order to this all the late Charters by which the Elections of Burgesses are limited contrary to the Ancient Custom shall be considered as null and of no force And likewise all Magistrates who have been Injustly turned out shall forthwith resume their former Imployments as well as all the Boroughs of England shall return again to their Ancient Prescriptions and Charters And more particularly that the Ancient Charter of the Great and Famous City of London shall again be in Force And that the Writs for the Members of Parliament shall be addressed to the proper Officers according to Law and Custom That also none be suffered to choose or to be chosen Members of Parliament but such as are qualified by Law And that the Members of Parliament being thus lawfully chosen they shall meet and sit in full Freedom that so the Two Houses may concur in the preparing of such Laws as they upon full and free Debate shall judge necessary and convenient both for the confirming and executing the Law concerning the Test and such other Laws as are necessary for the Security and Maintenance of the Protestant Religion as likewise for making such Laws as may establish a good Agreement between the Church of England and all Protestant Dissenters as also for the covering and securing of all such who will live Peaceable under the Government as becomes good Subjects from all Persecution upon the account of their Religion even Papists themselves not excepted and for the doing of all other things which the Two Houses of Parliament shall find necessary for the Peace Honor and Safety of the Nation so that there may be no more danger of the Nations falling at any time hereafter under Arbitrary Government To this Parliament we will also refer the Enquiry into the Birth of the Pretended Prince of Wales and of all things relating to it and to the Right of Succession And we for our part will concur in every thing that may procure the Peace and Happiness of the Nation which a Free and Lawful Parliament shall determine Since we have nothing before our Eyes in this our Undertaking but the Preservation of the Protestant Religion the covering of all Men from Persecution for their Consciences and the Securing to the whole Nation the free Enjoyment of all their Laws Rights and Liberties under a Just and Legal Government This is the design that we have proposed to our selves in appearing upon this occasion in Arms In the Conduct of which we will keep the Forces under our Command under all the Strictness of Martial Discipline and take a special Care that the People of the Countries through which we must march shall not suffer by their means And as soon as the State of the Nation will admit of it we promise that we will send back all those Foreign Forces that we have brought along with us We do therefore hope that all People will judge rightly of us and approve of these our Proceedings But we chiefly rely on the Blessing of God for the Success of this our Undertaking in which we place our whole and only Confidence We do in the last place invite and require all Persons whatsoever all the Peers of the Realm both Spiritual and Temporal all Lords-Lieutenants Deputy-Lieutenants and all Gentlemen Citizens and other Commons of all Ranks to come and assist us in order to the Executing of this our Design against all such as shall endeavor to oppose us that so we may prevent all those Miseries which must needs follow upon the Nations being kept under Arbitrary Government and Slavery And that all the Violences and Disorders which have overturned the whole Constitution of the English Government may be fully redressed in a Free and Legal Parliament And we do likewise resolve that as soon as the Nations are brought to a State of Quiet we will take care that a Parliament shall be called in Scotland for the restoring the Ancient Constitution of that Kingdom and for bringing the Matters of Religion to such a Settlement that the People may live Easie and Happy and for putting an end to all the Injust Violences that have been in a course of so many Years committed there We will also study to bring the Kingdom of Ireland to such a State that the Settlement there may be Religiously observed and that the Protestant and British Interest there may be secured And we will endeavor by all possible means to procure such an Establishment in all the Three Kingdoms that they may all live in a Happy Union and Correspondence together and that the Protestant Religion and the Peace
in open Arms or with Arms in their Houses or about their Persons or in any Office or Imployment Civil or Military upon any Pretence whatsoever contrary to the known Laws of the Land shall be treated by Us and our Forces not as Soldiers and Gentlemen but as Robbers Free-Booters and Banditti they shall be incapable of Quarter and intirely delivered up to the Discretion of our Soldiers And We do further declare that all Persons who shall be found any ways aiding and assisting to them or shall march under their Command or shall joyn with or submit to them in the Discharge or Execution of their Illegal Commissions or Authority shall be looked upon as Partakers of their Crimes Enemies to the Laws and to their Country And whereas we are certainly informed that great Numbers of armed Papists have of late resorted to London and Westminster and parts adjacent where they remain as we have reason to suspect not so much for their own Security as out of a wicked and barbarous Design to make some desperate Attempt upon the said Cities and their Inhabitants by Fire or a sudden Massacre or both or else to be the more ready to joyn themselves to a Body of French Troops designed if it be possible to land in England procured of the French King by the Interest and Power of the Jesuits in Pursuance of the Engagements which at the Instigation of that pestilent Society his most Christian Majesty with one of his Neighbouring Princes of the same Communion has entred into for the utter Extirpation of the Protestant Religion out of Europe Tho we hope we have taken such effectual care to prevent the one and secure the other that by God's Assistance we cannot doubt but we shall defeat all their wicked Enterprises and Designs We cannot however forbear out of the great and tender Concern We have to preserve the People of England and particularly those great and populous Cities from the cruel Rage and bloody Revenge of the Papists to Require and expect from all the Lord-Lieutenants Deputy-Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace Lord-Mayors Mayors Sheriffs and all other Magistrates and Officers Civil and Military of all Counties Cities and Towns of England especially of the County of Middlesex and Cities of London and Westminster and parts adjacent that they do immediately disarm and secure as by Law they may and ought within their respective Counties Cities and Jurisdictions all Papists whatsoever as Persons at all times but now especially most dangerous to the Peace and Safety of the Government that so not only all Power of doing mischief may be taken from them but that the Laws which are the greatest and best Security may resume their Force and be strictly Executed And We do hereby likewise Declare that We will Protect and Defend all those who shall not be afraid to do their Duty in Obedience to these Laws And that for those Magistrates and others of what condition soever they be who shall refuse to assist Us and in Obedience to the Laws to Execute vigorously what we have required of them and suffer themselves at this Juncture to be cajoled or terrified out of ther Duty We will esteem them the most Criminal and Infamous of all Men Betrayers of their Religion the Laws and their Native Country and shall not fail to treat them accordingly resolving to expect and require at their hands the Life of every single Protestant that shall perish and every House that shall be burnt or destroyed by their Treachery and Cowardise William Henry Prince of Orange Given under our Hand and Seal at our Head-quarters at Sherburn Castle the 28th day of November 1688. By his Highness special Command C. HUYGENS. The following Paper was Published by Mr. Samuel Johnson in the Year 1686. for which he was Sentenc'd by the Court of King's Bench Sir Edward Herbert being Lord Chief Justice to stand three times on the Pillory and to be whipp'd from Newgate to Tyburn Which barbarous Sentence was Executed An Humble and Hearty Address to all the English Protestants in this present Army Gentlemen NExt to the Duty which we owe to God which ought to be the principal Care of Men of your Profession especially because you carry your Lives in your Hands and often look Death in the Face The second Thing that deserves your Consideration is The service of your Native Country wherein you drew your first Breath and breathed a free English Air. Now I would desire you to consider how well you comply with these two main Points by engaging in this present Service Is it in the Name of God and for his Service that you have joyned your selves with Papists who will indeed fight for the Mass-book but burn the Bible and who seek to Extirpate the Protestant Religion with Your Swords because they cannot do it with their Own And will you be Aiding and Assisting to set up Mass-houses to Erect that Popish Kingdom of Darkness and Desolation amongst us and to train up all our Children in Popery How can you do these Things and yet call your selves Protestants And then what Service can be done your Country by being under the Command of French and Irish Papists and by bringing the Nation under a Foreign Yoke Will you help them to make forcible Entry into the Houses of your Country-men under the Name of Quartering directly contrary to Magna Charta and the Petition of Right Will you be Aiding and Assisting to all the Murders and Outrages which they shall commit by their void Commissions Which were declared Illegal and sufficiently blasted by both Houses of Parliament if there had been any need of it for it was very well known before That a Papist cannot have a Commission but by the Law is utterly Disabled and Disarmed Will you exchange your Birth-right of English Laws and Liberties for Martial or Club-law and help to destroy all others only to be eaten last your selves If I know you well as you are English Men you hate and scorn these Things And therefore be not unequally yoaked with Idolatrous and Bloody Papists Be Valiant for the Truth and shew your selves Men. The same Considerations are likewise humbly offered to all the English Seamen who have been the Bulwark of this Nation against Popery and Slavery ever since Eighty Eight Several Reasons for the Establishment of a standing Army and Dissolving the Militia By Mr. S. Johnson 1. BEcause the Lords Lieutenants Deputy Lieutenants and the whole Militia that is to say the Lords Gentlemen and Free-holders of England are not fit to be trusted with their own Laws Lives Liberties and Estates and therefore ought to have Guardians and Keepers assigned to them 2. Because Mercenary Soldiers who fight for twelve Pence a Day will fight better as having more to lose than either the Nobility or Gentry 3. Because there are no Irish Papists in the Militia who are certainly the best Soldiers in the World for they have slain Men Women and Children
Orange designs the King's safety and preservation and hope all things may be composed without more Blood-shed by the calling a Parliament God grant a happy End to these Troubles that the King's Reign may be prosperous and that I may shortly meet You in perfect peace and safety till when let me beg You to continue the same favourable Opinion that You have hitherto had of Your most Obedient Daughter and Servant ANNE A Memorial of the Protestants of the Church of England Presented to their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Orange YOur Royal Highnesses cannot be ignorant that the Protestants of England who continue true to their Religion and the Government Established by Law have been many ways troubled and vexed by restless contrivances and designs of the Papists under pretence of the Royal Authority and things required of them unaccountable before God and Man Ecclesiastical Benefices and Preferments taken from them without any other Reason but the King's Pleasure that they have been summoned and sentenced by Ecclesiastical Commissioners contrary to Law deprived of their Birth-Right in the free Choice of their Magistrates and Representatives divers Corporations dissolved the Legal Security of our Religion and Liberty established and ratified by King and Parliament annull'd and overthrown by a pretended Dispensing Power new and unheard of Maxims have been preached as if Subjects had no Right but what depends on the King's Will and Pleasure The Militia put into the Hands of persons not qualified by Law and a Popish Mercenary Army maintained in the Kingdom in time of Peace absolutely contrary to Law The Execution of the Law against several high Crimes and Misdemeanours superseded and prohibited the Statutes against Correspondence with the Court of Rome Papal Jurisdiction and Popish Priests suspended that in Courts of Justice those Judges are displaced who dare acquit them whom the King would have Condemned as happened to Judg Powel and Holloway for acquitting the Seven Bishops Liberty of chusing Members of Parliament notwithstanding all the Care taken and Provision made by Law on that behalf wholly taken away by Quo Warranto's served against Corporations and the three known Questions All things carried on in open view for the Propagation and Growth of Popery for which the Courts of England and France have so long joyntly laboured with so much Application and Earnestness Endeavours used to perswade your Royal Highnesses to consent to Liberty of Conscience and abrogating the Penal Laws and Tests wherein they fell short of their aim That they most humbly implore the Protection of your Royal Highnesses as to the 〈◊〉 ending and incroachments made upon the Law for maintenance of the Protestant Religion our Civil and Fundamental Rights and Priviledg and that Your Royal Highness would be pleased to insist that the Free Parliament of England according to Law may be restored the Laws against Papists Priests Papal Jurisdiction c. put in Execution and the Suspending and Dispensing Power declared null and void the Rights and Priviledges of the City of London the free Choice of their Magistrates and the Liâ—â—â—ties as well of that as other Corporations restored and all things returned to their 〈◊〉 Channel c. Admiral Herbert 's Letter to all Commanders of Ships and Seamen in His Majesties Fleet. Gentlemen I Have little to add to what his Highness has express'd in general Terms besides laying before you the dangerous way you are at present in where Ruin or Infamy must inevitably attend you if you don't joyn with the Prince in the Common Cause for the Defence of your Religion and Liberties for should it please God for the sins of the English Nation to suffer your Arms to prevail to what can your Victory serve you but to enslave you deeper and overthrow the true Religion in which you have liv'd and your Fathers dy'd Of which I beg you as a Friend to consider the Consequences and to reflect on the Blot and Infamy it will bring on you not only now but in all After-Ages That by Your means the Protestant Religion was destroy'd and your Country depriv'd of its Ancient Liberties And if it pleases God to bless the Prince's Endeavours with success as I don't doubt but he will consider then what their Condition will be that oppose him in this so good a Design where the greatest Favour they can hope for is their being suffer'd to end their Days in Misery and Want detested and despised by all good Men. It is therefore and for many more Reasons too long to insert here that I as a true English-man and your Friend exhort you to joyn your Arms to the Prince for the Defence of the Common Cause the Protestant Religion and the Liberties of your Country It is what I am well assured the major and best part of the Army as well as the Nation will do so soon as convenience is offered Prevent them in so good an Action whilst it is in your power and may it appear That as the Kingdom hath always depended on the Navy for its Defence so you will yet go further by making it as much as in you lies the Protection of her Religion and Liberties and then you may assure your selves of all Marks of Favour and Honour suitable to the Merits of so great and glorious an Action After this I ought not to add so inconsiderable a thing as that it will for ever engage me to be in a most particular manner Your faithful Friend and humble Servant AR. HERBERT Aboard the Leyden in the Gooree Lord Delamear 's Speech THE occasion of this is to give you my Thoughts upon the present Conjuncture which concerns not only you but every Protestant and Free-born Man of England I am confident that wishes well to the Protestant Religion and his Country and I am perswaded that every Man of you thinks both in danger and now to lie at stake I am also perswaded that every Man of you will rejoyce to see Religion and Property settled if so then I am not mistaken in my Conjectures concerning you Can you ever hope for a better Occasion to root out POPERY and SLAVERY than by joining with the P. of O. whose Proposals contain and speak the Desires of every Man that loves his Religion and Liberty And in saying this I will invite you to nothing but what I will do my self and I will not desire any of you to go any further than I will move my self neither will I put you upon any Danger where I will not take share in it I propose this to you not as you are my Tenants but as my Friends and as you are Englishmen No Man can love Fighting for its own sake nor find any pleasure in danger And you may imagine I would be very glad to spend the rest of my days in peace I having had so great a share in Troubles but I see all lies at stake I am to chuse whether I will be a Slave and a Papist or a
for we assure our selves that no rational and unbyassed Person will judge it Rebellion to defend our Laws and Religion which all our Princes have sworn at their Coronations Which Oath how well it hath been observed of late we desire a Free Parliament may have the Consideration of We own it Rebellion to resist a King that governs by Law but he was always accounted a Tyrant that made his Will his Law and to resist such an one we justly esteem no Rebellion but a necessary Defence And in this Consideration we doubt not of all Honest Mens Assistance and humbly hope for and implore the great Gods Protection that turneth the Hearts of People as pleaseth him best it having been observed That People can never be of one Mind without his Inspiration which hath in all Ages confirmed that Observation Vox Populi est Vox Dei The present restoring of Charters and reversing the oppressing and unjust Judgment given on Magdalen Colledg Fellows is plain are but to still the People like Plums to Children by deceiving them for a while but if they shall by this Stratagem be fooled till this present Storm that threatens the Papists be past as soon as they shall be resetled the former Oppression will be put on with greater vigour But we hope in vain is the Net spread in the sight of the Birds For 1. the Papists old Rule is That Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks as they term Protestants tho the Popish Religion is the greatest Heresie And 2. Queen Mary's so ill observing her Promises to the Suffolk-men that help'd her to the Throne And above all 3. the Popes dispensing with the breach of Oaths Treaties or Promises at his pleasure when it makes for the service of Holy Church as they term it These we say are such convincing Reasons to hinder us from giving Credit to the aforesaid Mock-Shews of Redress that we think our selves bound in Conscience to rest on no Security that shall not be approved by a Freely Elected Parliament to whom under God we refer our Cause His Grace the Duke of Norfolk 's Speech to the Mayor of Norwich on the First of December in the Market-place of Norwich Mr. Mayor NOT doubting but you and the rest of your Body as well as the whole City and Country may be Alarmed by the great Concourse of Gentry with the numerous Appearance of their Friends and Servants as well as of your own Militia here this Morning I have thought this the most proper place as being the most publick one to give you an Account of our Intentions Out of the deep sense we had that in the present unhappy Juncture of Affairs nothing we could think of was possible to secure the Laws Liberties and Protestant Religion but a Free Parliament WE ARE HERE MET TO DECLARE That we will do our utmost to defend the same by declaring for such a Free Parliament And since His Majesty hath been pleased by the News we hear this day to order Writs for a Parliament to sit the Fifteenth of January next I can only add in the name of my Self and all these Gentlemen and others here met That we will ever be ready to support and defend the Laws Liberties and Protestant Religion And so GOD SAVE THE KING To this the Mayor Aldermen and the rest of the Corporation and a numerous Assembly did concur with his Grace and the rest of the Gentry His Grace at his lighting from his Horse perceiving great numbers of Common People gathering together called them to him and told them He desired they would not take any occasion to commit any Disorder or Outrage but go quietly to their Homes and acquainted them that the King had ordered a Free Parliament to be called The Speech of the Prince of Orange to some Principal Gentlemen of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire on their coming to joyn his Highness at Exeter the 15th of Nov. 1688. THO we know not all your Persons yet we have a Catalogue of your Names and remember the Character of your Worth and Interest in your Country You see we are come according to your Invitation and our Promise Our Duty to God obliges us to protect the Protestant Religion and our Love to Mankind your Liberties and Properties We expected you that dwelt so near the place of our Landing would have joyn'd us sooner not that it is now too late nor that we want your Military Assistance so much as your Countenance and Presence to justifie our declar'd Pretensions rather than accomplish our good and gracious Designs Tho we have brought both a good Fleet and a good Army to render these Kingdoms happy by rescuing all Protestants from Popery Slavery and Arbitrary Power by restoring them to their Rights and Properties established by Law and by promoting of Peace and Trade which is the Soul of Government and the very Life-Blood of a Nation yet we rely more on the goodness of God and the Justice of our Cause than on any Humane Force and Power whatever Yet since God is pleased we shall make use of Human Means and not expect Miracles for our Preservation and Happiness let us not neglect making use of this gracious Opportunity but with Prudence and Courage put in Execution our so honourable Purposes Therefore Gentlemen Friends and Fellow-Protestants we bid you and all your Followers most heartily Welcom to our Court and Camp Let the whole World now judg if our Pretensions are not Just Generous Sincere and above Price since we might have even a Bridge of Gold to return back But it is our Principle and Resolution rather to die in a good Cause than live in a bad One well knowing that Vertue and True Honour is its own Reward and the Happiness of Mankind Our Great and Only Design The true Copy of a Paper delivered by the Lord Devonshire to the Mayor of Darby where he quarter'd the one and twentieth of November 1688. WE the Nobility and Gentry of the Northern parts of England being deeply sensible of the Calamities that threaten these Kingdoms do think it our Duty as Christians and good Subjects to endeavour what in us lies the Healing of our present Distractions and preventing greater And as with grief we apprehend the said Consequences that may arise from the Landing of an Army in this Kingdom from Foreign parts So we cannot but deplore the Occasion given for it by so many Invasions made of late Years on our Religion and Laws And whereas we cannot think of any other Expedient to compose our Differences and prevent Effusion of Blood than that which procured a Settlement in these Kingdoms after the late Civil Wars the Meeting and Sitting of a Parliament freely and duly Chosen we think our selves obliged as far as in us lies to promote it And the rather because the Prince of Orange as appears by his Declaration is willing to submit his own Pretensions and all other Matters to their Determination We heartily Wish and
Consent of Parliament is against Law That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Condition and as allowed by Law That Election of Members of Parliament ought to be Free That the Freedom of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or place out of Parliament That excessive Bail ought not to be required nor excessive Fines imposed nor cruel and unusual Punishments inflicted That Jurors ought to be duly empannell'd and return'd and Jurors which pass upon Men in Tryals for High-Treason ought to be Freeholders That all grants and promises of Fines and Forfeitures of particular Persons before Conviction are Illegal and Void And that for Redress of all Grievances and for the amending strengthening and preserving of the Laws Parliaments ought to be held frequently And they do claim demand and insist upon all and singular the Premises as their undoubted Rights and Liberties and that no Declarations Judgments Doings or Proceedings to the prejudice of the People in any of the said Premises ought in any wise to be drawn hereafter into Consequence or Example To which Demand of their Rights they are particularly encouraged by the Declaration of His Highness the Prince of Orange as being the only Means for obtaining a full redress and remedy therein Having therefore an intire Confidence that his said Highness the Prince of Orange will perfect the Deliverance so far advanced by Him and will still preserve them from the Violation of their Rights which they have here asserted and from all other Attempts upon their Religion Rights and Liberties The said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons Assembled at Westminster do resolve That William and Mary Prince and Princess of Orange be and be declared King and Queen of England France and Ireland and the Dominions thereunto belonging to hold the Crown and Royal Dignity of the said Kingdoms and Dominions to them the said Prince and Princess during their Lives and the Life of the Survivor of them And that the sole and full Exercise of the Regal Power be only in and executed by the said Prince of Orange in the Names of the said Prince and Princess during their joynt lives and after their Deceases the said Crown and Royal Dignity of the said Kingdoms and Dominions to be to the Heirs of the Body of the said Princess and for default of such Issue to the Princess Ann of Denmark and the Heirs of Her Body and for default of such Issue to the Heirs of the Body of the said Prince of Orange And the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons do pray the said Prince and Princess of Orange to accept the same accordingly And that the Oaths hereafter mentioned be taken by all Persons of whom the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy might be required by Law instead of them and that the said Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy be Abrogated I A. B. do sincerely promise and swear That I will be Faithful and bear true Allegiance to their Majesties King WILLIAM and Queen MARY So help me God I A. B. do swear That I do from my Heart Abhor Detest and Abjure as Impious and Heretical this Damnable Doctrin and Position That Princes Excommunicated or Deprived by the Pope or any Authority of the See of Rome may be Deposed or Murthered by their Subjects or any other whatsoever And I do declare That no Foreign Prince Person Prelate State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm So help me God Jo. Browne Cleric ' Parl. Die Veneris 15 Feb. 1688. His Majesties Gracious Answer to the Declaration of both Houses My Lords and Gentlemen THIS is certainly the greatest proof of the Trust you have in Vs that can be given which is the thing that maketh us value it the more and we thankfully Accept what you have Offered And as I had no other Intention in coming hither than to preserve your Religion Laws and Liberties so you may be sure That I shall endeavour to support them and shall be willing to concur in any thing that shall be for the Good of the Kingdom and to do all that is in my Power to advance the Welfare and Glory of the Nation Jo. Browne Cleric ' Parliamentorum Die Veneris 〈◊〉 Februarii 1688. ORdered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal Assembled at Westminster That His Majesties Gracious Answer to the Declaration of both Houses and the Declaration be forthwith Printed and Published And that His Majesties Gracious Answer this Day be added to the Engrossed Declaration in Parchment to be Enrolled in Parliament and Chancery A PROCLAMATION WHereas it hath pleased Almighty God in his Great Mercy to this Kingdom to Vouchsafe us a Miraculous Deliverance from Popery and Arbitrary Power and that our Preservation is due next under God to the Resolution and Conduct of His Highness the Prince of ORANGE whom God hath Chosen to be the Glorious Instrument of such an Inestimable Happiness to us and our Posterity And being highly sensible and fully persuaded of the Great and Eminent Vertues of Her Highness the Princess of ORANGE whose Zeal for the Protestant Religion will no doubt bring a Blessing along with Her upon this Nation And whereas the Lords and Commons now Assembled at Westminster have made a Declaration and Presented the same to the said Prince and Princess of ORANGE and therein desired them to Accept the Crown who have Accepted the same Accordingly We therefore the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons together with the Lord Mayor and Citizens of London and others of the Commons of this Realm do with a full Consent Publish and Proclaim according to the said Declaration WILLIAM and MARY Prince and Princess of ORANGE to be KING and QUEEN of England France and Ireland with all the Dominions and Cerritories thereunto belonging Who are accordingly so to be Owned Deemed Accepted and taken by all the People of the aforesaid Realms and Dominions who are from henceforward bound to Acknowledge and Pay unto them all Faith and true Allegiance Beseeching God by whom Kings Reign to Bless King WILLIAM and Queen MARY with Long and Happy Years to Reign over Vs. God Save King WILLIAM and Queen MARY Jo. Brown Cleric ' Parliamentorum The Declaration of the Estates of Scotland concerning the Misgovernment of King James the Seventh and filling up the Throne with King William and Queen Mary THAT King James the 7th had acted irregularly 1. By His Erecting publick Schools and Societies of the Jesuits and not only allowing Mass to be publickly said but also inverting Protestant Chapels and Churches to Publick Mass-houses contrary to the express Laws against saying and hearing of Mass 2. By allowing Popish Books to be Printed and Dispersed by a Gift to a Popish Printer designing him Printer to his Majesties Houshold College and Chapel contrary to the Laws
read to their Majesties the King returned to the Commissioners the following Answer WHen I engaged in this Vndertaking I had particular Regard and Consideration for Scotland and therefore I did emit a Declaration in relation to That as well as to this Kingdom which I intend to make good and effectual to them I take it very kindly that Scotland hath expressed so much Confidence in and Affection to Me They shall find Me willing to assist them in every thing that concerns the Weal and Interest of that Kingdom by making what Laws shall be necessary for the Security of their Religion Property and Liberty and to ease them of what may be justly grievous to them After which the Coronation-Oath was tendred to Their Majesties which the Earl of Argyle spoke word by word directly and the King and Queen repeated it after him holding Their Right Hands up after the manner of taking Oaths in Scotland The Meeting of the Estates of Scotland did Authorize their Commissioners to represent to His Majesty That that Clause in the Oath in relation to the rooting out of Hereticks did not import the destroying of Hereticks And that by the Law of Scotland no Man was to be persecuted for his private Opinion And even Obstinate and Convicted Hereticks were only to be denounced Rebels or Outlawed whereby their Moveable Estates are Confiscated His Majesty at the repeating that Clause in the Oath Did declare that He did not mean by these words That He was under any Obligation to become a Persecutor To which the Commissioners made Answer That neither the meaning of the Oath or the Law of Scotland did import it Then the King replyed That He took the Oath in that Sense and called for Witnesses the Commissioners and others present And then both Their Majesties Signed the said Coronation-Oath After which the Commissioners and several of the Scotish Nobility kissed Their Majesties Hands The Coronation OATH of England The Arch-bishop or Bishop shall say WIll You solemnly Promise and Swear to govern the People of this Kingdom of England and the Dominions thereto belonging according to the Statues in Parliament agreed on and the Laws and Customs of the same The King and Queen shall say I solemnly Promise so to do Arch-bishop or Bishop Will You to Your Power cause Law and Justice in Mercy to be Executed in all Your Judgments King and Queen I Will. Arch-bishop or Bishop Will You to the utmost of Your Power Maintain the Laws of God the true Profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law And will You Preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of this Realm and to the Churches committed to their Charge all such Rights and Priviledges as by Law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them King and Queen All this I Promise to do After this the King and Qeen laying His and Her Hand upon the Holy Gospels shall say King and Queen The Things which I have here before Promised I will Perform and Keep So help me God Then the King and Queen shall kiss the Book The Coronation OATH of Scotland WE William and Mary King and Queen of Scotland faithfully Promise and Swear by this Our solemn Oath in presence of the Eternal God that during the whole course of Our Life we will serve the same Eternal God to the uttermost of Our Power according as he has required in his most holy Word reveal'd and contain'd in the New and Old Testament and according to the same Word shall maintain the True Religion of Christ Jesus the Preaching of his holy Word and the due and right Ministration of the Sacraments now Received and Preached within the Realm of Scotland and shall abolish and gainstand all false Religion contrary to the same and shall Rule the People committed to our Charge according to the Will and Command of God revealed in his aforesaid Word and according to the laudable Laws and Constitutions received in this Realm no ways repugnant to the said Word of the Eternal God and shall procure to the utmost of Our Power to the Kirk of God and whole Christian People true and perfect Peace in all time coming That we shall preserve and keep inviolated the Rights and Rents with all just Privileges of the Crown of Scotland neither shall we transfer nor alienate the same That we shall forbid and repress in all Estates and Degrees Reif Oppression and all kind of wrong And we shall Command and Procure that Justice and Equity in all Judgments be keeped to all persons without exception as the Lord and Father of all Mercies shall be merciful to us And we shall be careful to root out all Hereticks and Enemies to the true Worship of God that shall be Convicted by the true Kirk of God of the aforesaid Crimes out of Our Lands and Empire of Scotland And we faithfully affirm the things above written by Our Solemn Oath God save King WILLIAM and Queen MARY Proposals humbly offered to the Lords and Commons in the present Convention for settling of the Government c. My Lords and Gentlemen YOV are Assembled upon Matters of the highest Importance to England and all Christendom and the result of your Thoughts in this Convention will make a numerous Posterity Happy or Miserable If therefore I have met with any Thing that I think worthy of your Consideration I should think my self wanting in that duty which I owe to my Country and Mankind if I should not lay it before You. If there be as some say certain Lineaments in the Face of Truth with which one cannot be deceiv'd because they are not to be counterfeited I hope the Considerations which I presume to offer You will meet with your Approbation That bringing back our Constitution to its first and purest Original refining it from some gross Abuses and supplying its Defects You may be the Joy of the present Age and the Glory of Posterity FIrst 'T is necessary to distinguish between Power it self the Designation of the Persons Governing and the Form of Government For 1. All Power is from God as the Fountain and Original 2. The Designation of the Persons and the Form of Government is either First immediately from God as in the Case of Saul and David and the Government of the Jews or Secondly from the Community chusing some Form of Government and subjecting themselves to it But it must be noted that though Saul and David had a Divine Designation yet the People assembled and in a General Assembly by their Votes freely chose them Which proves that there can be no orderly or lasting Government without Consent of the People Tacit or Express'd and God himself would not put Men under a Government without their Consent And in case of a Conquest the People may be called Prisoners or Slaves which is a state contrary to the Nature of Man but they cannot be properly Subjects till their Wills be brought to submit to the Government
So that Conquest may make Way for a Government but it cannot constitute it Secondly There is a Supreme Power in every Community essential to it and inseparable from it by which if it be not limited immediately by God it can form it self into any kind of Government And in some extraordinary Occasions when the Safety and Peace of the Publick necessarily require it can supply the Defects reform the Abuses and re-establish the true Fundamentals of the Government by Purging Refining and bringing Things back to their first Original Which Power may be called The Supreme Power Real Thirdly When the Community has made choice of some Form of Government and subjected themselves to it having invested some Person or Persons with the Supreme Power The Power in those Persons may be called The Supream Power Personal Fourthly If this Form be a mix'd Government of Monarchy Aristocracy and Democracy and for the easie Execution of the Laws the Executive Power be lodg'd in a single Person He has a Supream Power Personal quoad hoc Fifthly The Supreme Power Personal of England is in Kings Lords and Commons and so it was in Effect agreed to by King Charles the First in his Answer to the nineteen Popositions and resolved by the Convention of the Lords and Commons in the year 1660. And note That the Acts of that Convention tho' never confirmed by Parliament have been taken for Law and particularly by the Lord Chief Justice Hales Sixthly The Supreme Power Personal of England fails three Ways 1. 'T is dissolved For two Essential Parts fail 1. a King 2. a House of Commons which cannot be called according to Constitution the King being gone and the Freedom of Election being destroyed by the Kings Incroachments 2. The King has forfeited his Power several Ways Subjection to the Bishop of Rome is the Subjection against which our Laws cry loudest And even Barclay that Monarchical Politician acknowledges That if a King alienate his Kingdom or subject it to another he forfeits it And Grotius asserts That if a King really attempt to deliver up or subject his Kingdom he may be therein resisted And that if the King have part of the Supreme Power and the People or Senate the other part the King invading that part which is not his a just Force may be opposed and he may lose his Part of the Empire Grotius de Bello c. Cap. 72. But that the King has subjected the Kingdom to the Pope needs no Proof That he has usurp'd an absolute Power superieur to all Laws made the Peoples Share in the Legislative Power impertinent and useless and thereby invaded their just Rights none can deny 'T were in vain to multiply Instances of his Forfeitures And if we consider the Power exercis'd by him of late it will most evidently appear to all who understand the English Constitution that it admits of no such King nor any such Power 3. The King has deserted 1. By incapacitating himself by a Religion inconsistent with the Fundamentals of our Government 2. By forsaking the Power the Constitution allow'd him and usurping a Foreign one So that tho the Person remained the King was gone long ago 3. By Personal Withdrawing Seventhly The Supreme Power Real remains in the Community and they may act by their Original Power And tho every Particular Person is notwithstanding such Dissolution Forfeiture or Desertion subject to the Laws which were made by the Supreme Power Personal when in Being yet the Communities Power is not bound by them but is paramount all Laws made by the Supreme Power Personal And has a full Right to take such Measures for Settling the Government as they shall think most sure and effectual for the lasting Security and Peace of the Nation For we must note that it was the Community of England which first gave Being to both King and Parliament and to all the other Parts of our Constitution Eighthly The most Renowned Politician observes That those Kingdoms and Republicks subsist longest that are often renewed or brought back to their first Beginnings which is an Observation of Self-evident Truth and implies That the Supreme Power Real has a Right to renew or bring back And the most-ingenious Lawson observes in his Politica That the Community of England in the late Times had the greatest Advantage that they or their Ancestors had had for many Ages for this purpose tho God hid it from their Eyes But the wonderful Concurrence of such a series of Providences as we now see and admire gives ground to hope That the Veil is removed and the Nation will now see the Things that concern their Peace Ninthly The Acts done and executed by the Supreme Power Personal when in Being have so modell'd the Parts and Persons of the Community that the Original Constitution is the best justest and the most desirable The Royal Family affords a Person that both Heaven and Earth point out for King There are Lords whose Nobility is not affected by the Dissolution of the Government and are the subject Matter of a House of Lords And there are Places which by Custom or Charter have Right to choose Representatives of the Commons Tenthly There are inextricable Difficulties in all other Methods For 1. There is no Demise of the King neither Civil nor Natural 2. There is consequently no Descent 3. The Community only has a Right to take Advantage of the King's Forfeiture or Desertion 4. Whatever other Power may be imagin'd in the two Houses as Houses of Parliament it cannot justify it self to the Reason of any who understand the Bottom of our Constitution 5. By this Method all Popish Successors may be excluded and the Government secured in case all the Protestants of the Family die without Issue And this by the very Constitution of England And the Question can never arise about the Force or the Lawfulness of a Bill of Exclusion 6. The Convention will not be oblig'd to take Oaths c. Eleventhly If these things be granted and the Community be at Liberty to act as above it will certainly be most advisable not only for the Security and Welfare of the Nation but if rightly understood for the Interest of their Royal Highnesses to limit the Crown as follows To the Prince of Orange during his Life yet with all possible Honour and Respect to the Princess whose Interests and Inclinations are inseparably the same with his Remainder to the Princess of Orange and the Heirs of her Body Remainder to the Princess of Denmark and the Heirs of her Body Remainder to the Heirs of the Body of the Prince of Orange Remainder as an Act of Parliament shall appoint This will have these Conveniences among others 1. Husband and Wife are but one Person in Law and her Husbands Honour is hers 2. It puts the present Kingly Power into the best Hand in the World which without Flattery is agreed on by all Men. 3. It asserts the above said Power in the
owe Arbitraty Allegiance Allegiance is more in some Places and less in others but no Man can owe so much Duty to his Prince as not to have a Salvo for God and his Life and here we can owe none that is against our Laws and the Publick Good for that would destroy the Government Our Allegiance therefore must be bounded by our Laws and not by the King's Word or Will No Man can swear to obey the King's Word or Will simply but according to Law It would be Sin to tye our selves to think or speak or do what he would have us at large Our Allegiance therefore must be such as will consist with the Frame of our Government and that must be such as is couched in the Body of our Laws Other Allegiance there can be none but what is wrapt up in Courtesies and Formalities For it seems the King as well as the People is under the Law in some Sense under the direction of it though not under the constraint and therefore at his Coronation he does a kind of Fealty to the Laws and Government and swears Allegiance to them as to a Supream Lord. The Oath is not only Will you grant the Laws but will you grant and keep the Laws and Customs of England and the Answer is I grant and promise to keep them It is certain therefore no Allegiance to the King can be against Law to which he himself owes Allegiance The Case being thus far clear That the Allegiance sworn to is no other but our Legal Duty it does not hinder but that we may resist illegal Force When the King of the Scots swore allegiance to our King it did not deprive him of a just defence of his just Right by taking up arms if he were opprest And the King of England when he swore allegiance to the King of France made no scruple to take up arms against his Liege Lord in defence of his just Rights And the Old Lawyers tell us That the very Villain might in case of Rape and Murther arm against his Lord and if the Law arm a Villain against his Lord Subjects are worse than Villains if they may not arm against their Soveraign Lord's illegal Forces in defence of their Laws Lives Estates and the publick good but what makes it most evident is the Clause in King Henry's Charter which says If the King invade those Rights it is Lawful for the Kingdom to rise against him and do him what injury they can as though they owed him no Allegiance The Words are these if my Author fail me not Licet omnibus de Regno nostro contra nos insurgere omnia agere quae gravamen noster respiciant ac si nobis in nullo tenerentur Much to the same purpose is in King John's Charter which I find thus quoted Et Illi Barones cum communa totius terrae distringent gravabunt Nos Modis omnibus quibus poterunt scilicet per captionem Castrorum terrarum possessionum etalis modis quibus potuerint donet fuerint emendatum secundum Arbitrium eorum salva persona nostra Reginae nostrae Liberorum nostrorum Much may be said of this Nature about the Old Allegiance which was all couched in Homage and Fealty but this is enough to show that true Allegiance does not tye us from resisting illegal Force and Intolerable Incroachments upon our just Rights Obj. 10. But such Resistance would be against the Declaration which says It is not Lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take up Arms against the King c. Answ The Latitude of the word Lawful causes the Scruple which at first View seems to tell us That it is sinful upon any pretence whatsoever to take up arms against the King c. But it is no good consequence to say That it is sinful because it is unlawful unless the Discourse be restrained to the Laws of God I must confess it is politically unlawful for Subjects in any Case or for any Cause whatever to take up arms against the King and those Commission'd by him because such a taking up arms here can have no political authority But it is morally lawful in all limited Governments to resist that Force that wants political power The regal power is irresistable in all Persons from the King to the petty Constable but it does not hinder but that all these Persons may be resisted when they do what they have no political power to They that have a limited power and a prescribed Duty may either act against or beyond their Commission and when they so do they may be resisted For such acts have no political power in them though the Persons have to other purposes If a Commission should be granted to a Company of Ruffians to plunder and massacre they might have something more of the King's Affections but no more of his authority than Private Robbers had and consequently might be resisted with equal Honesty None therefore can make this Declaration in its full Latitude but upon this presumption That the King and his Ministers keep perpetually within the Bounds of the Law otherwise they declare the King has an arbitrary power which is against the Fundamental Laws of this Land and a kind of Treason against the State For if he may not be resisted in any Case he may be under some moral restraint but under no political restraint and consequently the political frame of the Government must be arbitrary The meaning therefore of this Declaration can be no other but that a Man can have no Civil power or authority in any Case to take up arms against the King c. But this does not debar any man of the Natural Right of Self-defence by private arms against Inauthoritative Force Obj. 11. To this some reply that seeing God hath placed the Governing though limited Power in the King's Hand no Man may by any Natural Right or Private Defence resist his illegal Force God s Power must not be resisted though abused Answ There is a great difference between the abuse of power and the want of power and therefore this argument either supposes the power greater than it is or concludes ill The King and Parliament have indeed an arbitrary power I do not say Infinite but as Extensive as the frame of government will bear and therefore if they make a very grievous Law though they ought not for they are under a moral restraint though no political neither the King nor any of his Ministers may be resisted in the due Execution of it But the King has no power to burden us beyond or against Law and we may thank our own Weakness if ever he have Strength to do it This shows us there is a great difference betwixt the abuse of political power and the want of it Abused power must not be resisted but Force without power may The political power of arbitrary Princes is more extensive than their moral power And this tyes the Subject to Non-resistance when
be miserably diminish'd sooner than we are aware But there remains yet another part of our Message which we have to impart to you on the behalf of your People They find in an antient Statute and it has been done in fact not long ago That if the King through any Evil Counsel or foolish Contumacy or out of Scorn or some singular petulant Will of his own or by any other irregular Means shall alienate himself from his People and shall refuse to be govern'd and guided by the Laws of the Realm and the Statutes and laudable Ordinances thereof together with the wholsom Advice of the Lords and great Men of his Realm but persisting head-strong in his own hare-brain'd Counsels shall petulantly prosecute his own singular humour That then it shall be lawful for them with the common assent and consent of the People of the Realm to depose that same King from his Regal Throne and to set up some other of the Royal Blood in his room H. Knight Coll. 2681. No Man can imagine that the Lords and Commons in Parliament would have sent the King such a Message and have quoted to him an old Statute for deposing Kings that would not govern according to Law if the People of England had then apprehended that an Obedience without reserve was due to the King or if there had not been such a Statute in being And though the Record of that Excellent Law be lost as the Records of almost all our Antient Laws are yet is the Testimony of so credible an Historian who lived when these things were transacted sufficient to inform us that such a Law was then known and in being and consequently that the Terms of English Allegiance according to the Constitution of our Government are different from what some Modern Authors would persuade us they are This Difference betwixt the said King and his Parliament ended amicably betwixt them in the punishment of many Evil Counsellors by whom the King had been influenced to commit many Irregularities in Government But the Discontents of the People grew higher by his After-management of Affairs and ended in the Deposition of that King and setting up of another who was not the next Heir in Lineal Succession The Articles against King Richard the Second may be read at large in H. Knighton Collect. 2746 2747 c. and are yet extant upon Record An Abridgment of them is in Cotton's Records pag. 386 387 388. out of whom I observe these few there being in all Thirty three The First was His wasting and bestowing the Lands of the Crown upon unworthy Persons and overcharging the Commons with Exactions And that whereas certain Lords Spiritual and Temporal were assign'd in Parliament to intend the Government of the Kingdom the King by a Conventicle of his own Accomplices endeavoured to impeach them of High-Treason Another was For that the King by undue means procured divers Justices to speak against the Law to the destruction of the Duke of Glocester and the Earls of Arundel and Warwick at Shrewsbury Another For that the King against his own Promise and Pardon at a solemn Procession apprehended the Duke of Glocester and sent him to Calice there to be choaked and murthered beheading the Earl of Arundel and banishing the Earl of Warwick and the Lord Cobham Another For that the King's Retinue and a Rout gathered by him out of Cheshire committed divers Murders Rapes and other Felonies and refused to pay for their Victuals Another For that the Crown of England being freed from the Pope and all other Foreign Power the King notwithstanding procured the Pope's Excommunication on such as should break the Ordinances of the last Parliament in derogation of the Crown Statutes and Laws of the Realm Another That he made Men Sheriffs who were not named to him by the Great Officers the Justices and others of his Council and who were unfit contrary to the Laws of the Realm and in manifest breach of his Oath Another For that he did not repay to his Subjects the Debts that he had borrowed of them Another For that the King refused to execute the Laws saying That the Laws were in his Mouth and Breast and that himself alone could make and alter the Laws Another For causing Sheriffs to continue in Office above a Year contrary to the tenor of a Statute-Law thereby incurring notorious Perjury Another For that the said King procured Knights of the Shires to be returned to serve his own Will Another For that many Justices for their good Counsel given to the King were with evil Countenance and Threats rewarded Another For that the King passing into Ireland had carried with him without the Consent of the Estates of the Realm the Treasure Reliques and other Jewels of the Realm which were used safely to be kept in the King 's own Coffers from all hazard And for that the said King cancelled and razed sundry Records Another For that the said King appear'd by his Letters to the Pope to Foreign Princes and to his Subjects so variable so dissembling and so unfaithful and inconstant that no Man could trust him that knew him insomuch that he was a Scandal both to himself and the Kingdom Another That the King would commonly say amongst the Nobles that all Subjects Lives Lands and Goods were in his hands without any forfeiture which is altogether contrary to the Laws and Vsages of the Realm Another For that he suffered his Subjects to be condemned by Martial-Law contrary to his Oath and the Laws of the Realm Another For that whereas the Subjects of England are sufficiently bound to the King by their Allegiance yet the said King compell'd them to take new Oaths These Articles with some others not altogether of so general a concern being considered and the King himself confessing his Defects the same seemed sufficient to the whole Estates for the King's Deposition and he was depos'd accordingly The Substance and Drift of all is That our Kings were antiently liable to and might lawfully be deposed for Oppression and Tyranny for Insufficiency to govern c. in and by the great Council of the Nation without any breach of the old Oath of Fealty because to say nothing of the nature of our Constitution express and positive Laws warranted such Proceedings And therefore the Frame of our Government being the same still and the Terms of our Allegiance being the same now that they were then without any new Obligations superinduced by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy a King of England may legally at this day for sufficient cause be deposed by the Lords and Commons assembled in a Great Council of the Kingdom without any breach of the present Oaths of Supremacy or Allegiance Quod erat demonstrandum MANTISSA WHen Stephen was King of England whom the People had chosen rather than submit to Mawd tho the Great Men of the Realm had sworn Fealty to her in her Father's life-time Henry Duke of Anjou Son of the said Mawd afterwards King Henry the Second invaded the Kingdom An. Dom. 1153 which was towards the latter-end of King Stephen's Reign and Theobald Archbishop of Canterbury endeavoured to mediate a Peace betwixt them speaking frequently with the King in private and sending many Messages to the Duke and Henry Bishop of Winchester took pains likewise to make them Friends Factum est autem ut mense Novembris in fine mensis EX PRAECEPTO REGIS ET DUCIS Collect. pag. 1374 1375. convenirent apud Wintoniam Praesules Principes Regni ut ipsi jam initae paci praeberent assensum unanimiter juramenti Sacramento confirmarent i.e. It came to pass that in the Month of November towards the latter end of the Month at the summons of the King and of the Duke the Prelats and Great Men of the Kingdom were assembled at Winchester that they also might assent to the Peace that was concluded and unanimously swear to observe it In that Parliament the Duke was declared King Stephen's adopted Son and Heir of the Kingdom and the King to retain the Government during his Life I observe only upon this Authority That there being a Controversy betwixt the King and the Duke which could no otherwise be determined and settled but in a Parliament the Summons of this Parliament were issued in the Names of both Parties concerned Quisquis habet aures ad audiendum audiat FINIS
desolationibus tam sanctae Eccles quam Reg. factis per hoc iniquum Concilium Domini Regis contra magnas Chartas tot toties multoties emptas redemptas concessas confirmatas per tot talia Juramenta Domini Regis nunc Dominorum Henrici Johannis ac per terribiles fulminationes Excommunicationis sententiae in transgressores communium libertatum Angliae quae in chartis praedictis continentur corroboratas cum spes praeconcepta de libertatibus illis observandis fideliter ab omnibus putaretur stabilis indubitata Rex conciliis malorum Ministrorum praeventus seductus easdem infringendo contravenire non formidavit credens deceptive pro numere absolvi à transgressione quod esset manifestum regni exterminium Aliud etiam nos omnes angit intrinsecus quod Justiciarii subtiliter ex malitia sua ac per diversa argumenta avaritiae intolerabilis superbiae Regem contra fideles suos multipliciter provocaverunt incitaverunt sanoque salubri consilio Ligeorum Angliae contrarium reddiderunt consilia sua vana impudenter praeponere affirmare non erubuerunt seu formidaverunt ac si plus habiles essent ad consulendam conservandam Rempublicam quam tota Universitas Regni in unum collecta Ita de illis possit vere dici viri qui turbaverunt terram concusserunt Regnum sub fuco gravitatis totum populum graviter oppresserunt praetextuque solummodo exponendi veteres Leges novas non dicam Leges sed malas consuetudines introduxerunt vomuerunt ita quod per ignorantiam nonnullorum ac per partialitatem aliorum qui vel per munera vel timorem aliquorum potentum innodati fuerunt nulla fuit stabilitas Legum nec alicui de populo Justitiam dignabantur exhibere opera eorum sunt opera nequitiae opus iniquitatis in manibus pedes eorum ad malum currunt festinant ac viam recti nescierunt Quid dicam non est judicium in gressibus suis Quam plurimi liberi homines terrae nostrae fideles Domini Regis quasi viles ultimae servi conditionis diversis Carceribus sine culpa commiserunt ibidem carcerandi quorum nonnulli in carcere fame maerore vinculorum pondere defecerunt extorquerunt pro Arbritrio insuper infinitam pecuniam ab eâ—â—dem pro redemptione sua crumenas aliorum ut suas impregnarent tam à divitibus quam pauperibus exhauserunt ratione quorum incurriverunt odium inexorabile formidabile imprecationes omnium quasi tale incommunicabile privilegium per Chartam detest abilem de non obstante obtinuerunt perquiviserunt ut à lege divina humanaque quasi ad libitum immunes essent Gravamen insuper solitum adhuc sive aliquo modo saevit omnia sunt venalia si non quasi furtiva proh dolor Quid non mortalia pectora cogit Auri sacra fames Ex ore meo contra vos O Impii tremebunda coeli decreta jam auditis Agnitio vultuum vestrorum accusat vos peccatum vestrum quasi Sodoma praedicavistis nec abscondistis vae animae vestrae vae qui condunt leges scribentes injustitiam scripserunt ut opprimerent in judicio pauperes vim facerent causae humilium populi ut essent viduae praeda eorum pupillos diriperent vae qui aedificant domum suam injusticia coenacula sua non in Judicio vae qui concupiverunt agros violenter tulerunt rapuerunt domos oppresserunt virum domum ejus imo virum Haereditatem suam vae Judices qui sicut Lupi vespere non relinquebant ossa in mane Justus Judex adducit Consiliarios in stultum finem Judices in stuporem mox alta voce justum Judicium terrae recipietis His auditis omnium aures tinniebant totaque Communitas ingemuerunt Vide Mat. West Anno 1289. p. 376 li. 13. dicentes heu nobis heu ubi est Angliae toties empta toties concessa toties scripta toties jurata Libertas Alii de Criminalibus sese à visibus populi subtrahentes in locis secretis cum amicis tacite latitaverunt Anno vero 1290. 18. Ed. 1. deprehensis omnibus Angliae Justiciariis de repetundis praeter Jo. Metingham Eliam de Bleckingham quos honoris ergo nominatos volui judicio Parliamenti vindicatum est in alios atque alios carcere exilio fortunarumque omnium dispendio in singulos mulcta gravissima amissione officii Spelmans Glossary p. 1. co 1. 416. alios protulerunt in medium unde merito fere omnes ab officiis depositi amoti unus à terra exulatus alii perpetuis prisonis incarcerati alii que gravibus pecuniarum solutionibus juste adjudicati fuerunt AFter that the King for the space of three Years and more had remained beyond Sea and returned out of Gascoign and France into England he was much vexed and disturbed by the continual clamour both of the Clergy and Laity desiring to be relieved against the Justices and other His Majesties Ministers of several oppressions and injuries done unto them contrary to the good Laws and Customs of the Realm whereupon King Edward by his Royal Letters to the several Sheriffs of England commanded that in all Counties Cities and Market Towns a Proclamation should be made that all who found themselves agrieved should repair to Westminster at the next Parliament and there shew their Grievances where as well the great as the less should receive fit Remedies and speedy Justice according as the King was obliged by the Bond of his Coronation Oath And now that great day was come that day of judging even the Justices and the other Ministers of the King's Council which by no Collusion or Reward no Argument or Art of Pleading they could elude or avoid The Clergy therefore and the People being gathered together and seated in the great Palace of Westminster the Archbishop of Canterbury a man of eminent Piety and as it were a Pillar of the holy Church and the Kingdom rising from his Seat and fetching a profound sigh spoke in this manner Let this Assembly know that we are called together concerning the great and weighty Affairs of the Kingdom too much alas of late disturbed and still out of Order unanimously faithfully and effectually with our Lord the King to treat and ordain Vide Fleta Cap. 17. p. 18 19. Authoritas Officium ordinarii Concilii Regis Ye have all heard the grievous complaints of the most intollerable injuries and oppressions of the daily desolations committed both on Church and State by this corrupt Council of our Lord the King contrary to our great Charters so many and so often purchased and redeemed granted and confirmed to us by the several Oaths of our Lord the King that now is and of our Lords King Henry and John and corroborated by the dreadful thundrings of the sentence of Excommunication against the
Invaders of our common Liberties of England in our said Charters contained and when we had conceived firm and undoubted hopes that these our Liberties would have been faithfully preserved by all men the King circumvented and seduced by the Counsels of evil Ministers hath not been afraid to violate it by infringing them falsly believing that he could for Rewards be absolved from that offence which would be the manifest destruction of the Kingdom There is another thing also that grieves our Spirits that the Justices subtilly and maliciously by diverse Arguments of covetousness and intollerable pride have the King against his faithful Subjects sundry ways incited and provoked counselling him contrary to the good and wholsome Advice of all the Liegemen of England and have not blushed nor been afraid impudently to assert and prefer their own foolish Councils as if they were more fit to consult and preserve the Commonweal than all the Estates of the Kingdom together assembled so that it may be truly said of them they are the men that troubled the Land and disturb'd the Nation under a false colour of gravity have the whole People grievously opprest and under pretence of expounding the antient Laws have introduced new I will not say Laws but evil Customs so that through the Ignorance of some and partiality of others who for reward or fear of great Men have been engaged there was no certainty of Law and they scorned to administer Justice to the people their deeds are deeds of wickedness and the work of Iniquity is in their hand their feet make haste to evil and the way of truth have they not known what shall I say there is no Judgment in their paths How many Free-men of this Land faithful Subjects of our Lord the King have like the meanest Slaves of lowest condition without any fault been cast into Prison where some of them by hunger grief or the burthen of their chains have expired they have also extorted at their pleasure infinite sums of money for their ransoms the Coffers of some that they might fill their own as well from the rich as the poor they have exhausted by reason whereof they have contracted the irreconcilable hatred and dreadful imprecations of all men as if they had purchas'd and obtain'd such an incommunicable priviledge by their detestable Charter of non Obstante that they might at their own lust be free from all Laws both humane and divine Moreover there is another more the ordinary grievance which hitherto hath and in some measure doth still rage among us All things are expos'd to sale if not as it were to plunder and theft Alas how great power hath the love of money in the breasts of Men Hear therefore O ye wicked from my mouth the dreadful decree of Heaven the dejection af your countenances accuseth you and like the men of Sodom ye have not hidden but proclaimed the sin woe be to your souls woe be to them that make Laws and Writing write injustice that they may oppress the poor in Judgment and injure the cause of the humble that Widows may become their Prey and that they might destroy the Orphan Woe be to those that build their Houses in injustice and their Tabernacles in Vnrighteousness Woe be to them that covet large possessions that break open Houses and destroy the Man and his Inheritance woe be to such Judges who are like Wolves in the Evening and leave not a bone till the morning The Righteous Judge will bring such Counsellors to a foolish end and such Judges to confusion ye shall all presently with a loud cry receive the just sentence of the Land At the hearing of these things all Ears tingled and the whole Community lifted up their Voice and mourned saying Alas alas for us what is become of that English Liberty which we have so often purchased which by so many Concessions so many Statutes so many Oaths have been confirmed to us Hereupon several of the Criminals withdrew into secret places being concealed by their friends some of them were brought forth into the midst of the People and deservedly turned out of their Offices one was banished the Land and others were grievously Fined or Condemned to perpetual Imprisonment This is confirmed by Spelman An. 1290. All the Justices of England saith he were An. 18. Ed. 1. apprehended for Corruption except John Mettingham and Elias Bleckingham whom I name for their honour and by Judgment of Parliament condemned some to Imprisonment others Banishment or Confiscation of their Estates and none escaped without grievous Fines and the loss of their Offices The Speech and Carriage of STEPHEN COLLEDGE Before the Castle at Oxford Wednesday Aug. 31. 1681. Taken exactly from his Mouth at the place of Execution Mr. High-Sheriff MR. Colledge It is desired for satisfaction of the World because you have profest your self a Protestant that you would tell what Judgment you are of Colledge Dear People dear Protestants and dear Country-men I Have been Accused and Convicted for Treason the Laws Adjudge me to this Death and I come hither willingly to submit to it I pray God forgive all those persons that had any hand in it I do declare to you whatever has been said of me that I was never a Papist or ever that way inclined they have done me wrong I was ever a Protestant I was born a Protestant I have lived so and so by the Grace of God I will die of the Church of England according to the best Reformation of the Church from all Idolatry from all Superstition or any thing that is contrary to the Gospel of our blessed Lord and Saviour I do declare I was never in any Popish Service Prayers or Devotions in my life save one time about seventeen or eighteen years ago as near as I remember I was out of a curiosity one afternoon at St. James's Chappel the Queens Chappel at St. James's except that one time I never did hear any Popish Service any thing of the Church of Rome Mass or Prayers or any thing else private or publick I know you expect that I should say something as to what I die for It has been charged upon me when I was apprehended and brought before the Council some of the Council the Secretary and my Lord Killingworth and Mr. Seymour they told me there was Treason sworn against me truly they surprized me when they said so for of all things in the World I thought my self as free from that as any man I asked them if any man living had the confidence to swear Treason against me They said several three or four as I remember Then they told me it was sworn against me that I had a design to pull the King out of White-hall and to serve him as his Father was served or to that purpose the Loggerhead his Father or that kind of Language I did deny it then and do now deny it upon my Death I never was in any manner of Plot in my