faceret And that greatly learned man could not but acknowledge that there were afterwards resumptions of Crown-Lands in the Reign of King Henry the 2. the alienation of some of the Crown-Lands severely charged upon King Richard the 2d Anno. 33. H 6. by an Act of Parliament and in the reign of King Edward the 4th at the request and upon the Petition of the Commons and were much more needfull then those that had been before in the Reign of King Henry the 2. made Leoline Prince of Wales to come and do him Homage and Baliel King of Scotland attending in our Pâ—rliament to arise from his State placed by the Kings and Stand at the Bar of the House of Peers whilst a cause was pleaded against him And it might not be improbable that that League betwixt that King and the aforesaid Christian Princes might be entred not amongst the Common Rolls and records of England but of Gascoigne where it was most proper and that some Vestigia of his great Actions might be there found of it as well as that of the 22th Year of his Reign of a Summons of divers English Barons to come to his great Councell or Parliament in England and it could not be unknown to that great man of learning that as Authors and Writers have learned and Writ one out of another so have many Wrote that singly and alone which many of the Contemporaries have either not been Informed of or did not think fit to Mention the dreadfull plagues of Egipt and the most remarkable that ever were in so short a Time inflicted by God upon any Nation of the Earth since the universall Deluge destroying all but the Righteous Noah his Family the several Kinds of Creatures perserved with him the passage of Moses thorough the Red-Sea in his conduct of the People of Israel into the land of Canaan were not to be thrown out of the belief of Christians all others Venerating the Sacred Scriptures because Plato or Pythagoras travailing into Egypt in the inquest of learning have given us no particular accompts thereof and it will ever be as truly said as it hath been that Bernardus non videt omnia the ancient institution rites ceremonies of the most Honourable Garter is not to be suspected because our Law and Statute books have not made such Discoveries Recherches or a worthy and most elaborate Record thereof as the learned and Judicious Mr Elias Ashmole hath lately done or our Glauviles Book de legibus Consuetudinibus Angliae is not to fall under the question whether he was the Lord Chief Justice of England that Wrote it because there hath not been so much heed taken of him as ought to be by our common-Common-Law Year-Books or Memorialls of Cases adjudged in our Courts of Justice and later Law Books when the learned Pancirollo in his Book de deperditis Ac etiam de novis repertis and the exquisitely learned Salmuthius in his Comment or Annotations thereupon or the learned Pasquier in his Recherches and our ever to be honored Mr Selden in his rescuing from the Injuries of Time those many before hidden truths which he in his history of Tithes Jauus Anglorum Analett Brittanniae Titles of honor de Synedriis Judeorum uâ—or Jus naturae Gentium Historia Ead mei cum multis aliis and those very many discoveries of learning and Truth which the world must ever confess ought to be attributed to his walking in unknown paths nullius ante trita pede have very Justly escaped any such suspicions and that long and Eminent Treaty for Peace at Nimiguen for divers Years last past managed by most of the Monarchs of Europe and their concerns wherein the care and mediation of our King in the charge of his Plenipotentiaries have not wanted gratefull Testimonialls of the many very much concerned Kings and Princes in the putting a stop to the Warrs effusion of Blood and devastation of so great a part of Christendom is not or ought to be placed amongst the non liquets or Doubtings of after Ages because which by some Incuria or neglect of our Recording of it amongst our Archives which the more is to be pittied is not much unlikely to happen it is not to be met with amongst our Records or Historians When the so much Deservedly admired speculations and Experiments of the excelently Learned Sr Francis Bacon Lord Verulam in his Philosophy more then Aristotle and many others had made those Discoveries of des Cartes Depths and Investigations of our Sr Kenelme Digby into the most abstruse parts of Learning and that great addition now every where allowed to be true to that most necessary and usefull Art or Faculty of Physick of the circulation of the Blood in the Bodies of men first Discovered and made apparent by our late Learned Doctor Harvey though the Egiptian Arabian and Grecian Doctors and the greatly Famed Galen and Hypocrates had in all their labors knowledge and Practice not so much as taken notice of it were never the worse but rather much the better that former ages and men in the length of Art and the short Curriculum of their lives often intermitted with Sickness and the Cares and Troubles of the World had no sooner communicated it neither ought the Truth and value of our allways highly to be esteemed Seldens Labours in the vindication of our Kings Sovereignty in our Brittish Seas suffer any abate because no Englishman before had undertaken it or of his learned Observations and Comments upon Sr John Fortescues Book de laudibus Legum Angliae because he did not mention or had Discovered that that over-tossed and turmoiled worthy and learned Chancellor was after the Expulsion of the 3 Henrys 4. 5. 6th of the House of Lancaster under the later of whom he had Faithfully served from the Inheritance of the Crown of England by King Edward the Fourth with his better Title enforced publickly to beg his Pardon and with much ado and by Writing and delivering unto him a Book contradicting the Title of those former Kings and asserting that of his own which appeareth in that Act of Parliament in the 13th Year of that King for the Reversall of his Attainder And those disturbers and misuses of our Fundamental Laws might do well to sit down and consider that our uncontrolled every where in England venerable Littleton can certify us that if a man hold Land of his Lord by Fealty only for all manner of service it behoveth that he ought to do some service to his Lord for if the Tenant ought to do no manner of service to his Lord or his Heirs then by long Continuance of time it would grow out of memory whether the Land were holden of the Lord or his Heirs and thereupon the Lord may loose his Escheat of the Land or some other Forfeiture so it is reason that the Lord and his Heirs have some service done unto them to prove
to provide remedy hath ordained In Ca. 3. where a cui in vita shall be granted and a Wife or he in reversion received the King hath ordained Ca. 6. Where a Tenant Voucheth and the Vouchee denyeth the Warranty the King hath ordained Ca. 9. Entituled in what case the Writ of Mesne is to be pursued it is said in the perclose that for certain causes Remedies are not in certain things provided God willing there shall be at another time Ca. 10. Providing at what time Writs shall be delivered for suits depending before Justices in Eyre the parties may make Generall Attorneys it is said the King hath ordained Ca. 14. Concerning Process to be made in wast our Lord the King from henceforth to remove this error hath ordained Ca. 24. For the granting of Writs of Nuysance quod permittatis in consimili casu where the King ordaineth for which by no ground or colour of reason it is otherwise to be understood that whensoever from thenceforth it should fortune that in Chancery which is no body's Court but the Kings a like Writ is found and in another case falling under the like Law a like remedy is not found the Clerks of the Chancery shall agree in making the Writ or the Plaintiffs may adjourn it untill the next Parliament and let the cases be written in which they cannot agree and let them referr themselves untill the next Parliament by consent of men learned in the Law which could not in those times be understood as of the Members of the House of Commons none of them being then chosen or Summoned to give their consent in Parliament Ca. 25. In the Act of Parliament entituled of what things an Assize shall be certified It is said that forasmuch as there is no Writ in the Chancery whereby Plaintiffs can have so speedy remedy by a Writ of Novell Disseisin our Lord the King willing that Justice may be speedily ministred and that delays in Pleas may be taken away or abridged granteth c. And our Lord the King to whom false exceptions be odious hath ordained c. The like words of the King 's granting and ordaining are to be understood in the Chapters immediately following viz Ca. 26. 27. 28. 29. and 30. In that of 13. E. 1. ca. 30. The two Knights of the Shire are changed by length of time or some other causes into those which are now called Associates and are indeed but the enrolling Clarks which by that Statute are allowed the Justices in their Circuits as they have used to have in times past Were not Knights of the Shire Elected for an House of Commons in 29. E. 1. ca. 5. the King willeth that the Chancellor and Justices of his Bench shall follow his Court so that he may at all Times have some near unto him which be learned in the Laws and be able to order all such matters as shall come unto the Court at all Times when need shall require And the like that the King ordained and willed is to be understood in the chapters or articles 31. 32 33. In that of 32. where it is mentioned and so the Statute is defrauded it is said our Lord the King hath ordained and granted Ca. 39. Concerning the manner of Writs to be delivered to the Sheriffs to be executed it is said that our Lord the King hath provided and ordained c. And the King hath commanded that Sheriffs shall be punished by the Justices for false Retornes once or twice if need be Ca. 41. entituled contra formam collationis which was of great concernment in their lands and estates and also as they then thought in matters of provision for the souls of their parents Ancestors and near relations it is said our Lord the King hath Ordained In ca. 42. appointing the several fees of Marshall Chamberlains in fee Porters of Justices in Eyre c. which was of great Importance to many it is mentioned that our Lord the King hath caused to be enquired by an enquest what the said Officers of fee used to have in times past and hath ordained and commanded that a Marshall in fee c. which was then Roger Bigod Earl of Norfolk a man of great power and authority it is in like manner Ordained Ca. 43. That Hospitalers and Templers which were a part of the People then of great Estates Power and Authority in the Kingdom shall draw no man in suite c. it is said to have been prohibited and the King also prohibiteth Ca. 44. Setling the Fees of Porters bearing Virges before the Justices c. it is said be it provided and ordained and the King chargeth his Justices In the Statute of Winchester made in Anno. 13. E. 1. that fresh suit shall be made after Felons from Town to Town our Lord the King to abate the Power of Felons hath established a pain in that case Ca. 2. Where the County shall answer for the Robbery where the Felon shall not be taken which though it was an excellent Law and ever since put in execution might upon the first impression seem to bear hard upon the People that they not committing the Crimes should be responsable in their Purses and Estates for it the preamble saith likewise our Lord the King hath Established Ca. 3. Respiting that Act until Easter then next nsuing it is mentioned that forasmuch as the King will not that his People should be suddenly impoverished by reason of the penalty which seemeth very hard to many the King granteth that they shall not incurr immediately but it should be respited untill Easter next following within which time he may see how the Country will order themselves whether such felonys do cease After which time let them all be assured that the aforesaid Penalties shall run generally that is to say the People in the Country shall be answerable for Felonies Robberies done amongst them In an Act of Parliament at what time the gates of great Towns shall be shut and Night-Watches begin and end it is said the King commanded For the breadth of High-ways leading from one Market-Town to another it is said and further it is Commanded In the Act of Parliament that every man should have Armour in his house according to his ability it is said and further it is commanded and the Justices assigned shall present in every Parliament unto the King such defaults as they shall find and the King shall provide remedy therein In the Statutes of Merchants made in the same year wherein the form of a Statute Merchant is appointed it is recited that the King and his Councel at his Parliament holden at Acton Burnell in the 11th year of his Reign hath ordained In the Statute of Circumspecte Agatis the King only saith Use your self circumspectly concerning the Bishop of Norwich and his Clergy In the Statute of Quia Emptores terrarum made in the 18th of his Reign it is said our Lord the King in his Parliament at the
or his Servant he shall upon declaration have a Warrant signed by the Speaker to obtain a Writ of Priviledge after which as on the same day follows a special Entry of a Vote of the House of Commons in these words For that William Ward Burgess of Lancaster had obtained a Writ of Priviledge out of the Chancery without a Warrant from the House it is committed to Mr. Mason Mr. Hare and Serjeant Morgan to examine and certify whence it is apparent saith Mr. Pryn their old friend that the House of Commons in that age did not use to enlarge their Arrested and Imprisoned Members by their Serjeant at Mace and own Orders but only by special Writs of Priviledge issued out of the Chancery under the great Seal of England according to the practice and usage of former ages that the House was first to be informed of the Arrests and thereupon to order their Speaker not to grant a Warrant directed to the Lord Chancellor not as their Subordinate or Coordinate Soveraigns to Issue a Writ of Priviledge to them if he saw cause and in case of Servants of a Member of an House of Commons in Parliament Arrested or Imprisoned the Master was upon his corporal Oath to prove that he was his real moenial Servant who came along with and attended on him before he could be released by a Supersedeas and Writ of Priviledge out of the Chancery being the Court of the King not of the House of Commons in Parliament one Member of the House of Commons in Parliament assaulting another is a breach of Priviledge and of the Peace for which he may be imprisoned until he find Sureties of the Peace and in the case of George Ferrers a Member of the House of Commons in Parliament reported by Mr. Crompton the House it self appealed to King Henry the 8th for his deliverance And although they do represent some part of the Commonalty yet it is within limits and boundaries so little to be transgressed as our Laws constant Customs and Usage of Parliament have una voce constantly affirmed that there can be no allowance of Priviledge of Parliament in cases of Treason Felony or Trespass And being so subordinate and tyed up as to themselves by our Laws antient Customs and Usages and their own Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy ought not surely to think that the power of representing for some can be by a limited Commission or Procuratorship enlarged to all that an Authority to represent in the doing of one single Act or consenting thereunto can give them a liberty to do what they please in every other matter and even in contraries against duties enjoyned by their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and that when antiently and of long continuance now altogether disused they were to give Sureties or Pledges to their Counties or places to perform their trusts it was not to imprison sequester starve or ruine or make Rebels Traitors those that gave them their Letters of Attorney Substitutions or Procurations and cannot but understand that an Attorney or Transgressor wilfully damnifying those that commissionated them are by common Law Reason and Equity damna resarciri and make amends that jure gentium Leagues even made by Embassadours in the behalf of their Princes that sent them contrary to their Mandates or Instructions have not seldom been avoided or altered and that it was adjudged in the case of Mendoza the Spanish Embassadour plotting Treason here against Queen Elizabeth that he was not to be allowed the priviledge of an Embassador for that Illiciti non est mandatum For did they represent those that within their bounds they did truly and properly represent they could not Arrogate a power without the King to unelect or remove those that came thither elected by their own Counties Cities and Burroughs not by any power or Authority of their own but by virtue of their Kings Writs nor order the Clerk of the Crown the Kings Officer and none of theirs to raze their names out of the Record a matter which our Laws and Parliaments themselves have ordained to be without exception highly Criminal and it may be an everlasting problem how the Members chosen by one County or City should be put out by another that were strangers or Forreign unto their Election and were not commissionated to expel or justle out one another for so might Cornwal Wiltshire and the County of Sussex who do claim a multiplicity of Members in the House of Commons in Parliament be praedominant and out-do all the rest in benefiting themselves or hindring whom they list or by what Authority they do now of late for before or in the Raigns of King Henry the 8th Edward 6. Queen Mary Queen Elizabeth King James King Charles the Martyr and all their Royal Progenitors and Predecessors ever since this Kingdom was and hath been and should be a Monarchy of above One Thousand years it hath been never heard of that strangers whom they would be thought to represent and sometimes their own Members or those they do not represent must when they receive their sentence or censure as it is stiled from them who have no judicative power but were only Elected ad faciendum consentiendum unto those things which should be ordained by the King by or upon the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament constrain to receive their sentence of expulsion if they be Members or punishment if otherwise upon their knees unless they will claim to be a Soveraignty which their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy all our Laws Records and Journals of Parliament and our Annals and Histories and the Usage and Customs of Neighbour Nations Kingdoms and Republiques have hitherto contradicted or if it shall be said that it is in regard that the King is supposed to be virtually there and always believed to be present our Laws Records Annals and Reason and Truth will make hast to confute them that it would be absurdissimum ab omni ratione remotum nullo Exemplo in Anglia usitatum for that the King is we hope no Commoner or Member of the House of Commons in Parliament who come thither as his Subjects and sworn to obey him and his Successors under their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy was not Elected at all or to be there for his Place and his Throne and Chair of State is in his House of Peers in Parliament to whom he sends which he usually doth in the time of Parliament to come to receive his Commands and Directions and cannot surely at one and the same time be supposed to be in two places or to send for himself to come out of the House of Commons to himself into the House of Peers to hear what himself would say unto himself for when in other cases it hath been said that the King is by our Laws intended to be vertually or personally present in his Courts of Justice it it is not personaliter but
vain Fears such as in constantem virum cadere non possunt should not be permitted to affright our better to be imployed Imaginations unless we had a mind to be as wise as a small and pleasant Courtier of King Henry the Eighths who would never endure to pass in a Boat under London-Bridge lest it should fall upon his Head because it might once happen to do so Our Magna Charta's and all our Laws which ordain no man to be condemned or punished without Tryal by his Peers do allow it where it is by Confession Outlawry c and no Verdict Did never think it fit that Publick Dangers such as Treason should tarry where Justice may as well be done otherwise without any precise Formalities to be used therein For although it may be best done by the advice of the Kings greatest Council the Parliament there is no Law or reasonable Custom of England either by Act of Parliament or without that restrains the King to do it only in the time of Parliament When the Returns Law-Days and Terms appointed and fixt have ever given place to our Kings Commissions of Oyer and Terminer Inquiries c. upon special and emergent occasions And notwithstanding it will be always adviseable that Kings should be assisted by their greatest Council when it may be had yet there is no Law or Act of Parliament extant or any right reason or consideration to bind Him from making use of His ordinary Council in a Case of great and importunate necessity For Cases of Treason Felony and Trespass being excepted out of Parliament first and last granted and indulged Priviledges by our and their Kings and Princes there can be no solid Reason or cogent Argument to perswade any man that the King cannot for the preservation of Himself and His People in the absence or interval of Parliaments punish and try Offenders in Cases of Treason without which there can be no Justice Protection or Government if the Power of the King and Supream Magistrate shall be tyed up by such or the like as may happen Obstructions So that until the Honourable House of Commons can produce some or any Law Agreement Pact Concession Liberty or Priviledge to Sit and Counsel the King whether he will or no as long as any of their Petitions remain unanswered which they never yet could or can those grand Impostors and Figments of the Modus tenendi Parliamenta and the supposed Mirror of Justice being as they ought to be rejected when the Parliament Records will witness that many Petitions have for want of time most of the ancient Parliaments not expending much of it been adjourned to be determined in other Courts as in the Case of Staunton in 14 E. 3. and days have been limited to the Commons for the exhibiting of their Petitions the Petitions of the Corbets depended all the Raigns of King Edward the First and Second until the eleventh year of Edward the Third which was about sixty six years and divers Petitions not dispatched have in the Raign of King Richard the Second been by the King referred to the Chancellor and sometimes with a direction to call to his assistance the Justices and the Kings Serjeants at Law and the Commons themselves have at other times prayed to have their Petitions determined by the Councel of the King or by the Lord Chancellor And there will be reason to believe that in Cases of urgent necessity for publick safety the King is and ought to be at liberty to try and punish great and dangerous Offenders without His Great Council of Parliament The Petitions in Parliament touching the pardoning of Richard Lyons John Peachie Alice Peirce c and a long process of William Montacute Earl of Salisbury were renewed and repeated again in the Parliament of the first of Richard the Second because the Parliament was ended before they could be answered Anno 1. of King Richard the Second John Lord of Gomenez formerly committed to the Tower for delivering up of the Town of Ardes in that Kings time of which he took upon him the safe keeping in the time of King Edward the Third and his excuse being disproved the Lords gave Judgment that he should dye but in regard he was a Gentleman and a Baronet and had otherwise well served should be beheaded but Judgment was howsoever respited until the King should be thereof fully informed and was thereupon returned again to the Tower King Henry the Second did not tarry for the assembling a Parliament to try Henry de Essex his Standard-bearer whom he disherited for throwing it down and aftrighting his Host or disheartning it 16 E. 2 Henry de bello monte a Baron refusing to come to Parliament upon Summons was by the King Lords and Council and the Judges and Barons of the Exchequer then assisting committed for his contempt to Prison Anno 3 E. 3. the Bishop of Winchester was indicted in the Kings-Bench for departing from the Parliament at Salisbury Neither did Henry the Eight forbear the beheading of His great Vicar General Cromwell upon none or a very small evidenced Treason until a Parliament should be Assembled The Duke of Somerset was Indicted of Treason and Felony the scond of December Anno 3. 4. Edwardi 6. sitting the Parliament which began the fourth day of November in the third year of His Raign and ended the first day of February in the fourth was acquitted by his Peers for Treason but found guilty of Felony for which neglecting to demand his Clergy he was put to Death In the Raign of King Philip and Queen Mary thirty nine of the House of Commons in Parliament whereof the famous Lawyer Edmond Plowden was oneâ— were Indicted in the Court of Kings-Bench for being absent without License from the Parliament Queen Elizabeth Charged and Tryed for Treason and Executed Mary Queen of Scots her Feudatory without the Advice of Parliament and did the like with Robert Earl of Essex her special Favourite for in such Cases of publick and general Dangers the shortest delays have not seldom proved to be fatally mischievous And howsoever it was in the Case of Stratford Archbishop of Canterbury in the fifteenth year of the Raign of King Edward the Third declared that the Peers de la terre ne doivent estre arestez ne mesnez en Jugement Si non en Parlement par leur Pairres yet when there is no Parliament though by the Law their Persons may not then also be Arrested at a common persons Suit they may by other ways be brought to Judgment in any other Court And Charges put in by the Commons in the House of Peers against any of the Peers have been dissolved with it For Sir Edward Coke hath declared it to be according to the Law and reasonable Customs of England followed by the modern practice that the giving any Judgment in Parliament doth not make it a Session and that such Bills as passed in either or
amaze all the men of Law and Learning in the Kingdom of England how Sir Edward Coke that hath been attempted to be a man of so great knowledge and experience in the Law and entrusted with so many weighty Charges and Offices in our Laws as Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and afterwards of the Court of Kings Bench and so great a Collector and Remembrancer of the cases and judgments in the Law with their various forms and entries should have so often read in his so greatly beloved Book of Littleton the Chapters of Homage and Homage Auncestrel and Escuage assessed in our Parliaments could think it to be the Common Law of England and that by which it had for many Centuries past been Governed and not to be by its true and original Name and Nation as well here as in all the other parts of the Christian World the Feudal Law and what else where those Feudal Laws used in England which our Learned Sir Henry Spelman and Dr. Zouch Mr. of Alban-Hall in Oxford so largely directly mentioned to have their beneficial Use and Residence amongst us allowed and repeated by the very learned the Sieur du Fresne a Baron of France and other good Authors and Historians And if those premises cannot be enough to satisfy us Sir Edward Coke if he were alive might do well to instruct us what Law that Homage and Escuage appertained unto And if there were any other Laws that this Kingdom was governed by when and by whom they were introduced and of how long continuance for it may be hoped that our Sons of Novelty will not be so impudent as to offer to obtrude upon the World the Follies and Villanies of Wat Tiler and Jack Cade our late pretended Rebuplicans or their cheating Instrument maker Oliver Cromwel Or upon what other Laws than Feudal are our Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta supported and as often as thirty times in several of our Parliaments confirmed when all our many English Rebellions troubles of State and Commotions either at home at abroad have left it as a quiddam Sacrum more than the safe guarded vestal fire amongst the Romans or can shew us in any of our Records Annals or holy Writ wrested or misinterpreted that the Dernier Resort or Appeal hath been or ought to be in the people unless they can make themselves or any others believe that there was something or more revealed to them than was in the Scripture or Holy Prophets for there was no third Estate under our Kings to assist their Councels in Parliaments subordinate unto them put upon them nor intended to be by the 25 Conservators enforced upon King John in the Rebellious Parliament and Battle at Running Mede afterwards reduced to four or when their Captain General Robert Fitz-Walter was stiled Mariscallus Exercitus dei Ecclesiae Anglicanae neither in Anno 42. H. 3. being over-powered by some of his Rebellious Barons where those 25 Conservators were turned into 24 the one half to be nominated by the King the other by the contending party at the Parliament at Oxford or when that afterwards adjudged derogatory Parliament to Kingly Authority was referred by King Henry the third and the Rebellious Barons unto the Arbitration of the King of France or sworn to abide it none of the Rebellious party were entituled Estates or in that after Rebellion and detaining King Henry the 3 and prince Edward his Son about a year and a quarter they would not adventure to form or imitate a general Councel in that captive Kings name those few that came were not called or intended to be a 3 Estate in an House of Commons nor in any of the many Rescripts or Mandates which Symon Montfort and his partner Rebels made in their Captive Kings name nor in any Parliament after his Release or in the Parliament of King Edward the first when he was pleased to suffer some of the Commons Elected by his Writs to attend in the House of Commons in Parliament neither had they the boldness in all his long Raign of 35 years or in the 17 or 18 years of King Edward the second or the fifty one years of King Edward the third or in the Raign of King Richard the 2 until the Title of Estates crept in as aforesaid and Mr. Pryn made himself after the Creator of them in his misused rectifying And having as they thought turned the Tables the wrong way in calling our Feudal Laws the Common Laws which indeed they are should be and a long time have been have so far put them out of their Right place Order and Station as they think they have changed our Feudal Laws which are should be the only Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom and Government thereof into a quite contrary and too many of our Lawyers have been so willing to forget them as they had rather now of late make us believe if they could the tricks of Attorneys to be our Common Laws than our more Ancient Legal Rational and Fundamental Feudal Laws Insomuch that one that thinks himself no small one hath of late been pleased to say very considerately as he thought that the Study and Knowledge of Antiquities was but like the picking up of Old Iron in the London Streets or Kennels As if the Prophet Jeremy had either mistaken or lost the Commission which our Alwise and Omniscient God had given him when he advised us Stare super vias antiquas inquirere veritatem and such Lawyers of a late Edition might find themselves hard put to it to answer the question how or from whence proceeded or were derived our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy which have for so many ages past been legally taken and enjoyned and do and ought yet to continue if not from an ancient Fundamental Feudal Laws from what other Laws of God or man were they derived or any the various Customs or Usages of either Heathen or Christian fixt or established by by any other rational Custom or Usage or unfixt and left only to the divers Interests Occasions and Contingencies of every mans particular Interest and Affairs and can never be ascertained how long they shall continue in one and the same mind and good liking and where the Systeem of these Laws Usages or Customs are or may be found or what Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy have been sworn unto or upon them Whether upon the Old Custom of England of wrastling or choosing King and Queen at the Epiphany or Twelft Night at Christmas And if they would be a 3 governing Estate may think themselves not a little beholding unto such as can either think or believe that they are or ought to be so in love with them as to trust them as formerly they had done and could tell their Brethren of Scotland that their promises were but conditional and did very lovingly alter order their man of sin Oliver Cromwel to beat subdue and after their Laws and Religion
set on fire about his Ears at once that of Ireland incited by his condescensions to that of Scotland and that of England as busy as the worst but gaining more by it when the King had to pacify all given them license by an Act of Parliament to continue in Parliament without adjourning proroguing or dissolving until those great Sums of Money should be satisfied and Ireland quieted which they never intended but hindred and perplexed all they could although he offered to go thither in Person himself which they would not consent unto for fear least he should thereby get Arms and Power into his own hands to frustrate their wicked design which that Republican wicked party durst never offer to Oliver Cromwell the Protector of their supposed Liberties with any the least of those monstrous conditions by them called Priviledges but could tamely suffer him to make his own Instrument of Government alter the Course of Parliament with more or less Members of the House of Commons in Parliament pull out and imprison diverse Members of that House and shut up the Doors constitute a new House of his mechanick and ordinary Commanders instead of a House of Lords after the Republican partty had made such an Act of Parliament as they could that none should have benefit of the Laws who did not take an oath of engagement not to have any more a King or House of Lords And to be disappointed as little as they could possibly in those their intentions made all the hast they could to fire their Beacons of personal Plots and dangers against themselves the great Patriots of the Kingdom and Weal publick as they had done before against Popery and therefore incredible Plots and Conspiracies were discovered by one of their Members who had an especial faculty therein and likewise by others as a Plaister taken from the sore of a man infected therewith and brought by an Incognito in a Letter to Mr. John Pym the Lord Digby seen at Kingston upon Thames with four Horses in a Coach in a warlike manner Horses kept and trained under ground and a dangerous design to blow up the River Thames with Gunpowder whereby to drown the Parliament Houses with many the like ridiculous fopperies to affright the easy to be deluded silly Vulgar and engage them in a Rebellion and were in the mean time to be secured themselves by a guard for which they â—eâ—tioned the King who ordered the Justices of Peace to command the Constables of that division to furnish one but that would not accommodate their purposes nothing would help forward their more than ordinary designs than a guard by the Trained Bands of the City of London by turns which being granted by the King suddenly after the Citizens Wives were so afraid of the danger oâ— the Tower of London as they could not lye dry in their Beds and the Lieutenant of the Tower must be displaced and a more confiding one put in to give them content that never intended to be satisfied Which being done the Pulpits of the Prebyterian Scotized Clergy flaming and the Printing Presses Stationers and Cryers in the Streets as busy in the publishing the Harangues of the House of Commons Members in proclaiming the imaginary grievances and he was a small man at Arms that had made and published no more than one or two such Speeches mean while Protestations were ordered to be made in every Parish of England and Wales to defend the King and the Protestant Religion the King going into London in his Coach hath a Paper thrown into it with a writing thereupon To your Tents O Israel the many Rude â—eople of the adjoyning Hamlets came in droves to the Parliament crying No Bishops and for Justice and as they pass by Whitehall Gate and knock at it desire to speak with the King who sends unto the Students of the Inns of â—ourt with some Captains and Commanders to attend him as a supplemary Guard who came and had a Diet and Table provided for them the Bishops do leave the House of Peers with a protestation patterned with one in 11 R. 2. that they could not sit there in safety for which they were all made Prisoners in the Tower of London but were all afterwards released except Matthew Wren Bishop of Ely who remained there sequestred from his Bishoprick for something more than 13 years without knowing for what cause or crime until his late Majesties happy Restauration Mr. Henry Martin a Member of the House of Commons in Parliament more fearing the Anger of his Mistress than his God or King begins in Parliament to declaim against the King saying that he was not fit to Raign or Govern and moved that all the Regal Ornaments customarily lodged in the Abby of Westminster under the custody of the Dean and Chapter thereof might be seised one Mr. Parker made hast to make himself an Observator of the Rebellious way with dislocated Maximes abused and wrested out of their proper meaning and Interpretations viz. Quod efficit tale est magis tale the King is Major singulis but minor universis salus populi est suprema Lex which although Learnedly answered by the more Loyal Orthodox Party to an ample Conviction that should be could not satisfie or stop the designed Confederacy and Rebellion but the ten Judges of the twelve that gave their Opinions in the case of Mr. Hambden against him concerning the Ship-money for the King were by the Parliaments Order put out of their Offices and Places Justice Berkly one of the Justices of the Court of Kings Bench taken Prisoner as he was sitting by the Usher of the Black Rod attending the House of Peers after which Mr. Denzal Hollis came to the House of Lords and with greater boldness than assurance claimed the Militia and Power of the Sword to appertain of Right to the People and Mr. Pryn writes and Publishes his Book of the Supremaey of Parliaments seconded by Mr. John Whites Book entituled a Politick Chatechism undertaking to prove by our Laws the Resistibility and Forcing the Power of our Kings to be Vested in the People and the Judges were commanded by the Parliament without the King to declare to the People in their Circuits that the Militia is and ought to be in the Parliament as the Representative of the People which was never before done read seen or heard of in England which all the Judges obeyed but my honoured Friend the worthy Sir Thomas Mallet one of the Justices of the Court of Kings Bench who not forgetting his very Ancient and Noble discent plainly and resolutely at every place in his next Circuit declared it in all his Charges to be in Law de Jure Coronae suae in the King and for his so exemplary Loyalty was in the last place of that Circuit by Sir Richard Onslow Knight a Member of the Commons House in Parliament with a Troop of Horse as he was sitting upon the Bench at Kingston upon
INVESTIGATIO Jurium Antiquorum ET RATIONALIUM REGNI SIVE Monarchiae Angliae In Magnis suis Conciliis SEU PARLIAMENTIS ET Regiminis cum iisdem in suis Principiis optimi OR A Vindication of the Government of the Kingdom of England under our Kings and Monarchs appointed by God from the Opinion and Claim of those that without any Warrant or Ground of Law or Right Reason the Laws of God and Man Nature and Nations the Records Annals and Histories of the Kingdom would have it to be originally derived from the People or the King to be Co-ordinate with his Houses of Peers and Commons in Parliament Per Fabianum Philipps J. C. Socium Medii Templi London Jerom. c. 6. v. 16. State super vias Antiquas inquirite veritatem The FIRST TOME LONDON Printed for the Author and are to be sold by Charles Broome at the Gun in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1686. VIRTUTE ET FIDE Robert Harley of Bramton Castle in the County of Hereford Esqr. To the Sacred Majesty of James the Second King of great Brittain France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. Dread Soveraign WHen the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy the greatest Tyes and Obligations that can be imposed upon the Generations of Mankind have so little prevailed as that the giddy and mad-headed Multitude prone to all wickedness and evil Examples have under an Hypocritical pretence of Holiness and Reformation of that which was good and needed it not introduced an abundance of unclean Spirits and brought forth that which was altogether like their Tutors and Masters of Impiety and with great impudence pertinacity secret and subtil contrivances after His late Majesties happy Restauration continued their Machinations and Rebellious Principles until his Death who notwithstanding his great Clemency and many Plots discovered by Gods mercy by the continual vigilancy of his Guards with all the care that could be taken was for a long time hardly preserved from Assassination which Villanies and Dangers consorted so well with their Ambitions and Envies Rapines Plunderings Sequestrations Decimations and pillaging of three Kingdoms especially of England besides the sad accompt to be made of the Massacre in Ireland destruction of many Thousands in England with their Families and Estates in the defence of your Majesties blessed Father the Martyr with that horrid ever to be abhorred Addition of his Murther and the long continued Miseries Calamities and Troubles put upon their Late Soveraign your Royal Brother your Majesty and the rest of the Royal â—rogeny as they or too many of them or their Seditious and Rebellious Party may not improbably an thought only to watch or enforce an opportunity of playing the same or a worse game of Rebellion over again and if they can to a more impious advantage bed plant a soveraignty inherent in the people whom they intend to govern as arbitrarily and wickedly as they had done before which a lamentable many years Experience hath taught the people to believe it to be abundantly Tyrannical and Slavish enough to those that were made so unhappy as to endure and Experiment it which to prevent is and should be certainly the duty of every good Subject and I over of his King and Countrey In order wherunto having made my Observations and Remarks from the Commencement of the grandest Rebellion that ever troubled and harassed England in the years 1640 1641. until his present year of the Lord 1685 now the 83 year and an half of my yet Deo gratias vividae senectutis many years before for the most part written and as well digested as many disturbances and worldly troubles would permit which could notwithstanding never alienate or withdraw my mind from those my first Enquiries or Observations And my careful and I hope industrious and impartial Recherches into the Original and true power of Parliaments will shew how the Incroachments of a miselected House of Commons therein have since the Raigns of Qu. Elizabeth and K. James made it their principal and only business by Petions Ingrateful Lurches and Artifices and catching Advantages of our Kings Princes necessarily enforced want of Money for the defence of themselves and their People to undermine and bring into an Anarchy or Insulting Poliarchy this your heretofore more flourishing Monarchy strongly built and founded upon the Feudal Laws derived unto your Majesty by and from your Royal Ancestors and Predecessors from the Brittish German Saxon Danish and Normans Feudal Laws and Customs the best Establishers and Supports of a truly not counterfeit Monarchick Regal Government and doubt not but that my Labours and Travel therein with what other Light and Confirmations may be justly added by such as will well Weigh and Consider it may truly Manifest and Prove the same and without the suspicion of an over-credulity well believe that the Reverend Judges and Sages of the Law whom our Kings have Commanded and Ordained to be greatly reverenced administring Justice under you to your people many of whom and the professors of the Law pleading before them were only Educated and practised as Lawyers in the time of the late misguided Parliament might have been easily mis-led by the Minores Gentium the Lawyers and Officers pleading or practising in the Courts of Justice by rejecting the Councel of the Prophet Jeremiah Stare super vias Antiquas inquirere Veritatem which his lamentations after their destruction might have taught them after sooner to have believed and not to have the original of your Majesties Government to be as Inscrutable as that of the River Nile or to forget their Common Parent or Original as in many things to make or render our Laws to have no Resemblance thereof but to be quite contrary thereunto or as some Children in the Stories or Tales of easily believing old Women changed in their Cradles all which should put every good Subject in mind neither to be ignorant of your Rights or negligent in the maintenance of them it being of no small concernment to your People to preserve yours with as much care as their own being comprehended therein and when he shall hear the Ship wherein his King is strugling with the rage and fury of the Winds and Seas and every minute like to be destroyed and swallowed up ought to make hast tenui sua Cymba and do all he can to relieve and preserve him of what Judgment and Disposition soever he be though not at all under those great obligations of the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy and of the bonds of gratitude must exuere humanitatem that will not endeavour to rescue him and in these my feeble but true hearted endeavours found those that instead of saving the Ship were only careful to Sacrifice to their own designs and divert and steer her from the right Port of Monarchy whilst they laboured all they could to save her by bringing her only into the Curses rather than Blessings of an Anarchy or knavish self-enriching Poliarchy and
cujus est concedere etiam si omnino sit falsa propter rasuram vel quia forte signum appositum est adulterinum melius tutius est quod coram ipso Rege procedatur ad judicium But in several other places of those his learned labours plainly declareth that leges Anglicanae consuetudines were made and confirmed Regum Authoritate ipse autem Rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo sub lege quia lex facit Regem Attribuat igitur Rex legi quod lex attribuit ei viz. dominationem potestatem non est enim Rex ubi dominatur voluntas non lex Et quod sub lege esse debeat cum sit Dei Vicarius Omnis quidem sub eo ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo Parem autem non habet in regno suo quia sic amitteret praeceptum cum Par in Parem non habet imperium Item nec multo fortius superiorem nec potentiorem habere debet quia fic esset inferior sibi Subjectis inferiores pares esse non possunt potentioribus Et Sciendum est quod ipse Dominus Rex qui ordinariam habet Jurisdictionem dignitatem potestatem super omnes qui in regno suo sunt habet omnia jura in manu sua quae ad Coronam Laicalem pertinent potestatem materialem gladium qui pertinet ad Regni gubernaculum habet etiam Justitiam Judicium quae sunt Jurisdictiones ut ex Jurisdictione sua sicut Dei Minister Vicarius Habet etiam quae sunt pacis ut populus sibi traditus in pace sileat quiescat habet etiam coertionem ut delinquentes puniat coerceat Si ab eo breve petatur cum breve non Currat contra ipsum locus erit Supplicatione quod factum suum Corrigat emendet quod quidem si non fecerit satis sufficit ei ad poenam quod Dominum expectet ultorem nemo quidem de factis suis praesumat disputare multo fortius contra factum suum venire And Stamford a Judge speaking of the opinion of Wilby delivered in Mich. 14. E. 3. that in King Henry the 3ds Reign he had seen a Writ which was Precipe Henrico Regi and it was said in Hilary Term 22. E. 3. that in the time of King H. 3. the King might be impleaded as any other Common Person but King E. 1. his Son ordained such as were grieved or to sue to the King by Petition howbeit saving the authority or reformation of those books he thought that the Law was never that a man should have any such Action against the King saith that Bracton in his 3d Book under the Title of contra quem competit Assisa concludes as to the King in the negative And so saith Stamford no Action lyeth against the King but the party damnified is to sue unto him by Petition And in one place Bracton discoursing where the King doth a wrong he saith nec poterit ei aliquis necessitatem imponere quod illam corrigat vel amendet speaking doubtfully not positively with a nisi sit qui dicat quod universitas Regni Baronagium suum hoc facere debeat possit in Curia ipsius Regis But he doth more clearly express himself afterwards when he saith Rex enim decipi potest cum sit homo Deus autem nunquam cum sit Deus and where any thing should be said to be injuria Domini Regis saith again that Superiorem non habeat nisi Deum satis erit illi pro paena quod Deum expectet ultorem quicquid dicitur de facto Regis eo quod est Rex proinde factum judicium disputari non debet nec factum a quoquam judicare nec revocari poterit cum sit justum si autem factum injustum fuerit perinde non est factum Regis cum non sit factum Regis quia injustum inde disputari poterit factum Judicari sed idem emendari non poterit nec revocari sine eo So as to rescue the words of that Learned Author from those wicked and absurd interpretations which the late Parliament-Rebells and Monarchy-Underminers would have put upon them It must either be thought that that worthy book of his hath in that particular Place and words so catcht at fallen under the fate of many Eminent Books or Manuscripts even amongst those of the venerable Fathers of the Church who have not in a long race or course of Time and contingences been able to escape the hands of Corruptors as the Books or works of the Excellent Origen did by the over-busy designs and rashness of Russinus the many Spurious Manuscripts of the Vatican Library and of other Popish Authors so acknowledged to be by Baronius and some other of their own Writers Or rather that the good man intended no more by the word Magister then an instructor or an Assistant as the Jews called their Doctors Rabbies or as Origen was called by way of Eminency the Master of the Eastern Churches and St. Cyprian called Tertullian so who was never his Master and our Famons Lawyer Littleton gave no less a name to Judge Newton his Predecessor And that he used the word Socii but as Aeneas is sayd to have done to his afflicted Trojans in their wandrings to seek new habitations when in his Oration to comfort them he saith O Socii neque enim ignari sumus ante malorum or as Julius Caesar did when he encouraged his Soldiers with the acceptable title of Commilitones Or as our laws and reasonable Customs have done in the titles and use of the Masters of Chancery Subordinate to the Lord Chancellors or Keepers of the great Seal of England who sit and say nothing or as in the acts of our Courts of Justice are done where they are recorded and said to have been done by the chief-Chief-Justice Socios Suos or as in the case of an associate unto a Chief Justice or any of the Kings Justices Sitting by and under the Kings Commissions of Oyer Terminer where an equality co-ordination or Superiority so contra-distinct and opposite each unto other can never be Claimed or allowed And the Framers and Fancyers of that kind of Argument will gain little by it when the word Magister properly and truly signifies no more then a Doctor or Instructor not a Superior as Sr Henry Spellman hath given us the definition received meaning and acceptation of it when he saith in Jure Canonico vel Civili Magistri dicuntur in Theologia vel Artibus videtur tempore Clementis 5. Concilii viennensi Magistri Doctoris vocabula confundere aevo scilicet Edwardi 1. Usitatiorem tunc fuisse apud nostrates Magistri titulum reverendum hoc vocabulum semper de peritia venit in nomine cognoscitur quod sit moribus aestimandum And
to his people that they shall have Election of their Sheriff in every Shire where the Shrievalty is not of Fee if they list which would have been very prejudicial both to the King and his people as to the collecting of his revenue and Executing his Justice by his Mandates Writs and Process if the confirmation allowance or disallowance thereof had not been by Law lodged in the King and his Supream authority What persons shall be returned in every Jury the King Willeth and Commandeth For a remedy against Conspirators False Enformers and Embracers of Juries the King hath provided a remedy Against Mainteynors of Suits it is said the King willeth but it may not be understood hereby that any person shall be prohibited to have Councel of Pleaders or of Learned Men in the Law for his Fee or of his Parents or next Friends What distress shall be taken for the Kings debts and how it shall be used the King willeth What sort of Persons the Commons of shires shall chuse for their Sheriffs forasmuch as the King hath granted it is said the King willeth That Baylewicks and Hundreds shall not be let too dear to charge the people with contribution In summons and attachments in plea of land the writ shall contain 15 daies it is in like manner to be understood In like manner against false retornes of writs The King willeth that the Statute of Winchester shall be read 4 times in the year and put in execution The King willeth that Escheators shall commit no wast in Wards lands In an act of Parliament declaring in what cases the owner shall have his lands delivered out of the King's hands with the issues it is said the King willeth In an Act of Parliament that vessels of gold shall be assayed it is said to have been ordained and that notwithstanding all those things before-mentioned or any point of them both the King and his Councell and all that were present at the making of that Ordinance meaning the Judges and Assistants of that Honourable Court will and intend that the right and prerogative of his Crown shall be saved to him in all things In the Statute de Escatoribus 29. E. 1. at the Parliament of our Lord the King at Lincoln in his Councell it was agreed and also commanded by the King Himself and this order shall be held from henceforth in the Chancery notwithstanding a certain ordinance lately made by our Lord the King concerning lands and tenements taken into his hands by his officers and not to be delivered but by the King himself and as it is conteined in a Certain dividenda or indenture made betwixt the King himself and his Chancelor whereof one part remaineth in the Custody of the Chancelor In the new Statute of Quo Warranto made Anno 30. E. 1. it is recited that the King himself in the 6 year of his Reign providing for the wealth of his Realm and the more full administration of Justice as to the Office of a King belongeth the more discreet men of the Realm as well high as of low degree being called thither it is provided and ordained but in the writs framed to enquire by what warrant the Liberties were granted to the people they are said to be in Parliamento nostro per nos concilium nostrum 31. E. 1. In an ordinance for Measures it is said that by the consent of the whole Realm of England the King's measure was made In the Statute of 33. E. 1. Touching protections granted by the King it is said to have been provided In the ordinance or definition of Conspirators made in the aforesaid Year it is declared that this ordinance and final definition of Conspirators was made and aworded by the King and his Councell in Parliament In the Statute of Champerty made in the 33d year of the Reign of the aforesaid King it is recited that whereas in our Statute it was contained and provided by a common accord the writ framed thereupon mentioneth that law to be the Kings Ordinance In the Ordinance for enquests made in Parliament the same year it is said to have been agreed and ordained by the King and all his Councell In the ordinatio Forestae made in the year aforesaid whereas certain people have by great men made request to our Lord the King that they may be acquitted of their charge and the demand of the Foresters our Lord the King answered that when he had granted Pour lieu he was pleased it should stand as it was granted albeit the thing was sued and demanded in an evill point Nevertheless he willeth and intendeth that all his demeasne lands which have been of the Crown or returned unto it by Escheat or otherwise shall have free chase and free warren and in right of them that have lands and tenements disafforested for the said Pourlieus and such as demand to have Common within the bounds of forests the intent and will of our Sovereign Lord the King is c. And if any that were disafforested would rather be in the Forest it pleaseth the King very well and our Lord the King willeth and commandeth the Justices of the Forest c. In Anno 34. of his Reign there being an Ordinance for measuring of Land In the same Year the King by his Letters-Patents with the Teste meipso certifying the Statute de Conjunctim Feoffatis declared that it was no new thing that among divers establishments of Laws which he had ordained in his time upon the great and heinous mischiefs that happen in Writs of Novel disseisin chiefly above others he as if he neither did know or believe any co-ordination or that he was to be tutored by a Conservatorship had devised a more speedy remedy then was before and willeth and granteth that that Statute shall take his effect the morrow after the feast of St Peter ad Vincula next coming In the Statute for Amortising of Lands tempore E. 1. the King commandeth c. In Ca. 4. Which seemeth to be about the 27th Year of that Kings Reign in the confirmation of all our Laws Liberties and Customes it is said that the King willeth and granteth if any Statutes have been made or any customes brought in contrary thereunto that such Statutes and Customes shall be void for evermore And for the more assurance of this thing we will and grant that all Archbishops and Bishops for ever shall twice in the year cause to be openly read in their Cathedralls the said Charters and denounce curses against the willing infringers thereof and the Archbishops Bishops c. have voluntarily Sworn to observe the tenor thereof In the ordinatio pro Statu Hiberniae made by him at Nottingham by the assent of his Councel there being in Ca. 6. in what cases the Justices of Ireland may grant pardon of Felony c. and where not there is an exception so always that there
if aids and Scutage were assessed by Parliament the military Tenants were to be the only Collectors thereof 35. E. 1. In the Statute Ne rector prosternat arbores in Caemiterio it is said that because we do understand that Controversies do oftentimes grow between Parsons of Churches and their Parishioners concerning Trees growing in the Church-yards both of them pretending that they do belong unto themselves we have thought it good rather to decide the controversy by writing then by Statute and declaring them to be parts of the goods of the Church the King did Prohibit the Parsons of rhe Church that they do not presume unadvisedly to fell them but when the Chancel or the body of the Church wanted necessary reparations in which cases the Parsons of their Charity shall do well to relieve the Parishioners with bestowing upon them the same Trees which he will not command to be done but will commend it when it is done So happy and ready was the obedience better Wisdom of the Subjects of this Kingdom in the ancient and former Ages when an agreement made before the King or his word was adjudged to have the power force of a Fine any one of his Writs or Edicts wanted not the operation and efficacy in many things of an Act of Parliament or Statute and so degenerate and unhappy are our present times as to suffer our interest and wrangling peevish disputes to disobey or lay aside not only the King's mandates and edicts in the ordinary and necessary course of his Government but in extraordinary and his Supream power in Parliament Who was as well furnished with Common as he was with Civil Lawyers which as a militia togata were as strong and impregnable forts and bulwarks to help to guard his Crown and Dignity namely Henry de Bracton John de Breton the sincere and upright John de Metingham Elias de Beckingham together with Accursius Doctor utriusque Juris Civil and Canon Gilbert de Thorneton first his Attorney general afterwards Chief Justice ad placita cor am Rege Gilbert de Rowbery Roger Brabazon and William Howard a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas cum multis in legibus eruditis side dignis as to this day it appeareth in the steddy and unarbitrary pleadings and Records of his glorious Reign In whose Time it was not denied to be Law and Right Reason that that verificatio patriae Contra Chartam Regis non est admittenda And did in the making of his Laws but imitate his great Ancestors For King Ina who Reigned in Anno Domini 712. Conredi patris sui Heddae Ercenwaldi Episcoporum suorum omnium senatorum suorum natu majorum sapientum populi sui in magna servorum Dei frequentia who in his making of his Laws did believe it necessary in his Imprimis to use the word precipimus King Alured who began his Reign in Anno Domini 871. made his Laws with a Proposuimus esto and in those which were published by Johannes Brompâ—on with a Praecipimus King Aethelstan who Reigned in the Year 930. made his Laws prudenti Ulfhelmi Archiepiscopi aliorumque Episcoporum suorum concilio with a Signif 〈…〉 Decrevimus Statuimus omnibus clare significat and saith Brompton Mandat praepositis suis and declared many of his Laws with a Volo diximus Ediximus Placuit nobis King Edmund that began his Reign in Anno 940. made his Laws solemni Paschatis Festo frequentem Londini tam Ecclesiasticorum quam Laicorum coetum celebravit cui inter fuerunt Odo Wolstanus Archipraesul plurimique alii Episcopi with an Ego Edmundus Rex omnibus qui in ditione ac potestate mea sunt clare significo Decrevimus Edwardus Rex saith Brompton made his Laws with a mandit Praecipit omnibus praefectis amicis ut justa judicia judicent injudiciali libro stant quod unum quodque placitum terminum habeat King Edgar who began his Reign in Anno 959. made his Laws frequenti senatu with a Sancivit Porro autem has populo who were not then understood to be Law-makers quas servet proponimus leges publici juris beneficio quisque fruitor and like his Predecessors made them short and imperative and his Canons in Ecclesiastical Affairs with a Docemus King Ethelredus who began his Reign in Anno Domini 979 made his Laws sapientum concilio habito Woodstoci Merciae quae legibus Anglorum gubernatur solely imperatively with an Esto Canutus Anglorum Dacorum Norweglorum beginning his Reign here in England in Anno Domini 1016 made his Ecclesiastical Laws solely and imperatively with an Imperimus sapientum concilio ad natale Domini And his humanae politica sapientum concilio with an Omnibus observari praecipio Edocemus Esto and touching his Dominions of Mercia with an Haec eadem in Mercia pro suis vendicat praeterea praecipimus and an Esto Satisfacto poenas dependito Compensato Castigetur Exterminetur in potestatem detur Plectitor Mulctator mando Invitus cogatur Habetor omnibus singulis in Dei nomine obtestor praecipio Gulielmus Rex Anglorum cum Principibus suis constituit post conquisitionem Angliae quâ—dam decreta with a Volumus firmiter praecipimus Statuimus Decretum est Interdicimus Prohibimus when the English had in the 4th Year of his Reign fletibus precibus by the assistance of his Norman Subjects also obtained of him a confirmation of King Edward the Confessors Laws and to be governed by them it is said to have been concilio Baronum after an enquiry throughout all England and Certificate returned per universae Angliae consulatus Anglos nobiles sapientes suâ— lege eruditos what those Laws and Customs were Et cum Rex quae audisset cum aliis sui regni legibus maxime appretiatus est praecepit ut observaretur per totum regnum And they that will peruse the laborious Collections of my ever honoured friend Mr Edward Falconbergh one of the Deputy Chamberlains of the Exchecquer the truest lover and carefullest preserver of the Records entrusted to his Charge that ever come into that place the very ancient Gervasius Tilburiensis Mr Agard Scipio le Squier many other learned men in the revolution of more then in that Office 600 Years last past not excepted of the proceedings upon the very many Quo Warranto's brought before the Justices Itinerant in their several Circuits throughout all the parts of the Kingdom in the Reign of King Edward the first as well High as Low Lords Spiritual and Temporal Abbots and Priors Great or Small therein sparing not his own Brother Edmond Earl of Kent may have premisses enough to conclude that that Stout and Magnanimous Prince did as our Common English saying is lay about him and had a mind to let his friends the Kings and Princes at the
said to be per Dominum Regem And a second of the same date and tenor with a perclose said to have been per Dominum Regem magnum Concilium John Pechies pardon for whom that House of Commons in Parliament was said to intercede only mentioneth that it was precibus aliquorum Magnatum 15 E. 3. The Archbishop of Canterbury before the King and Lords humbling himself before the King desired that where he was defamed through the Realm he might be arraigned before his Peers in open Parliament Unto which the King answered that he would attend the Common Affairs and afterward hear others 5 H. 4. The King at the request of the Commons affirmeth the Archbishop of Canterbury the Duke of York the Earl of Northumberland and other Lords which were suspected to be of the confederacy of Henry Percy to be his true Leige-men and that they nor any of them should be impeached therefore by the King or his Heirs in any time ensuing 9 H. 4. The Speaker of the House of Commons presented a Bill on the behalf of Thomas Brooke against William Widecombe and required Judgment against him which Bill was received and the said William Widecombe was notwithstanding bound in a 1000 pound to hear his Judgment in Chancery And the many restorations in blood and estate in 13 H. 4. and by King E. 4. and of many of our Kings may inform us how necessary and beneficial the pardons and mercy of our Kings and Princes have been to their People and Posterities The Commons accuse the Lord Stanley in sundry particulars for being confederate with the Duke of York and pray that he may be committed to prison To which the King answered he will be advised And Pardons before Indictments or prosecution have not been rejected for that they did anticipate any troubles which might afterwards happen For so was the Earl of Shrewsburys in the Raign of Queen Elizabeth for fear of being troubled by his ill-willers for a sudden raising of men without a warrant to suppress an insurrection of Rebels Lionell Cranfeild Earl of Middlesex Lord Treasurer of England being about the 18th year of King James accused by the Lords and Commons in Parliament for great offences and misdemeanours fined by the King in Parliament to be displaced pay 50000 l. and never more to sit in Parliament was in the 2d year of the Reign of King Charles the Martyr upon his Submission to the King and payment of 20000 l. only pardoned of all Crimes Offences and Misdemeanors whatsoever any Sentence Act or Order of Parliament or the said Sentence to the contrary notwithstanding For whether the accusation be for Treason wherein the King is immediately and most especially concerned or for lesser Offences where the people may have some concernment but nothing near so much or equivalent to that of the Kings being the supreme Magistrate the King may certainly pardon and in many pardons as of Outlaries Felonies c. there have been conditions annexed Ita quod stent recto si quis versos eos loqui voluerit So the Lord Keeper Coventry in the Raign of King Charles the Martyr to prevent any dangerous questions touching the receiving of Fines and other Proceedings in Chancery sued out his Pardon The many Acts of Oblivion or general Pardon granted by many of our Kings and Princes to the great comfort and quiet of their Subjects but great diminution of the Crown Revenue did not make them guilty that afterwards protected themselves thereby from unjust and malicious Adversaries And where there is not such a clause it is always implyed by Law in particular mens cases and until the Soveraignty can be found by Law to be in the People neither the King or his people who by their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy are to be subordinate unto him are to be deprived of his haute ex basse Justice and are not to be locked up or restrained by any Petition Charge or Surmise which is not to be accompted infallible or a truth before it be proved to the King and his Council of Peers in Parliament and our Kings that gave the Lords of Mannors Powers of Soke and Sake Infangtheif and Outfangtheif in their Court Barons and sometimes as large as Fossarum Furcarum and the incident Power of Pardons and Remissions of Fine and Forfeitures which many do at this day without contradiction of their other Tenants enjoy should not be bereaved of as much liberty in their primitive and supream Estates as they gave them in their derivatives And though there have been Revocations of Patents during pleasure of Protections and Presentations and Revocations of Revocations quibusdam certis de causis yet never was there any Revocation of any Pardon 's granted where the King was not abused or deceived in the granting thereof For in Letters Patents for other matters Reversals were not to be accounted legal where they were not upon just causes proved upon Writs of Scire facias issuing out of the Chancery and one of the Articles for the deposing of King Richard 2d being that he revoked some of his Pardons The recepi's of Patents of Pardon or other things were ordained so to signifie the time when they were first brought to the Chancellour as to prevent controversies concerning priority or delays made use of in the Sealing of them to the detriment of those that first obtained them And the various forms in the drawing or passing of Pardons as long ago His testibus afterwards per manum of the Chancellour or per Regem alone per nostre Main vel per manum Regis or per Regem Concilium or authoritate Parliamenti per Regem Principem per Breve de privat sigillo or per immediate Warrant being never able to hinder the energy and true meaning thereof And need not certainly be pleaded in any subordinate Court of Justice without an occasion or to purchase their allowance who are not to controul such an Act of their Sovereign Doctor Manwaring in the fourth of sixth Year of the Raign of King Charles the Martyr being grievously fined by both Houses of Parliament and made incapable of any place or Imployment was afterwards pardoned and made Bishop of St. Asaph with a non obstante of any Order or Act of Parliament So they that would have Attainders pass by Bill or Act of Parliament to make that to be Treason which by the Law and antient and reasonable Customs of England was never so before to be believed or adjudged or to Accumulate Trespasses and Misdemeanors to make that a Treason which singly could never be so either in truth Law right reason or Justice May be pleased to admit and take into their serious consideration that Arguments a posse ad esse or ab uno ad plures are neither usual or allowable and that such a way of proceeding will be as much against the Rules of Law Honour and Justice as of Equity and good
deny but be above it And would make the King by some scattered or distorted parts of that Answer mangled and torn from the whole context and purpose of it to give away those undoubted Rights of his Crown for which and the preservation of the Liberties of his People he died a Martyr the Author and his Party endeavouring all they can to translate the Assent of the Commons required in the Levying of Money into that of the power of pardoning and jumbling the Words and Sense of that Royal Answer cements and puts together others of their own to fortifie and make out their unjust purposes omitting every thing that might be understood against them or give any disturbance thereunto And with this resolution the Author proceedeth to do as well as he can and saith that After the enumeration of which and other his Prerogatives his said Majesty adds thus Again as if it related to the matter of pardoning which it doth not at all but only and properly to the Levying of Money wherein that Misinterpreter can afford to leave out his said Majesties Parenthesis which is the Sinews as well of Peace as War that the Prince may not make use of this high and perpetual Power to the hurt of those for whose good he hath it and of Publick Necessity which clearly evidenceth that his late Majesty thereby only intended that part of his Answer to relate to the levying of Money for the gain of his private Favourites and Followers to the detriment of his People Whither being come our Man of Art or putter of his Matters together finds some words which will not at all serve is turn inclosed in a Royal Parenthesis of his late Majestâ— viz. An excellent Conserver of Liberty but never intended for any share in Government or the choosing of them that should govern but looked like a deep and dangerous Ditch which might Sowse him over head and ears if not drown him and spoil all his inventions and therefore well bethinks himself retires a little begins at An excellent Conserver of Liberty makes that plural adds c. which is not in the Original fetches his feeze and leaps quite over all the rest of the Parenthesis as being a Noli me tangere dangerous words and of evil consequence and having got over goeth on untill he came to some just and considerable expostulations of his late Majesty and then as if he had been in some Lincolnshire Fens and Marshes is again enforced to leap until he come to Therefore the Power legally placed in both Houses is more than sufficient to prevent and restrain the Power of Tyranny But not liking the subsequent words of his late Majesty viz. And without the Power which is now asked from Us we shall not be able to discharge that Trust which is the end of Monarchy since that would be a total subversion of the Fundamental Laws and that excellent Constitution of this Kingdom which hath made this Nation for many years both famous and happy to a great degree of envy is glad to take his leave with an c. and meddle no more with such Edge-Tools wherewith that Royal Answer was abundantly furnished But looks back and betakes himself to an Argument framed out of some Melancholick or Feverish Fears and Jealousies that until the Commons of England have right done unto them against that Plea of Pardon they may justly apprehend that the whole Justice of the Kingdom in the Case of the five Lords may be obstructed and deseated by Pardons of a like nature As if the pardoning of one must of Necessity amount to many or all in offences of a different nature committed at several times by several persons which is yet to be learned and the Justice of the Nation which hath been safe and flourished for many Ages notwithstanding some necessary Pardons granted by our Princes can be obstructed or defeated in a well constituted Government under our Kings and Laws so it may everlastingly be wondred upon what such jealousies should now be founded or by what Law or Reason to be satisfied if it shall thus be suffered to run wild or mad For Canutus in his Laws ordained that there should be in all Punishments a moderata misericordia and that there should be a misericordia in judicio exhibenda which all our Laws as well those in the Saxon and Danish times as since have ever intended and it was wont to be a parcel of good Divinity that Gods Mercy is over all his Works who not seldom qualifies and abates the Rigour of his Justice When Trissilian Chief Justice and Brambre Major of London were by Judgment of the Parliament of the Eleventh of King Richard the second Hanged and Executed the Duke of Ireland banished some others not so much punished and many of their Complices pardoned the People that did not know how soon they might want Pardons for themselves did not afflict themselves or their Soveraign with Complaints and Murmurings that all were not Hanged and put to the extremities of Punishment nor was Richard Earl of Arundel one of the fierce Appellants in that Matter vexed at the pardoning of others when he in a Revolution and Storm of State was within ten years after glad to make use of a Pardon for himself King James was assured by his Councel that he might pardon Sir Walter Rawleigh the Lord Cobham Sir Griffin Markham with many others then guilty of Treason and the Earl of Somerset and his Lady for the Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury without any commotion in the Brains of the rest of his Subjects some of whom were much disturbed that he after caused Sir Walter Rawleigh to be executed for a second Offence upon the Score of the former not at all pardoned but reprieved or only respited And therefore whilest we cry out and wonder quantum mutantur tempora may seek and never find what ever was or can be any necessary cause or consequence that the five Lords accused of High Treason and a design of killing the King will be sure to have a Pardon if that the Pardon of the Earl of Danby whose design must be understood by all men rather to preserve him shall be allowed Nor doth an Impeachment of the House of Commons virtually or ever can from the first Constitution of it be proved or appear to be the voice of every particular Subject of the Kingdom for if we may believe Mr. William Pryn one of their greatest Champions and the Records of the Nation and Parliaments the Commons in Parliament do not or ever did Represent or are Procurators for the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and their numerous Tenants and ancient Baronies that hold in Capite nor for the many Tenants that should be of the Kings ancient Demesne and Revenues nor for the Clergy the multitude of Copy-holders heretofore as much as the fourth part of the Kingdom neither the great number of Lease-holders Cottagers c. that are not Free-holders
Citizens or Tradesmen nor can all the Members of the Body Politick be equally wounded in their Estates or concernments by the vain imaginations causless fears and jealousies and bugbears of other seditious or fanciful Mens own making And to men that have not yet proceeded so far in the School of Revelation as to be sure of the Spirit of Prophesie it may prove a matter of ill consequence that the universality of the People should have occasion ministred and continued to them to be apprehensive of utmost dangers from the Crown from whence they of right expect Protection And a Wonder next a Miracle from whence the Premisses to such a trembling and timorous conclusion can be fetched or how a People whose valiant and wiser Fore-fathers were never heretofore scared with such panick fears nor wont to be affrighted with such Phantasmes should now suspect they can have no Protection from the Crown when some of them do at the same time labour all they can to hinder it Or how it should happen in the long Rebellious Parliament that after Mr. Chaloner a Linnen Draper of London was hanged for Plotting a Surprize of the City of London and reducing it to the Kings obedience honest Mr. Abbot the Scrivener should be pardoned without any such discontent and murmuring of the People or that Oliver Cromwel should not be debarred of his Power of Pardoning in his Instrument of Government and be allowed to Pardon the Lord Mordant for a supposed Treason against his usurped Authority and our King deriving his Authority legally vested in Him and His Royal Ancestors for more than one thousand years before may not adventure to do it without the utter undoing and ruine of his Subjects in their Properties Lives and Estates by His pardoning of some Capital Offenders Or why it should not be as lawful and conveninent for the King to grant Pardons to some other Men as to Doctor Oates or Mr. Bedlow When no Histories Jewish Pagan or Christian can shew us a People unless in Cases of intollerable Villanies Petitioning their Kings that they would not Pardon when all are not like to be Saints or Faultless and it will ever be better to leave it to the Hearts of Kings and God that directs them than to believe Tyranny to be a Blessing and Petition for it And the most exact search that can be made when it findeth the Commons petitioning in Parliament to the King or House of Peers that they may be present at some Tryals there upon their Impeachments cannot meet with any one President where they ever desired or were granted such a reasonless Request pursued and set on by other Mens Designs to have one Mans Tryal had before another and by strugling and wrestling for it expose the King and Kingdom to an utter destruction And therefore in those their fond importunities might do well to tarry until they they can find some Reason why the Lords Spiritual may not Vote or Sit as Judges or Peers in Parliament in the Case of the five Lords as well as of the Earl of Danby Or any President that it is or hath been according to Parliamentary proceedings to have any such Vote or Request made by the Commons in Parliament Who neither were or should be so omnipotent in the opinion of Hobart and Hutton and other the learned Judges of England as to make a Punishment before a Law or Laws with a Retrospect which God himself did never allow but should rather believe that Laws enacted contrary to the Laws of God and Morality or that no Aids or Help are to be given to the King pro bono Publico or that there should be no Customs or Prescription or that the King should be governed by His People would be so far from gaining an Obedience to such Laws or Acts of Parliament as to render them to be ipso facto null and of none effect When the King hath been as careful to distribute Justice as his Mercy without violence to his Laws and well inform'd Conscience hath sometimes perswaded him to Pardon to do Justice or to cause it to be done in a legal and due manner and is so appropriate to the Office and Power of a King so annext appendant and a part of it as none but His Delegates are to intermeddle or put any limits thereunto and if it should not be so solely inherent in Him would be either in abeyance or no where For the House of Commons are not sworn to do Justice and if they were would in such a case be both Judges and Parties and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal are not as to particular proceedings sworn but meerly consultive So as Justice can vest in none but the King who is by his Coronation-Oath only sworn to do it if His Right of Inheritance and greater Concernments than any of his Subjects did not abundantly ingage and prompt Him thereunto and is therefore so every way and at all times obliged to do Justice and Protect the Lives Estates Peace and Liberty of His Subjects as he is with all convenient speed and hast to Try or bring to Judgment a Subject accused of Treason by the Houses of Lords and Commons both or either of them in His Court of Kings-Bench before the Justices thereof or by special Commission by a Lord High Steward in or without the time of Parliament And the King may acquit which amounteth to a Remission or Pardon by a more Supream Authority than any of His Judges some particular Cases wherein Appeals are or may be brought only excepted do ordinarily by an authority derived from no other not to be debarred by probabilities or possibilities or by consequences not always to be foreseen or avoided For a Man pardoned for Man-slaughter may be so unhappy as in the like manner afterwards to be the death of five or ten more 20000 Rebells pardoned at a time as in the Insurrections of Wat Tyler Jack Cade c. may be guilty of the like Offence twenty or forty years after The Lord Mayor of London that hath an allowance of Tolls and Profits to take a care of the City and wholsomness of Food might be as they are too much careless and undo them in their Health and well being The Judges may as those in the Raign of King Edward the First and Thorp in the Raign of King Edward the Third be guilty of Mildemeanours yet that is not to bereave us of that good which better Men may do us in their administration of Justice our Kings have granted Priviledges to certain Cities and Towns not to pay Subsidies and granted Pardons as their Mercies and right reason inclined them in the course of their several Raigns for many Ages last past yet have not acquitted or left unpunished all the Offenders ever since there being a greater likelyhood that they would not be so easie in pardoning where they were to gain so much by Attainders Fines and Forfeitures And therefore panick and
acquiruntur In concessione Privilegiorum observari debet ne contra Jus divinum possumus morale ejusque abolitionem quicquam indulgeat vel largiatur which would so have been if the parties supposed to have been Priviledged should extend them against their King and Gods Vicegerent And it neither was or could be by any Rule of Law or Right Reason any Priviledge granted unto any Members of the House of Commons in Parliament by any of our Kings to their Speaker or otherwise that any of our Kings and Princes should not upon any occasion of High Treason Felony or breach of the Peace personally enter into the House of Commons and cause to be Arrested any of the Members thereof when Queen Elizabeth caused Dr. Parry one of their Members to be Arrested sitting the Parliament for High Treason and tryed condemned and executed for it by Sentence of her Justices in the Court of Kings Bench at Westminster §. 29. Neither could they claim or ever were invested by any Charter or grant of any of our Kings or Princes or otherwise of any such Priviledge or Liberty nor was or is in England any Law or Usage or Custom that a Parliament sitting cannot be prorogued or dissolved as long as any Petition therein exhibiteth remained unanswered or not determined IT being never likely to have been so in a well-constituted government of a Kingdom built constituted upon sound solid principles of Truth Right Reason as ours of England is to have either often or always Ardua to be considered of or of those Arduorum quaedam most especially concerning the defence of the Kingdom and Church of Eng. which were not only to make an Act for the killing of Crows of Paving of Streets or that ex se or per se naturally or properly it could be or ever was in any Regal government in the Earth any Law or Custom to perpetuate or everlastingly to hold a Parliament a thing altogether unknown and unpractised by our English Monarchs who thought it enough at three great Festivals in every year to be attended with their Praelates Nobility and Grandees viz. at Christmas Easter and Pentecost and inquire into the State of affairs of the Kingdom which many times did occasion as much of Advice and Conference amounted as to a Parliament some addresses upon home emergencies being then made for Remedies of evils happened or as fires been to be prevented private petitions seldom interposing if in the inferiour Courts of Justice they might otherwise have Redress for that had been expresly forbidden by a Law of King Canutus and those Sumptuous Feasts and Solemnities being of no longer duration than the Festivals themselves And in so many inferior Courts that gave Remedies the people had no need to trouble themselves or their Kings in Parliament with Petitions especially when in the 9th year of the Raign of King H. 3. A peculiar Court was granted by our Magna Charta and Erected to give Remedies to all the peoples Actions Complaints not Criminal with a lesser charge and attendance in an ordinary and more expedite course and when they came with Petitions proper as they thought for Parliaments they were to be tryed by Bishops and Barons thereunto by the King appointed who by the advice of the Chancellor Treasurer Justices and the Kings Serjeants at Law were if they thought fit to receive them or otherwise to reject them with a non est Petitio Parliamenti and they that were received were many times referred by the King to his Privy Councel and sometimes with an Adeat Cancellariam and at other times with a farther Examination to the Justices of the Courts from whence the complaints did arise or with a respectuatur per dominum principem or referred to the Judges as against the multitude of Attorneys as in the Raign of King Henry 4. And Petitions were not seldom answered with there is a Law already or the King will not depart from his Right And when the Acts of Parliament were made in the 4th and 36th years of the Raign of King Edward 3. wherein he granted that Parliaments should be holden once in every year if need be the Petitions of the people could not avoid the like Limitations or Tryals of them as the Laws required Certain Petitions having been exhibited by the Clergy to the King it was agreed by the King Earls Barons Justices and other wise men of the Realm that the Petitions aforesaid be put in sufficient form of Law A time was appointed to all that would exhibit any Petitions The first part of a Petition the King granted and to the rest he will be advised The Commons did pray that the best of every Countrey may be Justices of Peace and that they may determine all Felonies to which was answered for the 2d the King will appoint Learned Justices they pray that the 40 s. Subsidy may cease Unto which was Answered the King must first be moved They pray that the King may take the Profits of all other Strangers Livings as Cardinals and others during their Lives Unto which was answered the King taketh the profits and the Councel the Kings privy Councel hath sent their Petitions to the King who was then busied in his Wars in France The Commons did pray that all Petitions which be for the Common profit may be delivered in Parliament before the Commons so as they may know the Indorsement and have Remedy according to the ordinance of Parliament unto which was given no Answer The Commons having long continued together to their great Costs and mischief desire Answer to their Bill which in the Parliament Language signified no more than a Petition leur deliverance The Commons petitioned against the falshood of such as were appointed Collectors for 2000 Sacks of Wooll To which was answered This was answered in the last Parliament and therefore Commandment was given to execute the same And the like Answer given ut prius to their Petition touching Robbers and Felons They pray that all Petitions in this present Parliament may be presently answered To which 〈◊〉 answered by the King after Easter they shall be answered The Parliament in Anno 6. E. 3. began upon Monday but forasmuch as many of the Peers and Memb 〈…〉 were not come the assembly required the continuance of the Parliament until the 5th of Hillary next following which was granted The Commons praying the King to grant a pardon for the debts of King John and King Henry the third for which process came dayly out of the Exchequer The King answered he will provide Answer the next Parliament No Parliament being after summoned until Anno 13. of his Raign when the Lords granting to the King the 10th Sheaf of all the Corn of their demesns except of their bound Tenants the 10th fleece of Wooll and the 10th Lamb of their own store to be paid in two years and would that the
of his Aerarium or Treasury without which no King or Prince can be safe or great and protect and defend himself and his people from Injuries and Contempt which put all together may give Gods appointed watchman of our Israel besides their more weighted and occasional business in Parliament scarcely time to slumber or sleep or enjoy his natural refreshments or divertisements without the addresses and Importunities of his almost always wanting and complayning Subjects which they that will be at leisure to peruse all the orders of himself and his privy Councel and treasury References upon Petitions in the Secretary of State and Master of the Requests Books and the Reports and Returns thereof with all that are contained in the patent close Rolls fine and liberate Rolls of every year besides the Writs Remedial granted out of the Chancery from which no man as our Laws say is to return sine Remedio those of the Common or Ordinary sort in every year amounting to no smaller a number than eighty Thousand in a year which by Law were anciently intended not to have been granted but by immediate Petitions to the King howsoever are now dispatched of Course as it hath long been by his Majesties not a few subordinate Officers very much to the ease and relief of his People who have so long enjoyed those benefits and accommodations as those Writs of Course without the trouble either of our Kings or their more especial Court of Parliaments as Anciently as King Canutus Raign who began his Raign in the year of our Lord 1016. and from thence so continued until the Raign of King John wherein a Writ of Novel diseisin is noted in the Margin of a Roll to be de cursu from whence the Cursistors in Chancery have taken and do yet keep their Name not a Cursitando as Fleta who wrote about the Raign of King Edward the 2d terms them Juvenes pedites little Lads who carried and fetcht Writs to and from the Great Seal but Clerici de Cursu mentioned in the Oath ordained to be given unto them in Parliament in Anno 18. E. 3. Insomuch as when Simon de Montfort that Married the Sister of King John and either his Father or himself had about that time been the destruction of the Protestant Albigenses and Waldenses in France did in the time of the Imprisonment of King H. 3. and his Son Prince Edward whom he and his Rebellious Partners had taken Prisoners in the Battle at Lewes take an especial care that in the absence of Thomas de Cantilupo the Kings Chancellor the Kings great Seal being committed to the Trust of Ralph de Sandwich Keeper of the Kings Wardrobe assisted by Hugh le Despencer Justiciar of England and Peter de Montfort two special Rebels to be kept until the return of the Chancellor and that the said Ralph should Seal brevia de Cursu but those which were de praecepto were to be Sealed in their presence And when that Rebellion was afterwards broken and Simon de Montfort and the most of his Rebel partners were slain at the more fortunate Battle at Evesham and the King restored to his Regality and Rights of government he and his Successors afterward did in all their Parliaments enjoy the power and authority of Monarchs in their great Councels or Assemblies of Parliament wherein by reason of their great and important affairs in War a in France Scotland and Wales they could not be able to be personally present but summoned and held their no long lasting Parliaments by their Lieutenants or Guardians of the Kingdom for the short continuance thereof § 31. That our great Councels or Parliaments except Anciently at the three great Festivals viz. Christmas Easter and Pentecost being ex more summoned and called upon extraordinary emergent occasions could not either at those Grand and Chargeable Festivals or upon Necessities of State or Publick Weal and preservation ex natura rei continue long but necessarily required Prorogations Adjournments Dissolutions or Endings FOR extraordinary occasions being not common or ordinary and the Summons or calling of fit and well capacited Persons to those venerable or great Councels of Parliament for purposed sometimes especily Limitted and Declared to be for Advice and Aid not in omnibus arduis only but in quibusdam arduis concerning the defence of the King his Kingdom and the Church always howsoever declared by the King himself or such as he appointed and there being other great and little Courts enough in the Kingdom to dispatch and administer Justice it could not but put our Kings and Princes in mind not to trouble their highest Court for small and trivial Affairs but to believe that Canutus an Ancient King of this Nation who began his Raign in Anno Domini 1001. had reason by an express Law to prohibit the troubling of him or his Parliament or greatest Councel with small matters when they might with more ease less delay expences and attendance be determined at home or in their proper Courts or Places in these words videlicet neme de injuria alterius Regi quaeritur nisi quidem in Centuria Justitiam consequi aut impetrare non potest Centuria autem Cominus quisque ut quidem par est intersit aut saltem debito absentiam luat supplicio and that Law might well be said to have been made by that King sapientum Concilio which might occasion the use of Receivers and Triers of Petitions constantly appointed by the King or his House or Councel of Peers until our late times of Rebellion and Confusion that great Councel or Court never being intended by our Kings or their Laws to be a standing often or continual Court for ordinary Affairs The wisdom of our Kings and their House of Peers having often rejected and not given any Remedies to Petitioners that might more properly be relieved in Inferiour Courts For King Offa in the year 787. after the Incarnation of our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ had a 2d Session in his great Councel And therefore as all Parliaments have had very urgent and necessary causes of Calling and Summoning them by their Kings so they were to have their continuance and duration proportionable to the Business and Affairs for which their Advice Assent or Approbation were required and even in the Ecclesiastical Councels begun as early after the Incarnation of our blessed Redeemer Jesus Christ as the year 446. The many Secular Businesses as making of Laws and redressing of Grievances in and by the Presence and Assistance of our Kings and many of the Nobility continued until the Norman Conquerour who separated the Ecclesiastical and Civil Jurisdictions one from the other and the Attendance upon Parliaments were not a little troublesom and chargeable to the Spiritual and Temporal Baronage and therefore the Ancient Custom of our Saxon Kings was more easy and less burdensom unto the Prelates and Nobility when it required their constant and annal Attendance
publishing in print in our own and some Forreign Nations a never to be believed or proved justification of the Murder of their most Pious Prince sub forma sigura judicii and no English men but the Learned and Loyal Dr George Bate and my self with our names subscribed and another without publickly vindicated his worth and innocency and not a Lawyer or man of the militia togata could find either a conscience or care calamum eâ—igere to defend the honour of their King and Countrey when they were bound by their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy not to have omitted it when as Advocati they should as Linwood hath told them in the case of an ordinary Client tanquam Athletae in Campo justitio pugnare not stand still hearall our Neighbour Christians speak of such a villainous Murder with horror and detestation and the learned Zeiglerus a Forreigner besides Salmasius who had never taken our Oath of Allegeance and Supremacy have publickly declared against it And do hope that our learned Lawyers of England who were not before our now almost fifty years Parliamentary Rebellion willing to be outdone or believed to be less learned in omni scibili or matter of learning in the Laws of their own or other Nations witness our Great Selden and many others will not suffer our Laws which want nothing to illustrate their very antient original to be so lost and eclipsed as there will be nothing of our Fundamental Laws left to furnish their practice in the Temples and Courts of Justice than such fragments as the Attorneys Seminaries shall be pleased to furnish them withal when they have squeezed the profit into their own advantages of all manner of Champerties and Ambodextryes by clipping our venerable just and antient Laws into such parcels as may seem most for their wicked and reasonless advantages and should be more than praemunired and not to be reckoned much less peccant than the Clippers of Caesars Coin or Image or false Forreign Coin introduced into the Kingdom in their daring to attempt to vitiate or violate their Kings Laws and suffer Milton that understood no more of our Laws of England than that which he had purposely Metamorphosed to delude a silly part of the People or Rabsheka it defieâ— the Host of Israel and John Goodwin a factious Minister with his Flambeau or Torch in the Pulpit to intice all that could be so mad as to believe them that King Charles the Martyr was justly accused condemned and beheaded at the suit of a few infatuated Rebels and so many men of the long Robe not have Loyalty care or Conscience enough to hasten to the brook to find some stones to sling at and convince those or any of their Goliahs or hear a Judge deservedly displaced by his late Majesty King Charles the 2d declare in the Court of Kings Bench tell not us of old Records and Antiquities but of the Law or Practice in or since 1641. And a Bencher of an Inns of Court perswades himself that he had hit the mark when he had said that Antiquities were no more to be valued than old Iron picked up out of the Channel in London Streets and sold for a penny in the pound And Mr. Milton that would have all men have a liberty to be divorced from their Wives as much as himself was from true Learning and Reason having done all and more than he could to blast and disparage that most excellent Pious Prince King Charles the Martyr and make his ever to be accursed Murder to be according to the Laws of England could not forbear persecuting his Manes whilst he magnified the Populum Anglicanum when all men had abhorred it and Bedingfield and Chresheld had voluntarily laid down their Commissions and forsook their Offices and places of Judges and the greatest Rebellion did ride in its triumphant Chair shall the Gentlemen of the long Robe who might be very able to do and should be well acquainted with all manner of Learning be so little concerned in it as to leave two Doctors of Physick to do what they could themselves for there were a Lion in the way whilst Mr. Milton cryed out as Tully in another case O fortunate nate me Consulo Roma And it would be a pity that so many Learned People in England of several conditions should not rightly understand the Constitutions and Government thereof but be so much mistaken as to believe they are honest and Loyal enough if they can but get what they can from their King and sacrifice it to their humours when the fear of God and right understanding of our Laws may teach us that our Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy do signifie much more than the ordinary Oaths of the smaller sort of the common people who have as little wit as Estate and a great deal less of Religion and that our Laws from Age to Age have resided in our Kings who have always been accompted to be tanquam Lex viva Could there be so great a thirst after learning and honour and esteem for it gained could the Queen of Sheba travel so far to hear the Wisdom of Solomon and Pythagoras to hear Plato Philip of Macedon give his Gods thanks that he had found out such a Tutor as Aristotle for his Son Alexander have men of learning and richer Souls than ordinary been invited and gladly welcomed into other Cities and Countries as our King Alfred did Asser Menevensis Edward the First Accursius and our King James the First the generally learned Causabon Peter du Moulin and Gerardus Vossius and believed it to be a great part of their honour and glory to be the Incouragers of learning and vertue Tacitus saith that amongst the Romans the Sons of Nobility did dare operam Studiis liberalibus The Emperor Valence appointed for the publick Library at Constantinople seven Antiquaries to look after the Books four for the Greek and three for the Latine who were to have a publick allowance and must we that may stand upon our Fore-fathers Shoulders and may with great ease do rather greater than lesser matters not be ashamed to be Children of yesterday when they that have arrived but unto a small parcel of learning must in spight of their Teeth acknowledge that experience is commonly upon earth one of the most trustiest guides and neglected the Mistress of Fools when posterior dies should never fail to be discipulus prioris and it can portend no less than a sad fatality and ruin to a Nation to have learning put under no better a Character than that of a Fop or a grave thinking Coxcomb when a Knave though a Fool is believed to be a Man of Parts and Ingenuity and an honest man a simple fellow or an Ass fit only to be bang'd or rid upon and whilst we mourn and lament with the Prophet Jeremiah the forecasted ruin of our Jerusalem and with our long ago Gildas the Excidium Britanniae should cease to
Power or were Elected by Them THe Laws of GOD Nature and Nations our Laws of England and the Records thereof no Strangers at all unto them but much in League and Friendship with them did never deny our Kings and Princes to make use of the Councels and Advice of such of their Subjects as were fit and able to give it Nor did any of our Kings by such applications unto their Subjects for their advice and councels either in general or particular common publick or private Councels or any of their Laws Grants Charters or Customs ever allow them any co-ordinate or equal Authority with Them or over any of their Actions in the giving of their Approbation Advice or Consent Or otherwise if we may believe as we ought those Records and Accounts which the World and its aged Companion TIME have from their Infancies left and recommended unto us no such Liberties Customs or Priviledges at all ever appearing to have been granted or of right appertaining unto them by any Warrant Foundation Law Act of Parliament Reason Prescription or Custom In the time of our Ancestors the Britains Qui Legibus Romanis not of the Senate but the Emperours Caesareis seu imperialibus paruerunt quamdiu sub Imperio Romano which Mr. Selden hath asserted to have continued 360 years or thereabouts from the time of Claudius the Emperour to that of Honorius and that Severus the Emperour kept his Court for several years at York where Papinian that great and famous Lawyer sate Praetor or Lord chief-Chief-Justice under him Which could not but introduce much of their Laws and Usages amongst us and the near succeeding Ages were so unwilling to part with them as they would never after be altogether Strangers unto them For King Aethelulph travelled with his Son Aelfred to Rome and Aelfred whilst he was there and likewise after his return and being King Librorum omnium notitiam habebat saith William of Malmsbury and was very learned as Asser Menevensis who was his Contemporary and privy to most of his Actions and Hoveden and Ingulsus have recorded it to Posterity Plurimam partem Romanae Bibliothecae Anglorum auribus dedit And Offa King of the Mercians had in the year of Christ 790. before the time of Aethelulph sounded erected and maintained in Rome a Schola Saxonica which could not be either constituted or continued without some Commerce with the Latian Language and Laws the one being likely to be an effectual means to convey the other and by a constant intercourse continue the course and knowledge of some part of these Laws and Customs in England Or in any of those Laws which Dunwallo Molmucius cujus Leges Molmucianae dicebantur ordained Or in those which Mercia Regina Britonum Uxor Gurtheli à qua Provincia Merciorum containing Gloucester shire and seven other Counties putatur denominata edit as an authentique Historian saith discretione justitia plenas quae Lex mercia dicebatur Of King Ethelbert Circa annum salutis 588 or 613. qui sub Heptarchia Saxonum as venerable Bede relates it decreta judieiorum inter subditos suos juxta exempla Romanorum Consilio sapientum constituit decreta judiciorum scribi fecit genti suae Et sub Saxonibus Danis quamvis pauciora Legum Romanorum vestigia reperiamus The learned Dr. Duck seconded by Dr. Langham in observationibus de antiquitatibus legibus Romanorum in Britannia exercitatissimus have not indiligently noted constabit tamen Reges eorum qui reliquis pietate virtute gloriae cupiditate praecelluerunt in judiciis jure dicundo inter subditos suos ad exempla Romanorum saepius se composuisse In the Laws of King Ina who about the year 712 after the Redemption of Mankind suesu instituto Cenradi Patris sui Heddae Erkenwaldi Episcoporum suorum omnium Senatorum suorum natu majorum sapientum populi sui in magna servorum Dei frequentia commanded ut justa judicia per omnem ditionem suam fundita stabilitaque sint at que ut nulli liceat in posterum Senatori sive alteri cuivis in ditione sua degenti sua antiquare judicia institutiones sive Leges genti suae condidit solempnes Of King Alured who about the year 871. prudentissimorum è suis consilio declaring that many of the Laws of his Ancestors quae sibi minus commoda videbantur ex consulto sapientum partim antiquanda partim innovanda curavit quaecunque in actis Inae gentilis sui Offae Merciorum Regis vel Ethelbert qui primus Anglorum sacrotinctus est Baptismato observatu digna deprehensus fuit ea collegit omnia reliqua plane omisit atque in istis discernendis prudentis simorum è suis consilio usus atque iis omnibus placuit editi eorum observationes Or in the League made betwixt King Alured and Guthrun the Dane or afterwards betwixt King Edward and Guthrum à sapientibus recitata sepius atque ad commodum Regni utilitatem aucta amplificata Or in or by any of the Books if they were extant and now to be seen said to have been collected and written by that great King viz. Breviarium quoddam collectum ex Legibus Trojanorum Graecorum Britannorum Saxonorum Danorum 2o. Visi Saxonum Leges 3o. Instituta quaedam 4o. Contra judices iniquos 5o. Dicta sapientum 6o. Acta Magistratum 7o. Collectiones Chronicorum Or by the Laws of King Edward about the year 900. where iis omnibus qui Reip. praesunt etiam atque etiam mandavit ut omnibus quoad ejus facere poterint aequos se praebeant judices perinde ut in judiciali libro scriptum habetur nec quicquid formident jus commune audacter liberèque dicant ac litibus singulis dies quibus dijudicentur condictos statuit Of King Athelstan about the year 924. the Heptarchy being then reduced to its pristine estate of Monarchy Consilio Ulfhelmi Archiepiscopi aliorumque Episcoporum servorum Dei. Or in his Laws not long before made in a Councel held at Exeter where he was as they mention sapientibus stipatus Of King Edmond made in a Councel at London about the year 940. tam Ecclesiasticorum quam Laicorum cui interfuerunt Oda Wolstanus Archipraesul plurimique alii Episcopi Or in or by the first written Laws of the Britains about the same time in the Reign of their King Howel Dha stiled the Good the Bards and Druids men of great veneration power and esteem amongst them not before recommending to posterity or committing to writing any of their Laws Customs or Memorials qui convocati Episcopis Laicis doctissimis Leges antiquas correxit novas condidit Or in the Laws which King Eldred made about the year 948. in festo nativitatis beatae Mariae when universi magnates Regni per Regium edictum summoniti tam Archiepiscopi totius Regni quam
being crowded into King John's Charter were never either granted or confirmed by King Henry III. Edward I. or any of our succeeding Kings nor as Sir Henry Spelman repeating the same omissions saith is therein that of paying the Debts of the Deceased probably of those that died leaving their Heirs in Ward to the Jews and others although Matthew Paris so much mistakes as to affirm that those Charters of King John and his Son Henry III. were in nullo dissimiles Which well-interpreted could signifie no more than that King John in his great necessities and troubles pressing upon his Tenants in capite the great Lords and others by taxing them proportionably according to their Knights Fees they endeavoured by those Charters all that they could to restrain him from any such Assesments which should go further then a reasonable aid unless in the cases there excepted and aim'd at no more then that a Common-Councel which was not then called a Parliament should be summon'd not annually of all Archbishops Bishops Abbots Earls and greater Barons and all the Tenants in capite being those that were most concerned therein nor as our Parliaments now but only as to their aids and services as Tenants in capite were upon forty days notice to appear at the same time and place given in general by the King's Sheriffs and Bailiffs sic factâ submonitione negotium procedat ad diem assignatam secundum consilium eorum qui prae sentes fuerint quamvis non omnes submoniti venerint and could not be intended of our now House of Commons in Parliament many years after first of all and never before introduced or constituted that praefiction of Forty days probably first creating that opinion which can never arrive unto any more then that every summons of such a Councel or Meeting was to be upon so many days notice or warning which Mr. Pryn upon an exact observation of succeeding Parliaments hath found to be otherwise much of the boisterousness haughty and long after unquiet minds of some of those unruly Barons being to be attributed to the over-strained promises and obligations of William the Conquerour before he was so to his Normans and other Nations that adventured with him upon an agreement and Ordinance made in Normandy before his putting to Sea which the King of France had in the mean time upon charges and great allowances made unto him undertaken to guard and long after by the command of King Edward III. then warring in France in the 20th year of his Reign was by Sir Barth Burghersh and others sent from thence in the presence of the Keeper or Guardian of England and the whole Estate declared in Parliament as a matter of new discovery and designs of the French happened in the traverse and success of those wars which probably might make the Posterity of some of them although the Ancestors of most of them had been abundantly recompenced by large shares of the Conquest Gifts and Honours granted by the Conquerour to a more than competent satiety extended to the then lower Ranks of his Servants Souldiers or Followers as that to de Ferrariis the Head afterwards and chief of a greater Estate and Family in England than they had in Normandy and might be the occasion of that over-lofty answer of John de Warrennis Earl of Surrey in his answer to some of the Justices in Eyre in the Reign of King Edward I. when demanded by what warrant he did hold some of his Lands and Liberties he drawing out a rusty Sword which he did either wear or had brought with him for that purpose said By that which he helped William the Conquerour to subdue England so greatly to mistake themselves as to think which the Lineage of the famous Strongbow Earl of Pembroke and some eminent Families of Wales in the after-Conquest of Ireland never adventured to do that the Ancestors of them and others that left their lesser Estates in Nòrmandy to gain a greater in England to be added thereunto had not come as Subjects to their Duke and Leige-Lord but Fellow-sharers and Partners with him which they durst not ever after claim in his life-time or the life of any of his Successors before in the greatest advantages they had of them or the many Storms and Tempests of State which befel them but might be well content as the words of the Ordinance it self do express That they and their Progenies should acknowledge a Sovereignty unto the Conquerour their Duke and King and yield an Obedience unto him and his far-fam'd Posterity as their first and continued Benefactors And those their Liberties and Priviledges freely granted by those Charters and not otherwise to be claimed were so welcome and greatly to be esteemed by the then Subjects of England as they returned him their gratitude and thankfulness for them in a contribution of the fifteenth part of all their Moveables with an Attestation and Testimony of the Wiser more Noble and Powerful part of the Kingdom viz. the Archbishop of Canterbury Eleven other Bishops Nineteen Abbots Hubert de Burgh Chief-Justice Ten Earls John Constable of Chester and Twenty-one Barons men of Might and great Estates amongst which there were of the contending and opposite Party Robert Fitz Walter who had been General of the Army raised and fighting against his Father the Earls of Warren Hereford Derby Warwick Chester and Albemarl the Barons of Vipont and Lisle William de Brewere and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford who afterwards fought against that King and helped to take him Prisoner That those Charters were given and granted unto them and other his Subjects the Free-men of his Kingdom of his own free will and accord And as to that of being not condemned without Answer or Tryal which in the infancy of the World was by the Creator of all Mankind recommended to its imitation as the most excellent Rule and Pattern of Justice in the Tryal and Sentence of Adam and Eve in Paradise are not to be found enacted or granted in King Edward the Confessor's Laws or the Charters or Laws of King Henry I. the people of England having no or little reason much to value or relie upon the aforesaid Charters of King John gained indirectly by force about two years after his as aforesaid constrained Resignation of his Kingdom of England and Dominion of Ireland to hold of the Pope and Church of Rome by an yearly Tribute being not much above Thirty years before and not then gone out of memory SECT V. Of the continued unhappy Iealousies Troubles and Discords betwixt the discontented and ambitious Barons and King Henry III. after the granting of his Magna Charta and Charta de Forestâ ALmost two years after which the King in a Parliament at Oxford declaring himself to be of full age and free to dispose of the affairs of the Kingdom cancelled and annulled the Charter of the Forests as granted in his
8. by Act of Parliament to dispose of 2 parts of his lands reserving a 3 part to the Heir and Administrations de bonis Intestati were anciently as Mr Selden saith granted by our Kings or Lords of Manors Derivatively from them 13. E. 1. Quia Emptores terr the statute 1. E. 1. compelling men of 20 l. per Annum to take the honour of the Knighthood 17. E. 2. de homagio faciendo cum multis aliis And those together with the before-mentioned Feudall Laws have been so fundamentall to our Laws and Customs of England and which hath been called our Common Law as it hath been rightly said to be velut ossa Carnibus and so Incorporate in the body thereof as it runneth like the life-blood through the veins arteries and every part thereof circulating to the heart the primo vivens ultimo moriens of our heretofore for many ages past in our very ancient body-politick and Monarchick attested and every where plainly and visibly to be met with seen and understood not only in and by our Glanvill Bracton Britton and Fleta together with our Annalls Historians and Records the latter of which as unto matter of fact do never lye or speak false but is and hath been written said and practised by in and amongst the most of Europaean Nations of Germany France and Spain if we reade and consider well the books of their learned Lawyers when too many of our now effassinated nation will not take the pains to look into former ages or if at all beyond our Inexpiated late Rebellious Age beginning at the year 1641. but scorn at Solomons large Just and Well-deserved Commendations of Wisdom and esteem the Prophet Jeremy inspired by God to be no other in his Councel or Advice State Supervias antiquas inquire veritatem then a fopp or a grave thinking Coxcomb and to be told to his face as the Prophet Jeremy was say what thou wilt we will not hear thee And it may be to our sorrow be made an Addition to our heretofore seven wonders of England that our Littleton and Sir Edward Coke his adoring Commentator should draw the water and have so little or no acquaintance with the Fountain from whence it Came and all our Year-books and Law-Reports should allow of so many of our Feudall Laws and not cite or quote or tell us from whence their Originall came in Insomuch as Littleton as Sir Edward Coke relateth speaketh of the Kings Prerogative but in 2 places in all his book viz. § 125. 128. and in both places saith it is by the Law of England And Sr Edward Coke that gave in some of his books that good and wholesome advice petere fontes non Sectari Rivules should not as he fondly did have built Altars Sacrificed his otherwise to be well esteemed abilities to the reasonless and notoriously false and vain figments of his so much adored modus tenendi Parliamentum and the mirrour of Justice and it can be no less then a marvail that so learned a Councell at Law and State as that great and Excellent Queen Elizabeth was so blest with should permit her to afflict and torment her mind in the taking away the life of her Cousin Mary Queen of Scotland for Treason who had fled unto her for protection against the persecution of her Rebellious Subjects who had driven her out of her own Kingdom and was by some Ill-affected English made use of in some of their plots and Conspiracies which were then made or Contrived by the advantage of her being here against their Sovereign and her Royall Government upon a designed Marriage betwixt her and the Duke of Norfolk and to endure the menaces and threatnings of some forreign Kings and Princes her Allies to avenge her death as a Common Concernment which his now Majestie and his blessed Father the Royall Martyr for his people could not in all their many distresses find any amongst their great Allies and kindred that would do any thing more then to make their own unjust advantages by an Early Complying with their Adversaries when the Justice of that her unwilling action in the Silence of our best and most learned Annalists and Historians who brobably might in that and other matters of our Laws think our Feudall Laws to be as unnecessary to be proclaimed in England as that there is a God when every one should believe it might have easily proved demonstrated the sentence condemnation of that unfortunate Queen being a Feudatory of our Queen Elizabeth and holding her Kingdom of Scotland of her by ancient Tenure in Capite homage and fealty of and under her Crown of England to have been agreeable unto those Laws although very unhappy unto the necessity of the one in the causing and the other in her Suffering under it and that so many of the Kings Council in the Law that should be more than the Carved Lyons about Solomons Throne if they would but read the learned Bâ—oks that have been written by some Learned Gentlemen and Divines in the defence of the Kings Just Rights from the Bars of our Courts of Justice to the Bench and from the Bench to the Bar should take so little notice of those our fundamentall Laws as only to entitle the Kings ancient Monarchick Rights to no better a Foundation and Originall then that which the miserable seduced and infatuated Common people shall be pleased to call Prerogative as if it were some new word or term of Usurpation or Tyranny to be maligned bawled and bayted at by the silly rabble or as if the name of Prerogative made every thing unjust that the King or his Ministers have either done or shall do and some of the Causes for reason amongst many of the effascinations which like the Egyptian darkness hath almost Covered all our Land of Egypt is a word too good for it may be the mischeivous quarrell betwixt our Common Lawyers and Civill or Caesarean Lawyers not reading or understanding so much as they should do the venerable mother of that which they would call the Common Laws when at the same time they can be content to make use of their Excellent Rules and Maximes in many of their Pleas Arguments Books and Reports as so many faithfull Guides and Directions And for further satisfaction unto and as far as a demonstration from what original the most of our fundamental and Principal Laws tanquam a fonte purissimo the purest fountain of Right Reason have proceeded been fixt and continued amongst us the particulars of the Feudal Laws following not before mentioned will if rightly considered abundantly Illustrate and Declare when the Feudists or Fendal Lawyers may assure us that the Feudal Laws being as a Jus gentium of all the Northern Nation of Europe from or out of which England Scotland and Ireland with their adjacent Isles and Territories are not or ever yet were to be excluded In the company whereof attended also as the
then untill after a long intervall of time in Anno. 22. E. 1. re-continued sub eadem fo 〈…〉 a which was in no other Tenour or to any other purpose then ad faciendum consentiendum iis to those matters or things which the King by the Councell and advice of the Peers viz. the Lords Spirituall and Temporall should ordain and although there have been ab ultima antiquitate great Councells or Parliaments Now although not formerly called Parliaments in this Nation or Kingdome yet they were not materially or formally the same and if it could be proved that the members thereof consisted of 3. Estates besides the King their Sovereign Lord before the 49th Year of the Reign of King Henry the 3. which all our Parliament Records do deny yet they that were admitted or came under the Elections illegally forced Writs and designs of Montfort and his rebellious partners by their then only newly contrived House of Commons can never entitle themselves to the same Origene Identity purpose and usage of our former Parliaments before that House of Commons in Parliament were admitted to consent unto and do what the King by the advice of his Lords Spiritualand Temporall therein should Ordain And there might be allways reason enough found that there should be a distinction betwixt the great Councells of Parliament which were not only for extraordinary emergencies touching the defence of the Kingdom and Church and redress of grievances in Civill affairs and contingencies and that which was for Military aids and services for saith our old and learned Bracton in Rege qui recte regit necessaria sunt duo haec Arma videlicet leges quibus utrumque tempus Bellorum pacis recte possit gubernare utrumque enim illorum alterius indiget auxilio quo tam militaris res possit esse in tuto quam ipsae leges usu Armorum praesidio possint esse servatae Si autem Arma defecerint contra hostes rebelles indomitos sic erit regnum indefensum sic autem leges sic exterminabitur Justicia nec erit qui rectum faciet Judicium And our Kings whose Royal Progenitors had heretofore all the Lands in England holden of them in Capite might in their greater concernments better deserve to keep their seperate and particular Military Courts for aids and services then those many of their Subjects do that would be unwilling not to be allowed to do it in their own Estates which had no other fountain or originall then the bounty and indulgence of their Kings and Princes and Bracton hath inform'd us that quod ille homagium suum facere debet obtentu reverentia quam debet domino suo adire debet dominum suum ubicunque inventus fuerit in regno vel alibi si possit commode adiri Et non tenetur dominus quaerere suum tenentem And in the homage Secundum quosdam there is to be salva fide debita domino Regi haeredibus suis. Et quod faciet servitium debitum domino suo haeredibus suis non debet homagium facere privatium sed in loco publico communi coram pluribus in Comitatu Hundredo vel Curia ut si forte tenens per malitiam homagium vellet dedicere possit dominus facilius probationem habere de homagio facto servitio recognito Which with the aid of tenures and feudall Laws and the homage services due from the Subjects to the Crown their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and our many and excellent Laws for self-preservation and publique safety did so firm and fix the Militia and Jus gladii in our Kings and Princes ordained and appointed by God for the execution of Justice Defence and Protection of the People their Religion Persons Lives Laws Liberties and Estates as they that would by perverted wrested and falsly concluded arguments overturn our Government and have Labour'd by all the Shifts and Falsities which the Devill and his Imps could contrive and furnish to Propagate their Designs and Principles of Wickedness and Confusion may find that all the Laws Records Annalls and Historians of the Kingdom do assert and prove the Jus gladii to appertain to none but our Kings and that the attempt to take it from them hath been ever accompted and punished as a Rebellion And that they are not Masters of their Wits or are Lunatiques without intervalls that can think their Industry and Pains well bestowed to go about to prove that there ought to be or ever was an Allegiance Oath or Homage made or taken to the People universally considered or was unto them due or could be by any right rule of Law Custom or Right Reason claimed by them or any way appropriate unto them Unto which well known and allways due Rights of our Kings and Princes were very subservient those great aids and support of the Kingdom the Knights fees and lands held of our King in Capite the strength and honour whereof could neither well be preserved called upon or certified unto our Kings in their Exchecquer as the book called the Red-book in that Court kept only for that purpose will inform us without an often Summoning those necessary and useful Courts or keeping them from a disuse which heretofore were wont to serve as Prognostiques or Indications or a feeling of the strength and pulse of the Kingdom by our Kings and Princes the careful Phisitians thereof the neglect whereof by the dissolution of the Abbies Monasteries and religious Houses and those large quantities of lands being no less then a fourth part of the Kingdom and the parcelling thereof into small quantities afterwards granted with a tenure in Soccage and our Kings granting of other great quantities of the Monastick Manors and lands to be holden in free and Common Soccage of the King as of his Manor of East Greenwitch together with the carlesness of the Court of Wards and Liveries and the Eascheators and Feodaries of the after ages so little minding their Duties and Oaths as if one parcell of lands were by a Jury found to be holden in Capite they were well content to suffer all the rest to pass with a per quae servitia ignorant and the carelesness in the levying of Fines and not suing out of Writs in such cases accustomed called per quae servicia which if the tenures in Capite and by Knight service had not been so ever to be lamented unhappily exchanged for a moyety after the Kings decease of a corrupt and unwholsome Drunken Excise those Terms in Capite with their Military aids and services the quondam strength and glory of our Kings and Nobility would have dwindled and shrunk into a consumption and Tabes of our heretofore Gigantine body politique and have for a great part by themselves without the so often murmuring and unwilling taxes and assessments been too weak or feeble to preserve their grandeur and protect and defend them and their peoples properties trades and
the Common Laws of England some part of the Civil and Canon Laws and a great part of the Records of the Kingdom and much honoured for his love and care of Justice But being a Judge in those Times and seduced by another of that Rank to take such a place upon him upon the pretence of keeping up and supporting the Law and was upon his Majesties Restauration advanced into an higher degree seemed notwithstanding not to have been so much or so well read as he might have been in the Feudall Laws excellent constitution and frame of the Monarchick Government of this Realm when in that House of Commons either in a cool neutrality or over perswaded by by his fears of or desire of living in safety or to preserve the Common Law when against his will and well known Integrity he was in that house of Commons in Parliament heard by another Member that Sat next unto him to say or declare his opinion that the King was trusted by the People wherein he might have better considered that two parts of our Laws most precious and necessary both to and for the King and his People which were the Summoning and calling of Parliaments or Great Councells and the Tryals of his Subjects Guilts or Innocencies per Pares with Reliefs Herriots due to our Kings and Princes and unto Ten thousand Lords of Manors or thereabouts Subordinate unto their Kings in England and Wales with Fines and Amercements Felons and Out-Laws Goods Annum diem vastum cum multis aliis c. were solely and principally derived from the Feudall Laws Which with some of the Usages and Customs of the Nation and our Statutes and Acts of Parliament from Time to Time after made and added thereunto were the Laws which many of our Kings and Princes took an Oath at their Coronations to Protect and Defend as also the leges Consuetudines quas vulgus elegerit who if our Feudal Laws had not been so very ancient as they have been would not want such as would heartily desire and make choice of them to have Lands given to hold of their King in Capite and enjoy to them and their Heirs under his more especiall protection and was in the Reign of our famous Arthur King of Brittain esteemed so great an happiness as Consensu Historicorum eruditorum of that Age and Time Leland hath informed us Utherus Pendraco fuit pater Arthuri cujus Gorlas Corinnae regulus beneficiarius erat a Notion or Title anciently used of such as held their lands in Capite or by Knight Service And therefore howsoever the learned Bracton's Pen might seem to have erred in his expression or words of Fraenare Regis it might as it ought consonantly to the Proper and Genuine Sense Intention and Meaning of all his Arguments through the Context and Tenor of his whole Books being no little one be accepted and taken to be no otherwise then a restraining him as Kings and great and good men have usually been by good advice and Councell of friends or Servants as Naaman the Syrian's Servants did in their Lords returning back in an anger from the Prophet Elisha who came near unto him and perswaded him to wash in Jordan in order to his recovery from his Leprosy when otherwise that harsh word or phrase of fraenare Reges could not without great danger damage or forfeiture be used or any forcible perswasion put upon a free Prince by Authorities coutrary to their Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy Justly and Truly descending from the Feudall Laws which commandeth all men holding of them in Capite to do otherwise And although some of our Ancient Historians have informed us that in a Parliament holden at Merton in the 20th Year of the Reign of King Henry the 〈◊〉 upon the Bishops endeavouring to have a Law made that according to the Canon Law the Children born before Marriage illicitis amplexibus should by a subsequent Marriage of the Parents be esteemed legitimate the Temporall Lords restiterunt and laying their hands upon their Swords Jurarunt quod noluerunt leges Angliae mitare it was not any plain absolute deniall of the Kings Decisive and Legislative Power but only an Altercation Debate or Dispute betwixt the Spirituall and Temporall Lords in Parliament concerning that matter And neither the Bishops or the house of Commons or any of the Commons represented or not could not so much as attempt to force or bridle their King by Commotions or force of Arms which by the Feudall Laws and the most of our Laws and Customs derived from thence would have been legally adjudged a Rebellion and Fraenare Regis in that undecent expression si quod rei fecerit aut neglexerit quod Dominum contempsisse dicitur aut si Dominus per consequentiam laedatur persona cujus existimationem sartam tectam manere Domini interest for Concilio auxilio Domino adesse debet which was the Cause and ground of right Reason that in the Reign of our King Edward the 2. the Lord Beaumont or de Bello monte was in Parliament Fined for refusing to come to Parliament and give the King his advice or Councell And it is not many Years since that the Emperor of Germany Seised and Imprisoned Prince William of Furstenburgh a feudatory for appearing in Person at a Treaty betwixt the Emperor and the King of France against his Lord the Emperor And our Mesne Lords holding their Lands Jurisdictions Courts Baron and Courts Leet notwithstanding that Act of Parliament for dissolving the Court of Wards and Liveries and the tenures in Capite supporting it did from the 24th Day of February in the Year of our Lord 1645 when in the height of their Wars against their Sovereign they had but Voted the Dissolution of thrt Court and the Tenures in Capite for at that Time there appeared not to have been any Act of Parliament although an Act made in the Time of Oliver Cromwell might be an usher or used as a pattern in the drawing of that by a learned Judge of those Rebellions Times wherein the Reliefs Herriots were found necessary to be reserved unto his now Majesty his Heirs and Sucessors Which may sadly be believed to have been a Decapitation or cutting off the head of the Body-Politick or Government as a Prologue to the Tragicall and Direfull Murder in the cutting off the Head of their most Pious better Deserving King No King or Prince in the World Christian or Heathen black or white that had all their Subjects except their Nobility and the Bishops and such as hold their Lands by the Honorary Services of grand Serjeanty or by the tenures of Copyhold or by Copy of Court-Roll unto which our Littleton giveth no better a name or Title then tenure in Villainage or any service incident thereunto which being originally derived from the tenures in Capite were not many Years ago very nigh a fourth Part of the Kingdom that had so
unto the now Duke of Beaufort and by men leavyed and sent unto him from Wales in his Majesties March as far as Shrowsbury towards him the better to enjoy and be near the great assistance which he promised and performed without which and the Ancient and Legall aid and help of his tenures in Capite and by Knight-service he could not have made any defence for Himself or his Loyal Subjects but might have been taken and Imprisoned by the Sheriffes of every shire or County thorough which he was to pass in his Journey to York with his eldest Son the Prince whom they would likewise have seised upon when he was by the Faction and their Hunters driven and pursued as it were thither for Refuge as a Partridge hunted upon the Mountains from his Parliament when he had no Provision of Arms Men or Money And the Rebell-Party of that Parliament had formed and beforehand made ready a great and powerfull Army without any manner of want of Money and a seduced party of his People to march against him And our Feudall Laws were so little despised unknown or unusuall in this Kingdom as our Magna-Charta and Charta de Foresta more then 30 times confirmed by Acts of Parliament and the Petition so called of Right will appear to have no other source or Fountain as to the most of the many parts thereof then the Feudall Laws And they must be little Conversant in the reading practice and usage thereof demonstrable in and through our Records and Authentique Annalls and Historians that will not confess and believe it when they shall so manifestly almost every where see the vestigia and tracks thereof and our Saxon Laws faithfully translated and rendred unto us by the labours and industry of our learned Lambard and Abraham Whelock Arabick professor in the University of Cambridge and the glossary of our Learned Sr Henry Spelman may aboundantly be found to declare that they had for the most part no other Progenitors And could not be understood to amount unto no less then the greatest and strongest Fortifications that any Kingdom could have though not so guarded by the Sea as our Islands of Great Brittain are and have been when Seventy Thousand Horsmen gravi Armatura or not meanly Armed should as the manner of those Times were without much disturbance to their other affairs be sodainly ready upon any Emergencies of Wars Intestine or Forreign without Pay or Wages under the greatest obligations Divine and Humane to defend their Kings themselves and their Estates which in more valiant and plain dealing Times did in no longer part of time commonly determine the fate or fortune of a Kingdom as to a great part of the Event or success of a War And was so necessary to the Defence of the King and People as our William the Conqueror that did not bring but found the Feudall Laws here in England may be thought to have been very willing to have strengthend his Conquests here when he distributed amongst his great Officers in the Army his Soldiers as much of his Conquered Lands as Ordericus Vitalis hath related it Seventy Thousand Knights Fees who in regard of their service for the defence of the King had a Privilege by the Kings Writ for them and their Tenants to be free ab omni Talagio from all Taxes which priviledge or acquittal saith Sr Edward Coke discontinued Of which our Feudall Laws the Brittains the more ancient Inhabitants of England as well as the Brittains in America in France now known by the name of the Duchy of Brittain cannot be believed to have been Ignorant when the Father of our Victorious Arthur King of Brittain was a Beneficiarius and held his Lands in Cornwall of the King in Capite unto whose Kingdom were appendant the large Dominions of Norway and the Islands ultra Scanriam Islandiam Ireland Curland Dacia Semeland Winland Finland Wareland Currelam Flanders omnes alias terras Insulas Orientalis Oceani usque Russiam Et iu Luppo etiam posuit orientalem metam Regni Brittania multas alias Insulas usque Scotiam usque in Septentrione quae sunt de appendicis Scaniae quae Noricena dicitur and that Kingdom of Brittain had so large an Extent and the King of Brittain such a directum Dominium therein that upon an exact Search and inquiry into the Memorialls Antiquities Annalls and Historians thereof it was evident that in the Times of Ely and Samuel after the Siege and Destruction of Troy Brute came into this Island called it by his name and divided his Kingdom to his 3 Sons Loegria now called England to his Eldest Albania since called Scotland came to the 2 and Cambria or Wales unto his 3 Son Camber after whom was Arthurus Rex Britonium famosissimus Who subdued a great part of France and those his Noble Acts were not unknown unto some of the Roman Poets and Historians and the Laws used here in his Time may with great reason be understood to have been the same which the English or Saxons our later Ancestors Fletibus Precibus with supplications washed in Tears obtained of the Norman Conqueror to be left unto them as King Edward the Confessors Laws for his Justice and Holiness reputed to have been a Saint and together with the Mercenlage or Laws made by Mercia a Queen of Mercia or the Borders or Confines of Wales ought to be esteemed the same aggregate Laws which K. William the Conqueror of the Brittains Saxons and Normans after they had began to Intermarrie and were become as it were Populus unus Gens una were certified by the greatest most universall and most Solemn Jury and verdict that ever was Impannelled or made use of in England and under the strictest and severest Charge not by Judges delegate but by the King himself and a Conquering King that had omnia Jura et terras in manu sua which he did Consilio Baronum suorum in Anno quarto Regni sui cause to be Summoned through all the Shires Counties of England of out of the Nobiles sapientes et in Lege cendites ut eorum Leges et Jura et Consuetudines ab ipsis audiret Whereupon in singulis totius patriae Comitatibus a Jury of 12 men qualified as aforesaid Jure Jurando coram ipso Rege before the King himself no ordinary Judge but the Highest under God quo ad possent recto tramite incidentes neither turning on the Right hand nor the Left legum suarum Consuetudinum suarum patefacerent neither omitting or adding any thing by fraud or praevarication yet the King seeming better to approve of his Norway and Danish Laws which in many things affinitate Saxonum seemed to be the same with the Norway Laws except in some small difference in the heightning of the Fines and Forfeitures which when the King had heard read unto him maxime appreciutus est proecepit ut Obsequerentur per
and prudent King Edward the First when he did his Homage to the King of France for the Dutchy of Acquitaine carefully to except his ancient right to the Dutchy of Normandy and the French Kings denying his brave and victorious Grandchild Edward the 3. to do his Homage by proxy made him so Inquisitive into his own better Title unto that Kingdom as the French King paid dear for it and the English King at length the owner of that great and flourishing Kingdom When Fealty is conjoyned with the Oaths of Allgeance and Supremacy the true born only Legitimate Issue and Children of the Feudall Laws they will be like a 3 fold Cord not at all in Reason or Justice to be broken And in matters touching Inheritances Nobility Titles of Honour womens Dower of the 3 part of Lands and Tenements fees tenures in Capite and by Knight Service Rents Escheats Fines Felonies Forfeitures tryall by battell cum multis aliis c. our Laws being not only founded upon them but supported and guided by them It may be wondred it should be so unknown to our Common Lawyers whom a carefull reading of our Glanvil Bracton Britton and Fleta and a better acquaintance with their mother the Civill and Caesarean and Feudall Laws with a due inspection into the ever to be valued Records of the Kingdom might better instruct then the malecontent and ill affected Sr Edward Coke and some other of the later School or Edition of those which are called Common Saviors as not to believe with great assurance that that which they call so generally the Common Law is for the most part if not all the Feudall Law which they are pleased to call the Praerogativa Regis declared and acknowledged in Anno 17. E. 2. and likewise that of the view of Franck pledge the next Year ensuing and that it was therefore not unfitly wished by a Late Learned Author supposed to be a post-hume of Sr Henry Spelman that Some worthy Lawyer would diligently read the Feudall Laws and shew the severall heads from whence those of our Laws are derived wherein saith he the Lawyers beyond the Seas are diligent but ours are all for profit And An Act of Parliament in Anno 1662. made by King Charles the 2. for the Settlement of the Kingdom of Ireland wherein notwithstanding that it was in the â—3th Year of his Reign ordained that all lands and Tenements in England and Ireland should be holden of him his Heirs and Successors in Free and Common Socage there is a Proviso and Exception that all lands tenements and Hereditaments in Ireland setled or to be setled on the Soldiers who are out of said Act and not provided for shall be held of the King his Heirs and Successors by Knight Service in Capite and it is well known that our unruly Neighbours in Scotland that could never be satisfied with the Fat and plenty of our Land of Goshen untill the lean kine had eat up the fat and they had set our before happy Kingdom on fire with their Hypocriticall dissembling Illegall wicked Covenant did not in all the mischiefs and Miseries which they brought upon us and themselves in those their Rebellious Designs make it any part of their desires to change their ancient tenures in Capite and by Knight Service into free and Common Socage which by unhinging the Government would have set all the wild Beasts of the Forrests loose and at Liberty and made the otherwise unruly and never to be governed numerous vassalls so masterless as to tear in peices their Lords Lairds or Superiors and turn that Monarchy to do as well as it can amongst a herd of rudeness and Incivilities in their Plads and Blew Capps And the Hollandiae Zelandiae Frisiaeque principes terra marique potentes heretofore nullo externo usi milite ex veteri Longobardorum Consuitudine sub certa quadam feudalitiae necessitudinis lege hoc est mutuae inter dominicum patrocinum ac Fiduciariam Clientelam veluti pactionis nexu beneficiarii instituerentur qui Conceptis verbis interposita Juratae fidei religione pro beneficio accepto patrono suo militarem operam praeberent navarentque ut scilicet quoties usus posceret parati in armis essent id quod Jure Feudalistico proprium Feudatariorium munus atque officium est Et cum praediorum defectu in these Provinces which ingenio soli quod natura depressum ac uliginosium were naturally scituated cum incilibus passim fossis lacubusque ac paludibus intercussum haud sane faciles aditus ostentat confisa turbas Seditionum praemia converteret and therefore to untie those obligations betwixt the Lords and Tenants and enervate those strengths and promptitude to a confidence in their own Power Charles the 5th Emperour Edicto perpetuo Anno Domini 1518. officia haec militaria vulgo servitia dicta in universum abragavit vassallisque omnibus remisit Ea tamen lege ut fundi Clientelares functionibus publicis quibus hactenus Imunes fuissent in posterum non secus atque patrimoniales obnoxii existerent and having so farr inticed them out of their old into a much worse constitution with Taxes and the Spanish Inquisition managed by the Duke D'Alva in a most tyrannical arbitrary Goverment so desperated them as after a long time expended in Intercessions without any redress obteyned and those their discontents heightned and made use of by the Policies of their neighbours the English and French who had reason to fear the ambitious encrochments and evil designs of the King of Spain to oppress them that were his neighbours and by the assistance of his late Conquest of the West Indies with their Gold and Silver Mines endeavouring to make himself to be as it were the Atlas of the World and extend his Dominions to a Fifth Monarchy and a Ne plus ultra All which concurring and put together with the Conduct and Adventurous successfull care of the then Prince of Orange assisted by the united Seven Provinces whereof Holland Zealand and West Freisland were the greatest Incouragers of the other caused that faedus ultrajectinum which in a long series and continuance of Time of Years making those netherland Belgick Provinces to be a Campus Martius and field of Bloud hath with an intermission only of 12 Years Truce after that Centnry ended occasioned greater ruines effusion of blood then the Wars Joyned all together between Rome and Carthage and Caesar and Pompey in the Pharsalian Fields So long and fatall from the beginning to the ending hath been that unhappy project of the dissolving the Hollandish Zealand and West Freizland ancient Feud 〈◊〉 Laws by the altering their Tenures in Capite and by military service which howsoever they had so continued depressed during the heat and fury of that Spanish War been laid aside and intromitted saith Neostadius haec olim celeberrima Feudalis Curiae quam Oraculum Bataviae was wont to be called the Lords
and testify that the Land is holden of them and that without taking away the Fealty and repealing the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy the Duty and Oaths of the Subjects remained as they did whilst they held their Land in Capite and by Knight Service Which probably as may sadly be lamented could never have hapned if the later men of the Law in England had not by the space of something more then Forty Years last past leaped over as it may be feared they have overmuch done the successive learned labours and Books in a long process of Time in the Reign of our Regnant Kings and Princes divers Judges and Sages of our Laws Recording from Time to Time Cases Judgments Decrees and Dicisions maturely and Deliberately adjudged therein But too much neglected those guidings better guides and faithfull Directors the Civill and Feudall Laws and suffred their Studies and practice to be imployed and incouraged in the Factious Seâ—iâ—ious Rebellious principles of those Times by following the gross Mistakes of Sr Edward Coke in his Discontent malevolence and Ill will unto the necessary and legall Regalities of the Crown and Idolizing as he did those grand parcells of forgery and Imposture entitled the Mirrour of Justice and the Modus tenendi Parliamentum and their neglecting the readings of Glanvile Bracton and Britton and other good Authors And the Civil Law was the Parent and Mother of many of the maximes and principles of that which is now called our Common Law And those men of the Law who without Books subsistence or Estates when they went beyond the Seas with their Sovereign and had not there the opportunities of the Knowledge or help of the Records of the Kingdom that might have been their best Instructers were for the most part but Young Gentlemen Born and Bred in the times of our Distempered Parliaments as those were that Tarried here who walked along with the Rebellion too much adhered unto them and came Weather-beaten again with his Majesty had understood as they might have done the Originall Foundation and Continuance of our Monarchick Government But King Edward the 1. who had passed over and overcome so many Hardships Difficulties Misfortunes and Storms of State was so unwilling to be afraid of a part of his Unquiet Baronage or to Humour the popularity and ignorance of any of the Common People or to be in fear of them or of any their Factious or Seditious Machinations making what hast his affairs would permit to return into England where his father having by his Death escaped the restless conflicts of a long and troublesome Reign and his Exequies and Ceremonies of buriall performed Róbertus Kilwarby Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus Gilbertus de Claro Comes Gloverinae a man that had been in Armes and opposite enough against his father and himself in the former convulsions of State and John Warren Earl of Surrey saith Samuel Daniel went up to the High Altar cum aliis Praelatis ac Regni proceribus Londiniis apud novnm Templum convenerunt Edwardum absentem Dominum suum Ligeam recognoverunt paternique Successorem honoris ordinaverunt assensu Reginae non Populi and before his return into England John Earl Warren and Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester in the Abby Church of Westminster sware unto him Fealty without asking leave of the People and proclaimed him King although they knew not whether he were Living or Dead caused a new great Seal to be made and appointed six Commissioners for the Custody of his Treasure and Peace whilst he remained in Palastine where by an Assassin feigning to Deliver Letters unto him he received 3 Dangerous Wounds with a poysoned knife then said and believed to have been cured by the Love of his Lady that Paragon of Wives and Women who sucked the Poyson out of the Wound when others refused the adventure and after 3 Years Travail from the time of his setting forth many conflicts and Disappointments of his aids and Ends left Acon well fortified and manned and returned homewards in which as he travailed he was Royally feasted by the Pope and princes of Italy whence he came towards Burgundy where he was at the foot of the Alpes met by Divers of the English Nobility and being Challenged to a Tournament by the Earl of Chalboun a man of extraordinary Renown Successfully hazarded his Person to manifest his valour thence came again into England with the great advantages of his Wisdom Courage and Reputation assisted by the memory of the fortunate Battle at Evesham and his Actions in the East SECT XVIII Of the Methods and Courses which King Edward the 1. held and took in the Reformation and Cure of the Former State Diseases and Distempers KIng Edward the 1st was together with his Queen Crowned at Westminster by Robert Archbishop of Canterbury Alexander King of Scotland and John Duke of Britanny attending that Solemnity which being finished he shortly after forced Leoline Prince of Wales who had taken part with Montfort against his Father King Henry the third to do him Homage and after a Revolt imprisoned and beheaded him did the like to his brother David and United Wales as a Province to England made the Statute of Snowden considered and perused their Laws allowed some repealed others collected some and added new as he well might there do for the Prince or King which Governed Wales had always used so to do and appointed one to give his assent to the Election of Bishops and Abbots And when The Pope demanded 8 yeares arreares for the rent or tribute of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland enforced from King John did by his letter answer that his Parliament was dissolved before it came and that sine Praelatis et Proceribus communicato concilio sanctitati suae super praemissa non potuit respondere et Jurejurando in coronatione suam praestito fuit obstrictus quod jura Regni sui servabit illibata nec aliquod quod diadema tangat Regni ejusdem no such clause or promise being in the Coronation Oath ut nihil absque illorum requisito concilio faceret Sent to Franciscus Accursius Docto of laws resident at Bononia in Italy the son of the famous Accursius the Civil lawyer to come with his wife family into England by his writ to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire commanded him to deliver unto the said Doctor Accursius the King 's manor house and castle of Oxford then no mean place for him and his wife to Inhabit Did so imitate the wisdom and providence of the Roman and Caesarean laws as Augustus Caesar and other of the Succeeding Emperours had done as he gave unto men learned in the laws which was more for the peoples good then in their suits and actions at law to court and live under the protection and humours of their popular Patroni's libertatem respondendi to give councell and advice to their clients in their concernments at law and
direct and plead their causes and was with us in England the originall of our Serjeants at law and pleaders mentioned in the Statute made in the 3d year of his Reign with great penalties to be inflicted upon them for any falshoods or deceits which should be committed by them which in the 3d year of the Reign of King Edward the 2d came to be so much in use and reputation much more since augmented by the grace and permission of our Kings and Princes into an eminent State and degree as they are only to be made and constituted by the King's writs appointed for the people to help them to Justice in their causes or actions either as to Prosecute for their Rights or defend them from wrongs and oppressions and intimate and shew unto Judges what the laws do require to be done according to Justice and equity and must needs be gratefull to the people who were so thereby freed from maintenance champerty and quarrels too frequently haunting the courts of Justice as it was enough for an advocate or Lawyer in discharging himself from actions brought against him for Champerty or maintenance to plead that he is Homo legis and was retained by his Client Although the word Narrator or Narratores pleaders have been found to have been used in the later end of the Reign of King Henry the 3. which might either proceed from the Civill or Caesarean Laws whereof the Lawyers of those Times would have been ashamed to have been such profest Enemies as some of ours are pleased to be because they do not or cannot afford to understand their excellencies or from the use or misapplication of some newly Devised Verba Novata by some rash or inconsiderable Authors or Writers unto some long before by gone and past ages such as Hint Sham c. not at all in those Times made use of or understood which have produced great Digladiations and Disputes both amongst Writers and Readers and made many that otherwise would not or should not go to Cuffs in the Dark for little or nothing And to satisfy his Subjects in the grand concernments of their Laws and Liberties Lives and Estates and to cause them to be fully kept and Executed sent his Writs to his Justice of Chester and the Sheriffs of all the Counties of England in these Words viz. Cum propter communem utilitatem totius Regni nostri meliorationem populi nostri relevationem de Communi concilio Praelatorum Magnatum Regni ejusdem no Knights or Citizens and Burgesses for the Commonalty being then present or believed to have been necessary quasdam provisiones quaedam Statuta cum magua diligentia ordinari postmodum sigillo nostro signari fecerimus tam a nobis quam a ministris nostris quibuscunque quam ab ipsis Praelatis Magnatibus nostris ac tota communitate Regni praedicti then understood to be included in the advice of the Prelates and Nobility ad perpetuam memoriam rei gestae inviolabiliter observand vobis mandamus in fide dilectione quibus nobis tenemini firmiter injungentes quod provisiones Statuta illa in pleno Com. Cestr. in singulis Hundredis ejusdem comitatuus Civitatibus Burgis Villis Mercatoriis locis aliis ubi expedire videritis legi publice solempnitor proclamari ea in omnibus singulis articulis suis ab omnibus de baelliva vestra futuris temporibus juxta tenorem corundem firmiter inviolabiliter observari provisionibus Statutis illis sic proclamatis ea in singmlis locis infra ballivam vestram ubi expediri videritis distinct aperte conscribi ea fidelibus nostris locorum illorum sic Scripta sine dilatione liberari vobis ac ballivis fidebus nostris habere cum eis indigueritis ostendenda quatuor vel duobus militibus de fidelioribus discretioribus militibus Comitatus praedicti de assensu totius communitatis tradâ— faciatis those Knights only and no Citizens or Burgesses trusted therein ad Securitatem dictae communitatis Cusiodiend it a vos habeatis in hoc mandato nostro exequendo ne nobis seu aliis per vos vel vestros seu vobis per defectum vestrum vel vestrorum imputari possit vel debeat quod ea quae in dictis provisionibus Statutis continentur vel corum aliquae in balliva vestra minus plene observentur hoc vobis universitati Comitatus praedictitenore presentium significamus T. R. apud Westm. 28 die Mar. consimiles literae diriguntur singulisVice comitibus per Angliam which needed not to have been said there if there had then been an House of Commons in Parliament or any such comprehension or representation of Commons by Commons in Parliament as the Authors of their supposed Sovereignty have fondly imagined And at the instance of John de Cobham altering the tenure of some of his Lands in Gavel-kind did it by his Charter in these Words ad Regis celsitudinis potestatem pertinet officium ut partium suarum leges consuetudines quas justas utiles censuerit ratas habeat observari faciat inconcussas illas autem quae regni robur diminuer potius quam augere conservare abolere convenit aut saltem in melius commutare Directed his Writ to Roger de Seyton and other his Justices Itinerant at the Tower of London in these Words viz. Rex dilectis fidelibus suis Magistro de Seyton Sociis suis Justiciariis Itinerantibus apud Turrim London Salâ—tem Sciatis quod per dominum H. Regem patrem nostrum nos ac Consilium nec non alios fideles suos qui cum eodem patre nostro convenerant apud Marleberge provisum fuit quod si coram quibuscumque Justiciariis Itinerantibus appellum vel querimonia fieret de roberia pace fructa vel homicidio aut aliis commissis tempore guerrae nuper suborte versus eos qui fuerunt contra eundem patrem nostrum vel alios aut dc hujusmodi commissis presentationes fierent sicut ad Capitula Coronae fieri solent nullus ea occasione amitteret vitam vel membra aut penam perpetui Carceris incurreret set alio modo de dampius amissis vel ablatis transgressionibus fieret Judicia castigatio secundum discretionem Justiciariorum dicti patris nostri insuper diligenter attenderent observarent ea que continentur in dicto de Kenilleworth Et habeant Justiciarii in singulis Itineribus suis transcriptum dicti prefati Ita quod de his quae per alios Justiciarios ipsâ—â—s patris aostri ad hoc assignatos termina fuissent seu terminari deberent nichil facerent Justiciarii dicti patris nostri Itinerantes sine speciali mandato suo si forte sibi idem pater noster aliquid injungeret sciendum quod tempus guerrae
incepit a quarto die Aprilis Anno. Regni dicti patris nostri 48 quando vexillis explicatis exivit cum exercitu suo ab Oxonia versus Northt duravit continue usque Sextum decimum diem Septembris Anno Regni dicti patris nostri xl nono quando apud Wyntouiam pacem suam post bellum de Evesham in presentia Baronum suorum qui ibidem convenerant firmari fecit clamari no Commons or Knights or Burgesses representing for them Provisium fuit etiam ne aliquis amittteret vitam vel membra pro Roberiis aut homicidiis aut aliis commissis sub specie guerrae per illos qui contradictum patrem nostrum erant a quarto die Junii Anno Regni ejusdem patris nostri xlvii quando illi vexillis explicatis primo per terram suam incedentes roberias homicidia incarceraciones tam personis Ecclesiasticis quam secularibus fecerunt usque ad predictum tempus quo ab Oxonia versus Northt cum exercitu suo recessit De aliis autem quae tempore illo sub specie guerrae non fiebant haberetur tempus illus velnd tempus pacis A tempore autem supradicto quo apud Winton pacem suam firmari fecit clamari curreret Lex pro ut tempore pacis currere consuevit Ita tamen quod illi qui fuerint apud Axeholm sive apud Kenill vel Insula Elyens vel apud Cestrefeld vel postmodum apud Suwerk observaretur plene pax sua prout eam habere deberent sive per dictum de Kenileworth sive per privilegia sua de pace sua sibi concessa De illis autem qui cum Com. Gloverniae in ultima turbatione fuerunt observaretur pax facta inter dictum patrem nostrum ipsum Com. Ita quod a tempore quo dicto Comes recessit a Wall versus London usque ad diem quo recessit a Civitate praedict non procederent Justic. contra ipsum vel eos qui erant in parte sua Et hoc de illis tantummodo intelligeretur De depredationibus autem utrobique factis tempore praedicto observaretur hoc quod pace inter dictum patrem nostrum ipsum Comitem facta continetur Et ideo vobis mandamus quod hec omnia in prefato Itinere diligenter observari faciatis T. R. apud Kickleton xix die Marc. 6. E. 1. He commanded the Sheriffs to distrain every man that had 20 l. per Annum in Land or a whole Knights Fee of the liâ—e value and hold of him in Capite milites esse debent ad arma militaria within such a Time a nobis suscipiend which was like a Nursery for military affairs for the continuance of those gallant necessaries for publique Defence in and by the obligations of their Tenures wherein a great part of our Fundamentall Laws Oaths of Allegeance Loyalty and Duties of Subjects do subsist And by an Inquisition taken in the same Year at Launceston in Cornwall by a Commission out of his Court of Exchecquer it was found by a Jury that Dominus ratione Regiae dignitatis Coronae suae habet privilegium quod nullus in Regno suo aliquo qui sit de Regno Angliae alieni homagium sine fidelitatem facere debeat vel aliquis hujusmodi homagium vel fidelitatem ab aliquo recepire debeat nisi facta mentione de fidelitate domino Regi debita eidem Dominus Regi observanda Episcopus Exon adfuit contrarium c. Et in contemptu c. Et le Evesque mis a respond And like a second Justitian did cause John le Breton one of the Justices of the King's-bench Or as others have written Bishop of Hereford to compile in his name a Book of the Laws and Customs of England wherein the King directring the Book to all the People which were under his protection par la Soufrance de Dieu saith for that peace could not be without Laws he had caused those which had been heretofore used in his Realm to be put in Writing which he Willed and Commanded should be Observed in all England and Ireland en toutz pointz Sauve a nous de repealer de eunoiter d' amander a toutz les faitz que nous verron que bon a nous serra par l'assent de nos Countes de nos Barons autres de nostre Conceil Sauve les usages a ceux que prescription de temps oul autrement use en taint que leur usages soyent mys discordants a droiture in which Book and the Droits de Roy there is no mention made of the Election and Summoning of Knights of the Shires Citizens and Burgesses to Parliament By his Edict or Proclamation prohibited the burning of Seacole in London and the Suburbs thereof for avoiding its noysom Smoak and without any Act of Parliament divided Wales into Shires and ordained Sheriffs there as was used in England caused some London Bakers not making their bread as they ought to be drawn upon Hurdles and 3 men for rescuing a prisoner arrested by an Officer to have their right hands cut off by the Wrists Fined without advice or assent of Parliament which might well be so understood to have been so upon the Act of Parliament in Anno 3 of his Reign ordained that such offenders should be ransomed and Punished at the Kings Will and Pleasure Sr Ralph Hengham Chief Justice of his Bench 7000 Marks Sr John Lovetot Chief Justice of the Common Pleas 3000 Marks Sr William Brompton 6000 Marks Sr Solomon Rochester or Roffey 4000 Marks Sr Richard Boyland as much Sr Thomas Sodenton 2000 Marks Sr William Saham 3000 Marks Roobert Littlebury Clark Master of the Rolls 1000 Marks Roger Leicester no less Henry Bray Escheator and Justice of the Jews 1000 Marks Sr Adam Stratton Chief Baron of the Exchequer 34000 Marks and Thomas de Weyland being the greatest delinquent and of the greatest substance could not be so easily excused but was Banished and had all his Goods and Estate Confiscate to the King only John de Metingham Elias de Beckingham two of the itinerant Judges to their eternall honour saith Henry Spelman appearing Guiltless and Righteous in that severe and Kingly examination and Justice purged his Courts of Justice and the Officers and clarks thereof from Bribery and extortion banished the usury of the Jews hanged 297. of them for abusing the Coyn and Money of the Kingdom curbed the pretended Independent power of the Clergy Clipped their Jurisdictions and upon their refusall to pay Tallage towards his Wars Seized many of their Temporallities put them out of the protection of his Laws and Justice and caused them to be excluded out of one of his Parliaments untill their Submission whom he had by wofull experience understood to have had too great an Influence upon some of the unquiet Nobility Made himself the Arbitrator and Umpire betwixt the many great Pretenders to
the Crown of Scotland amongst which was Erick King of Norway and received the homage of the King thereof and in his Claim to the Superiority strongly Asserted it when the Pope had by his Letter unto him mediated on the behalf of the King of Scotland and claimed that Kingdom And was so watchfull over his own Rights and what belonged to his Crown and Dignity as upon an appeal from John Baliol King of Scotland and his Parliament to the Parliament and Court of the K. of England unto which when he was Summoned personally to appear before him appearing sate with him in Parliament was Suffered no longer to sit by him but untill the Cause came to be heard when he was cited by an Officer to leave his Seat and Commanded to stand at the Barr appointed for pleading which he having no mind to do craved leave to answer by his procurator but was denied and as a Feudatory made to arise and descend to the Barr and defend his own Cause before him as his Superiour Which by the Ancient feudall Fundamentall Laws of England without the assistance of any other of our Laws concerning Treason might have excused and Justified our excellently virtuous Queen Elizabeth in her unwilling Tryall Condemning Beheading and putting to Death Mary Queen of Scotland her Feudatory not only for Usurping the Arms and Title of the Crown of England but plotting after her flying for Refuge unto her and her Kingdom of Scotlands Superior for Resuge to bereave her of her Kingdom of England and the Dominions thereof by her intended Marriage of the Duke of Norfolk for which he was likewise condemned and Executed for Treason In the same Year by his Writ commanded to be arrested Susurrones publicos predicatores contra personam Regis In the 7th year of his reign upon occasion of false rumours sent his Commissioners into severall Counties of the Kingdom ad inquirendum qui dicebant Regem inhibuisse ne quis blada sua meteret vel prata sua falcaret quod omnes tales sine dilatione in prisona custodiantur douec authores suos invenerint tunc liberent authores in prisona custodiant donec pro deliberatione corum mandatum habuerint Speciale In the 13th Year of his Reign for a fine of 20 Marks paid by W. gave him a respite de se militem faciendo Et a pres il fut amerce per les Justices itinerant parceo q'il ne leur monstre son Charter In the 10th Year of his Reign granted authority to Signify his assent to a future Abbot And in the same year impowred Edmond Earl of Cornwall to admitt in his name the Mayor of Oxon when the commonalty of the town should present him and the like for the Mayor and Sheriffs of London In the 12th Year of his Reign granted to the Citizens of London power to make Sheriffs of London and Middlesex In the 13th Year of his Reign directed his Writts to the Sheriffs in the words ensuing cum de consuetudine regni qui habent 20 libratas terrae vel feodum militis valens 20 libratas terrae vel feodum militis valens 20 libratas per annum distringerentur ad arma militaria suscipiendum nos ob servitium c. in Wallia a communitate regni nostri volumus quod non habentes tantas libratas terrae non distringantur Ordained that in Parliament certain Bishops Lords and Other their Assistants should be named of that Honourable Assembly of Parliament at the very beginning thereof which for many Ages after hath been duly observed to be receivers and tryers of the Petitions Complaints and Desires of his People to be exhibited therin whether properly to be there determined or in the Courts of Justice in Westminster-Hall or other inferior Courts In the 14th and 16 Years of his Reign made his cousin Edmund Earl of Cornwall custos regni Spared not in his Court of Kings-bench Robert the Son of William de Glanvile and Reginald the Clark of the said William for delivering at Norwich a Panell of the Kings Writs which the King 's Coroner ought to have brought Banished his Son Prince Edward from his Court Presence for 6 Months for giving reproachfull words to a great Officer of his Court or Houshold Caused the Prior of the Holy Trinity in London and Bogo de Clare a man of great power and reputation to be arrested at his suit by Peter de Chanet Steward of his houshold and Walter de Fancourt Marshall of the King for citing Edmond Earle of Cornewall to appear before the Archbishop of Canterbury as he was passing thorough Westminster-Hall to the Parliament whereupon the Prior and Bogo after some pleadings in the said case submitting themselves uuto the King's Grace Will and Pleasure were committed to the Tower of London there to remain during his Will and Pleasure and being afterwards Bailed the said Bogo paid to the King a Fine of 2000 Marks and gave security to the Earl for 1000. which by the interposition of the Bishop of Durham and others of the King's Councell was afterwards remitted unto 100 l. and the Prior was left to the Judgment and process of the Court of Exchecquer In the 20th Year of his Reign praecepit singulis vice Comitibus per Angliam Justic. Cestr. quod proclamari facerent quod omnes qui habent 40. libratas terrae in feodo haereditate sumerent militaria arma In that and the Year following seized the Lands of those that would not take that Degree and made speciall respites to some during their lives Caused his Justices to certify into the Exchecquer at the return out of their Circuits by particular Rolls under their own Names the Fines and amerciaments set imposed and forfeited upon Actions of trespass rescous deceit attaints non est factum or salse Pleas untrue avowries appeals of Murder felony manslaughter meyheim Contempts and attachments upon process out of any of his Courts of Justice abuse of the Law Fictitious actions and vexatious Suits Non-suits in Actions reall and personall or when but part was found for the Plaintiff or Defendant which were in those Days as much for the advance and well ordering of Justice as they were for the Kings profit who took such a care not to have it neglected as by his Writ without an Act of Parliament he prefixt his Justices certain times for the causing the said Monies to be levied when their own then little Wages or Salaries were to be paid out of it which made them to be so exact therein as there was no fault deserving a Just Punishment could escape the Eyes and Ears apprensions and Watch of his regulated Justices insomuch as Offenders were Fined or amerced pro falso clamore or quia non invenerunt pleg for Deceipts Sheriffs for not returning of Writs Jurors for not appearing or pro falsa appretiatione or giving verdicts before
they were sworn Fined such as threatned or abused them and sometimes the Common People that had occasion to attend his Courts of Justice pro garrulitate or irreverent Behaviour kept his Courts of Justice within their Centers and Limits of Jurisdiction held them to their just and legal forms of Pleadings in verbis Curia and was severe against any of the Pleaders Counters or Officers pro Seductione Curiae as the Language of the Records of those times did import for any Deceits or Collusion misleading or abusing the eyes and ears of his Judges and the Clients as well as the faithless Officers and Ministers of his Courts of Justice or in the Circuits of the Judges itinerant and therein was something less severe then the Law and Usages were in the Reign of his Great Grandfathe Henry 2. when William Fillius Nigelli a judge itinerant being in misericordia of the King pro defalt qui postea venit cognovit quod emendavit rotulos Sine Sociis suis ideo in miser Did not leave the grand Jurors so much Arbitrary Power as too many now please themselves to mind more where to have good Meat and Wine untill some seldom Indictments more for Malice then Love of Justice or a care of their Oaths be brought unto them but ordained their Charges not to be given in fine orations or speeches as soon gone out of their Memory as come in but to put in Writing in distinct articles of enquiry whereunto they were upon Oath to answer negatively or affirmatively whereby the offences against the Laws Conspiracies Treasons Dangers and Disturbances of the Nation were in the Embrio's stisled and as soon Discovered as hatched But the troubles and injuries forced upon the Crown his Father and Himself by the wicked attempts of Simon Montfort and his Rebellious partners putting him in mind to make his business to give a stop to growing mischiefs and prevent as much as was possible any thing of the like nature for the future did find it necessary for the good of himself and the Kingdom as the judicious Sr Henry Spelman hath recorded it to lessen those high powers authorities and priviledges which the Chief Justices of England had before that time exercised and claimed as appurtenances to that great Office as it were to be Vicarias Regis Pro Rex locum tenens Regis Custos regnii regni Guardianus in absentiae Regis tanto etiam prae aliis omnibus emicuit Justiciariis ut eisdem suo brevi more regio imperaret restraine ejus phtestatem cancellis circumscriptis arctioribus adeo ut se sejunctum a rerum fastigio priscae amplitudinis forensi solummodo negotio judiciis exercendis eum abdicavit did by his Writ constitute the said Chief Justice and all that were to succeed him in that Office and place under the form and declaration only concerning the affairs and business wherein he was to Officiate and be imployed in his Court of King's-bench rs by his Writ appeareth in these Words Quia volumus quod sitis Capitalis Justiciarius noster ad placita coram nobis tenenda vobis mandamus quod Officio illo intendatis Tmeipso apud Westm c. And in all probability praeteritorum memor By sad misfortunes warn'd learnt to beware How dang'rous innovations ever are Well considering that if that contrived Writ of Elections gained by a rebellious force and imprisonment from his father almost 30 Years before could have created in or to the Knights Citizens or Burgesses to be elected or brought into our King's greatest councels of the highest and most important concernments of the weal publick of the Nation Any such Rights or Priviledge as some of their Successors or Factious flatterers have since arrogated yet so long a Discontinuance of a Priviledge not at all executed or vested in them after a forfeiture incurred by the Cities of London Bristoll Gloucester and the most of the Counties Cities or Boroughs which had taken Arms against their King instead of their aid and assistance not very fully pardoned by any the Compositions or agreement made by King Henry the 3d his Father by the dictum de Kenilworth after his Victory gained of them at the Battle of Evesham And that notwithstanding he might have taken in again his own just Rights and debarred them fâ—om an after Invading or disturbing of him therein and that neither his Fatheâ—s Charters nor his own Confirmation of all the Peoples Liberties and priviledges either in Words expressed in his Father 's Magna Charta or Charta de Forestae or any way to be implyed within the verge or meaning thereof could bind him to Continue such a kind of Election of a separate part of the Vulgar or Common People as Simon Montfort and his Rebellious Complices had Traiterously devised and that such an attack of the Regall Government by the hoped for advantages of some or intermedling ambition of others in matters wherein they had little or no understanding or whereby they sought only to accomplish their own evil Designs making them ever afterwards more industrious then they should be to associate the creeping Ivy with the Royall Oke which by its clipping Kindness and drawing to it self its Sap and nourishment might at length Canker enervate and destroy it Yet willing to show them that he would as little as he could recede from what had been granted as privileges and Liberties to his Subjects and probably to pacify their then too much accustomed fears and jealousies and allure them into a course of obedience to those Laws provisions which should be made by the Privity and approbation of a Select number of the more wise and discreet part of his Common People and give them experience of an Adage or worthy saying of his own in many or some of his rescripts quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet in some speciall cases but not either by the laws of God Nature or Nations or our laws always adjudged to be Requisite or necessary And at the same time to lessen as Mr Prynne Sr William Dugdale and other weighty Authors have well observed the Strength and power of a part of his ungovernable Baronage by counter-ballancing in some sort their over-great power in his great councells or Parliaments by Requiring and making use therein of the service of the Knight Citizens and Burgesses fairly to be elected according to the intention of his writs and Royall mandates and acting according to the commissions or procurations which their Counties Cities or Boroughs should lawfully give or trust them withall But so little approved of Popular elections and that which had been imposed upon his Father as he was unwilling to adventure upon any thing like it untill he had rectified many things which he bâ—â—ieved had been much of the causes of the Distempers in the Body Politick and was to be warily done by a care and retrogradation as much as might be before he
encouraging and rewarding merit and Service for the good of the publick greatly and too much wasted and exhausted ever have been perswaded to have released so much as was done of the Tenures in Capite by a factious part of the people who designed to undermine the Monarchical Estate of the Government Or by some of the more Loyall advisers who either by ignorance or otherwise did not well understand Monarchy and the Government Or the sad and ever to be lamented Consequences and Effects that have already followed and will hereafter fatally ensue the change of the Tenure in Capite and by Knight Service to release and turn those Nerves and Sinews of the Government ligaments and ties of the Crown the Chariots and Horsmen of our Israels Glory Strength and support of it and the Loadstone of the Subjects obedience into free and common Soccage Wherein much more heed was to have been taken then formerly for that the Militia and the Sovereignty and Power of our Kings much whereof were lodged and incorporated therein were founded and built upon the Tenures in Capite and by Knights Service the Basis Foundation Life Blood Animall Spirits Soul Essence and support thereof and had not long before been by an Horrid and Hypocritical Rebellion wrested out of the hands of the late blessed Martyr King Charles the 1st by abuse and misconstruction of the Laws false arguments and the fear and flagging of some of his most Eminent Justices and Lawyers who were too little acquainted with the Feudall Laws and Laws of Nations the Records Annalls and Histories of the Kingdom and the Monarchicall Government thereof Which too much encouraged and assisted the Rebellion against him together with the murder and destruction of him and many Thousands of his Loyall and more Dutifull Subjects that fought for him Notwithstanding all which the aforesaid cares condescensions of that prudent Prince King Edward the 1. hoping for the best and not suspecting the worst In the 25th Year of his Reign requiring Bohun Earl of Hereford and Constable of England and other the Barons to go with him to the Wars in Gascoigny and Bygod Earl Marshall of England likewise refusing unless the King himself would go in Person the King swears ye shall go or Hang and the Earl answered he would neither go nor Hang and so without leave departed the King notwithstanding proceeded in his Voyage to Flanders the two Earls of Hereford and Norfolk assemble many Noblemen and other their friends to the number of 30 Bannerets so as they were 1500 men at Arms and stood upon their Guard and the King being ready to take Ship the Archbishops Bishops Earls Barons and Commons sent him a Roll of the Grievances of his Subjects in Taxes Subsidies and other imposicions with his seeking to force their services by unlawfull courses to which the King answered that he could not alter any thing without the advice of his Councell who were not now about him and therefore required them that seeing they would not attend him in his journy which they absolutely refused to do though he went in person unless it were into France and Scotland that they would yet do nothing in his absence prejudiciall to the Crown promising at his return to set all things in good order but being afterwards enforced to send for more Supplies of Mony ordained a Parliament to be held at York and to the End he might not be disappointed of aid condesended to all such Articles as were demanded concerning the great Charter promising from thenceforth never to charge his Subjects otherwise then by their consent in Parliament Seized the moneys in the Popes Bankers hands to relieve his and the publick necessities gave protections from arrest and troubles in their Estates to them that should have paid it otherwise and notwithstanding the Popes Anger and Threats not in those days easily to be adventured upon did not pay and refund it within 2 or 3 Years after Seized also and took at his own price the Wools which the Merchants then had in the Ports ready to be transported and all the Lands and Great Estates of Bohun Earl of Hereford and Clare Earl of Gloucester and upon the Marriage of his Daughter the Lady Elizabeth to the first with a Gift in Tayl to them the reversion in the Crown and the like to Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester and Hertford by Marriage of his Daughter the Lady Joan restored them in tail as aforesaid unto them and made not only the said Humfrey de Bohun Roger Bygod Earl Marshall whom upon second failings he afterward confiscated and all others who had joined with him in refusing to serve him in his warrs according to the tenure of their lands to be glad and well content with his generall pardon In the same year granted to Hugh Kent de Galvy in Ireland and the Heirs Males of his body the liberty of enjoying the benefit of the English laws in terra sua Hyberniae as the writ ensuing wlll evidence viz. Rex omnibus ballivis fidelibus suis in Hybernia ad quos c. Salutem volentes Hugoni Kent de Galvy Hyberniae gratia facere specialem concedimus ei pro nobis haeredibus nostris quod ipse liberi sui de corpore ipsius Hugonis legitime procreati procreandi hanc habeant libertatem quod ipsi posteri eorum de extero in terra nostra Hyberniae tam in morte quam in vita legibus consuetudinibus utantur Auglicanis firmiter inhibentes ne quis eos contra hanc concessionem nostram injuste vexet in aliquo vel perturbet in cujus c. Teste Rege apud Gillingham 25 die Martii per ipsum Regem And by his letters patents constituted Johannem de Breton Custos or Warden of the City of London as followeth viz. Rex omnibus ballivis fidelibus suis ad quod c. sciatis quod dilectum fidelem nostrum Johannem le Breton constituimus custodem civitatis London ad amerciandos Aldermannos alios quoscunque de civitate praedicta qui ad rationabilem praemonitionem Seu Summonitionem custodis ejusdem pro negotiis nos Civitatem illam tangentibus venire contempserent etiam ad Vicecomites Civitatis praedict ipsorum Clericos ac ministros mercedem sui Officii capientes cum super hoc modo debito convicti fuerint juxta quantitatem delictorum suorum castigandos puniendos quantum necesse fuerit quatenus sua discretio de jure viderit faciendum specialem tenore praesentium committimus potestatem quam diu nos placuerit durando in cujus c. Having before in the 13 or 14th Year of his Reign fined Gregory de Rokesly Mayor of London for that he renounced the Mayoralty and delivered the Common Seal of the Mayoralty or City to Stephen de Ashren aliis de Communitate London sine licencia ipsius Regis for which he
commandeth that such things be no more done from henceforth And if any Officer of Fee doth it his Office shall be taken into the Kings hands It is provided and agreed that the King of his Office shall from henceforth grant attaints upon Enquest in Plea of Land or Freehold In the several limitations of prescription in severall Writs which might be to many very prejudicial it was in like manner provided that in a Writ of right none should presume to declare of the seisin of his Ancestor further or beyond the time of King Richard the 1st Writs of Partition and Novell Desseisin of the first voyage of King Henry Father of the King into Gascoigne Writs of Mort d' Auncestor of Cosinage Ayel et Nuper obiit of the Coronation of the sâ—id King Henry and not before That one plea shall be decided by the Justices of the King's Bench before another be commenced it is provided also and commanded by the King In an Act touching the Tenants plea in a Writ of Dower and at what time Assizes shall be taken it was declared that forasmuch as the King hath ordained those things unto the honor of God and Holy Church and for the Common-Wealth and remedy of such as be grieved he would not that at any other time it should turn into prejudice of himself or of his Crown but that such right as appertains unto him should be saved in all points and forasmuch as it is great Charity to do right unto all men at all times when need should be it was provided by the assent of the Praelates that Assizes of Novell Disseisin Mortd auncestor and Darrein presentment should be taken in Advent Septuagesima and Lent even as well as Enquests may be taken and that at the Speciall request of the King made unto the Bishops In the 4th Year of his Reign caused an Eatenta Maneriorum or Survey as to his particular Royal Revenue much like unto that of William the Conquerors of his Castles Houses Buildings Demesne-Lands Copyhold Commons Parks Forests Woods Asserts Tenants Cottages Pleas and Perquisites of the Counties Churches and the values thereof and of Heriots Fairs Markets Escheats Customs Rents Services Fishings Freeholders Woods Rents of Assize Tenures in Soccage or by Knights-Service Forreign Works and Customes Perquisites of Courts Fines and all other Casualties Declared by a Statute de Officio Coronatoris the Duties of a Coroner and enquiries to be made by them In the matter of Bigamy published and declared certain constitutions before him and his Councel and commanded them to be stedfastly Observed in the presence of certain Reverend Fathers Bishops of England and others of the Kings Councel to which the Justices as all the Kings Councel did agree Cap. 1. In what Cases aid shall be granted of the King in what not it is said that it is agreed by the Justices and other Learned men of the Kings Councel of the Realm which heretofore have had the rule and practise of Judgments that where a Feoffment was made by the King with a Deed thereupon if another person by a like Feoffment and Deed be bound to Warranty the Justices could not heretofore have proceeded any further neither yet do proceed without the Kings Command And it seemeth also they could not proceed in other cases wherefore they shall not surcease by occasion of any Grant Confirmation or Surrender but after advertisement made thereof to the King they shall proceed without delay Ca. 4. Concerning purprestures upon the Kings Lands to be reseised If any do complain of such Reseisins he shall be heard as right requireth 6. E. 1. In an Act concerning a man killing another in his own defence or by misfortune it is said the King commanded In Ca. 10. that the husband and wife being impleaded shall not fourch by Essoin that act of Parliament is said to be the Statute of the King In the same year an Exposition and alteration of the Statute of Gloucester in divers articles and points was made by the King and his Justices by the Kings Letters-Patents dated at Gloucester In the foregoing statutes or Articles whereof videlicet ca. 1. it is said to have been provided in ca. 3. Established the like in Ca. 4. in 5. and 6. provided and the like in the 8. and the offenders shall be greivously amerced to the King In the Statute of Gloucester ca. 14. where it is ordained that a Citizen of London shall recover in an Assize damages with the land it is said the King of his speciall grace granteth and the Barons of the Exchequer and Treasuâ—er shall be commanded And in severall statutes and Articles there made did afterwards by the advice of his Justices make in some of them divers expositions alterations and additions in several materiall parts or Points 7. E. 1. by his Writ directed to the Justices of his Bench Signified that it was accorded that at the next Parliament by the councell and assent of the Prelats Earls and Barons provision should be made that none should come to Parliaments Treaties or Assemblies with force and arms and in the next Parliament after the said Treaty the Prelates Earles Barons and the Commonalty of the Realm Comprised in the Votes and suffrages of the Prelats Earls and Barons there assembled to take order of that business have said that to the King it belongeth and on his part it is through his Royall Seigneury Strictly to defend by force of armour and all other force against his peace at all times when it shall please him and to punish those which shall do contrary according to the Laws and Usages of the Realm and hereunto they are bound to aid him as their Sovcreign Lord at all seasons as need should be and commanded the same to be read before him in his Bench and there enrolled In the Statute of Mortmaine made in the same Year that no Lands should be aliened in Mortmaine upon pain of the forfeiture thereof it is mentioned that the King for the profit of his Realm minding to provide a convenient remedy by the advice of his Prelates Earls Barons and others of his Subjects being of his Councel hath provided and ordained c. 10. E. 1. in the Statute of the Exchecquer touching the recovery of the Kings Debts the King by his Writ directed to the Treasurer Barons and Chamberlains of the Exchecquer for the Indempnity of him and his People Willed and Provided Anno. 1â— E. 1. in the Statute of Acton Burnell made for recovery of Debts the King for himself and by his Councel hath Ordained and Established In the Statute of Entails that the Will of the Donor should in all things be performed Ca. 1. which was of a grand Concern to all the Nobility Gentry and Freeholders of England in their Dignities Families Lands and Estates and the transmitting them to Posterity it is said wherefore our Lord the King perceiving how necessary and expedient it should be
building an house in the parish of St. Peters in Cornhill super solum Regis for which an Anachoret paid 12 d. per Annum and inclosed another part thereof with Pales 48 foot in length and 10 foot in breadth super solum Regis and John de Oxon was the now Tenant thereof who came and prayed that he might rent it at 12 d. per Annum which was granted paying the King as much the Jury finding it not to be ad nocumentum c. Ric. le Taylor and others presented for selling in the Night veteres Pannos Caligas alia mercimonia in Deceptionem ementium cum per antiquam Consuetudinem usitatum in Civitate nullum mercatum ibi teneri debint nisi post ortum solis usque ad horam nonam vesperarum die Ideo prec est vic quod venire facias And thereupon the Offenders were prohibited to do so no more and the Mayor and Sheriffs injoyned quod mercata de caetero non teneantur in London post horam vesperarum pulsatam in Ecclesia Sancti Thomae de Aconia in Civitate London Et postea Proclamatum fuit the Modern and too frequent impudent cheating Custom of false-lights purposely built in or near Shops in the street side not then held to be Godly or to fignify any more then to shew where a Knave dwelleth Presented some that had Money to pay the Kings Debts and paid but part of it retaining the residue to their own use And some of the Company of the Weavers in London for making an Order for exacting a greater rate then was due for their Works That Richard de Rofham al. fecerunt quandam Congregationem ad aulam plumbatam super Cornhil That Johanues de Wengrave dum fuit Major Civitatis London took of the Vintners of London 50 l. ut permitteret eos vendere Lagonem Vini ad 5 d. 6 d. ubi vendidisse debuissent ad 4 d. tantum ad dampnum totius populi Civitatis Ideo prec fuit vic quod venire fac And that the said John de Wengrave in the taxing of the Subsidy in the City of London ad opus Domini Regis by imploying 2 Men in every Ward ad opus voluntatem suam did cause to be Leavyed de mediocri populo Civitatis and when they were to leavy 200 l. ad opus Domini Regis did leavy de mediocri populo Civitatis 300 l. retinendo inde ad opus suum proprium 100 l. And that the said John Wengrave and his Confederates being to collect in the City of London 1650 Marks for a sine imposed for a trespass done to the King for breaking down a Wall juxta Turrim London per quosdam de Civitate praedicta retained to their own use 650 Marks in praejudicium Domini Regis dampnum ejusdem mediocris populi Ideo prec fuit vic quod venire fac eum c. Likewise that the said John Wingrave whilst he was Mayor of London did sell 15 dolia Vini in Grosso ad Retalliam pretii cujuslibet dolii 3 l. post Statutum Ideo prec fuit vic quod venire fac eum postea testatum est quod praedictus Johannes de Wingrave non est invent c. sed quod distrinxerunt eum per Exit quorundam ten ipse non ven Whereupon the King by his Writ directed unto Hervey de Stanton one of the Justices Itinerant Reciting the whole matter commanded him to certify the said presentment to the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchecquer that they might according to Law take order therein Presented that the Dean and Chapter of St Pauls in London had incroached upon a large peice of ground near that Church where the Mayor and City of London were accustomed to keep their Folkmote and also Muster and shew their Arms being solum Regis and other large peices of ground towards St. Augustines-Gate unto which they pleading divers Grants and Charters of some of the Kings Royall Progenitors the King by his Writ adjorned the process and pleading therein to be heard and determined before himself ubicunque fuit in Anglia in Quindena St. Michaelis prox commanded the Dean and Chapter there also to attend at the same time Johannes de Cumbuelle Constable of the Tower of London was presented for taking Toll Custom and Victualls of such as fish upon the River of Thames near unto the Tower who pleaded that he took it for the Kings use and had accompted for it in the Exchecquer Postea predictus Johannes recessit in Contemptum Curiae Ideo praec fuit vic quod distring eum quod habeat corpus ejus coram Thesaur Baron de Scaccario in Quindena Sancti Michaelis ad audiendum Judicium Presented William de Broy Arch-Deacon of London and others for Extortions as Officers and Clerks in the City who made falsas fictas Actiones per minas extorserunt divers great sums of Mony prec fuit vic quod venire fac who came and denied the Extortion but would not put themselves upon the Jury but the Justices declaring unto them that when they are charged in the Court for Trespass against the King Et non vellent se ponere in Jur. Patriae ad ipsos inde acquietand per quod Jur. secundum Legem Consuetudinem Regni Capiend finalis Exitus debet fieri they were otherwise to proceed Whereupon the Defendants not denying their offences but refusing to put themselves upon the Jury submiserunt se gratiae Domini Regis in ea parte ideo ad Judicium postea petunt dimitti per plevinam eis conceditur And it was moreover presented ex parte Comunitat London quod omnes Tabernarii vina vendentes ad retalliam in Civitate ista had by Confederacy amongst themselves ordained that they would not suffer any that buy Wine of them to see it drawn out of the Vessel sic predicti Tabernarii Vina sua vendunt in locis absconditis obscuris per quod plures Homines bibentes de Vinis illis aliquando gravitur infirmantur quidem ea occasione moriuntur Ideo prec fuit vic quod venire fac omnes hujusmodi Tabernarios c. Whereupon some of the Taverners their Drawers or Vadlets as they were then called came and not denying the fact were fined 20 Marks to the King unde quilibet eorum pleg alterius c. Et injunctum est iis quod de caetero permittant vina Emere volentibus videre vinum dolium de quo bibere debet quod Emptor videat ubi quando vinum extrabatur de Dolio similiter Proclamatum est quod Emptores Vinorum de caetero non impediantur ad videndum vina sicut Injunctum fuit Tabernariis c. And Juries were also Impannelled to certify who were amerced sine rationabili causa ultra quantitatem delicti non per pares c. And was so allways ready and willing in the
all the returns of the Writs of Election for the Election of Knights Citizens and Burgesses from the 21st Year of the Reign of King E. 1. during the residue of his Reign for before no Manucaptors or pledges for Knights or Burgesses elected to come to Parliament were given in for those Knights that were elected in Anno 49. H 3. for the County of York and from thence during the Reign of King E. 2. E. 3. R. 2. H. 4. and 5. and thence until after the 33. of King Henry 6. and had after their Elections actuall and formall Indentures or instruments of procuration mutually Signed and Sealed by the Sheriff and the Electors or Assentors and Elected which were with the Writs of Election returned and filed amongst the records of the King in his Chancery having their procurations or powers inserted in the perclose of the indenture made betwixt the Sheriff and the Electors some being named instead of many Dante 's Concedentes eisdem the parties Elected plenam sufficientem potestatem pro se communitate praedict ad faciend consentiend iis quae tunc ibidem de communi concilio regni Domini Regis favente Domino ordinari contigerint super negotiis in dicto brevi specificat and notwithstanding their election and one part of the Indenture with the procuration therein returned with the Writ to the King in his Chancery were not accompted members of the House of Commons in Parliament untill their admittance by the Kings Allowance and Authority as it was upon a great debate adjudged in the 35 Elizabeth in the House of Commons in Parliament in the Case of Fits-Herbert in which the two eminent Lawyers Anderson and Coke afterwards successively Lord Chief Justices of the Court of Common Pleas were as Members personally present and in a Parliament holden in the 18 Year of the Reign of King Edward 3. the King was angry that the Convocation of the Clergy appeared not and charged the Archbishop of Canterbury to punish them for their defaults and said he would do the like to the Parliament In the 5 year of the Reign of King Richard 2. Members Elected were by an Act of Parliament to appear upon Summons or be amerced or otherwise punished according as of old times hath been used to be done in the said case unless they may reasonably and honestly excuse them to the King and in 1st and 2d Philip and Mary 39 of the Members of the House of Commons saith Sr Edward Coke whereof Mr Edmond Plowdon the famous Lawyer was one who pleaded that he was continually present at that Parliament and traversed that he did not from thence depart in contempt of the King and Queen and of the said Court had an Information exhibited against them by the aforesaid King and Queen for not appearing in Parliament according as they were Summoned cannot be admitted in the House of Commons in Parliament before they shall have taken the Oaths of Allegeance and Supremacy before the Lord Steward of the King's Houshold or his Deputy under a forfeiture or penalty nor depart from the Parliament without License and when admitted are Petitioners for License to choose and present their Speaker to the King who in their behalf prayeth to be allowed access to his Majesty freedom of speech and from Arrest of themselves and their menial servants during the time of their attendance have Wages allowed them by the King to be paid by their Commonalties in eundo morando redeundo according to longer or shorter distances or abode their Speaker being by the King also allowed Five Pounds per diem besides other perquisites appertaining to his place are but Petitioners have receivers and tryers of their petitions assigned by the King or by the Lord Chancelour de per liu and days were seldom prefixt and limited for exhibiting of them which were many times rejected with a non est petitio Parliamenti endorsed for that it was more proper for inferior Courts and sometimes for their hast or Importance of the King's Affairs were ordered to be answered in Chancery are no Court of Judicature or Record were not accustomed to draw or frame Acts of Parliament which they assent unto but leave them to be formed by the Judges and the King 's learned Councel at Law and not seldom after Parliaments ended most of the former Acts of Parliament being drawn and framed upon petitions or specifying to be at the request of the Lords and Commons or of the Commons only or that the King Willed Commanded Prohibited Provided or Ordained can make no proxies and are but a grand enquest of the Kingdom are not Authorized to give or administer any Oath never did or are to do it but are to send such Witnesses as are to be sworn to take their Oaths in the House of Peers and the Members of the House of Commons or their Speaker Jointly or severally cannot administer an Oath unto any of their fellow Members or any of the Commons whom they would represent for that would be to administer it unto themselves which Juries and men Impanelled in Enquests are never permitted to do but are to receive their Oaths from a Superior Authority and none but the King or such as have been Commissionated by him are impowred to give Oaths which hath allways put a necessity upon the House of Commons when any Witnesses are to be examined before them to produce and send them first to be sworn and take their Oaths in the House of Lords and they cannot adjourn or prorogue without the King 's special order and command nor were ever Summoned by themselves legally to come to Parliament without the Lords Spiritual and Temporal but as to their Meeting and Continuance were to follow their King in his House of Lords as the Moon and the Stars those Common people of the Sky do the Sun could not punish heretofore an offence or delinquency against themselves or any of their Members without an Order first obtained from the King or his Lord Chancellor have sometimes Petitioned the Lords in Parliament to intercede with the King to remit his displeasure conceived against them in the times of Henry the 4 few Petitions were directed to the King and his Councel some were to the King alone and some to the Lords alone and some to the Commons only saith Mr. Elsing and if they were Petitions of Grace the Commons only wrote thereupon soit baile as Seigneurs per les a Roy or soit per le a Roy per les Seimurs the other were sent up to the Lords without any directions the Judges the Kings Learned Councel in the Law prepared all answers to the Petitions of the Commons all Petitions directed to the King were to be considered by the Judges and his Councel at Law and by them prepared for the Lords if need were by the Commons who sometimes Petitioned
quibusdam Magnatibus aliis de Concilio suo super dictis negotiis in brevi specificat eis ibidem plenius exponend tractaturi suumque concilium impensuri ulteriusque facturi quod ibidem de communi concilio assensu contigerit ordinari and that the Sheriff as likewise the Sheriffs of all the other Counties of England were commanded to certify the names of the Merchants sic eligendorum with a severe admonition in the latter end of the said Writ of Summons viz. sciens procerto quod fi dicti Mercatores de discretioribus ditioribus ut praedicitur eligendi ad dictos diem locum non habueris te ab ofsicio tuo amovere teque tanquam expeditionem negotionum nostrorum praedictorum impedieras de impeditione hujusmodi culpabilem invenire absque difficultate aliqua faciemus Teste Edwardo Duce Cornubiae Domino de Cestria filio nostro charissimo Custode Angliae apud Kennington Et Eodem Anno Strangers have been sometimes admitted into the House of Peers after a Summons to be Receivers and Tryers of Petitions but did not sit The Commons at the beginning of every Parliament are sent for out of the House of Commons to come to the Bar of the House of Lords where the Lord Chancellor if he be present or in his absence one of the Lord Chief Justices or an Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and sometimes the Lord Treasurer and in 9. H. 6. Linwood a Doctor of Law in the sickness of a Lord Chancellor declared in the behalf of the King or his Lieutenant the cause at large of the Summons of Parliament commanded them to elect and present their speaker the Writs of Summons making sometimes a short mention thereof and many times none at all In 17th E. 3. the cause of Summons was begun to be declared by the Chancellor but pursued by Sr Bartholomew Burghurst concerning the Kings Actions in France 15. E. 3. The King denied the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury to come into the Parliament-House untill he had answered certain Articles objected against him in the Exchequer and then also refused him entrance untill at the last at the intercession of the Lords he was admitted In Anno 16 of his Reign Prince Edward his son Duke of Cornewall and Custos regni with others of the Councell summoned a Parliament in his fathers name to grant him an aid being then in his Wars beyond the Seas The King in the 18th year of his Reign sent his Writs of Summons to a Parliament to treat of the affairs of the Kingdom with these words nobiscum si praesentes fuerimus ibidem seu cum deputandis a nobis si abesse nos contigerit Eodem Anno Writs were issued for the Electing of two Knights for every County without mention of any Citizens Burgesses and in some no manucaptors for the Elected retorned and were to appear at London but before the day appointed come another Writ came to appear at Sarum Eodem Anno The King being offended at the small appearance of the parliament on Monday commanded it to be adjourned untill the next day The Receivers and Tryers being named because the prelates and other grandees were not come on Tuesday the parliament was adjourned untill the Thursday on which day the cause of Summons was declared 20. E. 3. On Fryday the Commons delivered in their petitions which were considered by the Lords upon Saturday Sunday and Monday next following and on that Monday they were Dissolved In the 21st Year of his Reign he declared in his Writs to Summon that parliament that he did call them not to give him Money or Supplies but only to enquire after wrongs done to the people Eodem Anno the Commons having long continued together desire an answer to their Bill leur deliverance Anno 24. E. 3. The King sending his Writs to Elect 2 Knights of every County and 2 Burgesses of every City and Borough caused a Clause to be inserted that none should be placitatores querolarum manutentores aut ex hujusmodi quaestu vincentes In 26. E. 3. the King issued out Writs to the Sheriffs of every County in England to elect one Knight for every County to come to the parliament and sent his Writs to the Mayors and Bailiffs of Burgess Towns not to the Sheriffs as at other time to retorn 1 Citizen for every City and 1 Burgess for every Borough except London whose Sheriffs were commanded to Elect 2 Citizens giving the reason why no more then 1 for other places ut Homines ab ista occupatione Audumpnalo quo nirus possimus retrahomus Anno 27. E. 3. Sent hrs Writs to the Sheriff to Elect de assensu Com. only 1 Knight and to the Sheriffs of London the Mayor and Bayliffs of all other Boroughs that used to send Burgesses to Parliament to Elect and retorn 2 Citizens and Burgesses apiece for the Statute of the Staple made in the same year ca. 3. hath these words viz. Whereas good deliberation had with the Prelates Dukes Earls Barons and great men of the Country that is to say of every County one for all the Countys and of the Commons of Cities and Boroughs Anno 28. E. 3. the cause of Summons was first declared before the names of the Receivers and Tryers were published Eodem Anno the King issued his Writs to all the Sheriffs of England to cause 2 Knights of every Shire to come to the Parliament at Lincoln to confirm the perambulation of the Forrests and particularly enjoyned to Summon the Knights Elected the last Parliament but if dead or unable to come to Elect others in their places and the Sheriff for Oxford and Barkshire receiving only a mandate to elect Knights for Oxfordshire did notwithstanding retorn two for Berkshire in this manner Et quia Com. Berks. est in ballia mea licet perambulatio in eodem facta fuit observata pro eo quod in isto brevi continetur quod colloquium in Parliamento tractandum erit Super aliis negotiis praefatum Regem tangentibus Ideo gratis elegerunt duos milites quorum nomina c. Anno 29. E. 3. the Chief Justice declared that the Kings pleasure was that the Cause of Summons should be declared by Mounsieur Walter de Manny and so it was yet the Chief Justice managed the Parliament business in the House of Peers as Speaker for presently after Mounsieur de Manny's discourse he called the Commons to advise thereof and make ready their Petitions In the 34 year of his Reign sent his Writs to all the Sheriffs to cause to appear in Parliament all Collectors of the Tenths and Fifteenths granted to him in Parliament for paying his Forces by Land and Sea for the Kingdoms defence to be restored again to the payers in case no such expences should be made and all Arrayers of Souldiers to give an account of all Moneys received and disbursed
County it was adjudged by the House of Commons to be void because it was against the Tenor and exception of the Writ and that he ought to be Fined In the debate whither the Speaker should send his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown for the Election of a Burgess it was answered by one of that House and not contradicted that since 26. Eliz. he did ex officio send his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown who is to certifie the Lord Keeper and so make the Warrant Sr Francis Hastings a member going down the Stairs a Page offering to thrust him was brought to the Barr and committed but was the next day upon the motion of Sr Francis and his submission upon his knees released some of the House moved to send him to a Barbers to have his hair cut because it was too long but others disswaded it as a matter not becoming the gravity of the House Sr Walter Rawleigh declared that the Queen had sold her jewels the money lent her by her Subjects was yet unpaid she had sold much of her Lands spared money out of her own purse and apparell for her peoples sakes and for his own part wished that they would bountifully according to their Estates contribute to her Majesties necessities as they now stand Mr Townsend one of the Members declared in the House of Commons that they were Summoned and called as a grand Jury of the Land though not upon their Oaths yet upon their conscience and was not contradicted Sr Edward Hobby said it was always the custom of the House of Commons to have their Warrant for the Election of a new Member directed by their Speaker to the Clark of the Crown But Sr Francis Hastings said that the Lord Keeper had in private informed him that he had rather have it made to himself then to any inferior Minister Sr Edward Hobby said that the Parliament being the highest Court was to Command all other Courts A bill being brought in for explanation of the Common Law concerning the Queens Letters-patents and certain Monopolies Mr Spicer a Burgess of Warwick said that bill might touch the prerogative Royall which was as he had learned so transcendant as the eye of the Subject may not aspire thereunto and therefore be it far from him that the State and prerogative Royall of the Prince should be tyed by him or the Act of any other Subject Mr Francis Bacon said for the prerogative royall of the Prince for his part he ever allowed it and is such as he hoped should never be discussed the Queen is our Sovereign hath both a restraning and enlarging liberty of her Prerogative that is hath power by her patents to set at liberty things restrained by Statute Law by Non obstante's of Penall Laws or otherwise and by her Prerogative to restrain things that are at liberty as by her Letters-Patents for new inventions license for transportation c. But Mr Speaker pointing to the bill said this is no stranger in this place but a stranger in this vestment the use hath been ever by petition to humble our selves to her Majesty and by petition to desire to have the grievances redressed especially when the remedy toucheth her in Right or Prerogative If her Majesty make a patent or a Monopoly to any of her servants that we must cry out against but if she grants it to a namber of Burgesses or a Corporation that must stand and that forsooth is no Monopoly I say and I say again that we ought not to deal or meddle with or judge of her Majesties Prerogative I wish every man therefore to be carefull of this point Mr Lawrence Hyde said I do owe a duty to God and Loyalty to my Prince I made it the Bill and I think I understand it far be it from this heart of mine to write anything in prejudice or derogation of her Majesties Prerogative Royall and the State Mr Serjeant Harris moved that the Queen might be petitioned by the House in all Humility Mr Francis Moor afterwatds Serjeant Moor said he did know the Queens Prerogative was a thing curious to be dealt with Sr George Moor said We know the power of her Majesty cannot be restrained by any Act why therefore should we thus talk Admit we should make the Statute with a non obstante yet the Queen may grant a Patent with a non obstante to cross it Mr Spicer said He was no Apostate but should stick to his former faith which was that it should be by way of Petition and that a course by Bill would neither be gratum nor tutum Mr Davies said God had given power to absolute Princes which he attributeth to himself Dixi quod Dii estis and as he attributes unto them he hath given unto them Majesty Justice and Mercy Majesty in respect of the Honour that a Subject oweth unto his Prince Justice in respect he can do no Wrong and therefore the Law is in First H. 7. the King cannot commit a disseisin Mercy in respect he giveth leave to his Subjects to right themselves by Law Mr Secretary Cecill said I am a Servant to the Queen and before I would speak or give any consent to a case that should debase her Sovereignty or abridge it I would wish my tongue cut out of my Head I am sure there were Law-Makers before there were Laws if you stand upon Law and dispute her Majesties Prerogative hear what Bracton saith Praerogatium nemo audeat disputare for my own part I like not such courses should be taken and you Mr Speaker should perform the charge which her Majesty gave unto you at the beginning of this Parliament not to receive Bills of this nature for her Majesties ears be open to all our grievances and her hands stretched out to every mans petition All which worthy and dutyfull expressions of duty and Loyalty to their Sovereign were made by Mr Spicer Mr Francis Bacon Sr Robert Cecill Sr George Moor Serjeant Francis Moore Sr Walter Rawleigh and others without any neglect of the good of the publick or the Office of Members of the House of Commons Elected only upon their Princes Writs and Warrants ad faciendum consentiendum to those things which should be by their Soveregn ordained by the advice of the Lords Spirituall and Temporall in Parliament assembled without any question or contradiction made thereupon or calling them to the Bar Imprisoning them in the Tower of London excluding them the House or making them ask pardon upon their knees with other exorbitances which some of their Successors have too often usurped to ask pardon of their fellow Members who did not at all represent those that Elected them who were not wont to call everything that suited not with their fancies to be an Error against the sence or Tyde of the House or to be sent to the prison of the Tower of London none of their prison or under their command or Authority without their
8th who being a Member of the House of Commons and Imprisoned the House of Commons made an address to the King for his release when they could not do it by their own power Mr Speaker said I am to deliver unto you her Majesties commandement that for the better and more speedy dispatch of causes we should sit in the afternoon and that about this day sennight her Majesties pleasure is this Parliament shall be ended At a conference with the Lords their Lordships told the Commons they would not have their Judgment prejudicated and in that conference of the House of Commons stiled themselves the Lower House There was saith Justice Hussey a whole Alphabet of paenall Laws in the time of King Henry the 7th Mr Mountague said The praerogative Royall is now in Question which the law hath over allowed and Maintained Serjeant Heale speaking somewhat that displeased the Generality of the House they all made an humming and when he began to speak again they did the like whereupon the Speaker stood up and said It is a great disorder that this should be used for it is the antient use of this House for every man to be Silent when any one Speaketh and he that is Speaking should be Suffered to deliver his mind without interruption Sr Edward Hobby upon the debate of a bill brought in for the peoples more diligent repair to Church whether the Church-Wardens were the more proper to certifie the defalters said that when her Majestie did give us leave to chuse our Speaker She gave us leave to chuse one out of our own number Mr Onslow the Clark of the House of Commons in Parliament being Sick the House gave his man leave to officiate for him every Members contributing 12d apeice for his support In the case of Belgrave depending in the Court of Star-Chamber upon an Information brought by Sir Edward Coke her Majesties then Artorney General prosecuted by the Earl of Huntington for wearing his Livery to make himself a Member of the House of Commons in Parliament after several Motions Debates and Disputes in the House of Commons a Conference was concluded to be had with the Lords thereupon the rather for that it had been said that the Lords in Parliament were reported to have directed the said Bill to be exhibited in the Star-Chamber one of their House being concerned therein and a day appointed by the Lords accordingly which failing and revived again by a motion of one of the Members of the house of Commons in their own House and the matters limitted whereupon it should consist first touching the offence committed by Mr. Belgrave whether it was an Infringement of the Liberty of the House of Commons and for the first that the Commons would do nothing therein until a Conference with them for the 2d to know the reasons of their Lordships appointment of the Information and to bring it to some end Mr. Speaker at another day certifying a message from the Lords concerning some other matters Sir Edward Hobby said We attended the Lords that morning which was appointed touching the Information against Mr. Belgrave who in the end concluded that forasmuch as it concerneth them as the House of Commons Priviledges they desired some time to consult and they would send us word of their Resolutions and some days after a Copy of the Information against Belgrave was sent to the House of Peers unto them under the hand of the Clerk of the Star Chamber by them and Sir Edward Hobby with some Bills but nothing appeareth to have been done touching the said Information against Belgrave In the mean time a servant of Mr. Huddleston a Knight of the Shire for Cumberland being arrested in London upon a Writ of Execution the Plaintiff and Serjeants denying to release him because it was after Judgment they were upon complaint to the House committed to Prison the Serjeant released paying the Serjeant at Arms Fees and the Plaintiff paying them as well as his own was ordered to remain three days in the Serjeants Custody For a like Judgment was cited to have been given by the House of Commons in the case of the Baron of Wilton in that Parliament Upon Thursday December the 7th Sir Edward Hobby shewed that the Parliament was now in the wain and near ending and an order was taken touching the Information delivered to this house viz. the House of Commons in Mr. Belgraves case but nothing done therein and as it seemeth by not taking out the Process no Prosecution of the Cause is intended against the said Mr. Belgrave he thought it fit because the chief Scope of the said Information seemeth to be touching a dishonour offered to this House that it would please the House that it might be put to the question being the original and first horrid fashion of their afterward altogether course or manner of voting and making their own pretended Liberties whether he hath offended this House yea or no If he hath he desireth to be censured by you and if he hath not it will be a good motive to this Honourable House here present who are Judges in this Court and yet he might have remembred what long and learned debates and disputes there had lately been amongst themselves whether the Custom of that House was or had been in cases of grievance to proceed by Bill or Petition to the Queen and it was resolved that it was the most proper and dutiful way to proceed by Petition which was done accordingly in clearing the Gentleman of that offence when it came before them which had then no higher esteem in Sir Edward Hobbyes opinion than to be previous to an after disquisition which that Law and the Queens Writ and the Election of that part of the people that brought them thither neither did or could give them any greater authority than ad faciendum consentiendum to do and perform that which the King and Lords in Parliament should ordain to be done and performed and when all should be rightly considered was an offence too often by more than one or once since practised to procure a Membership indirectly in an House of Commons in Parliament committed by Mr. Belgrave that should as little have been countenanced as there was any just or legal Warrant for it wherein Mr. Comptroller said I know the Gentleman to be an honest Gentleman and a great Servant to his Prince and Countrey I think it very fit to clear him I wish it may be put to the Question I will be ready to vouch your sentence for his offence when it comes there but if any other matter appears upon opening the Cause with that we have nothing to do Mr. Secretary Cecil who had not long before said in the same House he was sorry to see such disorder and little do you know how for disorder this Parliament is taxed I am sorry I said not slandered I hoped that as this Parliament began gravely and with Judgment
that nothing was done upon their Petitions and therefore prayed that they might be answered before the Parliament ended It appeareth by divers Answers to Petitions in Parliament that the Kings Councel unto whom they were committed did but report what they thought fit to be done for Answer prout Anno 15. E. 3. n. 17. where it is said our Lord the King caused the same Answers to be given to the said Petitions the which together with the Petitions were reported in full Parliament Eodem Anno it was answered Our Lord the King commanded Answers to be made the which put into writing were reported before our Lord the King and the Prelates and other Grandees Anno 17. E. 3. It seemeth to the Councel that it be done Anno 18. E. 3. Divers Petitions of the Commons being exhibited a Memorandum was entred viz. Unto which Petitions it was answered by the King and the Grandees as to the second Article Soit cestipetition granted To the third Article il plaist au Roy c. To the eight Article il plaist au Roy au Son conseil quae se soit To the eleventh il plaist au Roy c. To the 12th Article Soient les Statutes sur ceo faites tenus c. Anno eodem the Answer was It is assented by our Lord the King the Earls Barons Justices and other Sages of the Law that the things above written be done in convenable manner according to the prayer of the Commons in a long Petition of theirs against provisions from Rome whereunto the Bishops durst not assent Eodem Anno the Commons exhibited their Petitions which were answered drawn into a Statute sealed and delivered unto them Sedentibus before the Parliament ended in the same Parliament also the Parliament exhibited their Petitions which were answered sealed and delivered unto them sitting the Parliament which was not usual for the Statutes were most commonly made after the end of the Parliament The Answer to one of the Clergies Petitions in this Parliament was accord est pur assent du conceil Unto which may be added those of the 20th year of the Raign of King Edward the third which concerned the Pope to which Answers the Praelates who were of that Committee not daring to agree the opinion of the temporal Lords and the Judges were only reported viz. It seemeth to the Earls Barons and other Sages Lay-men of the Kings Councel c. Anno 21. E. 3. il Semble a conseil qu'il faut faire pour grand bien si plaist au Roy as grandes du terre Eodem Anno It seemeth unto the King the Praelates and the Grandees that the Custom stand in force the Commons having petitioned that the Custom of the Cloth made in England might be taken away Anno 25. E. 3. It seemeth to the Councel that such enquires cease if it please the King Eodem Anno It seemeth to the Councel that the Laws heretofore ordained ought to suffice for that this Petition is against the Law of the Land as well as against the holy Church It seemeth to the Councel that it ought not to be granted the Petition being that no Capias Excommunicat should issue before a Scire facias to the party Et al. hujusmodi c. Eodem Anno It was answered It is not the interest of our Lord the King nor of the Grantz Anno 28. E. 3. n. 33. It seemeth to the Lords and to the Grands that the Petition is reasonable Eodem Anno It is answered Let the Common Law used stand for the Lords will not change it Anno 30. E. 3. The Petition of the Commons touching Chaplains Wages had two answers The Archbishops and Bishops at the motion of the King and Grandees have ordained c. And therefore the King and the Grandees have ordained c. Those two Answers are recited almost ad verbum the Prelates first and then the Temporal Lords considered of the Answer Anno 47 E. 3. It was answered The King and the Lords have yet no will to change the Common Law Eodem Anno The Commons do require that every mans Petition be answered Anno 2. R. 2. apud Glocester le Roy del assent des Praelats Dukes Countz Barons de les Commons de son Royalme ad ordeigne c. The Commons having petitioned that all manner of Merchants might have free Traffick here And the like Answer was made to their Petition in Anno 3 R. 2 n. 37. 38. In 16. R. 2. Upon a Petition of Robert de Mull and his Wife touching the discharge of a Fine the King answered Soyent au Roy car ceo nest petition du Parlement In Anno 20. R. 2. Robert Mull petitioned the Commons stiling them by the title of honourable and Sage Commons in Parliament praying them to be discharged of a Fine to the King imposed upon him and supplicating them to make Relation thereof to the Parliament and alledging that his Bill or Petition had been put upon the file the last Parliament which doth prove that there was no standing Committees then appointed by the Commons in Parliament 2 H. 4. The King by Advice of the Lords in Parliament hath committed this Petition to his Councel Eodem Anno upon a Petition of the Commons for removing of Stanks and Milks generally it was answered It seemeth to the King and to the Lords that this Petition sounds in disherison of the King and of the Lords and others wherefore let the Statutes before made be held and kept Eodem Anno It is assented and accorded by the King and Lords c. Anno 2. H. 5. The King by the assent of all the Lords granteth c. Touching the Petition for taking of Tithe of great Wood contrary to the Statute of 4 E. 3. whereupon the Judges were of sundry opinions It was answered because the matter of the Petitioners demands required great and mature deliberation the King therefore would that it be adjourned and remitted to the next Parliament and that the Clerk of the Parliament cause this Article to be brought before the King and the Lords at the beginning of the next Parliament for declaration thereof to be made In the 2d year of the Raign of King Henry the sixth the King by the assent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons granted the contents of their Petition in all points Divers other Answers given do prove Debates to have been in Parliament upon Petitions betwixt the Lords and the Kings Councel And saith Mr. Noy that grand and very Attorney General to King Charle 〈…〉 the Martyr who unhappily died before his Royal 〈◊〉 had so much need as he had afterwards of his great abilities or who ever was the careful Examiner of many of the Parliament Rolls and Compiler of that Manuscript which is honoured with his name there can be no question made of those or the
the Commonalty of great Yarmouth the which Bills with the Indorsements thereupon made by the Lords were also on the Filace Divers Bills are there mentioned to be delivered and some mentioned to have been answered as happily all were saith that diligent Observator by the Lords of his Majesties Councel after the Parliament ended And therefore no marvel if all the Answers were not read on the last day of the Parliament when some of them were not made until after the Parliament ended and there is a Petition directed to the thrice redoubted Lord the King in these words following viz. Supplie vos Leiges the Praelates Dukes Earls Barons Commons Citizens Burgesses and Merchants of the Realm of England For Magna Charta to be confirmed unto them and for a general pardon setting down the Articles thereof whereof many were granted and many qualified as the King and his Councel pleased to answer the same And it was not the use and practise of those times to keep back any Answer that was justly displeasing to the King and his Councel much less any other For in Anno 11. H. 4. The Commons petition that none of the Kings Officers may receive any gift c. To which the King answered le Roy le veult In the same year a Petition of the Commons concerning Attorneys was granted by the King and both the Petitions and Answers were ingrossed in the Parliament Roll together with the rest which shews plainly that they were Read on the last day of the Parliament for the Royal Assent Yet notwithstanding the Kings Councel so misliked them that when the Clerk attended with the Roll of that Parliament for the drawing up of that Statute as the manner was those two Petitions and Answers were not thought good to be inserted in the Statute and therefore they did write in the Margent of the said Roll against the same these words Respectuatur per Dominum Principem Concilium which is written with another hand si non antea le Roy le veult answered to a Petition of the Commons without a Statute made there is only an Ordinance The Commons complain of Commissions granted to enquire of divers Articles in Eyre generally which have not been heretofore granted without Assent of Parliament and of the proceedings of the Justices therein contrary to the Law in assessing Fines without regard to the Quality of the Trespass To which was answered The King is pleased that the Commissions be examined in his presence In the 21th year of the Reign of King E. 3. the Commons pray that their Petitions for the Common profit and for amendment to have of mischiefs may be answered and indorsed in Parliament before the Commons so as they may know the Indorsement and thereby have Remedy according to the Ordinance of Parliament In the 37th year of the Raign of King E. 3. the Chancellor demanded of the Commons the last day of the Parliament after the Answers given to the Petitioners were Read if they would have the things so accorded mys par void ' Ordinance ou de Statute qui disoient qui bone est le matere les choses par voydes Ordinances nemy per Statut issint est fait And yet those were no otherwise drawn up into an Ordinance than only by entring the Petitions and Answers in a Parliement Roll. In the 9th year of his Raign the Articles of the Clergy being answered they procured the same Articles and Answers to be exemplified in such sort as they were entred in the Roll of Parliament which is lost without penning the same in any other form and were afterwards published under the great Seal of England with an Observari volumus In the Raign of the same King it was accorded that no Grand of the Land or other of what Estate or degree soever do make prizes or carriages for the houses of the King Queen or their Children and that by Warrant shall make payment thereof and it was ordained by Statute that that Accord be cryed and published in Westminster Hall And our Lord the King and his Councel willeth the same accord be cryed where it behoveth So as where they prayed the publishing thereof at Westminster Hall only the King and his Councel added the publishing thereof in London and elsewhere And the close Rolls of that year do declare that it was published in all the shires of England When an Ordinance had its first motion and being in the House of Lords in Parliament and agreed on and was drawn in the form of an Act of Parliament it was afterwards to receive the Assent of the Commons in Parliament In divers Parliaments when the Commons Petitioned for a Novel Ley which the Lords were willing enough to yield unto and the King to grant yet for that the King intended not to make any Statute that Parliament those Petitions have been deferred to another time and divers others which did not demand a new Law were granted and reputed for good Ordinances or Acts of Parliament As when in 21 E. 3. The Commons prayed that in Writs of Debt or Trespass if the Plaintiff recover damages against the Defendant that he have Execution of the Lands which the Defendant had the day in which the Writ was purchased Unto which the King answered This cannot be done without a Statute whereupon the King will advise with his good Councel and further do that which shall seem best for his people In the same year the Commons do shew that whereas before these times it hath been used that if Lands had been given to a man and his Wife and the Heirs of their Bodies issuing and the one dies no Issue having been had betwixt them the other may commit Wast without being impeached thereof that it may please our Lord the King to ordain thereof Remedy and that in such case a Writ of Wast be ordained To which the King answered Demurge entre les autres Articles dont novel ley est demandez Eodem Anno Shew the Commons that whereas a Writ of Possession doth not lye of Tenements deviseable though they be not devised to the great damage of all the Commons that it would please our Lord the King and his good Councel to ordain by Statute that Writs of Possession my lye and hold place as well of Tenements deviseable in case where they are not devised as of others and that there be saved to the Tenants their Answers in case that they be devised Whereunto the King answered Let it remain amongst the other Articles whereof a New Law is demanded In the 22d year of the Raign of the same King they do pray that for that many are disinherited by non Claim although they have good Right and namely those who are not learned in the Law that non Claim be gone and utterly taken away To which the King answered This would be to make a New Law which thing cannot
be done for the shortness of time Eodem Anno Pray the Commons that where a man is attainted at the Suit of the Party for Trespass done against the Peer and the Trespasser taken and let by the Marshal and his Marshals to Mainprise or at large they be charged with the Damages To which the King answered To put an Issue to this Article in manner as they pray it would be to make a new Law the which the King is not advised yet to do The Commons do pray That the Issues and Amerciaments of the Green Wax be certainly expressed in the Estreats and that the Sheriffs be allowed in their Accompts for the Hundreds granted from the Crown which Petitions were referred to the next Parliament for that the King had no leisure or no intent to make Statutes thereof at any time The Roll of the Parliament of 34 E. 3. is lost In the 17th year of the said Kings Raign the Commons do pray the King to desire the Parliament to consider how he might gain the Arrears of the first year and be put in a way for to gain the second year of the said Aid with less grievance to the People But the Lords and Commons were so exasperated by the Excommunication threatened by the Archbishop of Canterbury against them all because the King would not admit him into the Parliament and that they required a Declaration to be first made and agreed upon that the Peers of the Land whether Officers or not be not bound to answer the Kings Suit but in Parliament and it was a whole week before the King would agree unto it All which time the Archbishop demanded entrance standing upon his right as primus Par Angliae and required to be admitted upon pain of Excommunication At the last the said Declaration being first agreed upon by a special Committee of the Lords the King granted it and presently upon the same day the Archbishop was admitted who demanded Tryal by his Peers But as touching the Aid for the King the Lords and Commons incensed by the Clergy flatly answered that if the conditions of the grant in Anno 14. were not performed they would pay none After which the Laity and the Clergy exhibited their Petitions as the manner then was severally but petitioning the one for the other as they never did since or before except in Anno 25. E. 1. when the Popish Clergy had put that great and Victorious King also to the like plunge and their Petitions being answered by the Kings Councel who were the standing Committee for that purpose but the Lords and Commons disliked thereof and obtained a Special Committee of themselves to consider of the same which being reported and well liked a Statute was made thereupon by a Committee of the Grands and Commons which being read before the King and Sealed with his great Seal and delivered to the Grands and Commons divers of the Kings Councel as the Treasurer some of the Justices of both Benches the Steward of his House and the Chamberlain were sworn upon the Cross of Canterbury to observe the same as much as to them belonged but yet the said Councellors Treasurer and Justices made their Protestation that they assented not to the making of the said Statute nor to the form thereof neither could they keep the same if they were contrary to the Laws and Usages of the Realm which they were sworn to observe which disorderly Parliament ending in May and the King intending not to suffer the said Statute to be put in Execution summoned his great Councel to meet at London in July following to Repeal the same but there were so many of the Praelates called thereunto although the Archbishop was omitted that he could not effect his desire therein wherefore he summoned another great Councel to meet at Westminster about Michaelmas following whereby the Assent of the Earls Barons and other wise men not warning any Praelates the said Statute was repealed In which Statute so Repealed there will appear to have been many inconveniences both to the King and his People if it had continued in force The 2d Chapter whereof touching Tryal by Peers swerved very much from the true meaning of Magna Charta cap. 26. Nullus liber homo c. For that appointeth his Tryal to be by his Peers but restrains it not unto any place whereas this limits the Tryals of the Peers of the Land to be in Parliament only which would be very inconvenient to the King to wait for a Parliament for every Offence and very troublesom to the Commons to be so often troubled thither and no way beneficial for the Temporal Lords for they whether in Parliament or out of Parliament were ever to be tried per Nobiles Pares The 4th Chapter had Clauses that the King should place New Officers when they fall but by accord of the Grands which shall be nearest in the Country which is directly against the dignity of the King to be thus limited in the choice of his Officers and prove as inconvenient to the Subject if those Grands should not be men of Merit That the King shall take all Offices except the Judges c. into his hands the 3d day of every Parliament and the Officers be put to answer every complaint and if they be attainted shall be judged by the Peers in Parliament and the King shall cause Execution to be pronounced and be done accordingly without dclay which is altogether unjust and against all Right and Reason and against the Law to put any man out of his place before Judgment and Conviction and against the Right and Dignity of the Crown to bind the King to Execute the judgment of the Peers And it is observable that it was not in the Petition but was added afterwards by the Committee who drew up the Answer to the same and so was the 4th Clause penned by the said Committee much more beneficial for the Subjects than was in the Petitions or Answers Which particulars well considered no man can blame the King for his dissimulation at that time and his Repeal of that Statute In the Parliament of 18 E. 3. where the King having summoned a former Parliament in the year before and therein pacified the Lords and Commons so well as they all agreed that the said Statute made in the 15th year of his Raign should be Repealed and taken away and loose the name of a Statute for as much as it is prejudicial and contrary to the Laws and Usages of the Realm and to the Rights and Praerogatives of the King But for that some Articles were comprised in the said Statute which were reasonable and according to the Law and Reason It was accorded by our Lord the King and his Commons that of such Articles and others accorded in this present Parliament a new Statute be made by the advice of the Justices and other Sages and held for ever And no Statute being made the Commons prayed
of the King and his Nobles sealed by the Archbishop and Bishops but not by the King All other Statutes of H. 3. were proclaimed In Anno 4. E. 3. The extent of Mannors and the Statute de officio Coronator c. are not enrolled nor the Statute of Bigamy made in the same year though it was published and hath the praeamble of a Statute Anno 7. E. 1. The Statute de defensione portandi arma was sent by Writ Patent to the Justices and by another Writ Patent to the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer to be there enrolled And Eodem Anno the Statute of Mortmain is directed to the Justices in Banco to be there enrolled in Rot. Statute 9 E. 1. In the Print the correction of the Statute of Glouc. is directed in the form of Letters Patents to the Justices but recorded to be done Anno 9. E. 2. Ro. Glouc. Anno Eodem m 10. Anno 12. E. 1. The Statute of the Exchequer is directed to the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer Ro. Claus. 13. E 1. The Statute of Acton Burnel hath no Praeamble or any form of a Proclamation and yet it is enrolled in Ro. Stat. m. 46 Where there is one clause that the King shall have one penny out of every pound to maintain the Clerk and another that that Ordinance shall not extend unto Jews both which are omitted This Statute is also enrolled Ro. Claus. Anno 11. E. 1. In dorso which shews the true year when it was made The Statute de circumspecte agatis was but an Ordinance upon the complaint of the Bishop of Norwich Anno 18. E. 1. The Statute Quia emptores terrarum hath a Praeamble and conclusion in form of a Statute and yet is not enrolled in the Statute Roll the first in the Statute Roll being that of 6. E. 1. The Statute of Wast is but an Ordinance upon a debate in Parliament and the Justices commanded to proceed accordingly Anno 9. E. 2. The Articles for the Clergy are the Petitions of the Clergy and the Answers thereunto are ad verbum Exemplified under the great Seal with an Observari volumus and not drawn up into the form of a Statute Anno 15. E. 2. The Statute of Carlisle is by Writ sent to the Justices of the Bench and sealed in the time of Parliament as may appear by the date thereof at our Palace of Carlisle Articles concerning the Kings Praerogative and the Answers thereunto are only recited and not drawn up in the form of a Statute and seems to be but an Ordinance made in Parliament and the Justices of the Bench directed to observe the same else it had not been registred saith that very able Commentator Mr. Noy in our antient Manuscripts the venerable Conservators of our Statute Laws and otherwise had long ago perished with our Parliament Rolls whereof divers are missing of the Subsequent times all of the former to 4 E. 3. Yet the Statute Roll from 6. E. 1. are extant but divers Statutes omitted therein even from the said time 9. E. 3. The Statute of Money made at York was directed to the Sheriff to be proclaimed it may be for hast upon the approaching Fairs Of 18. E 3. Upon the Petition of the Commons that Merchant strangers might buy Woolls freely Proclamation was immediately sent to the Sheriffs for that purpose The revocation of the Statute of Anno 15. E. 3. and the Statute against Maintenance Anno 20. E. 3. being Acts made in the Kings great Councel and not of the Parliament were directed to the Sheriff to be published and so was the Statute of Labourers in the 23 year of that Kings Raign and also to the Bishops And all other the Statutes of E. 3. to the Raign of Henry 6. were drawn up in the form of Letters Patents or with a short Praeamble that the things following were ordained in Parliament and sent with a Writ to every Sheriff to be published whereof some remain yet in the Tower of London unsent in the time of Henry 6. Probably because that about that time the invention of Printing was brought into England Insomuch as in those times 1. No Statute hath been made in some Parliaments although sometimes agreed upon 2. Many things have been omitted 3. Many things added 4. A Statute hath been made wherein the Commons gave not their Assent 5. Wherein neither Lords or Commons assented Anno 18. E. 3. The Commons exhibited a Petition containing 12 Articles which were presently answered and together with the Subsidy grant was made into a Statute sealed delivered and published Sedente Curia And afterwards in the same Parliament they exhibited another Petition against Provisions from Rome which was agreed and assented unto by the King Earls Barons Justices and other Sages of the Law that the matters contained in the said Petition should be put into a covenable form according to the prayer of the Commons n. 32. 39. and yet no Statute at all made thereupon Anno 25. F. 3. n. 13. The Commons Petition against Provisions from Rome which was under-written for an Answer to the same viz. It is agreed that the Answer to this Petition shall be put into the Statute and so the Statute was entred by the Clerk amongst the rest in the Parliament Roll a thing then usual and yet that was not published with the other Statutes For in the next Parliament in the same year n. 43. The Commons prayed it might be published and put in Execution Anno 3. R 2. n. 38. The Commons Petition against Extortions was absolutely granted And notwithstanding the protestation of the Praelates to the contrary it was enrolled and yet afterwards at a great Councel the Lords then assembled said it was not their intent it should be enrolled and no Statute was made thereon Anno 11. H. 4. n. 28. 63. Two several Petitions of the Commons were absolutely granted and entred in the Parliament Roll and afterwards when the Councel met to draw up the Statute they were respited Anno 25. E. 3. n. 59. and cap. 3. Tit. Collations all this Clause was omitted out of an answer to a Petition of the Clergy viz. It is accorded by the King the Grands and Commons that after Judgment rendred for the King and the Clerk in Possession the Presentment cannot be repealed And there are added in that Statute two special Clauses for the Clergy which were not in the Answer And afterwards Anno 13. R. 2. n. 59. cap. 1. Collations the like Clause for the King is wholly omitted viz. And further the King willeth that Ratification granted for the incumbent after that the King presented and commenced his Suit shall be allowed hanging the Plea nor after Judgment given for the King but that such Judgment shall be fully executed as reason demandeth Anno 37. E. 3. n. 10. The Commons petitioned that the grand Charter and the Charter of the Forest and the Statute made Anno 36. of our Lord the
both Houses and had no Royal Assent unto them must at the next Assembly begin again for every Session of Parliament is in Law where any Bill hath gained the Royal Assent or any Record upon a Writ of Error brought in the House of Peers hath been certified is and hath been accompted to have been a Session And although some of this latter quarrelling Age have Espoused an Opinion too much insisted upon that an Impeachment brought by the House of Commons against any one makes the supposed Offence until it be Tryed unpardonable A Reason whereof is undertaken to be given because that in all Ages it hath been an undoubted Right of the Commons to Impeach before the Lords any Subject for Treason or any Crime whatsoever And the Reason of that Reason is supposed to be because great Offences complained of in Parliament are most effectually determined in Parliament Wherein they that are of that Opinion may be intreated to take into their more serious Consideration That there neither is nor ever was any House or Members of Commons in Parliament before the Imprisonment of King H. 3. by a Rebellous part of his Subjects in the Forty ninth year of his Raign or any kind of fair or just evidence for it Factious designing and fond conjectures being not amongst good Pa 〈…〉 ots or the Sons of Wisdom ever accompted to be a sufficient or any evidence Nor was the House of Lords from its first and more ancient original intituled under their King to a Judicative Power to their Kings in common or ordinary Affairs but in arduis and not in all things of that nature but in quibusdam as the King should propose and desire their advice concerning the Kingdom and Church in matters of Treason or publick concernments and did understand themselves and that high and honourable Court to be so much forbid by Law ancient usage and custom to intermeddle with petty or small Crimes or Matters as our Kings have ever since the sixth year of the Raign of King Edward the first ordained some part of the Honourable House of Peers to be Receivers and Tryers of Petitions of the Members of the House of Commons themselves and others directed to the King to admit what they found could have no Remedy in the ordinary Courts of Justice and reject such as were properly elsewhere to be determined with an Indorsement of non est Petitio Parliamenti Which may well be believed to have taken much of its reason and ground from a Law made by King Canutus who began his Raign about the year of our Lord 1016. Nemo de injuriis alterius Regi queratur nisi quidem in Centuria Justitiam consequi impetrare non poterit For certainly if it should be otherwise the reason and foundation of that highest Court would not be as it hath been hitherto always understood to be with a Cognisance only de quibusdam arduis matters of a very high nature concerning the King and the Church But it must have silenced all other Courts and Jurisdictions and have been a continual Parliament a Goal-delivery or an intermedler in matters as low as Court Leets or Baron and County Courts and a Pye-Powder Court And the words of any Crime whatsoever do not properly signifie great Offences and that all great Offences do concern the Parliament is without a Key to unlock the Secret not at all intelligible when it was never instituted or made to be a Court for common or ordinary Criminals For the House of Commons were never wont to take more upon them than to be Petitioners and Assenters unto such things as the King by the advice of His Lords Spiritual and Temporal should ordain and obey and endeavour to perform them And an Impeachment of the House of Commons cannot be said to be in the Name or on the behalf of all the People of England for that they never did or can represent the one half of them and if they will be pleased to exaimine the Writs and Commissions granted by our Kings for their Election and the purpose of the Peoples Election of them to be their Representatives Substitutes or Procurators it will not extend to accuse Criminals for that appertained to the King himself and His Laws care of Justice and the Publick for the Common People had their Inferiour Courts and Grand Juries Assises and Goal-Deliveries to dispatch such Affairs without immediately troubling Him or His Parliament and the tenour and purpose of their Commissions and Elections to Parliament is no more than ad faciendum consentiendum iis to obey and perform such things as the King by the advice of His Lords Spiritual and Temporal should in Parliament ordain For although where the Wife or Children of a Man murdered shall bring an Appeal the King is debarred from giving a Pardon because by our Saxon Laws derived from the Laws of God they are not to be disturbed in that satisfaction which they ought to have by the loss or death of the Man murdered Yet the publick Justice will not be satisfied without the party offending be Arraigned and brought to Judgment for it if the party that hath right to Appeal should surcease or be bought off so as an Appeal may be brought after or before the King hath Indicted and an auter foitz acquit in the one case will not prejudice in the other and where the Matter of Fact comes to be afterwards fully proved and the Appeal of a Wife or Child of a Bastard called filius populi quia nullius filius where only the King is Heir cannot vacate or supersede an Indictment of the Kings Neither is an Appeal upon a Crime or in criminal Matters in the first instance to be at all pursued in Parliament by the Statute made in the First year of the Raign of King H. 4. the words whereof are Item for many great inconveniences and mischiefs that often have happened by many Appeals made within the Realm of England to the great afflictions and calamites of the Nation as it afterwards happened by the Lancastrian Plots and Desings in that mischievous Appeal in Anno 11. of King Richard the Second before this time It is ordained and stablished from henceforth That all the Appeals to be made of things done out of the Realm shall be tryed and determined before the Constable and Marshal of England for the time being And moreover it is accorded and assented That no Appeals be from henceforth made or in any wise pursued in Parliament in any time to come And therefore that allegation that the House of Peers cannot reject the Impeachment of the Commons because that Suit or Complaint of the Commons can be determined no where else will want a better foundation an Impeachment of the House of Commons in the Name of all the People being no other than an Appeal to the King in Parliament And the Suit of such as might be Appellants in another place being there
expresly prohibited cannot be supposed to be the concern or interest of all the People deserving or requiring satisfaction or especially provided for by Law to have satisfaction unless it could by any probability or soundness of Judgment be concluded that all the People of England besides Wives Children or near Kindred and Relations the necessity of publick Justice and deterring Examples are or should be concerned in such a never to be fancied Appeal of the People And it will be very hard to prove that one or a few are all the People of England or if they could be so imagined are to be more concerned than the King who is sworn to do Justice unless they would claim and prove a Soveraignty and to be sworn to do Justice which though they had once by a villanous Rebellion attacked until Oliver Cromwel their Man of Sin cheated them of it for God would never allow them any such power or priviledge or any Title to the Jesuits Doctrine which some of our Protestant Dissenters their modern Proselites have learned of them that the King although he be singulis major is minor universis And it is no denial of Justice in the House of Peers to deny the receiving of an Impeachment from the House of Commons when they cannot understand any just cause or reason to receive it and the Records Rolls Petitions and Orders of Parliament will inform those that will be at the pains to be rightly and truly directed by them that Petitions in Parliament have been adjourned modified or denied and that in the Common or Inferior Courts of Justice Writs and Process may sometimes be denied superseded or altered according to the Rules of Justice or the circumstances thereof And our Records can witness that Plaintiffs have petitioned Courts of Justice recedere a brevi impetrare aliud And it cannot be said that the King doth denegare Justitiam when he would bind them unto their ancient legal well experimented forms of seeking it in the pursuing their Rights and Remedies hinders them in nothing but seeking to hurt others and destroy themselves For Justice no otherwise denied should not be termed Arbitrary until there can be some solid reason proof or evidence for it When it is rather to be believed that if the Factious Vulgar Rabble might have their Wills they would never be content or leave their fooling until they may obtain an unbounded liberty of tumbling and tossing the Government into as many several Forms and Methods as there be days in the year and no smaller variety of Religions And by the Feudal Laws which are the only Fundamental Laws of our Government and English Monarchy those many parts of the Tenants that held of their Mesne Lords in Capite could not with any safety to their Oaths and Estates Authorise any of their Elected Members of the House of Commons in Parliament to accuse or charge any of the Baronage of England in the House of Peers in Parliament although every Tenant in his Oath of Vassalage to his Mesne Lord doth except his Allegiance to the King and would be guilty of Misprision of Treason if he should conceal it by the space of twenty and four hours and if any of the Elected would or should avoid such Misprision of Treason in the not performance of his Duty and Oath of Allegiance it would require a particular Commission to his own Elected Members and is not to have it done by way of a general Representation when there is not to be discerned in the Kings Writ or in the Sureties or Manucaptors matters or things to be performed or in the Indentures betwixt the Sheriff and the Electors and Elected any word of Representation or any thing more than ad faciendum consentiendum iis to assent and obey do and perform such things as the King by the Advice of the Lords in Parliament shall ordain and if they would make themselves to be such Representers were to have a particular and express Commission to charge or impeach any one of themselves or of the House of Peers with Treason or any other high Misdemeanours And they must be little conversant with our Records that have not understood that the Commons have many times received just denials to their Petitions and that some have not seldom wanted the foundations of Reason or Justice That many of their Petitions have adopted the Concerns and Interests of others that were either Strangers unto them or were the Designs of some of the grand Nobility who thought them as necessary to their purposes as Wind Tide and Sails are to the speeding of a Ship into the Port or Landing-places of their Designs For upon their exhibiting in a Parliament in the 28 year of the Raign of King Henry the Sixth abundance of Articles of High Treason and Misdemeanours against William de la Poole Duke of Suffolk one whereof was that he had sold the Realm of England to the French King who was preparing to invade it When they did require the King and House of Lords that the Duke whom not long before they had recommended to the King to be rewarded for special services might be committed Prisoner to the Tower of London the Lords and Justices upon consultation thought it not reasonable unless some special Matter was objected against him Whereupon the said Duke not putting himself upon his Peerage but with protestation of his innocency only submitting himself to the Kings mercy who acquitting him from the Treason and many of the Misdemeanours and for some of them by the advice of the Lords only banished him for five years And that thereupon when the Viscount Beaumont in the behalf of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal required that it might be Inrolled that the Judgment was by the Kings own Rule not by their Assent and that neither they nor their Heirs should by this Example be barred of their Peerage No Protestation appears to have been made by any of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal for or on the behalf of the Commons Or by the Commons for themselves So as a different manner of doing Justice can neither truly or rationally be said to be an absolute denial of Justice and was never believed to be so by the Predecessors of the House of Commons in Parliament in our former Kings Raigns when some hundreds of their Petitions in Parliament have been answered There is a Law already provided or let the old Law stand or the King will provide a covenable or fitting remedy And is not likely if it were as it is not to be any Arbitrary Power or any temptation or inducement thereunto to produce any Rule or incouragement to the exercise of an Arbitrary Power in the Inferiour Courts when there is none so weak in his Intellect but may understand that different Courts have several Boundaries Methods and Forms of Proceedings and that the Kings extraordinary great Court and Councel in His House of Peers although very just and
unarbitrary in their procedures is so always ready to succour the Complaints of People as it never willingly makes it self to be the cause of it And cannot misrepresent the House of Peers to the King and his People in the Case of Mr. Fitz Harris or any others when that honourable Assembly takes so much care as it doth to repress Arbitrary Power and doth all it can to protect the whole Nation from it and many of the House of Commons Impeachments have been disallowed by the King and his House of Peers in Parliament without any ground or cause of fear of Arbitrary Power which can no where be so mischievously placed as in the giddy multitude whose Impeachments would be worse than the Ostracisme at Athens and so often overturn and tire all the wise men and good men in the Nation as there would be none but such as deserve not to be so stiled to manage the Affairs of the Government subordinate to their King and Soveraign To all which may be added if the former Presidents cited to assert the Kings Power of Pardoning as well after an Impeachment made by the Commons in Parliament as before and after an Impeachment made by the Commons and received by the Lords in Parliament or made both by the Lords and Commons in Parliament be not not sufficient that of Hugh le Despenser Son of Hugh le Despenser the younger a Lord of a great Estate which is thus entred in the Parliament Roll of the fifth year of the Raign of King Edward the Third ought surely to satisfie that the Laws and reasonable Customs of England will warrant it Anno 5 E. 3. Sir Eubule le Strange and eleven other Mainprisers being to bring forth the Body of Hugh the Son of Hugh le Despenser the younger saith the Record A respondre au prochein Parlement de ester au droit affaire ce de liu en conseil soit ordine mesuerent le Corps le dit Hugh devant nostre Seigneur le Roi Countes Barons autres Grantz en mesme le Parlement monstrent les L'res Patents du Roi de Pardon al dit Hugh forisfacturam vite membrorum sectam pacis homicidia roborias Felonias omnes transgressiones c. Dated 20 Martii anno primo Regni sui Et priant a n're Seigneur le Roi quil le vousist delivrer de las Mainprise faire audit Hugh sa grace n're Seigneur le Roi eiant regard a ses dites L'res voilant uttroier a la Priere le dit Mons'r Eble autres Main pernors avant dit auxint de les Prelatz qui prierent molt especialment pur lui si ad comande de sa grace sa delivrance Et voet que ses Menpernors avant ditz chescun d'eux soient dischargez de leur Mainprise auxint le dit Hugh soit quit delivrers de Prisone de garde yssint si ho'me trove cause devors lui autre nest uncore trove quil estoise au droit And the English Translator or Abridger of the Parliament Records hath observed that the old usage was that when any Person being in the Kings displeasure was thereof acquitted by Tryal or Pardon yet notwithstanding he was to put in twelve of his Peers to be his Sureties for his good Behaviour at the Kings pleasure And may be accompanied by the Case of Richard Earl of Arundel in the 22 year of the Raign of King Richard the Second being Appealed by the Lords Appellant and they requiring the King that such Persons Appealed that were under Arrest might come to their Tryal it was commanded to Ralph Lord Nevil Constable of the Tower of London to bring forth the said Richard Earl of Arundel then in his custody whom the said Constable brought into the Parliament at which time the Lords Appellants came also in their proper Persons To the which Earl the Duke of Lancaster who was then hatching the Treason which afterwards in Storms of State and Blood came to effect against the King by the Kings Coommandment and Assent of the Lords declared the whole circumstances after the reading and declaring whereof the Earl of Arundel who in Anno 11 of that Kings Raign had been one of the Appellants together with Henry Earl of Derby Son of the said Duke of Lancaster and afterwards the usurping King Henry the Fourth against Robert de Vere Duke of Ireland and Earl of Oxford and some other Ministers of State under King Richard the Second alledged that he had one Pardon granted in the Eleventh year of the Raign of King Richard the Second and another Pardon granted but six years before that present time And prays that they might be allowed To which the Duke answered that for as much as they were unlawfully made the present Parliament had revoked them And the said Earl therefore was willed to say further for himself at his peril whereupon Sir Walter Clopton Chief Justice by the Kings Commandment declared to the said Earl that if he said no other thing the Law would adjudge him guilty of all the Actions against him The which Earl notwithstanding would say no other thing but required allowance of his Pardons And thereupon the Lords Appellant in their proper Persons desired that Judgment might be given against the said Earl as Convict of the Treason aforesaid Whereupon the Duke of Lancaster by the Assent of the King Bishops and Lords adjudged the said Earl to be Convict of all the Articles aforesaid and thereby a Traytor to the King and Realm and that he should be hanged drawn and quartered and forfeit all his Lands in Fee or Fee-tail as he had the nineteenth day of September in the tenth year of the Kings Raign together with all his Goods and Chattels But for that the said Earl was come of noble Blood and House the King pardoned the hanging drawing and quartering and granted that he should be beheaded which was done accordingly But Anno 1 Hen. 4. the Commons do pray the reversal of that Judgment given against him and restoration of Thomas the Son and Heir of the said Richard Earl of Arundel Unto which the King answered he hath shewed favour to Thomas now Earl and to others as doth appear The Commons do notwithstanding pray that the Records touching the Inheritance of the said Richard Earl of Arundel late imbezelled may be searched for and restored Unto which was answered the King willeth And their noble Predecessors in that Honourable House of Peers the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament long before that videlicet in the fifth year of the Raign of King Edward the Third made no scruple or moat point or question in Law whether the power of pardoning was valid and solely in the King after an Impeachment of the Lords in Parliament when in the Case of Edmond Mortimer the Son of Roger Mortimer Earl of March a Peer of great Nobility and Estate the
the order of the House of Commons who returning to their places again ordered that their Serjeant should go to the Sheriffs of London to demand the delivery of their Burgess without any Writ or Warrant albeit the Lord Chancellor offered to grant them a Writ which they refused as being of opinion that all commandments and orders of their House by their Serjeants only shewing of his Mace the Ensign of their Soveraigns authority without a Writ would be authority sufficient but before the Serjeant came into London the Sheriffs having intelligence how heinously the matter was taken better bethought themselves and delivered the Prisoner but the Serjeant according to his command charged the Sheriffs to appear the next morrow in the House of Commons bringing with them the Clerks of the Compter and the said White was likewise taken into Custody whereupon the next morning the said Sheriffs and Clerks together with the said White appearing were compelled to make Answer without Councel and with the Sheriffs and the said White were committed to the Tower of London and the Officers and Clerks to Newgate where they remained for some days and were after delivered not without the humble suit of the Lord Mayor of London and divers of their friends But a debate and questions arising in the House of Commons which lasted 9 or 10 days together how to preserve the debt of the Creditor whilst they enjoyed the priviledge of Parliament by delivering Mr. Ferrers out of prison upon an execution and some being of opinion that it was to be salved only by an Act of Parliament and not well agreeing also thereupon the King being advertised thereof summoned to appear before him the Lord Chancellor and the Judges and the Speaker of the House of Commons and other the gravest persons of that House who after his Judicious arguments concerning the extent and warrantableness of the priviledge of Parliament and his own more especially in the granting thereof touching the freedom from Arrests which all the Judges assented unto none speaking against it commended notwithstanding the intention of his Houses of Parliament to have an Act to preserve the Creditors debt who he said deserved to have lost it the Act of Parliament was consented unto by the Commons but passed not the House of Lords by reason of the sudden dissolution of the Parliament Upon the report made by Mr. Attorney of the Dutchy of Lancaster Chairman or principal of the Committee of the House of Commons for the delivery of Edward Smally a Servant of Mr. Hales a Member of Parliament arrested in Execution that the said Committees found no President for the setting at large by the Mace and if they had it had but denoted the Kings sole Authority for that it was his Mace and his Serjeant at Arms that carried it and none of their Mace or Serjeant any person in Arrest but only by Writ and that by divers precedents of Record perused by the said Committee it appeareth that ever Knight Citizen and Burgess of the House of Commons in Parliament which doth require Priviledge hath used in that case to take a corporal Oath before the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper of the great Seal of England for the time being that the party for whom such Writ was prayed was his Servant at the time of the Arrest made And thereupon Mr. Hall was ordered by the House that he should repair to the Lord Keeper and make Oath in form aforesaid and then to proceed to the taking of a Warrant for a Writ of Priviledge for his said Servant according to the said report and it so appears by the Journal of the House of Commons and saith Mr. Elsing the Writ of Priviledge being so easy to be had what needed any Petitions to be made by the Commons to the King and the Lords for the same and as there is no precedent for this in the times of Edward the third Richard 2d H. 4. nor H. 5. so there are none to the contrary There being then no such opinions as have been since indulged and seditiously enough espoused by some that would go so far beyond Truth and Reason as to believe that the Members of the House of Commons that are or shall be have a Charter of Ordination or which is more of a never to be prov'd Commission from an unintelligible power of Soveraignty of the People And a man might wonder himself almost into an Extasy or Inanition how or by what magical or strange artifice Sir Edward Coke in the latter end of his Age and Treasury of Law and good Learning if he had ever Studied and read as he ought to have done the Feudal Laws which were our Fundamental Laws and the Original of our once and I hope may be again happy government and might before he came to be over-credulously infected with the Impostures of the modus tenendi Parliamenta and mirrour of Justice have well understood that they were no other than those which are and long have been the Laws of the Britains Saxons Germany France and Spain the Goths Vandals and Longobards Denmark Norway Sweden Hungary Bohemia Holland and West Freizland Gelderland Savoy Transilvania Silesia Moldavia Walachia Navarre Catalonia and the Republicks of Geneva and Genoa Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily Dutchies of Lorrain Millian and Florence with some little small diversities and that all our multitudes of allowed Customs Usages and Priviledges by the Indulgence of our Kings and Princes and their Laws have had no other Fountain or Original and should confess that our Magna Charta and Carta de Foresta which were not only some Relaxations Liberties and Priviledges granted and allowed by our King Henry the third but were expressly granted to be holden of that King his Heirs and Successors in Capite and that both they and all our Acts and Ordinances made them to be no other than as their Patroni or foundation and that our Colloquia generalia or Magna Concilia or Curia as Brodon stiles them now or for many Ages past called Parliaments and even those beneficia and Laws were not unknown to the Brittains in the time of their valarous and great King Arthur and could tell how when he was a Member of Parliament in the third year of the Raign of King Charles the Martyr and one of the most eminent and busy to Name and Stile the Petition of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament Assembled their Petition of Right when that which they would there claim to be their Rights and Liberties had no Right Reason Law President true History or Record to back or assert what they desired the King to give his Royal assent or Fiat unto and was no more the Rights of the People truly understood than to desire a Liberty to pull down the House or Government upon their own heads carve out their own destruction and entail it or as little Children left alone in an House with a great fire
Ancient Form of Government who ought better to assert them and that the Coronation-Oaths of all our many Kings and Princes swearing to maintain the Laws of King Edward the Confessor which have for those many Ages past so highly satisfied and contented the Common People and good Subjects of England do enjoin no other than our Kings and Princes strict observation of the Feudal Laws and their Subjects Obedience unto him and them by their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and his and their Protection of them in the performance thereof and from no other Laws or Customs than the Feudal Laws have our Parliaments themselves derived their original as Eginard Secretary unto Charles the Great or Charlemain who Raigned in the year after our blessed Saviours Incarnation 768. consisting of Lords Spiritual and Temporal if not long before had their more fixt beginning How then can so grave and learned a Professor of our Laws and after an eminent Administrator of the Laws and Justice of the Kingdom so either declare to the World that he hath not at all been acquainted with our Feudal Laws but gained a great Estate out of a small in a Government and Laws he knew no Original thereof and make many things to be grievances of the People which are but the Kings Just Rights and Authority and the Peoples Duty and their grievances in doing or suffering their Duties to be done as if disobedience which in our Nation hath too often hapned were a Franchise of the Land and a Right to be Petitioned for by the People But howsoever Mr. Will. Pryn being better awake could be so kind a Friend unto the truth as to give us notice that the Abridger of the Parl. Records left out much of what he should have mentioned viz. The Prelates Dukes Earls Barons Commons Citizens Burgesses Merchants of England in the Parliament Petitioned the King not only for a Pardon in general and of Fines and Amerciaments before the Justices of Peace not yet Levyed in special but they likewise subjoin a memorable request saith Mr. Pryn omitted by the Abridger that in time to come the said Prelates Earles Barons Commons Citizens and Burgesses of the Realm of England may not henceforth be charged molested nor grieved to make any Common Aid or sustein any charge unless it be by Common Assent of the Prelates Dukes Lords and Barons and other People of the Commons of the Realm of England as a Benevolence or Aid given to their King in his want of Money wh 〈…〉 h King Henry the 3d. sometimes had when he went from Aboey to Abbey declaring his Necessities and King Richard the Third that Murthered his Brothers Sons to Usurp the Crown flattered the People they should no more be troubled with when it was never 〈…〉 ked before the Raign of King Henry 3d or 〈◊〉 by any of our Kings or Princes until the urgent Necessities of our blessed Martyr for the preservation of his People caused him once to do it Or such as the imprisoning of some few wealthy Men as obstinately refused to lend him 〈…〉 e and small Sums of Money because they would force him to call such a Reforming and Ruining Parliament as that which not long before hapned in Anno 1641. Or such as their heavily complained of Charges levied upon the People by the Lord Lieutenants or Deputy Lieutenants in some seldom Musters or Military Affairs which a small acquaintance with our Feudal Laws might have persuaded the Gentlemen of the misnamed Petition of Right to have been lawful or that some imprisoned were not delivered upon Writs of Habeas Corpus when there were other just Causes to detain them at least for some small time of Advice And if they will adventure to be tryed by Magna Charta will be no great gainers by it for Magna Charta well examined notwithstanding the dissolution of the Tenures in Capite is yet God be thanked holden in Capite and loudly proclaims our Feudal Laws to be both the King and the Peoples Rights and disdains to furnish any contrivances against their Kings who were the only free givers and granters thereof And the Statute of 28 E 3. And all or the most of our Acts of Parliament do and may ever declare the usefulness of our Feudal Laws and that Reverend great Judge might have spared the complaints of Free-quartering of Land-Soldiers and Marriners or of punishing Offenders by Martial Law and will hardly find any to commend him or any Lawyer for their proficiency in their amassing together so many needless complaints And that in full Parliament The King then lying sick at Sheene whereof he died and divers of the Lords and Commons in Parliament coming unto him with Petitions to know his pleasure and what he would have done therein nor no Imposition put upon the Woolls Woolfels and Leather having as they might think as great an opportunity and advantage as the three great Barons Bobun Clare and Bigod had when they forced the Statute aforesaid de Tallagio non concedendo upon King Edward the first and would not suffer him to insert his Salvo Jure Regis or any the Annaent Custom of Wooll half a Mark and of three hundred Woolfels half a Mark and of one Last of Skins one Mark of Custom only according to the Statute made in the 14th year of his Raign saving unto the King the Subsidy granted unto him the last Parliament for a certain time and not yet Levied Unto which the King gave answer That as to that that no Charge be laid upon the People without common Assent The King is not at all willing to do it without great necessity and for the defence of the Realm and where he may do it with Reason For otherwise all Monarchies may be made Elective and the Will and great Example and Approbation of God disappointed where the Subjects and People will not be so careful of their own preservation as to help their King when his and their Enemy hath invaded the Kingdom and the People may as often as they please change or depose their Kings when they shall resolve to stand still and not help to aid him as the cursed and bitterly cursed Moroz did and be as wise to their own destruction as the Citizens of London were in the late general Conflagration of their City or a foolish fear of breaking Magna Charta which could never be proved to have been any cause of it they would to save and keep unpulled down or blown up ten houses and save some of their goods leave that raging and merciless Fire to burn twenty thousand houses in their City and Suburbs And it was no bad Answer also that that great and victorious King Edward the third as sick as he was made likewise unto that other part of their Petition that Impositions be not laid upon their Woolls without Assent of the Prelates Dukes Earls Barons and other People of the Commons of his Realm That there was a
the Kings Brother and Chancellor of England in the behalf of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of calling the Parliament and taking for his Theme Multitudo Sapientum learnedly resembled the Government of the Realm to the Body of a man the Right-hand to the Church the Left-hand to the Temporalty and the other Members to the Commonalty of all which Members and Estates the King not deeming himself to be one was willing to have Councel The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England by the Kings commandment declaring the cause of the Summoning the Parliament and taking for his Theme Regem honorificate shewed them that on necessity every Member of mans Body would seek comfort of the Head as the Chief and applyed the same to the honouring of the King as the Head And in that his Oration mentioning the Lords Spiritual and Temporal Knights Citizens and Burgesses giveth them no Title of Estates but the Kings Leiges In the presence of John Duke of Bedford Brother of the King Lieutenant and Warden of England and the Lords and Commons the Bishop of Durham by his commandment declared that the King willed that the Church and all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which could not include the King It was ordained that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties without the words Concessimus which could not comprehend the King who granted it to them but not to himself The Chancellor at the first assembling of the Parliament declared that the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties which must be intended to others that were his Subjects and not to himself that was none of them The Archbishop of York Chancellor of England declaring the cause of Summoning the Parliament said the King willeth that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties in which certainly he well knew that the Person willing or granting was not any of the Persons or Estates to whom he willed and granted that they should enjoy their Liberties The Duke of Gloucester being made Guardian or Keeper of England by the King sitting in the Chair the Archbishop of York being sick William Linwood Doctor of Laws declaring the cause of summoning the Parliaâ—ent said that the King willed that every Estate should enjoy their due Liberties which properly enough might be extensively taken to Military men and Soldiers the Gentry Agricolis opificibus all sorts of Trades Labourers Servants Apprentices Free-holders Copy-holders Lease-holders single Women and Children Tenants at Will and which never were themselves Estates but the several sorts and degrees thereof wherein if any Law Reason or Sense could make the King to be comprehended an inextricable problem or question would everlastingly remain unresolved who it was that so willed or granted The King sitting in his Chair of State John Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the Bishops Lords and Commons by the Kings Commandment declared the causes of summoning the Parliament taking for his Theme or Text the words sussipiant montes Pacem Colles Justitiam divided it into three parts according to the three Estates by the Hills he understood Bishops and Lords and Magistrates by little Hills Knights Esquires and Merchants by the People Husbandmen Artificers and Labourers By the which third Estates by sundry Authorities and Examples he learnedly proved that a Triple Political vertue ought to be in them viz. In the first Unity Peace and Concord In the second Equity Consideration Upright Justice without maintenance In the third due Obeysance to the King his Laws and Magistrates without grudging and gave them further to understand the King would have them to enjoy all their Liberties Of which third Estates the Chancellor in all probability neither the King or they that heard him did take or believe the King himself to be any part The 15th day of August the Plague beginning to increase the Chancellor by the Kings Commandment in the presence of the 3 Estates the Clerks Translator or Abridger being unwilling to relinquish their Novelty or Errors of which the commonest capacity or sense can never interpret the King to be one Prorogued the Parliament until the Quindena of St. Michael The Bishop of Bath and Wells Chancellor of England in the presence of the King Lords and Commons declaring the cause of the Summons of Parliament said that the King willed that all Estates should enjoy thâ—â— Liberties which might intitle the King to be the Party willing or granting but not any of the Parties who were to take benefit thereby It was enacted by the whole Estates which may be understood to be the King Lords Spiritual and that the Lords of the Kings Councel none of theirs should take such order for the Petition of the Town of Plymouth as to them should seem best Letters Patents being granted by the King to John Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury of divers Mannors and Lands parcel of the Dutchy of Lancaster under the Seal of the Dutchy were confirmed by the whole Estates for the performance of the last Will and Testament of King H. 5. though it was severed from the Crown and was no part of the concernment thereof nor had any relation to the Publick or any Parliamentory Affairs the King himself that granted the Letters Patents could not be interpreted to be one of those whole Estates which were said to have confirmed them By the whole Estates were confirmed King Henry the 6th Letters Patents of the Erection and Donation of Eton Colledge and also of Kings Colledge in Cambridge with the Lands thereunto belonging which might well conclude the King although he being the Donor could not be believed to be any part of the whole Estates who by their approbation are said to have confirmed his Letters Patents The Chancellor in the name of all the Lords in the presence of the King protested that the Peace which the King had taken with the French King was of his own making and will and not by any of the Lords procurations the which was enacted And it was enacted that a Statute made in the time of King H. 5. that no Peace should be taken with the French King that then was called the Dolphin of France without the assent of the three Estates of both Realms should be utterly revoked and that no Person for giving Counsel to the Peace of France be at any time to come impeached therefore which may demonstrate that neither the Dolphin of France nor the King of England were then accompted to be any part of the several 3. Estates of the said Kingdoms The King by his Chancellor declared that he willed that all Estates should enjoy their Liberties it cannot be with any probability supposed that either he or his Chancellor intended that himself was one of the said Estates The Archbishop of Canterbury Chancellor of England in the presence of the King gave thanks in his behalf to the 3. Estates wherein no
Thames Arrested and carried Prisoner to the Tower of London and the Wind and Tyde of fear and self-preservation did then so impetuously drive Sir Edward Littleton the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England who some years before when he was a young Man made it a part of his Praise or Olympick Game to prove by Law that the King had no Law to destrain men esse Milites and Sir John Banckes Knight Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas that they joyned with the then Illegal concurrent Votes of too many of the House of Peers that the Militia which was the Right and Power of the Sword and Jus divinum gladii and the totum aggregatum and support of the Government was in the People when our Learned Bracton hath truly informed us that in Rege qui recte regit necessaria sunt duo Arma videlicet Leges quibus utrumqne bellorum pacis recto possit gubernari utrumque enim istorum alterius indiget auxilio quo tam Res militaris possit esse in tuto quam ipsae Leges usu Armorum praesidio possent esse servatae si autem Arma defecerint contra hostes Rebelles Inimicos sic erit Regnum indefensum si autem Leges sic exterminabitur justitia nec erit qui justum faciet Following therein that opinion of Justinian the Emperour in his Institutes And did declare not like men that had taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy before they were admitted into that House that if any Person whatsoever wherein the King or his Command ought to have been excepted shall offer to arrest or detain the Person of any Member of that House without first acquainting their House or receiving further Order from that House that it is Lawful for any such Member or any Person to assist him and to stand upon his and their guard and defence and to make resistance according to the protestation taken to defend the Priviledges of Parliament which was neither to commit or maintain Treason or make that without the Kings Authority to be Treason that never was their intollerable haughty Priviledges so incompatible and inconsistent with Monarchy demanded by the Petition of the Lords and Commons in Parliament the 14th day of December 1641. can never be able to withstand the dint and force of the Law and Right Reason if a Quo Warranto should be brought against them Whereupon the King the 4th day of January 1641. coming into the House of Commons in Person no such Company attending with Pistols at the Door as was untruly reported and being sate in the Speakers Chair said he was sorry for the occasion of coming unto them Yesterday he had sent a Serjeant at Arms to apprehend some that were accused of High Treason whereunto he expected Obedience and not a Message and that he must declare unto them that in case of High Treason no Person hath a Priviledge And therefore he was come to know if any of these Persons accused were here for so long as those Persons accused for no slight crime but for Treason were there he could not expect that that House could be in the Right way which he heartily wishes and therefore he came to tell the House that he must have them wheresoever he can find them but since he sees the Birds are flown he doth expect from them that they should send them unto him as soon as they return thither But assures them in the word of a King he never did intend any force but shall proceed against them in a legal and fair way for he never meant any other which they might easily have done when they had his own Serjeant at Arms attending that Honse for no other than such like purposes The next day being the 5th day of January 1641. notwithstanding that Treason Felony and Breach of the Peace were always by the Laws of England and Customs of their Parliaments exempt and never accompted to be within the Circuit of any Parliament Priviledge for otherwise Parliaments and great Assemblies well Affected or ill Affected would be dangerous unto Kings they declare the Kings coming thither in Person to be an high breach of the Rights and Priviledge of Parliament and inconsistent with the Liberty and Freedom thereof and therefore adjourned their sitting to the Guildhall in London which they should not have done without the Kings Order that a special Committee of 24 should sit there also concerning the Irish Affairs of which number was Sir Ralph Hopton that after got out of their wicked errors and fought and won sundry glorious Battels for the King against those Parliament Rebels and some few more of that their Committee deserted their Party And the Writ sent by King Edward the first to the Justices of his Bench by Mr. Pulton stiled a Statute made in the 7th year of his Raign might have sufficiently informed them and all that were of the profession of the Law in the House of Commons in Parliament that in a Parliament at Westminster the Prelates Earls Barons and Commonalty of the Realm have said that to the King it belongeth and his part is through his Royal Seignory streightly to defend force of Arms and all other force against his Peace at all times which shall please him and to punish them which shall do contrary according to the Laws and Usages of the Realm and therefore they are bound to aid him as their Soveraign Lord at all times when need shall be and therefore commanded the Justices to cause those things to be read before them in the said Bench and there Inrolled The before confederated national Covenant betwixt England and Scotland being by Ordinance of Parliament for so they were pleased to call their no Laws confirmed under a penalty that no man should enjoy any Office or Place in the Commonwealth of Engl. and Ireland that did not Attest and Swear it which the King prohibiting by his Proclamation sent unto London the bringer whereof was hanged the King certainly informed of the traiterous practices and other misdeameanors of the Lord Kimbolton and his aforesaid Associates did as privately as possible with the Prince Elector Palatine his Nephew and no extraordinary attendance go in person to the House of Commons to seize them because his Serjeants at Arms durst not adventure to do it who having notice of it by the Countess of Carlisles over-hearing his whispering to the Queen and suddenly sending them notice thereof were sure to be absent wherein he being disappointed did afterwards by his Attorney General exhibit Articles of High Treason and other Misdemeanors against them 1. That they had traiterously endeavoured to subvert the Fundamental Laws and Government of the Kingdom and deprive the King of his Legal Power and place on Subjects an Arbitrary and Tyrannical Power which shortly after proved wofully true and for many years after so continued 2. That they have endeavoured by many foul aspersions upon his Majesty
Secretaries of State two Chief Justices and Chief Baron not being to be ranked with the Peers may always be chosen by the approbation of both Houses of Parliament the House of Commons being never before accompted equal with the House of Peers in Birth Honour Wisdom Education Alliance or Estate and in the Intervals of Parliament by the Assent of the Major part of the Councel in such manner as was before expressed in the choice of Councellors which in a matter of a much less consequence in the Government of the Kings Houshold was so little endured by the Nobility of England in the 10th year of the Raign of King Richard the 2d as it was adjudged an incroachment upon Regal Authority and high Treason and some great Lords suffered in their Persons and Estates for it and others glad to receive their Pardons for being confederate or Privy thereunto 4. That he or they unto whom the Government or Education of his Children shall be committed shall be approved by both Houses of Parliament and in the Intervals of Parliament by the Major part of his Council in such manner as was before expressed in the choice of Councellors and that all such Servants as are now about them against whom both Houses shall have any just exception shall be removed which before they had disclaimed as Mr. Rushworths Historical Collections Printed and allowed by them not long before had informed us 5. That no Marriage shall be concluded or treated for any of his Children with any Forreign Prince or any Person whatsoever abroad or at home without the consent of the Parliament under the penalty of a Praemunire unto such as shall conclude or treat any Marriage as aforesaid which they had as aforesaid disclaimed and the said penalty shall not be pardoned or dispenced with but by the consent of both Houses of Parliament that lower House never having before or since any power of pardoning or dispensation nor that higher without the Sanction or Authority of their Soveraign 6. That the Laws in force against Jesuits Priests Papists and Recusants be put in execution without any Toleration or Dispensation to the contrary and that a course may be enacted by Authority of Parliament to hinder them from making any disturbance in the State or Law by Trusts or otherwise 7. That the Votes of Popish Lords in the House of Lords may be taken away so long as they continue Papists and that his Majesty would consent to such a Bill as shall be drawn for the Education of Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion which was to take away the Priviledge of Barons holding by Tenure without conviction for Treason and of Earls Viscounts Marquesses or Dukes which ever since the beginning of the Raign of King Richard the 2d were by that and all succeeding Kings Letters Patents to have vocem locum sedem in Parliamentis 8. That his Majesty would be pleased to consent that such a Reformation be made of the Church Government and Liturgy as both Houses of Parliament shall advise wherein they do intend to have consultation with Divines as is expressed in their Declaration to that purpose and that his Majesty will continue his best assistance unto them for raising of a sufficient maintenance for Preaching Ministers through the Kingdom when there was no want of the Orthodox more Loyal and better sort and that his Majesty would be pleased to give his consent to Laws for the taking away of Superstitions and Innovations and of pluralities and scandalous Ministers which in their accompt were only of the Church of England and Loyal 9. That his Majesty would be pleased to rest satisfied with the course that the Lords and Commons have appointed for the ordering of the Militia until the same shall be further setled by a Bill and that his Majesty would be pleased to recal his Proclamations and Declarations against the Ordinance made by the Lords and Commons concerning it which was to take away the Tenures the Power of the Sword and defence of his People 10. That the Members of either Houses of Parliament as have during the time of this present Parliament been put out of any Places or Offices may either be restored to their Place or Office or otherwise have satisfaction for the same upon the Petition of that House whereof he or they are Members 11. That all Privy Counsellors and Judges may take their Oath the form thereof to be agreed on and setled by Act of Parliament for the maintaining of the Petition of Right which was in many things more than ever they could claim or ever had or could by Law have any Right unto and of certain Statutes made by this Parliament which shall be mentioned by both Houses of Parliament as if they were in all Duty and Loyalty bound to make him a glorious King thought they could never have unking'd him enough and brought him to their murdering ever to be abhorred Tribunal and that an inquiry of all the Breaches and Violations of all those Laws may be given in charge by the Justices of the Kings Bench and by the Justices of Assize in their Circuits and Justices of the Peace at their Sessions to be presented and punished according to Law 12. That all the Judges and Officers placed by approbation of both Houses of Parliament may hold their places quam diu se bene gesserint 13. That the Justice of Parliament may pass upon all Delinquents whether they be within the Kingdom or fled out of it And that all persons cited by either House of Parliament may appear and abide the sentence of Parliament 14. That the general Pardon offered by his Majesty may be granted with such Exceptions as shall be advised by both Houses of Parliament 15. That the Forts and Castles of this Kingdom may be put under the Command and Custody of such persons as his Majesty shall appoint with the approbation of his Parliament and in the Intervals of Parliament with the Major part of the Council in such manner as is before expressed in the choice of Councellors 16. That the extraordinary Guards and Military Forces attending his Majesty may be removed and discharged and that for the future he will raise no such Guards or extraordinary Forces but according to the Law in case of Actual Rebellion or Invasion an Imposition and Vassalage was never put upon any thing that was like a King in Christendom for the Kings of Scotland whilst seperate from England and did homage to our Kings had when there was cause enough of fear and jealousie as now there was none no such unkingly Vassalage put upon him King David had 24000 men for his Guard who every Month came up to Jerusalem and our Saxon King Alured had his Guards by monthly courses 17. That his Majesty would be pleased to enter into a more strict Alliance with the States of the united Provinces and States of the Protestant Religion for the defence and
authoritative where Sentences or Judgments are not received upon the knees neither in the Ecclesiastical Courts where the Bishops in the name of God and as the Church do only give their sentences and make their decrees without the Majesty or Ceremony of kneeling unto them to be performed by those that are concerned to obey the Condemnation it may be a Quaere harder to unriddle than many of those of Sphinx how it can consist with the reason of such a repraesentation that they whom they would seem to represent should be Petitioners unto themselves and that if any of the County or place represented shall commit any offence against any single Member of the House of Commons representing for another County or place as for breach of priviledge or for words c. The persons of the other Province or place must be punished and come upon their knees and not they that represented them a Warrant sent by their Speaker for the Kings Writ to the County City or place to Elect another in that House and might have done much better to have hindred it Or if any Freeholder Gentleman or Clown that Elected them were not before accustomed to be kneeled unto as by an adoration how these enlightened over-lofty Members can compel men to adore and kneel unto them under a colour of Representation when those that they would have believe that their new-found Representation with an adoration designed to be entailed upon them would have been ashamed to have it to be done unto them and durst never claim or own it in their own Counties or places that Elected them and might be abundantly satisfied that neither the Kings Writs or their Election Indentures Letters of Attorney Procurations or any Praescription or supposed Priviledge of Parliament could entitle them unto such a kind of Majesty or how they that are no Judicature or Court of Record and have no power to give or administer an Oath to Witnesses can escape the blame or censure of Magna Charta and all the Laws Right Reason and Rules of Justice and Equity to be Parties and Judges in their own Cases or enforce their fellow Subjects and not seldom of better Births and Extractions to receive upon their knees with adorations their unjust dooms and sentences when better tryed Criminals in the Court of Kings Bench where the King as a Judge is supposed to sit himself do not likewise in his other Courts receive their Judgements upon their knees but only when they receive the Kings pardon in rendring their thanks unto him But should rather remember that the Angel in the Apocalipse would not suffer St. John to kneel unto him and that the often sawcy Plebs or Vulgus of Rome could be content with the Exorbitant power of their Tribuni Plebes in their Intercessions for Laws without any the adoration of kneeling nor are there to be found any Records or Presidents in England or any scrap of Law or Reason that any of our Kings in their licensing any of the Speakers of the House of Commons should give them any Power or Priviledge to Eject any of their fellow Members and make them on their knees receive uncivil and ungentleman-like words such as Mr. Williams a late Speaker of the House of Commons in Parliament was pleased to say unto Sir Robert Peyton Knight being commanded and enforced to receive his Lawless Ejectment upon his knees in these words Go thou worst of men the House hath spewed the out or after such an Insolence to require the Kings Clerk of the Crown to make out a Warrant in the Kings name to Elect another Member in his place And our England nor any other civilized part of the World have yet found such a Parcel of Representatives or Deputies that can think themselves so to be entituled as the Author of the Character of a Popish Successor in this Kingdom of England hath been pleased to grant unto them to that which they would willingly stile their own Royal Inheritance and Sacred Succession of Power when they are not as Embassadors Repraesenting Princes sent unto or Treating with Princes but as Procurators or Attorneys employed by those that are nor ever were more than Subjects their ne plus ultra Or by what Art or refined Chymistry was such a Majesty entailed or infused into them when Kelsy a Body or Bodice-maker and Barebone a Fanatick Letherseller were Members or what or whose Charters or Letters Patents have they to entitle them thereunto when Sir Edward Coke a learned Lawyer gives them no greater Title than that of a grand Enquest and Mr. William Pryn that adventured Body and Soul for them and with great mistakings joyning them in a Supremacy conjoynt with the House of Peers in Parliament abundantly found fault with them in taking too much upon them in other matters when those designs of Majesty were not arrived or let down from Heaven as the figment of the Anciliae at Rome was believed to be or how could the Commons in Parliament charge as they did so unjustly and wickedly King Charles the first for coming unarmed without any Guard to seize Pym Hambden Haselrig and the rest of the five Members and Kimbolton then and long after guilty of High Treason if he were then in the House of Commons in his Politick or personal Capacity a distinction which the Master of Hypocrisy and Lyes had taught them when in several of his Battels in the defence of himself and his Loyal Subjects Weemes a prefidious Scot and others Levelled their Cannons at him with Perspective Glasses to be sure to hit him a Method which David had not learned when he found Saul sleeping and was afraid to touch or kill the Lords Anointed and never left persecuting him until they had cut off his Head and murdered him in both his Capacities which did not serve for a Plea in the case of Cook Hugh Peters and other his justly condemned Murderers who had not then the Impudence to plead or rely upon such a parcel of devilism when they might know that the Politick and personal capacity of a King or any subordinate Magistrate were so conjoint and inseparable as in articulo mortis that part of Kingship or Magistracy could not be severed from the natural unless it were in such an apparent and publick manner as in the self-deposing and Renunciation of our King Richard the 2d of Charles the 5th Emperor of Germany retiring into a Monastery or as some of the ancient Kings and Princes of France were when they were cheated of their Kingly Power and forced to be shaven as Monks and put into a Monastery And that notwithstanding the House of Commons new-fashioned way of their own framing since the Raign of Queen Elizabeth of making their own Committee to find out and determine such Priviledges as they would claim and have they might have discovered that in the Court of Kings Bench in the case of Richard Chedder a Servant to a Member of the