Selected quad for the lemma: justice_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
justice_n	authority_n	law_n	power_n	2,872	5	4.6226	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48472	The picture of the Councell of State, held forth to the free people of England by Lieut. Col. John Lilburn, M. Thomas Prince, and M. Richard Overton, now prisoners in the Tower of London for bearing testimony to the liberties of England against the present tyrants at White-Hall, and their associates, or, a full narrative of the late extrajudiciall and military proceedings against them ; together with the substance of their severall examinations, answers, and deportments before them at Darby-house, upon March 28 last.	Lilburne, John, 1614?-1657.; Prince, Thomas.; Overton, Richard, fl. 1646.	1649 (1649)	Wing L2155; ESTC R10562	40,210	29

old and new Lawes yea all of late that it was possible to buy or hear of and they tell me not one word of you and therefore I scarce know what to make of you or what to think of you but as Gentlemen that I know I give you civill respect and out of no other consideration But if you judge your selves to be a Councel of ●t●●e and by vertue thereof think you have any power over me I pray you shew me your Commission that I may know the better how to behave my self before you M. Bradshaw I will no●●ow question or dispute the Votes or Orders of the present single House of Commons in reference to their power as binding Lawes to the people yet admit them to be valid legal and good their due circumstances accompanying them yet Sir by the Law of England let me tell you what the House Votes Orders and Enacts within their walls is nothing to me I am not at all bound by them nor in Law can take any cognisance of them as Lawes although 20 Members came out of the House and tell me such things are done till they be published and declared by sound of Trumpet Proclamation or or the like by a publike Officer or Magist●ate in the publike and open places of the Nation But truly Sir I never saw any Law in Print or writing that declares your power so proclaim'd or published and therefore Sir I know not what to make more of you then a company of private men being neither able to own you for a Court of Justice because the Law speaks nothing of you nor for a Councel of State till I see and read or hear your Commission which I desire if you please to be acquainted with But Sir give me leave further to aver unto you and upon this Principle or Averment I will venture my life and being and all I have in the world That if the House had by a Proclaimed and declared Law Vote or Order made this Councel as you call your selves a Court of Justice yet that proclaimed or declared Law Vote or Order had been unjust and null and void in itself And my reason is because the House it self was never neither now nor in any age before betrusted with a Law-executing power but only with a Law making power And truly Sir I should have look'd upon the people of this Nation as very fools if ever they had betrusted the Parliament with a Law-executing power and my reason is because if they had so done they had then chosen and impowred a Parliament to have destroyed them but not to have preserved them which is against the very nature and end of the very being of Parliaments they being by your own declared doctrine chosen to provide for the peoples weale but not for their wo First part Declarat pag. 150 266 267 269 276 279 280 304 361 382 494 696 700 716 726. And Sir the reason of that reason is because its possible if a Parliament should execute the Law they might do palpable injustice and m●●e administer it and so the people would be robbed of their intended extraordinary benefit of Appeals for in such cases they must appeal to the Parliament either against it self or part of it self and can it ever be imagined they will ever condemn themselves or punish themselves nay will they not rather judge themselves bound in honour and safety to themselves to vote that man a Traytot and destroy him that shall so much as question their actions although formerly they have dealt never so unjustly with them For this Sir I am sure is very commonly practised now a dayes and therefore the honesty of former Parliaments in the discharge of their trust and duty in this particular was such that they have declared the power is not in them to judge or punish me o● the meanest free man in England beeng no Member of their House although I should beat or wound one of their Members nigh unto their door going to the House to discharge his duty but I am to be sent in all such cases to the Judge of the upper * See 5. H. 4. 6. 11. H. 6. ch 11. See also my plea against the Lords jurisdiction before the Judges of the Kings Bench called the Laws Funerall pag. 8. 9. and my grand plea against the Lords jurudiction made before Mr. Maynard of the House of Commons and the four imprisoned Aldermen of London's plea against the Lord jurisdiction published by M. Lionel Hurbin 1648. Bench unto whom by Law they have given declared rules and direction in that particular how to behave himself which be as evident for me to know as himself Now ●i● if reason and justice do not judg it convenient that the Parliament shall not be Judges in such particular cases that are of so neer concernment to themselves but yet hath others that are not of their House that are as well concerned as themselves much lesse will reason or justice admit them to be judges in particular cases that are farther remote stom their particular selves and do meerly concern the Common-wealth and sure I am Sir this is the declared Statute Law of England and doth stand in full force at this hour there being I am sure of it no Law to repeal it no not since the House of Commons set up their new Common-wealth Now Sir from all this I argue thus that which is not inherent in the whole cannot by the whole be derived or assigned to a part But it is not inherent neither in the power nor authority of the whole House of Commons primarily and originally to ●●ecute the Law and therefore they cannot derive it to a part of themselves But yet Sir with your favour for all this I would not be mistaken as though I maintained ned the Parliament had no power to make a Court of Justice for I do grant they may erect a Court of Justice to administer the Law provided that the Judges consist of persons that are not Members of their House and provided that the power they give them be universall that is to say to administer the Law to all the people of England indefinitely and not to two or three particular persons solely the last of which for them to do is * And therefore I aver that the High Court of Justice that sate upon Duke Hamilton the Earl of Holland c. was no Court of Justice but in the eye of the Law murdered those Noble men for which Bradshaw and the rest of his fellow Judges are not in the eye of the Law so excusable as was Empson and Dudly that Sir Edward Cook speaks of in the 2. part Ins●it fo 51. 3 part f. 208. 4. part Inst fol. 41. 196. 197. 198. who yet lost their lives as Traitors for subverters of the fundamentall Laws of England unjust and altogether out of their power And therfore Sir to conclude this point It being not in the

Harrison the Generall being but their stalking Hors and a Cipher and there trayterous faction ** For the greatest Traytors they are that ever were in this Nation as upon the losse of my head l Ioh. Lilburn will by law under take to prove and make good before the next free and just Parliament to whom I hereby appeal having by their wills and Swords got all the Swords of England under their command and the disposing of all the great places in England by sea and land andalso the pretended law executing power by making among themselves contrary to the Lawes and Liberberies of *** For the people being in reason justice and truth as well as by the Parliaments late votes the true fountain and original of all just power they ought not only in Reason Right and Justice chuse their own law makers but all and every of their law executors and to obey none what soever but of their own choice and it is not only their right by reason and justice but Sir Ed. Cooke in his second part Institut published for good Law by this present house of Commons declares and proves Fol. 174. 175. 558. 559. that by law it was and is the peoples right to chuse their Coroner Justices or conservators of the Peace as also their high Sheriff and Verderors of Forest and saith he there expresly for the time of War there were likewise Leaders of the Countreys Souldiers of Ancient time chosen by the Free-holders of the county but it 's true the chiefest of these things were expresly taken from the people and invested in the King by the Statute of the 27. Hen. 3 chap. 24. and therefore Kingly government being abolished the right is returned into the people the king or fountain of power and cannot be exercised as a new devise by the Parliament although they were never so legally and Justly chosen by them without a conference with them thereupon a power deputed to them for that end as Sir Edward Cooke declares in the 4 part of his Institutes chap. High Court of Parliament Fol. 14. 34. therefore I do hereby declare all the present Parliaments Justices Sherifs c. to be no Justices Sherifs c. either in law or reason but meer tyrants invadors and usurpers of their power and authority and may very well in time come to be hanged for executing their pretended offices England all Judges Justices of Peace Sheriffs Bailiffes Committee-men c. to execute their wils and tyranny walking by no limits or bounds but their own wils and pleasures And trayterously assume unto themselves a power to levie upon the people what money they please and dispose of it as they please yea even to buy knives to cut the peoples throats that pay the money to them and to give no account for it till Dooms-day in the afternoone they having already in their wills and power to dispose of Kings Queen Princes Dukes and the rest of the Childrens Revenues Deans and Chapter lands Bishops lands sequestered Deliquents lands sequestred Papists lands Compositions of all sorts amounting to millions of money besides Excise and Customs yet this is not enough although if rightly husbanded it would constantly pay above one hundred thousand men and ●urnish an answerrable Navy thereunto But the people must now after their trades are lost and their estates spent to procure their liberties freedoms be sessed about 100000. pound a month that **** But saith there own Oracle Sir Ed. Cook in the 4 part of his instutes chap. High Court of Parliament Fol. 14. 34. It is also the Law and custome of Parliament that when any new device is moved on the Kings behalf in Parliament for his aid or the like the Commons may answer that they tend●ed the Kings estate and are ready to aide the same only in this new device they dare not agree without conference with their countries whereby it appeareth saith he that such conferences is warrantable by the law and custome of Parliament and this was do●e in the Parliament of the 9. Ed. 3. nu●b 5 but the present Parliament assume unto themselves the regall office in the height and therefore ought not to be their own carvers in reference to the peoples purses but ought to demand and obtain their consents especially in time of peace before they levie either 90000 pounds per month or any such like new device what ever and therefore I know neither law equity or reason to compel the people to pay a penny of it unlesse they have a desire to bring themselves into the same condition in reference to the present Parliament that the Egyptians were to Pharoah when Joseph was so hard hearted as to make the Egyptians to pay so dear for b●ead-corn that it cost them all their money and all their cattle yea all their lands and also themselves for his slaves Gen. 47. 14. 15. 16. c. for which tyranny God plagued him and his posterity by making them slaves to the Egyptians afterwards so they may be able like so many cheaters and and State theeves to give 6. 8. 10. 12. 14. 16000. pounds apeice over again to one another as they have done already to divers of themselves to buy the Common-wealths lands one of another contrary to the duty of Trustees who by law nor equity can neither given or sell to one another or two or three yeers purchase the true and valuable rate considered as they have already done and to give 4 or 5000l per annum over again to King Crumwell with ten or twenty thousand pounds worth of wood uponit as they have done already out of the Earl of Worcesters estate c. Besides about four or five pounds a day he hath by his places of Lieut. Generall and Colonel of Horse in the Army besides the extraordinary advancement of many of his kindred that so they might stick close to him in his tyranny although he were at the beginning of this Parliament but a poor man yea little better then a begger to what he is now as well as other of his neighbours But to return those Gentlemen that would have had us bailed lost the day by one vote as we understood for all their wicked oath of secrecy and then about 12. at night they broke up a fit hour for such works of wickednesse John 3. 19. 20. 21. and we went into their pretended Secretary and found our commitments made in these words our names changed viz. These are to will and require you to receive herewith into your custody the Person of Lieu. Col. John Lilburn and him safely to keep in your Prison of the Tower of London untill you receive further order he being committed to upon suspition of high Treason of which you are not to fail and for which this shall be your sufficient Warrant given at the Councel of State at Derby-house 28. day of March 1649. To the Lieu. of the Tower of London Signed in the name

the State the Army derived their Government by Martiall Law which in Judgment and Reason could be no longer binding then the Authority which gave being thereto was binding to the Army for the denyal of the authority is an Abrogation or Nulment of all Acts Orders or Ordinances by that Authority as to them And upon this account your Excellency with the Army long proceeded upon the Constitution of a new Councell and Government contrary to all Martiall Law and Discipline by whom onely the Army engaged to be ordered in their prosecution of the ends to wit Their several Rights both as Souldiers and Commoners for which they associated Declaring agre●ing and promising each other not to Disband Divide or suffer themselves to be Disbanded or Divided without satisfaction and security in relation to their Grievances and Desires in behalf of themselves and the Common-wealth as should be agreed unto by their Councell of Agitators And by vertue and under colour of this Establishment all the extraordinary Actions by your Excellency your Officers and the Army have past Your refusall to Disband disputing the Orders of Parliament Impeachment and ejection of Eleven Members your First and Second March up to London your late violent Exclusion of the major part of Members out of the House and their imprisonment without Cause declared c. which can no way be justified from the guilt of High Treason but in the accomplishment of a righteous end viz. The enjoyment of the benefit of our Laws and Liberties which we hoped long ere this to have enjoyed from your hands Yet when we consider and herewith compare many of your late carriages both towards the Souldiery and other Free-People and principally your cruel exercise of Martiall Law even to the Sentence and execution of Death upon such of your Souldiers as stand for the Rights of that Engagement c. And not only so but against others not of the Army we cannot but look upon your defection and Apostacie in such dealings as of most dangerous consequence to all the Laws and Freedoms of the People And therefore although there had never been any such solemn Engagement by the Army as that of June 5. 1647. which with your Excellency in point of duty and conscience ought not to be of the meanest obligation We do protest against your exercise of Martiall Law against any whomsoever in time of peace where all Courts of Justice are open as the greatest encroachment upon our Lawes and Liberties that can be acted against us And particularly against the Tryal of the Souldiers of C. Savages Troop yesterday by a Court Martiall upon the Articles of Warre and sentencing of two of them to death● and for no other end as we understand but for some dispute about their pay And the reason of this our Protestation is from the Petition of Right made in the third yeer of the late King which declareth That no person ought to be adjudged by Law Martiall except in times of Warre And that all Commissions to execute Martiall Law in time of Peace are contrary to the Lawes and Statutes of the Land And it was the Parliaments complaint That Martiall Law was then commanded to be executed upon Souldiers for Robbery Mutiny or Murder Which Petition of Right this present Parliament in their late Declarations of the 9. of Feb. and the 17. of March 1648. commend as the most excellentest Law in England and there promise to preserve inviolably it and all other the Fundamentall Laws and Liberties concerning the preservation of the Lives Properties and Liberties of the people with all things incident thereunto And the Exercise of Martiall Law in Ireland in time of Peace was one of the chiefest Articles for which the Earl of Strafford lost his head The same by this present Parliament being judged high Treason And the Parliament it self neither by Act nor Ordinance can justly or warrantably destroy the Fundamentall Liberties and Principles of the Common Law of England It being a maxime in Law and Reason both that all such Acts and Ordinances are ipso facto null and void in Law and binds not at all but ought to be resisted and stood against to the death And if the supreme Authority may not presume to do this much lesse may You or Your Officers presume therupon for where remedy may be had by an ordinary course in Law the party grieved shall never have his recourse to extraordinaries Whence it is evident that it is the undoubted Right of every Englishman Souldier or other that he should be punishable onely in the ordinary Courts of Justice according to the Lawes and Statutes of the Realme in the time of Peace as now it is and the extraordinary way by Court Martiall in no wise to be used Yea the Parliaments Oracle S. Ed. Cook Declares in the third part of his Institutes Cap. of Murther that for a General or other Officers of an Army in time of Peace to put any man although a souldier to death by colour of Martiall Law it is absolute murther in that Generall or Councell of War 〈◊〉 Therefore erecting of Martiall Law now when all Courts of Justice are open and stopping the free current of Law which sufficiently provides for the punishment of Souldiers as well as others as appears by 18. H. 6 Ch. 18 19. 2 3. Ed. 6. Cha. 2. 4 5. P. M. Chap. 3. 5. Eliz. 5. 5. Jam. 21. is an absolute destroying of our Fundamentall Liberties and the razing of the Foundation of the Common Law of Eng 〈◊〉 the which o●t of duty and Conscience to the Rights and Freedoms of this Nation 〈◊〉 we value above our lives and to leave You and all Your Councell without all ex 〈◊〉 we are moved to present unto your Excellencie Earnestly pressing you well to consider what you doe before your proceed to the taking away the lives of thosemen by Martiall Law least the blood of the Innocent or the blood of War shed in the time of peace and so palpable subversion of the Lawes and Liberties of England bring the reward of just vengeance after it upon you as it did upon the Earle of Strafford of old for innocent blood God will not pardon Gen. 9 5. 6. 1 Kings 2 v. 4. 5. 28 29 30 31 32 33. and what the people may do in case of such violent subversion of their Rights we shall leave to your Excellency to judge and remaine Sir Your Excellencies humble Servants Iohn Lilburn Richard Overton From our Causelesse unjust and Tyranical Captivity in the Tower of London April 27. 1649. POST SCRIPT And that for the present General or his Councel to put any man to death in time of peace by Martiall Law is not only Murder but Treason is undenyably proved in Capt. John Ingrams Plea and M. William Tompsons Plea and M. Joh● Crosmans Plea all of which are printed at large in Lieut. Col. John Lilburn's Book called FINIS

power of the whole Parliament to execute the Law they can give no power to you their Members to meddle with me in the case before you For an Ordinary Court of Justice the proper Administrator of the Law is the only and sole Judge in this particular and not you Gentlemen no nor your whole House it self And therefore if you be honest men and will be as good as your words oaths and promises which are to maintain the Laws in reference to the peoples Liberties I challenge at your hands the benefit of the Law and not to be past upon otherwise in any kinde For with your favour Mr. Bradshaw the fact that you suppose I have committed for till it be judicially proved and that must be before a legall Judge that hath cognisance of the fact or confessed by my self before the Judge it is but a bare supposition is either a crime or no crime a crime it cannot be unlesse it be a transgression of a Law in being before it was committed acted or done For where there is no Law * Rom. 4. 15. See the 4. part of the L. Cooks Institutes ch 1. High Court of Parl fol. 37. 38. 39. 41. See also my printed Epistle to the Speaker of the fourth of April 1648. called the Prisoners plea for an Habeas Corpus p. 5 6. and Englands Birth-right p. 1. 2. 3. 4. and the second edition of my Epistle to Judge Reeves p. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. and M. John Wildmans Truths Triumph p. 11. 12. 13. 14. and Sir John Maynards Case truly stated called The Laws Subversion p. 9. 13. 14. 15. 16. 38. there is no Transgression And if it be a Transgression of a Law that Law provides a punishment for it and by the Rules and method of that Law am I to be tryed and by no other whatsoever made ex post facto And therefore Sir if this be true as undoubtedly it is then I am sure you Gentlemen have no power in Law to convene me before you for the pretended crime laid unto my charge much lesse to fetch me by force out of my habitation by the power of armed men For Sir let me tell you The Law of England never made Colonels Lieutenant Colonels Captains or Souldiers either Bailisss Constables * See the Petition of Right in the 3. C. R. and my Book called the peoples Prerogative p. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 56. c. Yea I say that is the Generall take away by Martiall Law the life of Laughorn c. now in time of Peace the Courts of Justice being open he murders him or them and ought to die therefore or Justices of Peace And I cannot but wonder that you should attach me in such a manner as you have done considering that I have all along adhered to the Interest of the Nation against the common Enemy as you call them and never disputed nor contemned any Order or Summons from Parliament or the most irregularest of their Committees but always came to them when they sent for me although their Warrant of Summons was never so illegall in the forme of it and I have of late in a manner de die in diem waited at the House dore and was there that day the Votes you have read past till almost twelve a clock and I am sure there are some here present whose Couscience I beleeve tells them they are very much concerned in this Book row before you that saw me at the dore and stared wishfully upon me as they went into the House and I cannot but wonder there could be no Civil Officer found to summon me to appear but that now when there is no visible hostile enemy in the Nation and all the Courts of Justice open that you that have no power at all over me must send for me by a hundred or two hundred Armed Horse and Foot as though I were some monstrous man that with the breath of my mouth were able to destroy all the Civil Officers that should come to apprehend me Surely I had not endeavoured to fortifie my house against you neither had I betaken my self to a Castle or a defenced Garrison in hostility against you that you need to send a hundred or two hundred armed men to force me out of my house from my wife and children by four or five a clock in the morning to the distracting and afrighting of my wife and children Surely I cannot but look upon this irregular unjust and illegal hostile action of yours as one of the fruits and issues of your new created Tyranny to amuse and debase my spirit and the spirits of the People of this Free Nation to fit me and them for bondage and slavery This being the very practise of the Earl of Strafford before you as M. Pym in his declaration against him doth notably observe And Sir give me leave further to tell you that for divers hundreds of men that have often been in the field with their swords in their hands to encounter with hostile enemies and in their engagements have acquitted themselves like men of valour and come out of the field conquerours for these very men to put themselves in Martial Array against four Mise or Butterflyes taking them captives and as captives lead them through the streets me thinks is no small diminution to their former Martial Atchievements and Trophies And therefore to conclude this I do here before you all protest against your power and Jurisdiction over me in the case in controversie And also doe protest against your Warrant you issued out to apprehend me And against all your martial and hostile acts committed towards me as illegal unjust and tyrannical and no way in Law to be justified Further telling you that I saw most of the Lord of Strafford's arraignment and if my memory fail me not as little things as you have already done to me were by your selves laid to his charge as acts of Treason For which I saw him lose his head upon Tower-hill as a Traytor And I doubt not for all this that is done unto me but I shall live to see the Laws and Liberties of England firmly setled in despite of the present great opposers thereof and to their shame and confusion and so M. Bradshaw I have done with what I have now to say Upon which M. Bradshaw replied Lieut. Col. Lilburn you need not to have been so earnest and have spent so much time in making an Apologetical defence for this Councel doth not go about to try you or challenge any jurisdiction to try you neither doe we so much as ask you a question in order to your tryal and therefore you may correct your mistake in that particular Vnto which I said Sir by your favour if you challenge no Jurisdiction over me no not so much as in order to a tryal what do I here before you or what do you in speaking to me But Sir seeing I am now here give me leave to say