should contend for the disordering the Succession of the Crown who still labour for the Lineal Discent of their own Common Inheritance and I will appeal to the breast of the most violent contender for this Power whether an Act made for the disabling one of their own Sons or design'd Successors would not by themselves be look't on as unjust if not utterly defeasible and then 't is sure prodigiously strange where so many Learned Heads tell us of a sort of entail from a power Divine where the common Custom of the Kingdom has been a constant course of Lineal Discent unless as has been shown a perfect Rebellion interven'd And where themselves acknowledg this sort of Succession has been sometimes by Statute entail'd yet still they should think that but Justice to their Kings Successor which they would resent as an Injury to their own But they may vouch for it the common sort of Recoveries from a right Heir with a too Cunning sort of vouching and perhaps too much practis'd but I am sure it no way agrees with the Laws of Forraign Nations and has been a little condemn'd by some learned Heads in our own and some that have brought it into dispute seem to have rais'd a Devil not so soon to be put down in their Dialogues Vid. Dr and Student p. 49 to 58. but however this Objection is nothing analagous nothing of a Parallel Case for here is a Complication of both Parties Concern'd and concluded upon by both their Consents and where shall we find the perfect Proprietor of Crowns and Scepters and when God has told us to that by him they Reign that bear them and they 'l hardly vouch the Almighty for a piece of Injustice But allowing it for once a meer Human Constitution and in their bandied Authority of Saint Peter an Ordinance of Man and the Kings Consent with his Parliaments to determine the Point yet still the great disparity would call for a little longer consideration than a Common Recovery and not presently to cut off the right of an Heir to three Kingdoms only because commonly done at Westminster of one to so many Cottages and besides when that has been practis'd so long and born the test of Time and this their attempt would have been the first President And at last what has silenc'd their Advocates for ever the non-concurrence of the King and his Lords whose consent was by themselves suppos'd to be necessary because requir'd and will like those recognitions of some of our former Parliaments for an Hereditary Succession perpetuate that right in spight of the Laws of others that were made for altering it and should the Commons ever get such a Bill to pass 't is enough to say 't was once rejected by the Peers unless they can prove that the Question was put again Whether the lower House should take advice of the Lords in the Legislative power and that 't was Resolved that the House of 6. Feb. 48. carried in the Neg. p. 15. voices Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be abolish't and Order'd that an Act be brought in for that purpose Queen Mary succeeds her Brother In the very first of her Reign there was an Act made declaring her Succession and Inheritance to be by right of Blood Edward with all the Right of Blood with all the Law of God and Man too on her side for whatever the Parliament pretended they could never Illegitimise that which was begotten in Matrimony celebrated according to the Laws of the Church and the Realm for whatsoever defect there was found subsequent to the Consummation of the Marriage in common reason and equity ought not to have extended to the making that Issue spurious which had all the requisites to the making it truly Legitimate tho perhaps the subsequent discoveries might be sufficient to cause a Divorce and in the too Common Case of Adultery 't would be severe far from Equity to make Bastards of all that were born before the Conviction of the Fact but it may be reply'd to this That these were such Impediments as related to the Contract ab Jnitio and where that 's Invalid there the Children begotten after can't be suppos'd Lawful Heirs when the Contract it self is against Law but tho still I shall look upon that as a rigorous resolution when I think Innocents and Infants ought to be more favour'd especially when there is a Maxim in the Law even in the like Cases that the fact Quod fieri non debet factum valet may be valid tho the doing of it can't be justifi'd and besides there being a Rule that obtains amongst Civilians That Leg. qui in provincia Sect. divs H. de Rit Nup. 1. 4. Marriage contracted without any preconceiv'd Impediment tho it after come to be dissolv'd as unlawful yet Children begotten in such a state are reputed truly Legitimate and tho Appeals to Rome were then Punishable with a Premunire yet the Civil Law then obtain'd much more than it does now that Stat. being very young as well as the Reformation and by the Laws of the Church long before it they were such Latitudinarians in this point that the subsequent Marriage would Legitimate those that were born before the Contract but that I confess was rejected here in 20 Harry the 3d's time 20. H. 3d. because contrary to the common Laws of the Realm which the Parliament resolutely declar'd they would not change But what ever power they had of Nullifying this and making Mary spurious 't is certain another and latter Act 35. H. 8. made her as much Legitimate by making her Hereditary insomuch that what ever Edward her Brother was prevail'd upon a young Prince and a dying one whose forward Understanding might be well disorder'd with an approaching Death and an untimely end and which might be easily prevail'd upon in such Circumstances by the Cruel sollicitations of the designing Northumberland Stow. 609. Vid. Bishop of Hereford's last year of E. 6. whose Son had but just Married Suffolk's Daughter the designed Queen yet even then Cranmer the truly Loyal Bishop and as true a Protestant of which his adbering to the right of the Crown was the best testimony tho now 't is made but a preposterous Emphatical expression of that Religion to invade it that worthy Prelate tho he suffer'd in the Succeeding flames of a real Persecution when demanded by these State Projectors his sense of the setting up of this Testamentary Queen declar'd it was no way agreeable to Equity to disinherit the two Sisters and that the Succession could not be Lawfully alter'd upon any pretence tho Religion then too was the very thing pretended the Bishop of Hereford that was as good a Protestant observes upon the Suffolk men siding with Queen Mary tho they knew she was for setting up of Popery says that our English are in their respects to their Prince so Loyally Constant that no regard no pretext of
the Politician and for the Injury he did all along to the Right-Blood Providence seemed to bring upon his head his own and sent that sort of an Usurper too to the Grave with the fate of Tyrants not with a common dry Death but in his own Gore and he that had held the Scepter but with a pretended Right by this disastrous Death gave an opportnnity to a perfect Intruder that had none at all Henry the first who being in new Forrest when his Brother was killed did not stay long to consider the disaster or to get the Carcass Coacht home instead of Carted but rides to Winchester seizes the Treasure and that soon helpt him to put on the Crown The Purple Robes soon followed those Golden Regalia and the Power absolutely Usurpt will irresistibly force a Coronation Florence of Worst but tho Crown'd as he was a good Author say who liv'd and wrote then as great men then sent for Robert promised him his Right and as resolutely stood by him too and well they might when he had been debarred his Birth-right once before and besides the Right of Blood had refused his Assignation his early Pension and had compounded for his own Kingdom which he had so much Title to without the Composition But Mat. Paris tells us in the first Lines of this Kings Life that the Nobility Magnates Angliae ignorabant quid actum esset de Roberto duce Normannorum An. 1100. were utterly Ignorant what was become of this Robert Duke of Normandy but that when he sent privately to them in England Letters alledging his being first Born and that for that very Reason he declared the Right of the Kingdom belong'd to him assoon as they heard those Allegations of his unanswerable Right promised him their best advice and to lend him their Assistance which they did too and Robert came over forc't his Brother to a Composition for 3000 Marks yearly and at least made the Vsurper but a Tributary King and all the Argument out of this Reign that our Elector here fetches for his making Ibid. p. 46. Fidele Consilium pariter Auxilium promiserunt our English Monarch a King of Poland is this Usurpers courting the great Council to confirm it to his Son but so would a Cromwell the Parliament for the Succession of his Son Richard and sure such Creatures have need to anticipate all sorts of security for their Sons Succession that have gotten all their Right by Anticipation of anothers or absolute wrong but the parallel holds still between that antient Usurper and the more Modern I mentioned they both felt their Consciences prickt in their unjust obtaining of a Mat. Paris 1106. sentiens Conscientiam Cauteriatam Judicium Dei formidare c. Kingdom they both feared the Judgments of the Almighty both as unhappy in their designed Heirs one born to be Drowned the other to be a Fool and as their Fame stunk above Ground so did both their Bodies before they went under and Paris tells us the first committed Murder after he was Dead and poysoned his Doctor before they could get him down into the Dust tho he smartly observes this was the last Ultimus fuit ex illis quos Rex Henricus occidit An. 1136. among the many this good King Henry had destroyed The last remark I shall make on this Mans Reign is but what this malicious Historian has made very Remarkable and that is from an Author that he cites for saying that this Robert had discovered too much of the Cruelty of Disposition of his averseness to the English Nation and his proneness to revenge and this Character must be most Emphatically markt out that they might not miss of his meaning another Duke a Prince to whose Valour and Conduct the Wretch ows his Freedom from a Forreign Yoke and the Nation her safety and security and so far does his malice transport the Sot that he falsifies for it the very Latin he translates Perversus contrarius et Innaturalis He makes cruelty of Disposition and for Proneness to Vid. H. de Knyght C. 8. 2374. revenge not one Syllable in the whole Citation and then besides the words of the Author he cites are the same verbatim which this Henry the first used against his Brother when he makes a Speech to his Nobles to make him odious from whom this Author I believe borrowed it and 't is as meer revgene Vid Paris 1107. ful malice to the Duke of York as that against Robert the Duke It is here evident that this Gentlemans Principles and Perswasions are clearly Democratical and writ with a perfect design to please the People as plain as if the rabble beast the Monster Mobile were seen fawning upon this KEEPER of their LIBERTIES and you saw the Sycophant spitting in its mouth his Papers are the very Picture of this piece and the Representation of Rebellion with a Pen. The next that Mounts the Throne is STEPHEN and the little Right tho some Relation he had to the Crown to be sure won't be past by when this Author for the sake of his sinking Cause has caught at every Plank to hold up her Head in that desperate Condition and where he could not meet the least solid substantial Argument graspt at every empty Shadow And truly here he tells us that STEPHEN acknowledg'd his Election in the very Words of a Charter from the People and Pag. 4. so would any man that had no better Title and tho I shall condemn his Usurpation can allow of his Politicks in letting them know how much he was beholden to them and yet that People were strong enough to pull off his Crown too which his own hands rather Stow says he was repulsed by them of Dover shut out by them of Canterbury and unjustly took upon him the Crown of England had put on for as Bradshaw told the King The People of England had constituted them a Court when that unanswerable Martyr observed not half their Consents did concur or were askt so also in this Case many of the Nobility most of the Commonalty lookt upon it as a manifest Usurpation and those whose Concurrence he had were but an handful of his Friends and at his Coronation had but three Bishops few of the Nobility and not one Abbot and also as Historians observe those very Malembs Baker perjur'd Prelates and Lords came many of them to an ill-end or else to worse Calamities before their life was ended And the revengeful Cruelties of the Scot lookt somewhat like a Judgment for their Perjury when they spar'd neither the Gray-Hair for whom Reverence might plead nor the Tender-Infant for whom its Innocence but Butchered the one in their Beds the other on their Mothers Breasts the Barbarity of Mat. Paris in ultionem Imperatricis cui idem Rex Fidelitatem juraverat An. 1138. those avengers is as horribly describ'd in Mat. Paris But agen I cannot see why he was
jure must be Kings they know the first of James declares his Royal Office an Heritage Inherent in the very Blood of him 1. Jacob. and also that all our Books of Law besides the Fundamental Constitution of the Land do make the Regal Power Hereditary and not Elective and such an Elected Usurpers Laws can no further oblige the Subjects of England then they they 'l submit no more then the Czars of Muscovy a pecuniary mulct must be but a bare oppression and a Capital Punishment MURDER But Will. Prynn I Pryn's That the Parliament and Kingdom are the Sovereign power a piece Printed by Order of the house of Commons Confess in another of his Treatises that he Printed will have all such Acts made by Consent of Vsurping Kings bind the right Heirs of the Crown that Reign by a just Title That all such Acts oblige them is utterly false for one of them is commonly for their Exclusion but that some are admitted to bind is as really True but that is rather upon a Political account of their being serviceable to the Publick and the Country's Good And is it not now an unaccountable boldness that the very same Cases of Usurpers upon the Crown that this Indefatigable piece of Faction publish't against the Father they fought and Murder'd should be retrieved against the Son whom the kind Heavens ev'n by Miracle so lately restor'd But at last allowing those palpable falsehoods they so much Labour for falsehoods so gross that they can be felt to be matter of Fact contradict the true sense of all Chronicle with a Seditious Supposition to be secur'd of Truth give all the Laws of the Land the Lye raze Rolls and Records the better to rise a Rebellion and grant the Kings of England have been all Elected all almost from that Union of the Heptarchy in the Saxon to that of our three Kingdoms in the Scot and sure no Soul living can conclude with them in afairer Concession than in granting the very Postulate they require yet since they then in the End of K. James tho but so lately had settled the Succession and made it Hereditary can with men of Common sense the Presidents of its having been formerly Elective prevail for an utter Subversion of such a Settlement Popery was once in England by Law Establish't and must it therefore again be Establish't by Law Certainly all succeeding Reformation must null and abolish that from which they Reform and a Repealing Act will hardly be made Declaratory of the very Statute it Repeals if these be but their best Arguments the same you see will reason us back into the very Religion of Rome we have seen several Rebellions and some even of late to have lain the Land in Blood and can such sad Sufferance be made to Prescribe for our Misery warrant some such as Bloody to succeed but since all this suppos'd suggestion must vanish like to soft Air since the Succession has been settled for so many several ages to rake every musty Record only for a sad Review of some Time of Confusion is certainly but an Impious Industry to Confound the work of the very God of Order We may as well be discontented at the Frame of his World he so well digested and plead for Prescription the Primitive Chaos CHAP. II. Remarks upon Plato Redivivus THE best Animadversion that I can make on his whole first days Discourse is that it wants none that it's Impertinence has superseded reproof and the fulsome flattering Dialogue as unsit for a serious Answer as a Farce for a Refutation out of a Sermon The great acquaintance these pretending Platonicks would be thought to have with that Sect of Philosophers did not oblige them to be so morosely reserv'd as to know none other and they may remember an Ephesian Sophy I believe as Learned too in his Politicks that was never so much tickl'd as when he saw the dull Animal mumbling of the cross-grain'd unpalatable Thistle the disputing against the Laws of the Land and the Light of Reason they 'l find as uneasie as absurd and the latter as Impious and Profane and which deserves to be assimulated to a more serious sort of Obstinacy that of so many Sauls kicking against the Pricks but the Pleasant and Ridiculous Disputants put in for another pretty Quality of that insensible Brute the length of their sordid and stupid Flattery outdoes their Original Beast and the sad Sophister would force one Smile more to see three of the same sort of Creatures for a whole day clawing one another Certainly whatever they fancy the Dialogues of Plato whatever the Favourers of his Principles can suggest surely they were never fill'd with such Fustian But that good old Philosopher did as plainly cloath his Disputes as well as himself in an honest homely Drugget of Athens Tho I confess they tell us of his rich Bed and his affectation of State which a Soul so sublime could not but Contemn while these Sectaries are such refin'd Academicks so much polish't with Travel and the breeding of the Times That all the Fops of France the Dons of Spain his Adulano of Italy seem melted down into one Mass of Impertinence they can't pass by the thin Apartments of a Page without a Congee Bon-Grace and a formal Salutation upon one anothers Excellencies the Doctor claws the Patient with his Lenitives Frications Emollients of Praise and Adulation and the Patient who in the literal sence must be said to suffer with such a Doctor if not in Body Natural I am sure in the Politick as in Cordial Affection and Common Civility he is obliged returns him the reputation of his Book De Corde for the tickling the very Auricula's of his Heart for Praise must certainly be Pleasant for an Aesculapius that sets up for a Matchiavel confutes Solomon and the Bible as he says for saying the Heart is unsearchable tho but Vid. Argument to the Book an Ordinary Divine without the Criticks Tremellius or a Munster would say that in the Text there is nothing meant but the mind But Cor hominis must not be Inscrutabile now only because the Doctor has handl'd its fibres and thus this Triumvirate of Fulsomness and Faction treat one another with their Fustian and Foppery through the whole piece I seldom care to lard our English with the least scrap of Latin but because 't is the property of such pedantick Scriblers who still most affect what is most ridiculous Foppery and Folly I 'll only give them an Argument out of the Mathematicks fora Demonstration of their agreeable Faction and Foolishness and for his Cor hominis as it relates to this Doctors Pharmacentria let him take one of Euclid's Postulates that has a greater reference to their mighty Three In English thus and if they will have Lattin Quae conveniunt uno Tertio conveniunt inter sâ— 'tis in the Margin Those that agree in one Third must needs agree among themselves The Venetian
Third's was no sooner several times confirmed in one year but in the next presently they fell upon his Justiciary Hugo de Burg and he must be removed Vid. Stow page 183. or they threaten to do it with the Sword Then the poor Prince complies and sends him to the Tower Next the Bishop of Winchester is as great a grievance as the Chief Justice was before for bringing in the Pictavians and unless all those are put from him they tell him plainly they 'll depose him from his Kingdom and create a new The Bishop is sent away and those Pictavians expelled but still were there more grievances and assoon as one was removed be sure another would be found out and the true perfect Occasion of those Intestine Broils was rather the Concession of King Henry in his Youth they having been used with so much Complyance in his Minority that being emboldened afterward with Age he grew too much a Soveraign to be overaw'd or overreach't by his Subjects and they having been accustom'd not to be oppos'd in their encroachments on the Crown which they had been long Habituated to he being Crown'd an Infant and they having the fresh Precedent before them with what arrogance they us'd his Father John upon any the least denyal betook themselves to the Sword for this you 'l find if Occurrences of those Times be but Impartially examin'd and for his Second Instance of our late Kings time his abominable Falsehood so far from Truth that not only Narrative and Record but the very Memory of man can give him the Lye did he not grant them these very Villains insolent demand Parliaments at last without Intermission was there not a Triennial one first Insolently demanded and as Graciously consented to was not that as ungratefully thought insufficient and nothing could satisfy till unhappily settl'd during the pleasure of the two Houses an Act of Concession which the poor Unfortunate Prince could himself call as indeed it was unparallel'd by any of his Predecessors nothing but their Ingratitude 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 could equal so much goodness and only for bettering of theirs the Wretches resolv'd his own affairs should be the worse what punishment would the Law have found for such Monsters of Ingratitude that punisht once all Common Offenders in it with Death were not his Gracious Answers at last to the Propositions so full of Concession that some of the Cannibals that thirsted for his Blood could Vote it a Ground for the House to proceed upon for Peace Lastly had he Vid. Jout 5. Decemb. 1648. not granted to his Inveterate Foes whose Necks were forfeited to the Gibbet the Heads of some of his best Friends till he had none left to dispose of but his own and that at the last must be brought to the Block And can such an impudent Daemon the very spawn of the Father of Lyes thus confidently now declare that obstinacy Denyal in the late King was his Ruin but his misery and misfortune has unhappily left tho for us happy could a Nation be said so under such a loss such Politicks written in his Blood that all those of such Rebels and Republicans can never undermine In the next place the State Empirick comes upon the Stage and that only to vilify our Court of Chancery which with all Persons that can but distinguish Equity from the Rigour of the Law must be had in Estimation the greatest Objection his utmost Malice can asperse it with is only That it may be Corrupted and so may the best of things whose Corruption is the worst There may be Roguery in Clerks he thinks in entering Rules and so their may be Plat. pag. 130. more Dangerous Knaves among Doctors that can prescribe a dose of Sublimate for Mercurius dulcis and such Which has been done too as one of thir own Authors tells us Bartholin in 's Centurie Hist Chancery the Grand Court of Equity Conscience moderating the common Law Vid. Crompton Jurisdiction a Villany in his Art is sure more fatal then the worst that can occur in their faculty that at the worst can but bereave you and that long first of your Estate This Ruffian in a Moment robs you of your Life and I should chuse to live a little in the World tho a Beggar than be sent out like a Rat. The Ridiculousness of his Objections can't be answer'd but with such Merry ones as I make But to let him know I can defend the Constitution of the Court in Good Earnest so far is it from Obstructing his right by the Common-Law as he Ignorantly Objects that it 's a Rule Commonly never to relieve him here when he can have his Remedy there but always in Justice and Equity renders him that right which the Rigour of the rest many times forecludes him off where the Common can't Compel a man to an agreement this will enforce it Recoveries of Legacies Performance of Wills otherwise Irrevocable and not to be Compel'd shall be obtain'd here It enforces the Husband to give the Wife Alimony and perhaps the Doctor dislikes it for that and certainly this must be a greater Solaecism For more of this Courts power practise see Totthl Cariâ—s Reports than he can suggest in contradiction to the Court that a Court of meer Equity to moderate the Rigour of the Common Law should Injure their Petition of Right or Invade the Liberty of Magna Charta But that which is more Ridiculous The Chancellor hath two Powers one absolute the other ordinary by the first he is not â—y'd as inferior Judges or limited to the Letter of the Law Vid. Stâ—â—for Praerog Cap. 20. fol. 65. and False is his Foolish fear of Injustice from such a single Judge sitting in the Judicatory and his Impudent assertion that never any Country in the World had such away of Judging For the first should we not consider the prudence and Integrity of that Honourable Person that presides in it at present whose Equitable determinations were sufficient to supersede and silence such a silly suggestion it is morally impossible there to meet with Injustice where nothing is decreed but upon a Fair and Full Examination of Witnesses and the Judges hearing what can be alleaged by Counsel on both sides All the Panick fear that Alarms him is that the Prince for such is the Malice of a Republican that nothing can be thought Wicked enough for a King may put in a Person that may Act against Right and Reason carried away by Passion and Prejudice and at best but a Tool for the State If the possibility of such vain suggestions shall prevail for an Extirpation of an Officer of Justice Co-aeval if Polidore Virg. makes the Chancellor only Coaeual with the Conqueror but mistakes in that too as well as others Mr. Dugdale shews us they were long before in 's Orig. And so my Lord Coke also in his 4 Iust not before the Conquest and still Recorded
3. fol. 14. upon the suffrages of such a senate whom all our Laws declare has it self no other being but what it owes to the Breath of that Sovereign over whom they would so Preposterously Superintend as to set a Council can they think that even the Spartan Ephori would have ever been Constituted had their Kings by as strong Presidents of the Laws of their Land been allow'd the Liberty of Ad moderandum Regum Libidinem Calvin's 2. edit Strasburg 1539. Chusing their own advisers or would Calvin himself have recommonded them and the Roman Tribunes the Demarchi the Decemviral at Athens had he been assured that their Decrees and Edicts had all along placed it in the power of their Prince to be advised by whom he pleased and this Rebellious Project we now are examining I am sure would prove a greater Scourge and curb to our own Kings than ever the Romans or Athenians had for the management of theirs we must turn about even the very Text and invert our Prayers to the Almighty when a Parliament shall come to Counsel his Counsellors and teach his Senators Wisdom when it shall be in the Subjects power to set himself at his Soveraigns Table you may swear he 'll be first served too and that with his own Carving and therefore were they not forc't to rase Rolls and Records for the making such a Reformation in the State Reason it self is sufficiently the Faction's Foe and as much on the side of those that are the Kings Friends For let any sober Person but consider whether the greatest Confusion Disorder and Disturbance in the State would not be the Consequence of this very distracted Opinion do we not already too much experiment the disquiet of a divided Kingdom to be most dangerous when but a tumultuous part of a Parliament too much Predominates this Gentleman 's Quarantia Plat. page 241. or if you please the Kingdoms four General Councils are to be named in Parliament and then what would be the result of it but that his Majesty must be managed by a standing House of Commons or at best some Committee of Lords they need not then Labour for the Triennial Act of the late King confirmed 16. Car. 1. 16. Car. 2. by the too gracious Concession of this His Councils once their own Creatures would have too much Veneration for their kind Creators to diswade their King from a speedy Summons of a Senate tho assured secured of its being sufficiently Seditious they would soon supersede as superfluous one of the very Articles of such a Counsellors * 4. Inst p. 54. Oath where he swears to keep Secret the Kings Counsel for by such a Constitution they would be obliged to make a Report from the Council-Board to some Chair-man of a Committee a better Expedient I confess than an order for ‖ Parl. 25. Car. 1. just so took upon them to search the Signet Office and that of the Secretary whereof the King as justly complain'd Vid. Keeper Coventry Speech to the Commons Sr. Stephen's bringing in the Books And indeed none of the Kings Services should be then called Secret they would be soon Printed with their Votes and hardly be favoured with some of their own Affairs of Importance to be referred for the more private Hearing to a Committee of Secrecy the good advise his Majesty might expect from such Councils might be much like those of late from his Petitioners And he again told to be the mightiest Monarch by condescending to be the most puny Prince My Lord Cook tells us Ibid. p. 57. those Councils are there best proposed for the Kingdom when so that it can't be guess'd which way the King is enclined for fear I suppose of a servile Complyance but here the knowledge of his Inclination would be the most dangerous to the King which to be sure would be opposed and only because known the good the King would receive from such Counsellors might be put in his Eyes and the Protection the Nation could receive from such a King must be but in good Wishes and are we come to deny our Soveraign at last what every Subject can Consult his own Friends But tho this bold Gentleman as arrogantly tells us that this Privy Council is no part of the Government his imagined one he must mean a Common-wealth I 'll tell him more modestly and Plat. page 232. with better Authority than a Dixit only of a Platonick Dogmatist that he might as well have told us too what indeed are such a Republicans real thoughts that the King Himself is no part of it and shew him both from Law and Reason that they have a great share in it to◠And that the Laws great Oracle tells us too who is so far from letting them have no part in the Government that he tells us they have a very great part even Cook 4. c. 2 Inst Stanford 72. F Senators sunt partes corporis Regis in the very King That they are incorporated to the King himself His true Treasurers and the most profitable Instruments of the State And without doubt this great part they had always in Publick administrations made them of old so much esteem'd that in all Rolls and Acts of State they were mention'd with so much reverence and respect certainly had they been no constitution allow'd of by the Fundamental Laws of our Land they would never have been transmitted to posterity with such veneration to their Memories and that too through every Reign and all the Records of Time let them have but the benefit and priviledge of a Common Burrough and let their President an Office as old as King John's Time and that Holl. fol. 169. Matt. Paris 205. by Letters pattents but have as fair play as one of their Port-Reevs prescription would incorporate them into the Government as well as entitle those to their Franchises 'T is an absolute Contradiction to Imagin that Rolls then the Rot. Par. 3. H. 6. n. 3. very Parliaments Acts or Opinions in Transcript should have recorded them so Honourably for their Publick Administration were they not allow'd by the people so much as to be Ministers for the Publick good and such Honour was given them too by our Ancestors such Semblance of Soveraignty to their Persons that their Houses had in some sense the self-same privilege of the very Coke 4. Inst p. 53. Inas c. 46. Kings Palace and Verge wherein if a blow was given it was punisht with a Fine the loss of a good Summ of Money as in the other of a Hand And is it not at present Treason to destroy them and can Absurdity it self imagin that the Laws which are made always by those that Govern would make such provisions for those that were no part of the Government And lastly to prove this proposition of our Republican but a Rebels Plot and a fair progress towards a Rebellion I 'll shew this presumptious projector
est Condere and * Quod principi placuit Dig. 1. 4. 1. Pleasure of the Prince only qualifies it with this Insignificant Restriction That it must not be understood of an Absolute Will and Ungovernable but such as is guided and regulated by good advice and the Rules of Equity and Reason and if this be a Warrantable Resolution and I warrant you the rankest Republican will take his Authority to be good should it in any place favour their Anarchy then it must be unavoidably concluded that where the Law is the Princes ‖ Britton that Bishop of Hereford by order of Ed. 1. pen'd a Book of Laws tells us 't is the Kings will that his jurisdiction and Judgment be above all in the Realm Will none of his People neither as aggregate or Jndividuals can be Judges of its Violation neither can it according to common Sense without the greatest Solecism and Absurdity be said by him to be violated at all for where the Custom of the Kingdom as it must be in all absolute Monarchies has plac'd the sole Legislative Power in that which is Supream There the same Will or Moral Action of the Sovereign that breaks an old Edict is nothing else but an Enacting of a new and the Common Objection that our Republicans Flourish withal against this is That then Murder and Sacrilege might be the Laws of the Land because perhaps it has been heretofore the pleasure of our own * Hen. 8. Prince But as such Observations are full of Venom and Spight so they are as much impertinent and nothing to the purpose for whether our own old English Lawyers had restrain'd the meaning Britton Bract. of the Word WILL to a WILL guided by right Reason and Judgment no Person of sober Sense but must Imagine that the very Principi placuit of the Romans was as much restrain'd to the Rules of Reason and Equity and therefore their Tiberius Caligula Nero and Domitian were as much Tyrants and by their own Authors so are term'd as Vid. Sucron In. vitas if they had been bound by the strictest municipal Laws of a mixt Monarchy and as the People themselves to the very Penal Statutes of the Land and therefore for that Reason the very same Civil Sanctions of their Imperial Law that allow such a Latitude to their boundless Prince abound too with this Restriction that still it becomes him to observe those very Laws to which he is not oblig'd Decet tamen Principem inquit Paulus Leges servare quibus ipse solutus D. 32. 1. 23. And for the spilling of Blood or Robbing of Churches and the like unnatural enormities which they say by the Soveraigns being thus absolv'd might become Lawful did not the very Directive part of some of their Municipal Laws forbid them in it the precepts of God and Nature the Unresistable Impulse of Eternal Equity and Reason to which the Mightiest Monarch must ever submit and themselves did ever own a Subjection those will always tye the hands of the most Absolute from Committing such Crimes as well as the Common Lictors do the meanests people for being by them perpetrated and Committed and 't is a great Moral Truth grounded upon as much Reason and Experience That those dissolute Princes that did Indulge themselves in the Violating the Divine Laws of God and Nature could never have been constrain'd to the Observance of our Human Inventions the Municipal Acts of any Kingdom or Country And therefore I cannot but smile to see the Ridiculous Insinuations of some of our Republicans endeavouring to maintain that by such silly suggestions which they can't defend with Sense and Reason for rather than want an Objection they 'll put us too suppose some Kings endeavouring to destroy their Subjects and alienating of their Kingdoms and then put their Question Whether the People shall not Judge and Punish them for it but in this they deal in their Argumentation against their King as some Seditious Senates of late indeavoured to Impose upon him to pass Bills by tacking two together A popular encroachment with an Asserting the Prerogative Just such another business was bandied about by that baffler of himself that pretious piece of Contradiction Will. Prin. Who tells us out of Bracton That GOD the Law and the Kings Courts are above the King where if you take all the Connexion Copulatively 't is not to be contradicted because no King but will allow his God to be above him under whom he Rules yet even there it may be observ'd that the Lower House he so much Labour'd for is not so much as mention'd So do these Sophâ—sters in the Politick's here proceed just like those Jugglers in the House they couple a suppositious piece of Premis'd Nonsense and then draw with it a pretty plausible Conclusion for what man can Imagin if he be but in his Wits that his Monarch unless he be quite out of them and Mad would destroy those over whom he is to Reign none but the Bosan in the Tempest with his Bottle of Brandy was so besotted as to think of Ruling alone and setting up for a Soveraign without so much as a single Subject so that should these peevish Ideots have their silly Supposition granted still they would be prevented from obtaining their end at which they aim for first if we must suppose all the Subjects to be destroy'd where would there be any left to judge this Author of their Destruction if they 'll suffer us only to suppose the Major part or some few certain Persons to be sacrific'd to his Fury then still that Soveraign that would destroy the most part or some certain number of his Subjects without Sense or Reason must at the same time be suppos'd to be out of his Senses and then no Law of any Land will allow the People to punish a Lunatick But if a King must be call'd a Destroyer of his People only for letting the Laws pass upon such Seditious Subjects that would destroy him which is all the Ground they can have here for branding with it their present Princes and for which these exasperated rebels really suggest it then in Gods name let the Latin * Fiat Justitia ruat Coelum Aphorism take place too Then let such Justice for ever be done upon Earth and trust the Judgments of Heaven for their falling Then let them deprecate as a late ‖ Vid. Paper of the Proceedings upon Armstrong his Outlawry Lady did the Vengance of the Almighty upon the Head of the Chief Minister of the Kings but let there be more such Hearts to administer as much Justice and the hands will hardly receive much harm for holding of the Scales And for that others silly supposition of these Seditious Simpletons of a Kings Alienating of his Kingdom * 'T is a receiv'd rule among civil Lawyers and may be well among our own That a King can't in Law alienate his Crown and that if it were
in their small Dukedom of Holstein and that consequently they retained the same sort of Election in their new acquired Government here that they left in their own at home this he does not undertake to suggest because not able to prove there having been a probable Monarchy all along Hereditary if Paternal Right was wont to descend so for that is proved by most learned Pens and these Saxons are believed to have been the relict of the race of Cimbrians that inhabited that Chersonese so called from its Inhabitants of whom Gomer the Son of Japhet was the Original Father or Prince But what ever was their Government before he allows them to have set up seven Monarchies here only can't think they agreed in one Rule of Succession because governed by different Laws which tho granted is so ridiculous an Infinuation that greater Differences at present between greater Kingdoms and Nations far more remote in Place far more different in Religion contradicts the Suggestion who for the most part now over the whole World agree in an Hereditary Succession to the Crown and the Argument would have been as strong and as apparently foolish if he design'd it for a Specimen of his folly that since France and Spain Sweeden and Denmark are govern'd by different Laws we can't imagin them to have one sort of Succession Which very Rebound of his own Pen wounds his Cause more than any direct stroak of his Adversaries for since we see those more different more distant Nations agree in one Rule 't is sure a Logical Inference a Majori that those that were less different might And for the Changes and Confusions of those Times which he urges as an Argument of their uncertain Succession that is in effect his very Alpha and Omega and his praefatory Suggestion only proved through his whole History that in times of Confusions and Rebellions Succession is uncertain and so is all Property and Common Right all meum and tuum all that the Law of God or Man can make his own But as obscure as he makes our Succession before the Romans came 't is not so dark and unintelligible but that we may gather light enough from it to have been Hereditary We won't rely on the How in his Historical reface to Stow 's Annals contends mightily for such a story citing all our antient Authors for its Authority and Cambden amongst the Modern Fable of Brute and the Catalogue of near 68 Kings that are said to have Reigned Successively here before the coming of the Romans yet allowing it an entire Fable we may draw from it this Moral at least that a Fabulous Tradition sometimes has somewhat of reality for its ground as the patching up a Centaure a Chymera with a thought results from several Objects that are simply real abstracting from the compounded Fiction And tho we might not have 68 Kings successive before the Roman Conquest yet that there were several appears and he owns and I conclude Hereditary from the common rule in all Barbarous Nations when ever discovered in which the further back we run in the History of the Old World the more we are confirmed as also the more forward we go in discovering the New But tho from the Roman Invasion he leaps presently into the Saxon Heptarchy yet we may read too there were many petty Kings that they suffered here after their Conquest it being the Roman Pride of having Kings their Subjects and why those might not still retain an Hereditary Succession I cannot understand especially since Dr. Heylin reckons up 16 Kings that succeeded after the Roman Forces had left them naked as indeed they were without a Metaphor to the incursion of the Pict the first five or six of them lineally succeeding one another from Father Vid. Heylin's Geograph Britain to Son and the rest not known to have succeeded so only because there 's nothing left us of them but their Names After the consolidating of that Heptarchy into a single Monarchy the learned Man whom I before have cited has shown this disingenuous Author unfortunately to have stumbled in the very Threshold and proved by Authentick Citation that his elected Egbert was the next of kin to the Royal Stock that all the following Succession of the Saxon and Danish Monarchs ran in the blood or was disposed of by the Will and Testament of the deceased Prince The renowned City of London as he calls her is obliged to him for his Civilities and I shall thank him too for his Complement in letting her know that her Approbation had heretofore no small Influence on the Succession And for the securing the Crown on the right head 't is recorded to their Glory and may that glorious act of their Ancestors be still perpetuated in our lasting Annals and imitated too by the Posterity of her present Inhabitants who then adhered to King Edmond their Lineal and Lawful Prince and that because they knew he was so A Prince Worthy of a better time and who had he found more faithful and but better Subjects might have been in Condition to have made it so His Citizens then clave to him when his very Clergy forsook him but their Religion in those days was too little to expect their Loyalty much whereas ours now as the best Argument of their being truly Religious still show themselves as eminently Loyal The Citizens then for I shall insist upon it for their Encouragement now would not concur with Canute's Election by the Priests and Nobility And why Vid. Daniel because a perfect Exclusion of the right Heir and the next Lawful Son and Successor to their late King And the Fiction that the Factious Author tells us of a Child chosen in the Womb proves but the Story the Fable of a Monk for which he might as well have cited their Legends M Westminster Paris nor any other Authentick Historians ancient enough so much as mention it and our modern Baker says expresly upon Ethelred's Death his third Son Edmund call'd Iron-Side but the Eldest living at his Fathers Death succeeded and was Crowned at Kingston upon Thames That a great part of the Nobility favoured the Dane because they feared him but the Londoners stood firm to Edmund and were the Authors of his Election and upon his very using of the word here I can't but observe what the worthy Dr. has sufficiently proved too how common among Historians that word Election is used only for a Confirmation or acknowledgment of the Right and how against Reason he still misapplies it to Choice why did he not undertake to prove from Baker too that this Prince was elected by the Londoners only because he says they were the cause of his Election which perhaps he would have done but that he found he must have made that Author contradict himself as I believe he has done the rest who tells us just before he was Crown'd at Kingston as the eldest living at his Fathers Death And the Interest
laboured to prevent an Vsurpation and provided for the right Heir who succeeded in his paternal Inheritance before arrived even to the Romans civil age of Puberty 14. And the malicious Perverter might as well say as great a stress as you 'll find afterwards he truly does upon Richard the thirds Butchery and Usurpation the breaking of the Laws of God and Man for a Crown All the difference is Here were only two Nephews for a while debarred there Butchered and shall such bloody Miscreants pass upon the World for credible Authors who for robbing of a Divine-right can cite you Murder and for the breaking of our Humane Laws the blackest Crime in the Declogue And since this Antimonarchical Zealot has shown himself thus elaborately studious to rake every musty Record of those Reigns for a Rebellious remark give me leave only from the same times to make this last and Loyal Observation where Providence seemed to shew it self remarkably concerned for its crowned Head and that in the subsequent Judgment upon the Proto-Martyrdom of the Saxon Edward as well as what we suffered since for our Martyr'd Charles tho there 't was only for anticipating a right by blood but ours a bloody Usurpation of those that had no right at all Ethelred's passage to his Reign was but before his time and the Almighty's yet the Government suffered for it as many Pangs till it quite miscarried within fifty years the new Monarchy fell quite asunder rent and torn by two several Conquests He himself meets with the Defection of all his Nobility forc't to raise his Danegelt and his Subjects into Rebellion by it prepared his Navies only to be shattered with a tempest or consumed with Fire both Elements and Heaven it self seemed to conspire But because he came to the Kingdom by ill means arose Civil Wars p. 86. to make him Miserable Famine and Mortality were the dismal attendants of his Wars the Depredations of Invaders would not allow peace the Reign that begun in a Murder ended in a Massacre The incensed Danes soon invade him the perjured Edric falsely forsakes him he languishes a long time as well he might under Guilt and Misfortune and to put the only period to his days Miseries and Kingdom together Vid. Daniel p. 13. Dies You see how little success this Author met with among the Saxons Sovereigns for altering Succession how much of Imposture his Reader may there meet with in him and you shall as soon see he deals as disingeniously with the Danes And here thorough his double diligence this Parliament Historiographer has not omitted an Argument for his purpose much of the same strength as those that he has used viz. That Knute was no kin to Edmund or Ethelred And the Dane no way related to the Line of the Saxon that is the poor conquered England was not Cosin German to Denmark the Conqueror and yet the Title of the latter was preferred and their King acknowledged ours I can't conceive what necessity of Relation an Invader needs to the poor Prince he Invades and whether that be not a pretty sort of an Argument for altering Succession to say the Kingdom was Conquered Swayn had before cut out a fine Title for his Son with the Sword The North West and some of the South part of England had submitted frightned with his revengeful Cruelties which their own had provoked Canute himself after his Fathers Death lands as soon at Sandwich with a Navy of two hundred gave our English a great overthrow possest himself of what Swayn had before harassed the West and because the Nobility favoured only whom they feared and set him up in Competition for the Crown whom they could not keep down from being a Competitor ergo therefore the Succession must not run in the right Line and why because here it did not if more absur'd Inferences can be drawn from matter of Fact or greater Solecisms from Historical Observation I 'le forfeit all the little Right I have to Reason and with an Implicit Faith believe the Legend for a Bible and his History for the Revelations But yet this Prince though by Conquest and Composition he got half the Kingdom and upon Edmunds Death the whole foresaw what Power the pleas of Right and Succession might have for animating an Interest in the defence of the poor injured Heirs and therefore took all the ways to ingratiate himself with his wavering People his young and unexperienced Subjects and all manner of means for preventing the Lawful Heirs for attempting for their Right sticking at neither Murder Malice and Treachery and in order to the first he made a shew of governing with more Justice then he conquered and took mildness for the best means of his Establishment and to let the Nation know he designed only to subdue them sends away his Mercenaries ships away his Navy and for a popular Specimen of an Heroick Kindness to the memory of the Saxons he succeeded as a Satisfaction to their injured Dust prefers Edricks perjured Head to the highest place on the City Gate and with that Expedient reconciled himself at once to his own promise deserved Justice and the Peoples favour and yet for securing himself from any danger from the Lawful Heirs so politickly Cruel that all the Royal Blood felt of his Injustice sent the two Sons of his late Co-partner in the Kingdom to be murdered abroad and got his Brother to be butchered at home such an experienced truth is it that Powers usurpt Successions altered like the blackest Villanies can only be Justifyed and defended by committing more At his Death 't is true he disposed of his Crowns by Testamentary Bequest and well he might when there was so little known for Kingdoms of Feudatory Law and private Estates then far from being entailed yet in that very Legacy you can observe what Power the Consideration had with him of Right and Blood for he leaves his own Paternal Dominions Norway to his Eldest son Swayn and to his Youngest Hardicanute his conquered England considering his Mothers Blood which was Emma Wife to the late King Ethelred might as indeed it did give him some precedency to his middle Brother Harold the one having somewhat of Saxon in him the other all Dane especially if he was as some say Illegitimate tho' Baker calls him an Elder Brother by a former Wife so that upon the whole the Contest that rose about the Succession was but whether he had Right and when at last Harald was preferred 't was upon the Resolution of his being Legitimate so that here his own Inference contradicts the end for which 't was brought and instead of altering the discent shows they industriously contended to keep it in the right Channel and allowing they were mistaken in their Opinions of his Birth the Lords to make amends for their error streight on his Death fetch home Hardicanute who dying without Issue the Right of Blood prevailed again and the Saxon entred in Edward the
such Perverters making it a Parliamentary choice But if any thing could be condemned Stow says the King expresly caused him to be Crowned by the Bishop of York without mentioning any other p. 132. And Baker says the same p. 55. in this unhappy Solicitation for his Sons security to succeed 't was only in making him a King before he came to be a Successor by defrauding himself upon a sollicitous distrust of part of that Divine Right when he was by God entrusted with the whole and making his Son to Anticipate that by his forwardness for which he should have waited the Almighty's leisure The Nature of Monarchy being inconsistent with a Duum-Virate units may be as well divided And the very Etymon of the Word contends for the sole Soveraignty it expresses And the very sad effects of this contradictory Nec Regna socium ferre possunt nectedae sciunt Coronation were the best Evidence of its inconsistency and verifies the Latin Aphorism of the Tragedian that the Crown cannot admit of a shareer or competitor no more than the Bed the making himself but half King was like to have lost him the whole Kingdom Incongruum Regem quem-libet esse Dominationem debitam in Regno non habere Mat. pvit H. 2. and almost made him none at all they soon animated the young Monarch against his Old Father and let him know that 't was absurd for any one to be called a King and to have nothing of Government that is essential to it in the Kingdom Daniel calls it the making the Common-wealth a Monster with two Heads and what then must it be with many but withal tells us 't was only the effect of jealousie that this King feared from his Mothers Example and that some of his false Subjects might also break all Oaths of Fealty to his Son as well as this perjur'd Author has that of his Allegiance to his Sovereign and I believe this alone made this King so carefully Praecipitous as to prevent the Expiration of his Reign with an Anticipation of the Grave and a Resignation of his Rule with a POLITICAL DEATH for this Crown'd Son was soon by LEWIS of France embolden'd to that insolency from having the half that in plain Terms he demanded the whole and what the too bountiful Father had no Reason to grant by fair means the ungrateful Son resolves to obtain by foul sides with the King of France and many of the divided Kingdom with Him and are all in Arms ready for Ruin and Destruction neither did they lie down their Swords till it ended as all Alterations in a Monarchy in BLOOD and the Coparcenary King shortly after his Life but a little before reconciled to his too provident Father I am sure this shows even the Participation of the Royal Power dangerous tho by those that had Right to Succession and if such an Alteration in the Government can prove so fatal much more then an altering the Succession it self and if a Crown can't like a common Conveyance with safety be made over in trust I dare say 't will be less secure to cut off entail The next Reign that we have Reason to reply upon is that of Richard the First and with that his irrational Inferences have dealt as unreasonably for he there by his own Confession has no other Authority for his Election as his own words R. de Daeto he quotes tho it should be de Diceto who oficiated at his Coronation Haereditario jure promovendus are his words before have it but the words of his Historian and yet this very Historian whom he there most impudently traduces and abuses acknowledges his Hereditary Right to the Crown by which he was to be promoted before ever he tells you of the solemn Election of the People which beyond contradiction confirms what the Worthy Dr. B. has as significantly suggested that the common acceptation of Election amongst ancient Authors imply'd nothing less than what our factious insinuators apply it to and that they meant nothing else but Confirmation or Acknowledgment for first would such a Learned Authority as he cites only labour under a learned Contradiction and tell you such an one was promoted for his Hereditary Right and then in the very subsequent words declare it was by solemn Election Certainly such Immortal Authors could never wage with Sense and Reason a Mortal War and he himself is so favourable to their pious Memory as to omit all the seeming Contradiction because not reconcileable to his prejudic'd Interpretation and when Historians tell you of any thing of Election which he would have popular be sure he omits what ever they say of Hereditary Succession before so has he done here so in most of the Citations elsewhere And next also he tells us that his Father had gotten the Succession confirm'd to him in his Life Of which many of our modern Historians are totally silent and afterwards that he was again Elected by the People of which in his sense none truly speak nether is it reconcileable how they shou'd twice solemnly choose him for their King when even in Poland it self once will serve but besides before his Solemn Coronation or as he wou'd have it his popular Election immediately after his Fathers Funeral without doubt upon the consideration Watson and Clarks Case 1 Jacobi of his Hereditary Right he exercised as he might well do and as has been since resolv'd any King of ours may an absolute Power of a King before this Vid. Daniel exigit castella Thesauros patrissuiquos habebat Solemn Ceremony of Coronation for presently he seizes upon his Fathers Treasure in France Imprisons Fetters Manacles the late Kings Treasurer to extort the uttermost penny I think Says Paris and has not one word of his Election but only Coronation such a severe sort of absoluteness as they wou'd not now allow our Crowned King He is there girt by the Arch-Bishop with a Sword takes fealty both of Clergy and Lay makes a Truce with the King of France and all this before ever he came into England to be Crown'd or Elected And shou'd we yield to this perverse Imposture the signification of his word for which he has so long labour'd yet all this while we find his very People more willing to Elect him that had an Hereditary Right than a spurious Invader that had none at at all and did actually Confirm him in his Succession unless the more powerful Usurper terrifi'd them from their Loyal Intentions and truly the mistaken Gentleman might have as well prov'd that he was the third time Elected too when after his Imprisonment that he suffer'd from Henry the Sixth the German Emperor after he came home and had held a Parliament at Nottingham he was again recognis'd for their King and Crown'd at Winchester But what can be better Evidence of the precedency that was allow'd to the nearest of blood in a Lineal Descent then Constituit
â—rthurum Haeredem â—am legiâ—imum si â—ine haerede moreretur Paris in vit R. this Princes Care he took in appointing his Nephew Arthur to Succeed him tho he had a Brother of his own to whom he had shown a liberal largess of his Love when he began to Reign in bestowing on him no less than half a dozen Earldoms a good part of his Kingdom Certainly this Earl John was nearer to him in Blood and Affection and then what cou'd move him to this Testamentary Disposition but the more nearness of the other to the Kingdom and the Crown But in spight of all Adoption and Right JOHN as great an Usurper as any laid hold of the Scepter and held it too only as some of our Tenures in Law by primer occupancy he had his Brothers Army in the field and that was then enough to have made a King of a Cromwel an Hewson a Brewer or a Cobler Vid. Dan. p. 108. Baker Stow say Arthur actually did homage to France as King of England powerful Arms that silence any Law But still the Nobility were for maintaining the Right of Succession in Arthur and as they call'd it the usual Custom of Inheritance most of his Provinces in France stood firm to him and so did the King of it and had Fortune favor'd him upon whom for the most part it frowns the Justest pretender he had not been made a Prisoner to his Uncle to whom he was a King and been murder'd by him after the Siege of Mirabel But the Barons rebellious Insurrection soon aveng'd the Barbarous Butchery and but bloody consequences here too attended the Debar'd Right He is forsaken of all his People and the French Kings Son a perfect Forreigner invited in for a King and his end at the last as unnatural as the death he gave to his Nephew And here upon the Coronation of this intruding King John the factious Historian rehearses the Clause of Hubert the Bishop of Canterbury's Speech that declar'd the right to the Crown to consist only in the Election of the People but disingenuously omits the very reason of the self same Prelate who when he was pincht with the Interrogatory why he would preach up such pernicious Principles own'd it more a Design of Policy than the Sense of his Soul But to give him a perfect Vid. Paris Edit Lon. vita John Rowland for his Oliver he will find in the Life of Richard the Second a better Bishop making of a more Divine Speech and asserting the Right of Succession more strenuously than ever this designing Metropolitan was able to confute But that worthy Prelates Doctrine did no way countenance our Authors seditious Observations and so directly different from his Huberts Vid. Baker Trussel vita Rich. II. Bishop Carlisle's Speech Harangue that he might well pass it by without reading and which must certainly have baffl'd him into Blushes to have read Henry the Third a Prince too young to know his Right much less to be able himself to take Possession of it was presently upon his Fathers Death Crown'd King Certainly upon the Consideration of his Hereditary Right or the Testamentary Donation of his Father whom Paris says he appointed M. Paris vit Joha ad finem primogenitum suum regni constituens Haeredem his Heir as his First-born made the Kingdom swear Fidelity to him sent his Mandatory Letter under the Authority of his Great-Seal to the Sheriff's of the Counties to the Keepers of his Castles that they shou'd all be intent upon the Business and upon his death they show'd themselves as ready to perform it and what can the most factious Regnumque Angliae illi jurare fecit Literas cum sigillo suo munitas advice-comites castellanos direxit ut singuli essent intendentes idem M. P. princip vit Hen. 3. sic Defuncto Johanne convenerunt ut Henricum exaltarent Pen make more of this than an Acknowledgment of Hereditary Right especially when the same Author in the beginning of the young Kings Reign says they only came together to Exalt him to the Throne of his Father and not one word of their Suffrages or Election therefore what could not be proved from matter of Fact must be suggested with an Innuendo and because the good Earl Marshal in a perswasive Speech exhorted them to adhere to their lawful Sovereign it imply'd the Consent of the People requir'd if such an Assent shall make the Kingdom Elective 't will be hard to proveany Hereditary for all people that do not actually Rebel and Oppose must in that sense be said to Consent and Elect and when ever our Kings are Crown'd 't is so far with the Consent of the people that they do not interrupt the Coronation But can he prove in any of his pretended Elections much less here that ever in England they balloted for the Crown or drew Lots for the Kingdom that they had ever any certain number of Electors as in Germany or carried it by Majority of suffrages as in Poland ' tho I believe some of them would make no more of his Majesty than a Bourrough Representative or a County Knight and Scarce allow him the Freedom of a Pole But with what face can he urge it Stow says only he was Crown'd by Common consent p. 175. here when the whole drift of Pembrokes Oration was only to satisfy them the Succession belong'd to the Son and that the French Usurper Lewis would be the ruin of the Realm which Speech was so effectual too that several of the Principal of the Barons notwithstanding that open hatred to his Father in spight of Obligation of an Oath to Lewis they still thought their Loyalty and Allegiance more obliging and revolt from the French-man till all at last deserted of all he abjures his claim and the Kingdom together After he had been first routed by Land at Lincoln by Pembroke the Protector and his fresh supplys at Sea near Dover by Hubert the Governour And the bold Speech of that stout Vid Matt. Paris who told him that if his Master was dead he had left Sons and Daughters alive Souldiers to this powerful Prince when he demanded Dover on the Death of King John was a better Evidence what sense the people had of a Lawful Succession than he from the Marshals can evince that he succeeded by Election and against the Laws of Descent and all that he can pertinently draw from the Protectors Oration is that an Infant King did not speak for himself But if ought be a blot in his Succession 't is what this praejudiced Historian I am sure does not care to Hit and that is the weakness of his Fathers Title that forc't him to strenghten his Sons with a Donation And Elenor the Sister of his Cousen Arthur who had a Stronger right did not dye in five and twenty years after he Paris 1241. In clausurâ Diuturna Carceris sub arcta Custodiae
that was his least Relyance for as little 1. H. 4. 12. 52. Vid. Dr. B. p. 25. as he makes of his claim from Henry the Third it is apparent from some Rolls of Parliament that he challenged the Realm upon that account and the Lords were interrogated what they thought of that claim upon which without delay they consented he should Reign and as another Evidence of his Right to Rule shewed them the Seal of King Richard as a Signification of his Will that he should succeed him but that which for ought I see he lay his greatest weight upon was but what all Vsurpers must most relie on the Sword and he himself assures them just after the Sermon was ended at the time they consented to be his Subjects that he would take no advantage against any Man's Estate as coming in by Conquest and Conquest is one of the first claims he puts in at his Coronation and as Haward Haward p. 98. Baker p. 15 is relates it in his Life not the least mention of his being elected is there mingled with his Claim But neither did the success of a prosperous Wickedness Countenance this Usurpation for he was soon made sensible that a Crown seldom sits easie on that Head where it has so little Right to sit and indeed before it could be well setled his Lords conspired against him at Westminster set up Maudlin the Counterfeit send to the King of France for assistance Glendour stirrs up the Welsh to rebel the Nobility fell from him drew up the following Articles against himself viz. for having Articl'd himself against his Sovereign for having falsified his Oath in medling with the Kingdom and the Crown for taking Arms against his King Imprisoning Murdering Him that he unjustly kept the Crown from the Earl of March to whom of Right it belonged and vowed the Restoration of Him and His Destruction and our Author now shall know these too are Articles Vid. Baker 1â—1 as well deserving to be read and one thing more that deserves as much Observation that this his good Peoples Election was the prime Principal Cause of losing of Millions of Lives and an Notwithstanding all these claims Speed says he at his Death owned he had no Right to the Crown Speed Lib. 9. Chap. 14. Philip De. Comines which wrote then says to his Remembrance 80. of Blood Royal dy'd If they long for the draught of Slaughter and Blood that followed this their Election of the Line of Lancaster then look upon the lamentable List at the end of Trussel Ocean of Blood here entred that Line of Lancaster that had almost left the Nation Childless the Nobility and Gentry that escap'd the Sword were still by the prevailing Party chopt off or gibbited and in the space of about thirty year and somewhat upwards they dreined more Blood in England then e're was spent in the Conquest of France or would have been spilt had it been again attempted and that too never have been lost by their Henry the Sixth had it not been for an altered Succession and an injured Heir and the Bloody Consequences of a debarr'd Right And now at last he is forc't to allow an instance of a Prince that succeeded without the least shadow of Election and that in Henry the Fifth to whom himself owns they swore Allegiance without staying for his being declared we are obliged to him for this fair Concession but this Kindness is only because he finds it as clear as a Postulatum in the Mathematicks beyond his own Impudence to contradict but however he must malitiously observe that it was a thing strange and without President and why so because his Polidore tells him such an extraordinary Kindness was never shown to any King before 't is strange that his Italian should understand more of our own Government than all our own English Authors 't is no wonder sure if he that was a Stranger to our Affairs should Write as strangely of it and make our Mighty Monarchs of Britain no more then some petty Prince of his own Italy and as Elective as their Duke of Venice But this perverse Gentleman shall know it was not without President and that by several Instances And first Richard the First presently on his Fathers Death without staying for their suffrages seised on his Father's Treasure was girt with the Sword of the Dutchy of Normandy took fealty both of Clergy and Lay and exercised all the Authority that Sovereign power cou'd allow before he came to be recogniz'd by their Suffrages or to his Coronation Vide Daniel 2. Hoveden's Account that he gives of King John's coming to the Crown which as some Writers say is the best extant says they swore Fealty to him when he was out of England without mentioning any thing of preceding Election and he had his better Title his Brothers Army then in the field by which he cou'd have made himself soon their King had they not been so ready to receive him 3. Upon the Death of Henry the 3d. the States Assembled at the New-Temple and proclaimed his Son Edward King when they knew not whether he was living or dead swear Daniel Fealty to him and cause a New-Seal to be made Here sure are some presidents of Allegiance before their Election unless he 'll make Declaring or Proclaiming to be so and then in Gods Name in that sense let them as he contends for be Elected for I think all will allow they are proclaim'd But suppose on the death of a Predecessor there was no convention of any of the Nobility Vid 4 part In Stit. 46. and Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 7. or Commonalty for Parliaments they then can have no Existence when the Breath is gone that gave them Being as all other Communitys are de facto dissolv'd If I say there were none met to Declare or Proclaim his Successor must the common Maxim be contradicted and the King dye too for want of their Popular Breath to give him Life or do our Laws admit that this interval between his Predecessors expiration and the proclaiming or crowning his Successor shall be call'd an Interregnum they know the Constitutions of our Government admit no more of this than an Exclusion They know that immediately by Descent King James was declar'd to be completely and absolutely King and that by all the Judges 1 Jacobi Watson Clark Vid also Calvins Case Cokes Rept part 7. of the Kingdom I know the Kings Successor is always immediately proclaim'd upon his death and that perhaps is more for the proceedings of judicial Processes and that Writs may presently run in his name But were such a Proclamation obstructed I am satisfi'd he commenc'd an absolute King upon the very Minute of his Predecessors Expiration and if the Law Maxim won't allow an Haeres viventis there can be no Heir at all if he begin not to be so presently upon his Predecessors Death and for an Evidence of Fact as
History the best account of that King and he tells us he had no less then three Titles to the Crown whatever that Italian States-man Commines could conceive to the contrary first his Title in right of the Lady Elizabeth whom he was resolv'd to marry secondly that of the Line of Lancasters long disputed both by Plea and Arms thirdly the Conquest by his own But the Learned Historian observes the first was look't on the fairest and Yorks line been always lik't as the best Plea in the Crowns descent and for Confirmation of it the Learned Lord tells us that this Henry knew the Title of Lancaster Condemn'd by Act of Parliament Bacon Hist H. 7. p. 3. Ibid. page 12. and prejudic'd in the Common opinion of the Realm and that the root of all the Mischiefs that befel him was the discountenancing of the house of York whom the General body of the Kingdom still affected and whatever stress and reliance this Prince might place in the PARLIAMENT's power this able states-man observes there is still a great deal of difference 'twixt a King that holds by civil Act of State and him that holds Originally by the Law of NATVRE and DISCENT of BLOOD so that we have here a Person vers'd in our own Laws an excellent and allowed Scholar by the whole World and not only Lauds and Bishops as our bigotted Author would have it allowing a Divine right by the Laws of Nature and who I am sure was so good a Naturalist as best understood her Laws and that Natural discent by blood to be much more preferable than any other Human title given by such Inferiour powers of a Parliament whom the most zealou's adorerssure won't acknowledg more Omnipotent then the God of Nature himself I shall observe another Historical Instance that a true lineal discent was then taken for the best title and even in those times had the greatest Influence which was the Lord Stanley's Case who tho the very Person that plac'd the Crown on this Princes head yet suffer'd the loss of Vid Bacon Hist his own only for saying somewhat that savoured of his kindness to the Succession and that if he was sure the Children of Edward were alive he would not â—ear Arms against them so mightily did the sense of the right blood prevail with him that he sacrified all his own for it and rather than recant what he so well resolv'd seem'd no way sollicitous for his Life But that which this Historian might have observ'd too in this Reign as a discouragement to the designs of some of their popular Patriots then afoot when he pen'd this his presumptuous piece was the ill success that two several impostures met with in their pretensions to a Crown to which they were not born no great Inducement certainly for any one to be persuaded to personate the Royal Heir to set up for a Lambert or a Perkin only for their misfortune and fate Lastly I shall conclude my remarks upon this Kings Reign with an Animadversion upon a Paragraph or two that conclude his piece very pertinent to this place since it relates to the times of which we treat and that is the resolution of the Judges upon the Case of this their King that the Descent of the Crown purged all his defects and attainder This their opinion he refutes Brief Hist p. 17. as Frivolous Extrajudicial and here Impertinent but I hope to show this Point a most material one the Resolution to be a good Judgment and their reply much to the present purpose First sure it was a matter and that of a high Nature to know how he was qualify'd to sit in the House that was to preside in it as the head And tho he might in some sense be said to have won the Crown with Arms yet he knew it would wear much Better sit much Easier if setled and establish't according to Law and tho a Conquerer that has the Sword in his hand can soon capacitate himself to sway the Scepter yet he 'l soon find the most regular Proceedings tend most to the Establishment of his Reign this made Henry the Seventh who had a Triple Plea for the Crown and that one by discent from the Lancasters consult his Oracles of the Law how far an Attainder past in the Reign of the Yorks would still taint his Blood and make it less Inheritable Secondly their Resolution that all preceding defects were purg'd in the discent was a Judgment both equitable and reasonable for 't was sure but equal that an Heir to whom an Inheritance and that of a Crown was allowed to discend should be qualify'd to take too for if he was a King no Bill of Attainder could touch him that was past too when he was none And if he was no King Vid Dyer H. 7. f. 59. The King is the head of the Parliament Lords and Commons but Members So no more Parliament without a King than a body without a head It is no Stat. if a King assent not to it 12. H. 7. 20. all the concurrence of the Lords and Commons cou'd never have made him an Act for his being so there being no Royal Authority to pass it into Law and nothing by the very constitution of our Government can be made a Law without so that such a resolution certainly was highly reasonable and unavoidable that that should purge its own defects which no power had perfection anough to purge wou'd he have a King pass an Act with his two Houses for the reversal of his own Attainder or the two Houses reverse the Attainder of their King If the first the allowing him to pass such an Act supersedes the end for which it should be past and makes him de Facto capable whom they would capacitate if he allows the Latter then he must an Interregnum too extinguish that Monarchy for a while of which the very Maxim says the Monarch can't dye and place that Supream power in the People which all our Fundamental Laws have put in the King Thirdly this Resolution is very pertinent to the present purpose to which 't is commonly now apply'd and that is the Bill of Exclusion But his passion and prejudice would not permit him to Examin the little difference there is between them For certainly that ability that can discharge any attainder is as efficacious for the voiding and nulling any Bill that shall hinder the descent for a Bill of Exclusion would have been but a Bill or an Act of the House for disabling the next Heir And an Attainder can do the same and is as much the Houses Act and to distinguish that in an Exclusion the Discent it self is prevented by a Law makes just no difference for whoever is Attainted has his Discent prevented by a Law too and that antecedently also before the Descent can come to purge him so that they only differ in this formal sort of Insignificancy In an Exclusion the Discents prevention would be
the sole Subject of the Bill in an Attainder it is by Consequence and Common Law prevented and so the disability being but the same in both the defects by the same means may and must be purged The president the Judges cite to justify 1. H. 7. f. 4. B. Town dit que le Roy H. 6. en son readeptiondel reign tant son Parlia il fuit atteint ne fuit Reverse Al auter Justice dise que il ne fuit atteint mes disable de son Crown c. dise que eo facto que ill prist sur luy le Royal dignity que tout il fuit Void this their Opinion is not only applicable to their Case for which 't was cited but much more so to the very project of Exclusion which I 'll prove too from this Sophisters own reasoning It is the Case of Henry the Sixth who by Act of Parliament was Disabl'd to hold the Crown which was as particular an Act for the depriving him of his presum'd right as this their Excluding Bill would have been of an unquestionable one Town one of the Justices that debated and argued this point vouch't this H. 6. Case as an Attainder but was Corrected by the rest and told that he was not attainted but Disabled to hold the Crown but even that that was void assoon as he came again to wear it and seem to conclude that then à fortiori that an Attaindere would be purg'd away by the Descent and sure if this was then Law and that even for the Line of Lancaster who had Defects of Title to be purg'd besides of tainted blood 'T is strange to me why a York now and such an one too in whom both those so long disputed Titles Terminate and Concenter should be Disabl'd for ever by that Expedient which was resolv'd unable to prevent the Succession so long agon For Argument that an Attainder hinders the Crowns Discent has this presumptious Interpreter of the Law brought the most impertinent piece of Application that the defect of sense could suggest and so has as little reason as Truth to tell us that this Judges Resolution Brief Hist page 7. on Attainder is not to the present purpose pertinent for that a discent is insufficient to purge attainted Blood he cites the Sense of the King of France and the Learned advice that was given him to send his Son Lewis Because King John's Blood was corrupted but he might as well have told us because John is said to make over his Kingdom to the Moor we are all now Subjects to the King of Morocco the true reason of the French mans sending of his Son is what will at any time incapacitate the Crowns Discent and that is the Rebellion of the Subjects and yet those very Barons that Rebell'd never insisted on his corruption of Blood never made it so much as a Plea for their Rebellious Insurrection nay themselves thought him so far from being disabl'd by it that they prefer'd him even to the very right Blood which was incorrupted in his Nephew Arthur but allowing it then Law this resolution that such Corruption is purg'd was made long since and must now be as Legal tho the Contrary before had been never so much Law so that here he has only taken the pains to be impertinent and that too for the telling of a Lye But as his Villanous heart had falsely forg'd before that the Learned in King John's time invited Lewis over only because they thought his Attainder had incapacitated him to take the Crown when all the while they made nothing but their Magna Charta and their priviledges the pretence for their Rebellion and would have been certainly glad of such a suggestion when they were so well Resolv'd to Rebel tho I look upon this Inviting in of the French-man rather as a Retribution of a Remarkable Providence that retaliated on his head the same sufferance from his Rebel Subjects which his Soveraign and own Father had suffered from himself as Rebellious a Son who sided against Henry the Second with Philip of France the Successor of a Lewis as these did with a Lewis a Philips Successor With the same falsehood and forgery would he have the world believe that the Line of Lancaster was so long approv'd only because that of Yorks was Attainted which when purg'd in Parliament he says they then presently forsook the Lancastrian But if he pleases to Consult my Lord Bacon he 'l find that Learned Historian History H. 7 tell him another tale and that the Lancaster Line was always the less esteem'd by the people and how the Parliament could purge the Duke of York only by declaring him Heir Apparent I cannot apprehend for whatever can be warrantably past by a Parliament to warrant Obedience must be what is past into an Act too unless one of their Order'd and Resolv'd shall resolve it self into a Law for such a Statute must tho it were for the declaring an Heir Apparent to the Crown have the Royal Sanction of some Lawful King which could never be Consistent here with this their most inconsistent Declaration for the granting the Duke of York to be their Heir Apparent in the same Breath pronounc'd Henry the Sixth an Usurper and the very words that declar'd York an Apparent Heir made him de facto their Lawful King for they must either allow that he was the Crowns Heir and then that had devolv'd to him long before by Blood and Inheritance from Lionel Duke of Clarence Elder Brother to John of Gaunt from whom the Lancasters claimed or else they declared their Lineal Lawful King an Intruaers Vsurpers Heir it is an unavoidable Dilemma if the first then an acknowledgment of an irreparable wrong done to their Lineal Soveraign that had an unquestionable right if the Latter then most absur'd and contradictory in making him an Heir to the Crown from that Henry that himself never had the least Title to the wearing it From whence I conclude that any such supposed Act and it must be allowed that if not an Act that then it signified nothing too that purged Richard Duke of York from his Attainder could never have the Royal Assent unless most absurdly from one that was no King for either it must be past by Henry the sixth and then the thing he past un-King'd him or else by the Duke the declar'd Heir and then but a suppos'd Subject in the very Declaration or rather a Lawful and allow'd King in admitting him to pass a Bill and so superseded such a superfluous and Declaratory Act. Lastly even in this very point the Seditious Author supersedes the pains of any Loyal pen for the Confutation of the false Position he would prove and in the very same Paragraph baffles himself to prevent an Answer and tells us that Richard Duke of York 's Corruption was purg'd when declar'd Heir Apparent by Brief History p. 17. the Parliament and that therefore the People
Religion Ibid. page 157. can extenuate their Affections to their Prince and Lawful Soveraign And he writ it in a Time when the most malitious can't object it was to flatter a suspected Successor and when most of the Prelates themselves were so far from Rome that there was scarce an Arminian Upon the death of her Sister Doctor Heath Arch-Bishop of Canterbury presently declar'd Queen Elizabeth's right to Stow 635. the Parliament then sitting who did not put it to the Vote as our Republican would insinuate they use to do but however did as much as was usual acknowledg'd that she was right Lawful Inheritor and presently she was proclaimed in Westminster-hall and in the next vote they do declare moreover in full Assembly Lords and Commons That this their Queen Elizabeth is their Lawful 1. Eliz. c. 3. Soveraign by the Laws of God and so not only in relation to 35 H. 8. by the Statutes of the Realm and the Blood-Royal and in this open and generous Recognition they must Implicitly disclaim all power of Election or give themselves the Lye and so must our Impostor put upon them a falsehood if here his Parliamentary Choice must pass for a Truth but where matter fails them before and he can't prove his Election antecedent to the Monarchs right then as in some other places and here at present he can make the Prince tho own'd Hereditary by some subsequent Act of his own to make himself Elective and for this he cites you the 13 of this Queen the purport 13. Eliz. of which is to disable any one even after her Death to inherit the Crown that shall pretend to it during her Life But does not every one know that this was Enacted as all the fore-mention'd irregular Acts of her Father with her own seeking and desire and the bringing this for a president for a Parliamentary Power is just as pertinent as that of palliating the Treason of their late Covenant with the Title and Pretence of an Association made in her Time too with her own Consent and for the same purpose that this Act was past both being contriv'd in opposition to the pretences of the Queen of Scots and must the only thing that has Blacken'd her clear Integrity with Injustice and Blemish't her Virgin Innocency with Blood be brought upon the Stage for an Imitation to our State and because the Grand-mother suffer'd with a Bill of EXCLVSION and an AXE and the Father with the same Fate must the Son too that has experienc'd exile dangers and all but death from this power of Parliament Succeed only in their Misfortune and his Blood be made Hereditary only in being Spilt All that he says of King James is but 1. Jacob. what makes against him and what he might have said of all the rest that they made a Recognition of his right upon his coming to the Crown and truly such an one as must silenc'd all such Historians for they acknowledg him Lineal Lawful Liege Lord by the Laws of God and Man this may suffice for my sense of his History and all honest hearts will concur with my Sentiments his subsequent observations are but the same with the Principles of his ASSOCIATES that follow where I shall reflect upon them together as they are combin'd And here only give him an omitted Instance as pertinent as the Presidents he has propos'd to bring down his Narrative to the Times Charles the first notwithstanding his proximity of Blood his possession of the Crown and his pretended right from God yet the Parliament imprison'd him MVRDERED him and put the Power in the People And now what can any Rational Soul See all the 3 Votes in their Journal Book living infer even from this Authors own Observations but that those Parliaments which he brings us here for Presidents both for disallowing the Discent of the Crown to purge the Defects of the Prince upon whom it descends as also those that concern'd themselves in altering the Lineal Discent it self are so far from warranting the same Practises and proceedings that they stand upon Record are Chronicl'd in History register'd in their own Journals declar'd by Special Coke Ch-Treason 2d Inst resolved by all the Judges of the Land the deposers were all Traytors Acts REBELS and TRAYTORS and then no wonder if the poor People are encourag'd to Rebel when the very Presidents of TREASON shall be publish't as a Parliamentary Practise the deluded filly Souls don't so soon consider that if every Seditious Senate's determination shall decide too the Descent of the Crown that this consequence which even themselves may blush to own must as inevitably follow that from the Vnion of the Seven under Egbert to our present Soveraign the first Born Heir to our Three Vnited Kingdoms there never was or could ever be a REBELLION or ever one USURPER in the whole Catalogue of Kings Henry of Bullingbrook by this unreasonable sort of supposition had as much right to the Crown as that Unfortunate Richard from whom it was rent and torn Edward the Third but a Son Intitl'd to the wearing it before his Father had done with it himself and that Butcher of his Brothers Babes and the Monster of Men as Lawful a King as his Nephew that he Murder'd That Arch-Rebel that of late mounted the Throne Cromwel himself as much right to sit there as a Charles the best of Monarchs they Martyr'd all these were by Parliament acknowledg'd for their Lawful 1. Ed. 3d. 1. Hen. 4. 1. Rich. 3. Soveraigns against the very Fundamental Laws of all the Land Laws that even with the Allowance of one their late most Laborious most popular and pillor'd Advocate for this Power of Parliament Pryn himself have still plac't Prynn's power of Parliament fol. 107. the Discent of the Crown in the right Heirs at Common Law and who himself Confesses that Acts of Parliament have translated it from them to others who had no good Title and then certainly such a translation at best can be but bad and Evidences that there is somewhat else requir'd besides their Power to the making of a King so powerful and prevalent are the Dictates of Truth and reason that they force their Confessions sometimes from the very Mouths of those that Labour to give them the Lye drop from them unawares and steal from their unadvised Lips Lastly 'T is most prodigiously Strange that such Seditious Sycophants as fawn upon this Parliamentary Power for altering the Succession and asserting of an absolute wrong yet are such unreasonable Souls as not to Consider the several Acts of the self-same Powers that have declar'd it unalterable and maintain'd the Monarchs Vnquestionable right Edward the 4th's first Parliament they themselves 1. Edw. 4. know declar'd those that came to the Crown by the Common Consent of the People to be but Vsurpers Kings only de Facto which implys ' its contrary to be just and that some de
Secondly I 'll shew that this their confounded principle of perfect Confusion is not only against the Fundamental Law of the Land but against the sense of every Law that ever was made in it Every preamble of an Act and that of every Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty It is no Stat. if the King assent not 12. H. 7. 20. H. 8. by and with the CONSENT of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in the present Parliament Assembled And then let any sober person Judge where lies the Soveraignty would it be suffer'd to be thus exprest were they not satisfy'd they were not all Soveraigns or if they were ought it not according to this Rebel and Republican run We the King Lords and Commons Enact but I 'll let him know how and what the Libertine would again have that Enacting part of an Act of Parliament to be tho the Politick Knave fear'd it was too soon yet to declare plainly for an Usurpation viz. Be it Enacted and ordained An Act. March 1657. Vid. Act of Oblivion 51 by his Highness the Lord Protector Or the Parliament of England having had good Experience of the Affection of the people to this present Government by their ready Assistance in the defence there of against Charles Stewart Son of the Late Tyrant and his Forces invading this Nation do Enact c. That our Kings in the time of the Saxons Danes and some part of the Normans had more absolute Power over their Subjects than some of their Successors since himself can't deny the Charter of Liberties being made but in the Reign of Henry the Third and when the People had less of Priviledges the Kings must be supposed to have had more of Praerogative therefore we shall examine only what and where the Supremacy is at present and where the Laws of the Land not the Will of the Prince do place it In the Parliament that was held at York in Edward the Seconds time The Rebellious Barons that 15. Ed. 2. had violently extorted what Concessions they pleas'd from the Crown in His like those in the three foregoing Reigns when they seal'd almost each Confirmation of their Charter in Blood were all censured and condemn'd and the encroaching Ordinances they made in those Times all repeal'd Because says the Statute The Kings Royal Power Great Stat. Roll. 26. H. 3. to Ed. 3. 1. Ric. 3. Exact Abridg fol. 112. was restrain'd against the Greatness of his Seigniory Royal contrary to the State of the Crown and that by Subjects Provisions over the Power Royal of the Ancestors of our Lord the King Troubles and Wars came upon the Realm I look upon this as an absolute Acknowledgment of a Royal Power which is sure the same with his Soveraign sufficiently distinguisht here from the Parliaments or the Peoples co-ordinate Supremacy for those condemn'd Ordinances were lookt upon as Usurpations upon the Kings Supremacy which they call the Power Royal of his Ancestors and not as our Author would have too of the Sovereign power of Lords and Commons At the Convention of the three Estates first of Richard the Third where 1. R. 3. the Parliament call themselves so themselves expound also what is meant by it And say it is the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in present Parliament so that we have here the whole three States besides the King owning themselves such without assuming to themselves a Soveraign power recognizing the Right of Richard and acknowledging him the Sovereign And tho I shall for ever condemn as well as all Ages will their allowing his Usurpation a Right which was an absolute wrong yet this is an undeniable Argument that then they did not make their King Co-ordinate with themselves made themselves declared themselves three States without him and acknowledged their King the Sovereign and Supream That Act that punisht appeals to Rome with a premunire in Henry the Eighâ—h's time gives this Reason why 24. H. 8. none should be made to the Pope nor out of the Kingdom because the King alone was only the supream head in it It tells us expressly That England is an Empire that the King the Supream Head has the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Emperial Crown unto whom a body Politick divided into Terms and Names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden owe next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power Preheminence Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction Here his Body Politick is devided into Spiritual and Temporal here he is called the supreme Head and here I think is a full Recognition of his sole Sovereignty And 't is strange that what a Parliament did in Opposition to Popery should be so zealously contradicted by such Sycophants that pretend so much to oppose it In the next place he tells us of an error he lay under that he thought our Commonalty had not formally assembled in Parliament before Henry the Thirds time but of that now is fully Page 103. convinc'd by the Labours of some learned Lawyers whom he names and lets them know too how much they are obliged to him for the Honor But I suppose he reads but one sort of Books and that such as suit with his Humor and Sedition and of that Nature he can meet with Variety for I dare avow that within the space of six years all that ever was or can be said against the best of Governnent our own all that was or ever will be rak't up for justifying a Rebellion and restoring a Republick from falsifyed Roll and Record from perverted History and Matter of Fact by Pens virulent and Factious with all the Art and Industry and whatever thought could invent for its Ruine and Destruction has been Printed and Publisht such an Universal Conspiration of Men of several Faculties each assisting with what was his Excellency his Talent in Treason which seemed to be the Task-Master of the Town and Monopolizer of Trades But our Politician might return to his old Opinion again did he but consult other Authors I believe as learned Antiquarians I am sure more Loyal Subjects who can shew him that the Saxons Councils call'd the Witena Gemotes had in them no Commons That the Conqueror call'd none of them to his great Councils none in those of his two Sons that succeeded nor none in any of the Parliaments down to Henry the Third my Lord Coke tells us of the Coke first Institutes Lib. 2d C. 10. T. Burgage Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure
from this Authority they can have no proof and from Wise Men can be gathered nothing but such as were Noble or chief of the Realm for the meaner sort and that which we now call the Commonality were then far enough from having any great share of Learning or common Understanding and then besides these Wisest of the People were only such whom the King should think Wise and admit to his Council far from being sent by their Borroughs as elected Senators King Alfred had his Parliament and a great one was held by King Athelstan at Grately ' which only tells us there were Assembled some Bishops Noble-Men and the Wise-Men whom the King called which implies no more then those he had a mind should come But the Antiquity of a Parliament or that of an House of Commons is not so much the thing these Factious Roll and Record Mongers contend for 't is its Superiority Supremacy and there endeavours to make them antient is but in order to the making their Power Exorbitant and not to be controul'd by that of their King whom in the next place this Re-publican can scarce allow the power of calling them at his Pleasure and dissolving them when he pleases But so great is the Power of Truth and the Goodness of the Cause he Opposes that he is forc't to contradict himself to defend his Paradoxes For he tells us the King is obliged with an hear-say Law which his learned in the Faculty and Faction can't find out yet Page 111. to call Parliaments as often as need should be that is they think fit And also not to dissolve them till all their Petitions were answered that is till they are willing to be gone But then will I defie the Gentleman to shew me the difference between this their desired Parliament and a Perpetual sitting do not these industrious Endeavours for such a perpetuity of them plainly tell us 't is that 's the only thing they want and that they are taught experimentally that that alone run the three Kingdoms into absolute Rebellion and ruined the best of Kings and can as certainly compass the Destruction of the present But I 'll tell the lump of Contradiction first the words of our greatest Lawyer and then his own Cooke says none 4. Insti 27. 2. 1. Inst Sect. 164. can begin continue or dissolve a Parliament but by the Kings Authority Himself says that which is undoubtedly the Plato Red. page 105. Kings Right is to call and dissolve Parliaments 'T is impertinent to labour to contradict that which he here so plainly confutes himself the Statesman being so big with his Treasonable Notions so full of his Faction that his Memory fails him makes him forget his own Maxims and makes his subsequent Pages wrangle with the Concessions of those that went before His next Observation is a perfect Comment upon his Text that had in it implicit Treason before he tells us in Justification of the Barons Wars which all our Historians represent as a perfect Page 107. Rebellion That the Peers were fain to use their Power and can he tell me by what Law Subjects are impowred to Rebel He calls it arming of their Vassals for the defence of the Government That Bill by which they would have associated of late that I confess had it past into Act would have made Rebellion Statutable And they themselves must indeed have had the Sovereign power when they had gotten their Sovereign to suffer himself to be sworn out of his Supremacy they might well have armed their Vassals then when they had got his Majesties leave to commence Rebels and Traytors for the Protection of his Person and the Preservation of his Crown and Dignity But these humble Boons were no more than that Bill must have begged and these kind Concessions no more than was expected from the Grant of a King so Gracious a Petition that might well have been answered like that of Bathsheba's by bidding them ask the Kingdom also The Barons standing in open defiance Ibid. page 108. to the Laws tho they stood up too so much for them He calls the Peers keeping their Greatness and this is the Sovereign Power the Rebel would have them again set up for to be great in their Arms as well as Quality and demand with the Sword again the Prerogative of their Kings and the grant of the Regalia which in their preposterous Appellations was abused with the pretence of priviledge and right and which the force of the Field can soon make of the greatest Usurpation and wrong But in the very next Page 't is 109. expounded clearly what has may and must be done in such Conjunctions that is to your Arms. He tells us after they had obtained the framing of their Charters and I think they were as much as the most condescending Monarchs could grant or the most mutinous malecontents require Then arose another grievance unseen and unprovided for This was the Intermission of Parliaments which could not be called but by the Prince and he not doing it they ceast for some years to be Assembled if this had not been speedily remedied The provoking Rebel for certainly he is as much so that Animates a Rebellion as he that is actually engaged in it and is by Law so declared tells us the Barons must have put on their Armour again and 25. Ed. 3. Plat. pag. 109. the brisk Assertors of their Rights not have acquiesc'd in this Omission that ruined the Foundations of the Government After all the kind Concessions of the Prince the putting him upon that which was the taking away of the very remains of Royalty puts me in mind of one of our late Expressions of a popular Representative that could declare in open Assembly as attested by some of the very Members of it that tho this their Bill of Exclusion were past which was more we see than the most mildest Monarch could grant or even our House of Peers sure the better part of our Nation could in Modesty require yet still there was more work to be done and a Reformation to be made in the Church as well as the State The Patriot was prepared to lanch out in such kind of Extravagancies and told the truth of the Plot before his time had not calmer Heads interposed and cool'd his hot one into common Sense Several of the Speeches spoken in Parliament for which its Publisher deserves to be Pillor'd if not Authentick and True and brought before them on his Knees at least for his Presumption if they are it being here as Criminal to Print Truths at all times without an Imprimatur as 't is to tell it without leave even in several of those Speeches Publisht in that Paper I reflected on in the beginning where the Pedantick Author has exposed me in the Tail of his History that lookt like the Narrative of a Rump History of the Association Printed by Janeway there are as bold Expressions of
Liege Lord I am sure this was making over their Faith to a Foreigner and many may think it as much to bee condemned as that of their King his Crown to a Saracen especially when that by some Historians is doubted but their falsehood's confirmed by all Then was our England like to have been truly France which they now but so vainly Fear In the next place he is pleased to grant the Militia to be in his Majesty's Power But 't is only until such a sort of Rebels have strength enough to take it out for he tells us the Militia being Page 116. given but for an Execution of the Law if it be mis-imployed by him to subvert it 't is a Violation of the Trust and making that power unlawful in the Execution And that which shall violate this Trust has he reduced to three of the most Villanous Instances that the most Excrable Rebel could invent or the most bloody Miscreant conceive the Murder of three Kings by their Barbarous and Rebellious Subjects And in all three their strength and Militia were first taken away and then their Lives first he tels us Edward the second forfeited his Executive Power of the Militia In misapplying his revenue to Courtiers and Ibid. Sycopkants Richard the Second for preferring Worthless People to the greatest places And Charles the First in the Case of Ship Money can now the most virulent Democraticks hug such a piece without Horrour at its Inhumanity or the vilest of the Faction preserve it from the Flames can those popular Parliamentarians and the most mutinous of all our murmering Members of whom my self have known some that could Countenance this very Book can they here defend insinuated Treason when Stanley Stanley's Case H. 7. dyed for a more Innocent Innuendo but if Faction has forc't from their Souls the poor remains of Reason will Humane Nature permit such precedents to prevail that terminated in the miserable Murder of as many Monarchs 'T is remarkable and 't is what I remember these very Papers were Publish'd near about one of their late Sessions wherein they were nibbling again at the Milittia and could so merciless a Miscreant be put in the pocket of a Member of Parliament much less then into his Heart and drop from his unadvised Lips can those that come to give their consent for the making Laws be thus Ignorant of those that are already made has not the Military power for above this 500 years been absolutely in the Crown and almost by their Parliament it self declared so in every Reign was it ever taken out but when they took away the Life of their King too was ever his Head protected from Violence when this the Guard of his Crown was gone or can any Hand long sway the Scepter when it wants the Protection of the Sword 1st Edward 3d. Chap 3. The King 1 Edward 3. 1 C. 3. willeth that no man be charged to Arm himself otherwise than he was wont in the time of his Progenitors Kings of England In H. 7. declared by Stat. All 2 Hen. 7. Subjects of the Realm bound to assist the King in his Wars Queen Mary 4. 5. Mary and all her Progenitors acknowledged to have the Power to appoint Commissioners This Commission was in force Rot par 5. H. 4. n. 24. repealed by this 4. and 5. of P. M. but this repealing Stat. is again repealed Jacob. 1. and so of force in this King now as well as when they deny'd it to his Father 2. Ed. 6. 2. C. 2d Cook 2. Inst 30. Car. 2. C. 6. to Muster her Subjects and array as many as they shall think fit The Subjects holding by Serjeantry heretofore all along to serve their Sovereigns in War in the Realm and a particular Act obliging them to go within or without with their King He and only He has the ordering of all the Forts and Holds Ports and Havens of the Kingdom confirmed to this very King and Cook tells us no Subject can build any Fortress Desensible Cook Litt. p. 5. And since some of our late Members of the lower House were so tickled with this Authors soothing them with the Kings Executive Power of War forfeitable I 'll tell them of an Act expressly made in some Sense against their Assuming it and for another Reason too because some mutinous Heads would argue to my Knowledge for their Members comming armed to the Parliament at Oxford and which was actually done too by Colledge and his Crew It was made in Edward the First 's time 7. Ed. 1. and expressly declares that in all Parliaments Treatises and other Assemblies every Man should come without Force and Armour and of this the King acquainted the Justices of the Bench and moreover that the Parliament at Westminster had declared that to us belonged straightly to defend Force of Armour and all other Force against our Peace at all times when it shall please us and the Judges were ordered to get it read in the Court and enroll'd And now can it with common Reason or Sense be suggested that the letting Favourites have some of the Treasures of the Kingdom or Courtiers as he calls it the Revenue or the preferring of such Persons as they shall think Worthless and Wicked which with such Villains as himself are commonly the most deserving that this shall be a sufficient violating as he terms it of a Kings Trust to the forfeiture of his Power of putting the Laws in Execution with which the common consent of almost all the Laws and all Ages have invested their King as an absolute Inherent singular Right of the Crown Certainly such an Opinion is as extravagant as Treasonable and could enter into the Head of nothing but a Madman the Heart of none but a Traytor Next we meet with another Assertion as false as Hell and then its clear contrary nothing but the God of Heaven is more True He tells us after having hardly allowed His Majesty a Negative Voice at least as such an Insignificant one as not to be made use of That Plat. Pag. 124. 't is certain nothing but denials of Parliamentary requests produced the Baron's Wars and our last dismal Combustions when I 'll demonstrate to him as plain as a Proposition in Euclid that nothing but their too gracious and unhappy Concessions to their perfidious and ungrateful Subjects made those mighty Monarchs miscarry read but any of our Histories tho pen'd by the most prejudiced and those that ware at best but moderately Popular of our first Civil Wars The Barons Daniel that speaks most commonly as much as the Peoples Daniel 53. H. 3d. Case will bear tells us his thoughts of those unhappy Dissentions that neither side got but Misery and Vexation We see that notwithstanding as often as their Charter and Liberties were confirm'd notwithstanding all the Concessions of those two yielding Monarchs still more was demanded The Charter in Henry K. John Henry 3. the
Book he begins to rout it entirely when he comes up with the Body to the Battle and the Rear there he tells us plainly the Sweetness the profitableness of a Common-wealth that only 't is not to be set up during these Circumstances that is Plato page 221. p. 234. p. 236. Making Leagues absolutely in the King 19. Ed. 4. 239. 249. 252. 't is too soon to Rebel yet and he has found out better expedients the King has too much Power the Presidents of John and Henry the Third are trumpt up again for being Compell'd to give it away the Murder of Edward and Richard the Second at least the Deposition of which that is an absolute Consequence is two or three times again Recommended for Instruction and now he tells the Parliament plainly what Branches of the Praerogative they must insist upon Power of making War and Peace Treaties and Allyances which the Kings wicked Ministers have made Destructive to the Interest of our English Nation You have here the best of Kings in effect tho apply'd to the Courtiers of which I think he must be the Chief resembl'd to the very Rebel that Vsurpt upon his Crown as if it were design'd by him as well as a Cromwel that had no right to maintain himself in the Throne but the Power of the Sword to Crave aid from FRANCE Plat. 239. to keep Vnder his People of ENGLAND The Militia must be granted them because out of Parliament or Session it being in his hand they cannot raise the County Bands nor those of the City to Guard themselves that some trusty Members whom if the King pleases may take care of his Houshold that a Parliament meet of Course at a certain Day at Plat. p. 249. the usual place without Writ or Summons and that because Peers depend so much upon the will of their Prince for Creation they should never be made but by Act of Parliament I appeal to the most Plat. 252. moderate mild Soul Living whether any single Line of all this absolute Treason has not of late almost since the Publication of this Damnable piece been endeavour'd to be put in Execution was not the Haereditary Discent struck at in the Duke was not the Militia offer'd at in some of their Votes Frequency of Parliaments which would have been as good as without intermission Clamour'd for in some of their Speeches the Nomination of some of the Officers of Power by the People And lastly was it not agreed to meet without Writ and Summons when the Major part of Members were to be conven'd after Dissolution and can any still say that an alteration of the Government was never design'd by those that were then so busily concern'd and when some of the most popular and Active have been since Actually Convicted for the Compassing all this by the Blood of their King which they dispair'd of obtaining from his Le Roy vult But 't is to be hop'd that the God of Heaven who has brought to Light the Darkness even of Hell has so much illuminated Peoples understanding as well as Eyes that the next Assembly that shall constitute this Politick Body truly Honourable adsolutely Necessary in it's Constitution will be such as will transcend what has been one of their best Presidents An healing one and that of those wounds such Daemons and Doctors have scarifi'd instead of clos'd and with a merited Vote Condemn such Devils to their own Element the Fire that have so Seditiously set three Kingdoms in a Flame But tho this refin'd Statesman this polisht piece of the most accomplisht Treason may perhaps value himself upon the Product and Invention of his own Villany proud of the being reputed a witty Republican whose greatest Glory here is to be at the best but an Ingenious Rebel yet his very Reputation tho it be but in his Roguery must sink too When you consider what I shall soon satisfy any sober Person in any Soul that has but so much Sense as to distinguish an Author from a Plagiary a Man of Honesty from a Thief that even the very Notions and Principles he Prints for the establishing this Government were formerly Publisht and proposed by the very Villains that actually subverted it not one Expedient in all his Politicks but what was by sad Experience the very Propositions of declar'd Traytors The Blessed Wit would rob the Records of an old Rebellion and that only to put in for an Inventor of a new the worst of Felons and in Forreign parts punisht as the greatest that Steals his Fellow from the Gibbet His Book has not only borrowed all from Harrington I 'll allow it him with all my Heart and that Oceanae by what follows you may find A Parallel between the Propositions sent the late King by the Rebel Parliament and the Rebellious Proposals of our Plato Redivivus PARLIAMENT'S PLATO'S 1. That all the Kings Privy Council great Officers and Ministers of State may be put out excepting such as the Parliament shall approve and to assign them an Oath 1. His Majesties Power to nominate and appoint as he pleases all the Officers of the Kingdom one of the Powers in the Crown that hinder the Execution of the Laws Plat. p. 239. why may we not begin by removing all his Majesties present Council by Parliament Page 232. 2. That all Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament except such Matters as are by them transferred to their Privy Council 2. That his Majesty exercise the Four great Magnalia of Government with the consent of Four several Councils appointed for that end the Councils to be named in Parliament Page 240 241. 3. That all great Officers of the Kingdom be chosen by Parliaments and their Approbation 3. That the Election of the great Officers be by those Councils and those Councils to be chosen by the Parliament p. 258 259. 4. If any place fall void in the Interval of Parliament the Major part of this Council to chuse one to be confirmed at the next Session of Parliament 4. Preserving to themselves the Approbation of the great Officers as Chancellor Judges Generals of the Army p. ibid. 5. To reform Church Government as the Parliament shall advise to concur with the People in depriving the Bishops of their Votes 5. That the Clergy quatenus such had and will have a share in the Sovereignty and Inferiour Courts in their own Power called Ecclesiastical this is and will ever be a Solaecism in Government p. 178. 6. Marriages and Allyances to be concluded in Parliament 6. The Kings absolute Power of making War and Peace Treatises and Allyances one of the Powers in the Crown that hinder our Happiness and Settlemene p. 327. 7. To settle the Militia as the Parliament have ordered it 7. The Kings disposing and ordering the Militia one of the Powers in the Crown that hinders our Happiness p. 239. 8. All Forts and Castles to be in the disposal of the Parliament 8. The King
great a power and prerogative and exercised it too punishments Vid. Baker p. 34. vir William 2d before his time which were Mutilation of Members he made pecuniary provisions for his House which were paid in kind he made to be turned into Money an Alteration of Custom and Law not now to be compast but by particular Act Baker makes him first to have So also Florence of Worst instituted the form of an High Court of Parliament and tells us that before only the Nobles and Prelates were called to consult about Affairs of State But he called the Commons too as Burgesses elected by themselves but this can't be gathered from Eadmerus the much better Autority who in the Titles and the Stile of near Nine or Ten Councils of his time not so much as mentions them King Stephen what he wanted and was forc't to spare in Taxations which were not then granted by the suffrages of the Common People tho they commonly bear the greatest burden of it tho he did not according to the Power he was then invested with raise great Sums upon his Subjects and the greatest Reason because he could not the Continual Wars having impoverisht them as well as their Prince and it has the proverbial Authority of necessitated Truth That even where it is not to be got the King himself must foregoe his Right yet this mighty Monarch's power was such that Confiscations supplyed what he could not Tax and as our Historian tells us Baker p. 49. upon light Suggestions not so much as just Suspicions he would seize upon their Goods and as I remember the Bishop of Salisbury's Case in his time confirms But tho the Menace of the threatning King the Text be turned now into the clear Reverse and our Kings Loyns no heavier then the very Finger of some of his Predecessors still we can The wordâ— of a Priâ—â—t lately tryed and convicted of High Treason find those that can preach him down for a Rehoboam or some Son of Nebat that makes Israel to Sin Henry the Second resum'd by his own Act all the Crown Lands that had been sold or given from it by his Predecessors and this without being questioned for it much less deposed or murdered whereas when our Charles the First attempted only to resume the Lands of Religious Houses that by special act of the Parliament in Scotland had been settled on the Crown but by Usurpation were shared among the Lords when 't was only to prevent their Scandalous defrauding of the poor Priest and the very box of the poor to keep them from an Imperious and even a cruel Lording it over the poor Peasant in a miserable Vassallage beyond that of our antiquated Villains and when he endeavoured all this only by the very Law of all the Land by an Act of Renovation Legal Process and a Commission for the just surrendring Superiorities and Tyths so unjustly detain'd from the Crown but our modern Occupants of the Kirks Revenue had far less Reverence for the State chose much rather to Rebel against their Prince for being as they would Phrase it Arbitrary than part with the least power over their poor Peasants which themselves exercised even with Tyranny This was the very beginning of the first Tumults in that Factious Kingdom and 't is too much to tell you in what they ended Richard the First had a trick I am sure would not be born with now he pretends very cunningly to have lost his Signet and puts out a Proclamation that whoever would enjoy what he had under the former must come and have it confirmed by the new and so furnisht himself with a fine fund he could fairly sell and pawn his Lands for the Jerusalem Journey and as fouly upon his return resume them without pay And all this the good peaceable Subject could then brook without breaking into Rebellion and a bloody War and as they had just then none of their Great Charter that made afterward their Kings the less so neither had they such Rebellious Barons that could not be contented even with being too Great as they were then far from having granted so gracious a Petition as that of Right so neither 3 Car. 1. you see so ready to Rebel and that only because they could not put upon their Prince the deepest Indignities the greatest wrong And these warrantable proceedings of our Princes whose power in all probability was unconfin'd before the Subjects Charter of Priviledges was confirm'd must needs be boundless when there were yet no Laws to Limit them yet these two Presidents were as impertinently applyed by the Common Hackney Goose quils whose Pens were put upon by the Parliament to scribble Panegyricks upon a Common-wealth to prove 1648. 49. 51. Mercur Polit. n. 64. 65. all our Kings a Catalogue of Tyrants tho the Presidents they brought from those times were clear Nonsense in the Application and no News to tell us or reproach to them that those Princes were Arbitrary when they had yet given no grant to restrain their Will Here I hope is sufficient Testimony and that too much to Demonstrate that our Kings of old by long Prescription were so far from being guided and governed by a Parliament as our Factious Innovator would have them now that in truth they never had any such Constitution and the People then insisted so little on their own Priviledges that they could not tell what they were and the Princes Prerogative so great that even their property could hardly be called their own But these being but Presidents before their Charters were granted or the Commons came in play tho these preceding Kings might deviate from the common Custom of the Realm in many that some may call irregular Administrations yet the Customs of the Vid. Lex Terrae Kingdom relating to the Royal Government in all those Reigns were never questioned much less altered they never told their Kinge then as this piece of Sedition does now that their Nobles were to manage their Affairs of State as well as he would have even a Council of Commons We come to consider now whether An. Reg. 17 John from the granting them Charters which was done in the next Reign that of King John when the long tugged for Liberties were first allowed or from the Constitution of admitting the Commons to consult which by the greatest Advocates can't be made out handsomely before this Kings time or his Son and Successors who might well be necessitated to Consult the meaner sorts when all the great were in Arms and wisely flatter their Commons into peace when the Lords had rebelled in an open War tho' still good Authorities will Vid Dr. B. Introduct p. 72. 105. c. not allow them to be called in either of their Reigns not so much as to be mentioned in any of their Councils and p. 149. The King calls Parl. per advisam entum Concilii Vid. Bract. Parl. 4. Inst p. 4. and
shall they suppress those by whose advice they are call'd that even to the 18 of Edward the First wee 'll see I say now whether from these as they count them the most happy times That blessed Epoche wherein their Kings were first confined down to those which Posterity will blush at the Period of Villany when this Proposition was among the rest proposed whither ever the Parliament pretended unless when they actually rebelled as they did here to manage their King and his Affairs of State The greatest Lawyer and the most Equitable Bracton l. 4. Cap. 24. one that lived in this Henry the Thirds time tells us the King has a power and Jurisdiction over all that are in his Kingdom that all are under him § 5. ibid. that he has not an Equal in the Realm and sure the Project of putting the Parliament upon choosing of his Council for the managing of his Affairs or assuming themselves to manage it certainly would Plat. prop. make the Subject have some power over him make him more then Equal or Co-ordinate as the more modern Contenders for the Peoples Supremacy very Magisterially are pleased to Phrase it In the Reign of Edward the First the 7. Edw. 1. Parliament declares they are bound to assist their Sovereigns at all Seasons and in that very Sessions declared the Supream power to be his proper and peculiar Prerogative and so far from taking upon them to manage Him or His Affairs or the setting a Council over Him as a superintendent In Edward the Second's time they several times confirm'd to him the 1 Ed. 2. power of the Sword as his Sole undoubted 7 Ed. 2. unquestionable Prerogative and that he could distrain for the taking up of Arms all that held by Knights Service and had twenty Pounds per An. and I think that allowed him to be his own Adviser when it put him into an absolute Condition to Command But I confess his Seditious and Rebellious Subjects afterward served Him just as these our Proposers did their Soveraign took upon themselves to reform his Council managed His Affairs till they did all the Kingdom too deposed him with that power of the Sword they themselves had several times in his very Reign put in his Hand as ours also denyed His Majesty the Commission of Array Vid. dugd Baker 5. H. 4. 1. Jac. which they well knew the Laws allowed But as this Usage was shown to both so was it done to bind them both that both might be more easily Butchered In the following Reign of this unfortunate Prince's Son too forward to Edw. 3d. mount the Throne before his Father had thoroughly left it which he could not be said to relinquish but with his Life there I 'll grant this Republican his own Rebel Tenent was as stoutly maintained but by whom why by the very same Exilium Hugon Edw. 2. 1 Edward 3d. C. 2. Wretches whom too several Parliaments had condemned for the same sort of damnable Opinions and solemnly sent them into Exile too the daring and presumptuous Spencers who being the first Authors of that Seditious Sophistry that damnable Distinction of parting His Majesties Person from his * Vide Jenkins's Lex Terrae first Edit p. 5. political Capacity that is making Allegiance no longer Law than their King could maintain his Authority with Arms for that must be the meaning of such Treasonable Metaphysicks for if they 'll owe but Obedience upon that political account of his being a King assoon as they can but find out some blessed Expedient for the proving of him none that is Misgovernment †Vid. Parl. Declarations 41. p. 4. Arbitrary Power ‖ And Proceeding of L. Shaftsbury in the Old-Bayly Popish Inclinations and the like pretty Pretences to make him fairly forfeit it why then truly all the Majesty vanishes like a Shadow before this New Light and if he can't hold his Scepter in his Hand with the power of his Sword why they have Metamorphosed Him into a common Man and may pluck it out with theirs And truly the Peoples Politick In three several Places in Plowden they are made inseparable p. 234. 242. 213. Corps politick include le Corps natural Son Corps politick natural sont indivisible Ceux Deux Corps Sont en encorporate une Person Capacity is such they will soon make their Kings uncapable when once they are grown so strong in the Field as not to fear it Here was the Rise of that Rebellious reasoning that run all indispensable Obligation of our Obedience to the Prince into the Capricious and Arbitrary Conjecture of the People whose Title and Deposition must depend upon his own Demeanor and that to be decided according to the diversity of thought which in a discontented Vulgar deserves the better Epithet of Distraction The good King would have a Right to his Crown as long as his kind Subjects would be pleased to think so and we have more than once found their Politicks have too soon made them uncapable to Govern and then deposed and murdered their very Persons for the want of this their politick Capacity I am sorry to say and posterity will blush to hear that such Seditious and sophisticated reasoning obtained even to the making * Ed. 2. in whose time 't was first started Vid Lex Terrae Rich. 2. because by misdemeanours he had made himself uncapable Vide Trussel Three mighty Monarchs in a most miserable manner to miscarry and it appears still too plain in their Prints and those too Charactered in Royal Blood that they never left severing our late * Charles the 1st the Parliament declares because the King had not granted the Propositions i. e. deposed himself he could not Exercise the Duties of his place Answer of the Com. to the Scots Com. p. 20. and the Scots expound their preserving the Kings Person in the Covenant but as it related to the Kingdom i. e. in English if they please they may destroy him Soveraign's Person from his Crown till at last his Head too from his Shoulders I could not but with some passionate Digression reflect upon this pernicious Principle and so the best of it is I can be but pardonably impertinent but which I would apply pertinently to this Republicans and Parliamentary Proposition for their managing all State Affairs is one of the Consequences that may be drawn and which those Sycophants the Spencers did actually draw from this their damnable Doctrine for so they did conclude from it too as well they might That in default of him their Liege Lord his Lieges should be bound to govern the Affairs of State and what Newes now does this Devilish Democratick tellus us Why the very Doctrine of two damnable Parasites whom themselves have condemned for above two or three hundred years agon who to cover their own Treason as they then too call'd it committed against the People and that but in * Vid.
Distemper when some of the Seditious Souls had but gotten the Government of a single City and that but under a Soveraign their Supream and sure 't is an Argument unanswerable that those Salesmen of his Prerogative would assoon Barter your Properties See the sad experienced result of all the Democracies since their first Institution what was left the poor Lacedaemonians upon putting in Execution that popular Project their * So also in Syracuse Petalism or Impoverisht Athens her self upon such another Order of her Ostracism why both were beggar'd of their Nobility the Scum the Scoundrels of the Town turn'd the Mighty Massinello's of the State The Tod-Pole Train the product of those beggarly Elements Mud and Water Lorded it even over all the Land And those Rulers naturally retaining in this Medley this Mixture of Sway the Native Principles of that Abject Matter from whence they came still as mean as the one and restless as the other could never reduce them to composed States till they had recalled the good Governours they had Banisht before ‖ Vid Mercur polit June 17. 1652. you know all this is too true and your selves too vile Caitiffs have owned it in Prints Lastly Let your Lords too be allowed for once your only as well as it is your beloved Government Let Aristocracy for once obtain for the best and Banish your Monarch set up that Idol and fall down to the Gods of your own Hands that good Government must still be of many still of as much divided Interest there would still be many then to mind the making their own Hay in the fair Sun-shine whereas should your Prince perjure himself for the minding only his private concern and neglecting the publick good which he must do if ever he is Crown'd where an Oath is administred for his very disavowing it yet still here would be pursued but the Interest of a single Person there of so many When the rash and unadvised Romans had upon that bandied Argument the Dissoluteness of their Tarquin the popular president of the Party for the Banishing of all Kings as if the Practice of a Rebellious Rome against a single dissolute Prince and that so long since could with the same Reason prevail at present for an extirpating the Government even under the best of Princes yet this very precipitous Act of Rage and Rashness was afterward even by the relenting Romans as much repented of and their Error best understood in their following Misfortunes and of which they were soon sensible too soon saw it in their subsequent sufferings for the first Frame of Government they constituted after this Expulsion was the * Rosin Ant. Rom. L. 7. C. 9. Consular and one would think that being but of two of the cheefest among them that it might have lasted as indeed the best sort of Aristocracy coming within an Ace of a Monarch a Duumvirate yet even from those they suffered more than from the first Constitution they had abolisht their more immoderate power broke the Laws more †Consulum immoderata poteitas oâ—nes metuâ— Legum excussit Liv. Lib. a. immoderately than the Lustful Licentious and Lewd Monarch they made to fly with his Fugitive Government We shall in some other place consider the restless Revolutions they ran through from their turning out this Monarchy till they tumbled into it again This serves only to let us see that publick Administrations even in the hands but of two of the best of the People are not always the best managed What pray better can be expected when the Optimacy is made up of so many more And where then into what form to whom shall we run for the best maintaining of this popular Darling this dangerous Violation that has been clamoured for rebelled and fought for the Peoples RIGHT but to that Soveraignty which our very Laws say can do no wrong to a Monarchy where Mechanicks can never meddle with Affairs of State to make them truckle to their own or the Nobility so powerful as to be all Soveraigns and under what Prince can we better acquiesce for this enjoyment than the present that has so often declared for its Protection And shall the Speech of some Noble Peer be better assurance promise more than the word of a King All Subjects under him have either Riches or Honor for their private Aim to make them act more partially for the publick and which the Laws presume therefore they may injure and have therefore made the greatest punishable But him exempted from all * He can't so much as be a disscisor 4. El. 2. 4. 6. The King has no Peer in the Land and so cannot be Judged 3. Ed. 3. 19. Statutes that are Penal And these sort of Arguments I can assure them their King himself has used to prove the publick Interest his own and that he alone of all the Kingdom can be presumed most impartially concerned for the good of the publick A Reason worthy of so good a King and which the worst the most Seditious Subjects cannot Answer Did not the Parliament in Richard the Third's Time give even that Vsurper an Arbitrary Power greater than any they can dread now from their most Lawful Soveraign Did not * Vid. Exact Abridgment fol. 713. they declare him their Lawful King by Inheritance tho they knew they made him Inherit against all Law Did not they declare it to be grounded upon the Laws of God and Nature and the Customs of the Realm whereas we now can oppose this Divine Right from the panick fear of making our true Legal King too powerful and the Succession of a Right Heir must be questioned by our Parliaments now when their Predecessors declared it unalterable even in a wrong Did †Vid. ibid 717. they not to him but an Usurper a Tyrant own themselves Three Estates without including himself and say that by them is meant the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons and shall the Press be pestered under our undoubted Soveraign and the mildest Prince to make him Co-ordinate with the People Did they not make particular Provision in * 1. R. C. 15. Parliament for the Preservation of His Person that was the very Merderer and Destroyer of His Subjects And shall our ungrateful ones Associate for the Destruction of the mildest Monarch whose greatest Care is their Protection Was this Monster ever questioned or censured for the Murder of several of His Subjects as well as the more Barbarous Butchery the spilling almost of his own Blood in his Nephews and must our most gracious one stand the mark of Malice and Reproach and that only for desending that of his Brothers who Reigned more Arbitrary and managed all Affairs more Monstrously than this very Monster of Mankind And must a Parliament be now the Manager of the mildest Monarch and think him dangerous if not governed by themselves The two Succeeding * H. 7. H. 8. Henries had their Power as much
for five hundred years before the Conquest and for above two hundred after Bishops and Abbots made up the best part of those petty Parliaments and that so long before these Contenders for their excludeing them their suffrages ever sate in that Assembly as part of the Senate And that antient piece that tells us of the ‖ Modus tenend Parl. manner of holding Parliaments tells us too that such Ecclesiasticks were always summoned Seditious Souls let those that are to take Care of them too have the same Subjects Liberty you so much Labour for Let Bishops be allowed their Birth-Right as well as your Lay-Lord-ships too your †Vid. Magna Charta the 1st thing in the first Chap. Articuli cleri Vid. Cook Com. on both 2. Inst Magna Charta was made for the Loyal Bishops as well as the Rebellious Barons and that expressly declares the Church shall enjoy all her Rights inviolate and tells us as plainly one of them was to sit in Parliament your selves know a discontented * Stratford Arch-bishop Ed. 3. Canterbury and I hope you 'll side with him because he was so claim'd for four hundred years agon his Privilege of Peerage in Opposition to His Prince petitioned for his Right and protested against the wrong for fifteen hundred years for so long our Monarchs can be Chronicl'd can in every Reign the Clergies being concerned in Parliament be proved upon Record and may they with the Monarchy last that with its Christianity commenc'd They seemed always to sympathize in their very sufferings never to cease but by consent and Bishops were never excluded from their Votes but when their King himself had never a voice The Sixth pernicious Principle they propose is for Marriages Alliances Treatises for War and Peace to be put in the power of the two Houses And shall the meanest Subjects be Mightier than their Soveraign Not allow'd the Marrying his Issue when where and to whom he pleases That the Parliament has presumed to intermeddle with this undoubted Prerogative of the Soveraign since the Birth-Right of the poorest Subject can no more be denyed then that the two Houses have also actually Rebell'd too but they never pretended to make Matches for their Monarch but when they were as ready to make War too There was somewhat of that Mutinous Ferment got among the Members in the latter end of King * James's his Reign who tho they mightily 19. Jacob. 1621. soothed their Soveraign with some Inconsiderable subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate so small that notwithstanding the Preparation for War the poor Prince was forc'd to pursue Peace and to tell the Men at Westminster so much too that he intended to compass the Palatinate with an Allyance with Spain which he was not like to obtain from the smallness of their Subsidy and Aid But tho the Commons did not care much for the maintaining the War they were as much startled with this seeming tendance to Peace they knew their Prince poor and therefore thought that the time to show the Subject bold and so began the Puritan Party to represent in a Remonstrance Popery Power Prerogative and their Averseness forsooth to the Spanish-Match The pious Prince tho none of the boldest to resist an invading People yet took the Courage to tell them they took too much upon themselves very warmly forbad them farther to meddle with his Government ‖ Dudgdale's short View 21. and deep Affairs of State and particularly with the Match of his Son with the Daughter of Spain And this account they 'll surely Credit since it comes from an * Rusworth Col. p. 40. Author a partial and popular Advocate for this power of Parliament And did not the Commons intermeddling with an other Spanish Match of Queen Mary's send their Memberships into the Country to mind their own Business and were presently Dissolv'd for meddling so much with their Soveraign's And this I hope will be as †Burnet's Abridgm 236. Authentick since it comes from an Author that has had the Thanks of the House But this Disposal of the Kings of his own Children and the Marrying them to what Princes he pleases has such an absolute Relation to the making Leagues and Allyances that the Laws which have declared the latter to be solely in the Soveraign are as Declaratory that the other is so too and this power of the Prince of making War and Peace Leagues and Allyances is so settled in him by the Laws of the Land that till they are subverted it can never be taken out In Henry the Fifth's Time a Prince under whose Courage and Conduct the Nation I think was as Flourishing at Home as it was formidable Abroad A Prince that kept a good Sway over his Subjects and wanted nothing to the making him a good Monarch but a better Title though his Expensive War in France cost his People a great deal of Money as well as Blood yet they were far from being animated into an Invading this part of Prerogative but declared as appears by the Law of his Time that to their King belonged only to make Leagues with Foreign Princes and so fully does this Fundamental Law of the Land place this power in the Prince that it absolutely excludes all the Pretences of the People for it tells us ‖ 2. H. 5. c. 6. expressly that if all the Subjects of England should break ‖ 22. Edw. 4. Fitz. Jurisd a League made with a Foreign Prince if without the King's Consent it shall still hold and not be broken And must the Laws of our own as well as those of all Nations be subverted for the setting up a Supremacy of the People which both declare is absolutely in the King The Seventh Proposal about the Militia is the most Impudent because it has been the most confuted of any by Reason and baffled above all parts of the Prerogative Establisht by Law History tells us ever since Chronicle can Compute and that is for almost Fifteen Hundred Years that the Power of the Sword was ever in him that sway'd the Scepter and Statute tells us even the very First * Magna Charta that was ever reckoned among Acts of Parliament That if the King lead or send his Subject to do him Service in his Wars that he shall be freed from such other Services as Castle-guard and the like so that you see that extorted Instrument the result of a REBELLION reserved this piece of Prerogative of the Soveraigns Sole Right That the Members of the two Houses should have the Management of the Militia was undertaken to be proved too by that Plague of the Press Pryn himself who proceeds upon his own false Principle and Premises which he beggs and then may well draw from them a Conclusion of an absolute Lye for he takes it for granted that by the Kingdoms Suffrages they made their King and then he could not as he says have this * Pryn's Parliam
Interest in the Militia Military power without the Peoples consent but why may it not be with less Presumption supposed That a Parliament by special ‖ 12. Car. 2d c. 12. Act declared Traytors pitcht upon Him for their Pen-Man against the Prerogative and then it may be more easily concluded that Pryn was the most prejudic'd partial Person that ever put Pen to Paper for in spight of his Factious Heart he must be forc'd to confess that not only this very Charter of Liberties settled this Militia but that it was confirmed to the King almost in every Reign by Act of Parliament since the Time the very FIRST was made To the very Son and Successor of Henry that Great Confirmer of the great Grant they declare * 7. Ed. 1. c. 1. that to the King belongs to defend Force of Armour c. All that held by Knights Service the King could distrain them for the taking up Arms. By the Laws of the very next ‖ 1. Ed. 2. Reign And in his Son and Successors that Usurpt upon his †1. Ed. 3. Father's Right before it could be call'd his own they declare the manner of his Mustering and Arraying the Subject and this they did too to Henry * 4. H. 4. the Fourth A Prince that had truly no other Title to the Swords of his Subjects than what he had gotten by the Conquest of his own yet so necessary was this inseparable power of the Prince thought then to be solely in him by the People that they Acknowledg'd it to be absolutely even in him that could hardly pretend to the Crown so inseparable from the Right of Soveraignty did the Laws allow this unalterable part of the Prerogative that they have declared it Inherent even in such a sort of Soveraigns as seemed not very well qualified for an Execution of that Royal Power which the Judgment of their very Parliaments decreed to be entirely theirs They resolved it to be the Right of the Prince in the Reign of a ‖ 2. Ed. 6. c. 11. Child They resolved it so when Subjected to the Government of a * 4. 5. Mar. c. 3. Woman The Commission of Array was revived again to King †1. Jacob. James in whose Time they resolved it such a Necessary Right of the Crown that they repealed for it the very repealing Statute of the Queen This their * Lord Cook 4. Inst Oracle tells us and that in those parts of his Works which the Parliament that opposed this very power in their King themselves ordered to be Printed yet themselves could as impudently Assert against the Sense of the very Law they Published against the very Law that was reviv'd but in his very Father's ‖ Die Mer. 12. maji 41. Vid. Journal and last p. Cook 2. Inst Time that his Son and Successors tho necessitated for suppressing such Insurrections as themselves had raised †20. Jun. exact Col. p. 372. could not Issue out such Commissions of Array tho the very preamble of the Act declares the very purpose of it was to prevent and preserve the Prince from such Rebellious Subjects And in truth the Rebels were Conscious of their Guilt and that it was which made them resolve not to know the Law But presently represented in a Declaration that this 1 July exact Col. p. 386. Vid. also Dugd. p. 97. Commission was contrary to the Laws of the Land and the Libertie of the Subject tho the very express privilege the Statutable Right of all their Kings Royal Ancestors but would not those wicked Miscreants have made even the Crown an Usurpation in their King that just before ‖ This Declaration expressly against the very Words of 11. H. 7. Cap. 1. declared that it was against the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom that the Kings Subjects should be commanded to attend him at his Pleasure And ordered * 17. May exact Col. 193. that if they should be drawn in a Posture of Defence for their Soveraign the Sheriffs of the County should raise Forces to suppress them and then how can the most prejudiced partial Person presume to tell us that this their Kings Commission was contrary to the Liberty of the Subjects when they set themselves in Contradiction to all the Laws of the Land in the very Declaration that denyed him his Array Their Eighth Proposition is for the Forts and Castles and that the Fortifying them be in the Parliaments power but even that too base Caitiffs your selves know to be by the very Letter of the Law in the Kings the very Charter of their own Liberties in this point confirms also the Soveraign's Right where it is provided ‖ Si nos ab duxerimus vel Miserimus eum in exercitum sit quietus de Custodia Castri char c. 20. Statute Keeble 2. Inst 34. that the King can dispence with the Services that are due for the keeping of his Castles when he sends those that ought to do them to serve in his Host By the very * Castle-gaurd an old Service alway due to the King 1st Inst 70. 111. 121. till such Services were taken away 12. Car 2d common Law and Custom of the Realm before there was alway such Services due to the King for the keeping of Castles And certainly they were lookt upon then to be in the Disposal of the Prince when the Subject was but a Tenant to serve him in his Fortifications And this Chapter of their very Charter I hope proves sufficiently not only that the King can command his Castles to be defended but send his Subjects any where for his Defence which the Declaration of the Commons did as Rebelliously deny But besides the taking of the Kings Castles Forts Ports or Shipping is resolved and ever was reputed ‖ Brook Treason 24. Treason and were not the two Houses Traytors then by a Law before that of this King made them so by Statute when they ordered * Parl. 1641. Vid. Exact Coll. p. 123. 21. Mart. 22. Martii upon the London Petition and that of the Cinque-Ports that all his Majesty's Forts and Castles should be presently fortified that no Forces should be admitted into Hull without the Consent of Lords and Commons seized their Kings Shipping and made Warwick Vice-Admiral of the Fleet This was a sort of accumulated Treason whose every Individual Act was truly so as if they designed that the Statutes should not declare more things Treasonable than they could dare to commit My †Cooke 1. Inst pag 5. A. Lord Cooke tells us whom they cannot but believe that no Subject can build a Castle or so much as a House of strength imbattailed or any Fortress Defensible without the Soveraigns consent much less sure shall they seise those that are the Kings and Fortifie them for the People and tells us again the * 2d Inst Comment Chart. Chap. 15 same in his Comment upon the very Charter of
is a solecism in Sense to imagin that Plebeians can concur in conferring that on others which themselves have not the least Tincture of A Title of Honor Or that any thing besides somewhat that is Soveraign can really communicate it to a Subject And we have seen when it was Usurpt what a sort of singular good Lordships and precious Peers were put upon us The Thebans would not so much as admit a Merchant into their Government till they deserted their calling for ten Years while the meanest Mechanicks were made Members of our House and a Tinker of the Army's just taken from his Tool The Bishop of Ely was accused only in Richard the First 's Time for putting in pitiful Officers into publick places of Trust and 't is but a little since a Parliament intrusted our Lives and Fortunes in the vilest Hands And lastly this very Libel Lashes one of our * Rich. 2d Plat. pag. 116. Kings for the preferring Worthless Persons and makes it even a forfeiture of the power of the Sword at the same time that he contends for the People in this point who were never yet known to prefer any other An Italian State as Tumultuous as our own took upon them once to create a new Nobility but assoon as the popular Faction or if you please the Convention of the People had set themselves for the Preservation of their Liberties to make Lords why truly the Election was like to be of such senseless Scoundrels you may suppose a Barksted or an Hewson some mender of Shooes or a maker of Bodkins But so sensible were those Seditious Souls that they were like to set up their Servants that they wisely resolved to retain their old Masters And I think were not some of us so wicked we should all be so wise too since we saw our own distracted Nation was never at rest Till our Rulers were restored to us as at the FIRST and our Councellors as at the BEGINNING And last of all only let me take the Liberty in this last and dismal scene of Sedition to represent but a bloody prospect of that Harmonious concurrence there is between all sorts of Rebellious Principles tho projected by Persons of different Persuasions Persons that differ in Manners and Customes of their Countries Rebels remote from one another in Time Rebels as remotely allyed in the Lands wherein they live As if the Sea it self could not separate such Seditious Subjects In their Principles and Practices that had defiled their Land with such a mutual Conspiration in the Murdering of their Soveraigns and let in an Inundation of Blood upon the Subjects and this Bloody Correspondency between the practice of primitive Rebels as well as modern between the Proceedings of Foreign Rebellions as well as our Domestick must result from the Reasons any sort of Subjects have to resist their Soveraign which we shall see were at all times with all sorts still the same that is just none at all and that appears in that People of such several sorts were all forc'd to pitch upon the same Pretences for the Justifying their Treasons And to make use of the same Cavil and Calumny against their Princes when they saw they could never ground any real Accusation And lastly to promote the same Projects and Propositions almost in a Literal Transcript for the levelling the raising the Foundations of their several Monarchies and making themselves the Masters of the Crown or rather this Seditious Harmony of all Rebels proceeds from their having ever been animated and instructed by the self same Agent of Hell the primitive Prince of Faction the Devil and this parity of pernicious Principles Practices and Propositions will appear in the perfect parallel that there is between the Proceedings of our old Rebellious Barons in England And the later Rebellion of the late Leaguers in France and the clear conformity of the Proposals of our Parliament and the polticks of this Plato to both I 'll place them in their turn as they succeeded in their time and let them that would prescribe to Treason be proud of the Precedency For the First the Barons being greedy of Rule the Commons of Liberty as a learned Author and * Antiquary le ts us Barons Cotton's view of Henry 3d. know some of the popular Lords began with the plausible pretext of the Peoples Liberty when to suppress these Troubles and supply the Kings Extremities a Parliament is call'd but such an one as prov'd much to the liking of the Lords and as little meant to relieve their King much less to redress the People The Clamor was of Encroachment upon their Liberty To silence that the Charter is several times confirmed But they finding what a power the Kings Necessities put in their Hands were resolved to supply him with so little that it might well keep their King from being Great they * M. Paris pag. 807. force him to the very sale of his Lands and Jewels for Bread and to turn out of his Palace because not able to sustain himself in it they seised upon Dover his Castle and the Kingdoms Key which was Treason for that account to deliver to a Foreigner and than a Fortiori for a Subject to take made Head against their Soveraign called in French to subdue him Which when they had done in which Actions none more Zealous than the Loyal Londers for his Destruction what was the Event Why our Historians tell us and what are still the unfortunate Effects of a prosperous Rebellion Murder and Sacrilege and Sword And the Victorious Barons Lorded it like so many †Baker p. 86. Tyrants too till Providence in a more signal Victory restored their Lawful King and the Subject's Liberty As the Baron's Wars began in King John's Time but broke out in a more Leaguers perfect Rebellion in his Son Henry's so were the seeds of this Civil Dissention sown in the Reign of Charles the Ninth and were fully ripened in the Reign of his Son and that a 3d. Henry too The Nobles here were disgusted and soon made the Commons so too A Parliament there too was thought to remedy those Discontents and that as our Henry's encreas'd the Distemper they told the French too of their Taxes and Impositions and accus'd their King of Misgovernment for imposing them as our Lords combin'd so these Leagued for the redressing of Grievances and were first Aggressors in seising Verdun and Tull two Towns in France as those did Dover and Hull in England * See their History written in Italian by D'avila in Lat. by Thuanus in French by D' Aubigni in English a Translation by Mr. Drydâ—â— their Henry was forc'd to flie from Paris his Principal City His Metropolitan also of Sedition and that by Tumult too And what did it terminate in but in the Murder of their King too The calling in of the Spaniard that was like to inslave the People to a Foreign Yoke and at last weary of the Usurpt Dominion
of the Duke of Mayne that had imposed on them a Council of State too the Tyrannous Assembly conven'd by Conspiraors was confusedly Dissolv'd in as much Distraction and Disorder And the recovered Nation return'd to their Lawful Lord. And did not our own late lamentable Distraction Commence in the Reign of King James and put all in Combustion in Charles the First did not Rebellion in Car. 1. they first practise upon his Necessities to which themselves had reduced him and then remonstrated against such Acts as were the very effect of his Necessity encumber'd with a War or rather betrayed into a breach they would not suffer the * Vid. even Rushw Coll. p. 40. Father to make Peace and then denyed the Son the supplies of War A Parliament is summoned too here and that serves him just as the two preceding Ones did their Soveraign with Remonstrances of Oppressions For this the petition of Right was granted them as Gracious an Act as that of the great Charter but nothing could serve unless like that too 't was sealed in Blood and for that they began by Degrees to be so Tumultuous till this Prince was forc'd to fly his Capital City and that also as in the others prov'd the Head to the Rebellion that succeeded upon their ‖ Exact Coll. p. 123. 21. Mart. Petition the War was first began And Hotham sent to surprize Hull as in the two former were Verdun and Dover and now was all in Arms and Blood which ended at last too in that of their King The Scots called in here as in the former the French and Spaniard the People enslaved by those that set up for their Protectors The Council of State set up here as well as in France and the ruin'd Realms never at rest till they had returned to that Soveraignty from which they revolted It is sad even to see the least thing * Plot in Carol 2d now that looks like a prelude to such a sort of Tragedy The clamors of Sedition still the same Parliaments that are Assembled to redress them ‖ Vid. com Remonstrances 79. 80. Remonstrating against Grievances they never yet felt Subjects †Proceeding Old-Bayly Associating against their Prince for his Preservation the draught the Scheam and abstract of the Baron's Combination The French League the Scotch Covenant so far from an Abhorrence of either as to pitch upon a Compound of all three Designs discovered and detected for the seising of strong Holds the * Rouse's Tryal Tower instead of an Hull and the ‖ Sydney's Tryal Scot invited once more to pass the Tweed for a better booty The Treason of such Practices is never the less because the Providence was so great as to prevent its Execution Had that not interposed the Parallel Lines I am sure would have led us on further but all their draught beyond it must have been Blood A Comparison between the Demands of our English Barons and the Desires of the French Leaguers from whence they have copyed as Counterparts The Propositions of our Parliament and the Proposals of Plato English Barons French Leaguers 1. That the King hath wronged the publick State by taking into his private Election the Justice Chancellor and Treasurer and require that they be chosen by the common Council of the Realm Parl. Tent. 22. H. 3. 1. That the Disposals of Places of Office and Trust in the Kingdom be in the Leaguers vid. Henry the 3d. of France's Answer to their Manifesto who told them 't was against the Prerogative of all his Predecessors 2. That it be ordained that 24 of the most grave and discreet Peers be chosen by the Parliament as Conservators of the Kingdom Baker pag. 8. Ann. D. 1238. Regn. H. 3. 22. 2. That the number of their Kings Council should be limited to 24. D'avila pag. 341. our Propositions were not to exceed 25. or under 15. 3. That those Conservators be sworn of his Majesties Council and all Strangers removed from it 3. The City of Paris set up a Council of 16. of themselves whil'st their Kings was to admit Persons whom they should chuse 4. That two Justices of the Kings-Bench two Barons of the Exchequer and one Justice for the Jews be likewise chosen by the Parliament ibid. 4. These sixteen so managed the Judges of their King upon a Presumption of their favoring their Soveraign that they got three of them strangl'd without process 5. They brought with them Consciences full of Error and Schism against the Laws and the Canons false Prophets fomenting Heresies against the Vicars of Christ Mat. West pag. 332. 5. That there should be a Reformation in the Church and no Hugonots favored 6. They would not have this Henry the 3d's Daughter marryed to Alexander King of the Scots and for a long time would give him no aid which at last with much ado they did 6. That his Allyance and Truce with the King of Navar was against the Interest of his Subjects 7. At Lewes they took upon them so much of the Militia that they made their Prince a Prisoner 7. That the strength of Provence be put in the hands of the Duke D'Aumarle or such others as they should nominate 8. The 24. to dispose of the King's Castles and no Peace till all the Forts and Castles be delivered to the keeping of the Barons 8. Leaguers seiz'd upon the King's City Castles and strong Holds D'avila pag. 328. 9. His Councellors elected by the Parliament allowed him such a pitance for his Houshold that they starv'd him out of his Palace M. Par. 807. 9. That the Kingdom could not be safe so long as the King was environed with Non confiding Persons 10. They chose their own Peers called the Peeres Douze 10. That they might have the Disposal of all Honor vid. their King's Answer to their Manifesto This Parliament of those Rebellious Barons my Lord Cook that had as much Veneration as any Man for that Honorable Assembly called the * Parl. Insanum Cook 's Insti part 3. p. 2. mad Parliament the reverse of that of Edward the 3d. which he calls the ‖ 50. Ed. 3. 4. Inst p. 2. good one And I am sure the Propositions of that in 41 would have made the Learned Lawyer had he lived to see them proposed pronounced that Senate as distracted too as that Oxford one of Henry the 3d 's but it may suffice that special †12. Car. 2. Cap. 12. Act since supposed them in their Witts in declaring them what was worse TRAITORS CHAP. III. Remarks upon Mr. Hunt 's Postscript THIS Disingenuous Author with his Hypocritical Apology for the Church of England has just done her as much Mischief as that of Bishop Jewels sincere one did her Good That pious Prelate with his unanswerable Arguments had defended her against all the powers of the Pope and this with his Argument which he Answers himself has made her all Popish Never did an Hypocrite
trump'd up his Treatise That his Majesty 's had not an absolute Negative Voice to deny Bills of Common Right For this ‖ Plato Red. Plato tells us That His Majesty having it evacuated the very ends of Government For this Hunt Harangues and says He is so bold to say That never any Bill in Parliament Hunt p. 50. wanted the Royal Assent that was presented by the Desires of the People And I think 't is bold enough said with a Witness For is not this King left at last by the Laws of all the Land Sole Soveraign Judge what is really fit for his Peoples good to be past whereas he presumes that their bare presenting signifies the Desires of the People and that must absolutely determine the Jurisdiction of the Prince * pag. 47. He tells us when a matter is moved in Parliament by the King the Commons consent last and are therefore the Commons Co-ordinate with their King Or does that only signifie the Candid Custom of the Proceedings in Parliament The King is presumed upon his own Proposal of any matter the Party and they being consulted is only for their ‖ Consilium impensuri the Words of the Barons Writ 4. Inst p. 4. Advice as the very Words of the Writ expresly have it by which they are called and the very Etymology of their very Name the great Council expresses Controversies in such Cases will be Eternal until the Disputants agree in the same Notion of the Thing they so much dispute For otherways it is but making of Words instead of Arguments if they mean by the Legislative of the two Houses a power of Concurrence with their King in the making Laws and that their Consent is to be required they labor to prove just nothing or what they may have without so much pains and to so little purpose If they will insist upon the Natural Etymology of the very Word they will find the Derivative Legislative to be deduced as above from the Latinism Legem ferre and then in God's Name let the two Houses enjoy even of that an Arbitrary power and bring in what Bills they please so long as they will not again force upon us an Ordinance or Vote for Law and the Statute of the Land but if their Sense of this Legislative power must signifie That their Commons have as much of it as their King and That 't is that which makes their King Co-ordinate with his Commons as is sufficiently clear from their Writings that it is then I affirm 't is against Law against Reason and a Lye For the King by the very Law it self hath power to dispence with Statutes his Proclamation is a Law and an Edict and as much as any of the Decrees of the Roman Emperor's with the Advice of his Judges he will dispence with the rigor of the Laws if too severe and resolve their meaning if Ambiguous Have their two Houses whom they would have these mighty Law makers the power of repealing or so much as altering those very Laws they make without their Kings consent And tho this Laborious Lawyer observes That neither their King can pass any thing he proposes without theirs yet this his power and that when they have not so much as a Being Evinces the Prince at least supream in the Legislative The Learned in other Laws besides our own tell us a Legislative power may partly be delegated to other Persons tho Subjects and yet remain in the Prince even entirely notwithstanding such a Communication I confess the Opinion of Canonists and Civilians may not be so Authentick with some that abhor their very Names yet Grotius himself is of that Opinion and he a Person that our ‖ Plato Redivivus Republicans can cite even on their own Side but our own * Vid. Brit. Fol. 1. 4. Inst 70. Laws allow it or else I think our Judges too might make themselves Co-ordinate because their King's Commission communicates to them all the power of destributive Justice that is in the King We are told the King has committed all his power Judicial some in one Court some in another and therefore the Judgements run Consideratum est per Curiam c. and ‖ 8. H. 4. 19. 'T is resolved That if one should render himself to the King 's own Judgement it would be of none effect yet for all this it would be false to affirm That he does not do justice because he has delegated it to others to be done The King does not put in Members of Parliament as he does Judges yet Peers he makes and calls them to Sit and Commons cannot come without his Writs for Election but certain it is that our Kings once had a more absolute Legislative for they all know their Lower House commenced but so late and heretofore their Nobles and Bishops but such as the King should be pleased to call And I cannot imagine that when our Princes admitted the Commonalty to be concerned in the making Laws they then designed he should lay aside his own Legislative or put it in Common as they do their Land in Coparcenary or in their great * Coke 1st Inst Corp. Coke's the learned Lawyers Language make an Hotchpotch a Pudding of his Prerogative If every Politick Body that has but a share in this Legislative must also be presum'd to participate as much of it as the King I can prove to them every petty Corporation Co-ordinate with their great Convention of States and even a poor Parish as great Legislators as an House of Parliament for by the Laws of the Land even those can make their By-Laws without Custom or Prescription if they be but for the good of the * Pour Reparation del ' Eglise d'an haut voy c. 44. Edw. 3. 19. Publick and if they can but prescribe to it may pass any private Acts for their own The Civilians make their Law to be the Will and pleasure of their Prince But tho our ‖ Bracton l. 1. c. 9. Antient Lawyers would not expound that absolutely for our †Fleta l. 1 c. 17. own yet they seem to make it but little less only say it must not be meant with us of his unadvised Will but such an one as is determined upon the Deliberation and Advice of His Council Pryn that preposterous Assertor of this their Legislative has furnished them sufficiently with as contradictory Arguments as absurd as irrational Inferrences for its defence He tells us in his Treatise * Pryn's Treatise for the Peoples Legislative that Kingdoms were before Kings and then the People must needs make Laws that I confess setting aside the very Contradiction that there is in Terms For certainly the Word Kingdom was never heard of till there were Kings to Govern He might as well have told us of a Derivative that was a long time before the Primitive but bating this Solecism in Sense and Speech well meaning Will designed it perhaps for
tradition of their positions which as I observ'd are deliver'd down to their posterity and rever'd for Revelation The Principles of a Republick like the root of Rebellion it self run in a Blood or are receiv'd like the Plague from the Company they keep by way of Contagion They are loth to dissent from their Friends and Relations or Condemn the resolution of their pious Predecessors But sometimes the Seditious Souls are Seduc'd and Prejudic'd with the Approbation of an Author whom they shall as much perhaps pervert as they little Comprehend sometimes impos'd upon with a pretended Antiquity of their opinion and policy with which too they would delude others so for the first we saw not long since a Plato Redivivus dealt with the Devil he would have raised in the Ghost of his Philosopher and endeavored to obtrude upon the World the lewdest Sedition for the Dogma Platonis so did also the Leviathan of the Usurper that took his pastime in his unfathomable Oceana i. e. a political piece of Paradox deep and un-intelligible besides the quaintness of its pretty Style that renders it a Composition of Pedantry and Romance That Illuminato was perswaded among the wonders in his deep that he had discovered what had been so long buryed in the Floods the old Model of the very Primitive Common-wealth as if his Idaea of Government had determin'd the Deity or at least had been concurrent with the Design of the Creator when he fram'd a World to be govern'd for the bold Gentlemen being very Opiniative and I think one might say a little impious too * Ocaeana p. 15. Appeals to God whither the Sentiments of this Oliver's Architeck do not suit exactly with the very Protoplasts the Almighty's Mind and whither his Model which all must acknowledge the result of a most unnatural Rebellion was not the very Common-wealth of Nature And this his Prototype of the Primitive Republick the Pragmatical Dogmatist is pleas'd to call the †Ibid p. 20. Doctrine of the Antients or Antient Prudence but if such as he says were the Government before the Flood I shall only conclude it so because its Lewdness and Sedition might occasion the deluge and might have been preserv'd for them in the Ark too since there was Beast in it of every kind and their admir'd Aristotle will allow his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be Communicable to an Ant an Ape or an Ass as well as a Man This opinion of the Peoples deciding between themselves and their King you shall see is not only Mr. Sidney's but the Doctrine of all the Democraticks all the rank Republicans that ever writ * Junius Brutus vind cont Tyran Intelligimus Magistratus quasi Regum Ephoros c. Septuaginta in Regno Ifraelitico denique Praefectos Centuriones Caeteros Vid. 6. 37. Quaest 2. Rex Qui pactum perfide violat hujus faederis seu pacti Regni officicurii Vindices Custodes sunt Quaest 4. pag. 169. Brutus in his Vindiciae makes the Magistrates whom the People shall Authorize by whom he understands their Representatives their Dyets or Parliament or else such as was the Ephori of the Lacedaemonians the Seventy Elders among the Israelites the Praefecti with the Centurians among the Romans these makes not only the Judges but the Avengers of the Perfidiousness as they call it of their Princes upon their presumption that they have Violated the Laws About a year before the Publishing of that Pernicious piece some say a Romish Priest a Catholick others a Reform'd one A Calvinist maintain'd the same Doctrine in a Treatise concerning the Soveraigns right over the Subject and the Subjects Duty towards his Soveraign for there he tells us tho it be a Common Objection that the King has no other Judge but God himself and the Example of David as commonly objected whose Murder and Adultery no less Laws could punish than the Almighty's he ‖ Populi ordines jus sibi retinuisse fraenandorum Principum c. Quod ni fecerint perfidi in Deum patriam habeantur De Jure Magistratuum Quaest 6. pag. 73. Edit Francfurt Answers to it very positively that the States of the Kingdom always retain'd a power of Judging and Bridling their King which if they do not do they are Traytors to God and their Country he would resolve the Case of King David whom the People could not Judge for his more than Ordinary Crimes to result from his sins and offences but being Personal ones and as he must mean I suppose not perpetrated against the Welfare of the Neque supremum Magistratum pro privatis delictis Coercere quae proprie Personalia sunt ibid. Common-wealth it self tho I cannot see why the breach of any Law establisht in a Community may not be Constru'd to be a Transgression also against the Publick tho the Injury sustein'd more immediately relates to some private Person 'T is for that Reason all our Indictments run in the Kings Name and the Criminal Process in all other Nations at the suit of the Power that is Supream so that properly there is no Personal Crimes especially of this Nature but what can be consider'd too as they Commonly are against the National Interest and the very well being of the Civil Society So that if they 'l Punish or sit as Judges upon the Soveraign for designs against the Publick State it self they can as soon for any injury done to an private Member of the same But that we see the Israelites did not pretend to do even in their David's Case and so his solution of the Nature of the Crime signify's just nothing Mr. Harrington whom his advocate and his Plagiary too in his * Publisher to the Reader Plato Redivivus is pleas'd to recommend for his Learning least the Notion of the Balance that he borrow'd from him should be taken for a Fool 's as well himself filtch for it there and play'd the Knave why truly that Learned Gentleman Chimes on in the same Din of the Peoples Judicial power and these drudges of Sedition like the Common Pack-horses pursue all the same Track and the leading Bell for he tells us too ‖ Harrington in his Epitome of the whole Common-wealth Oceana pag. 278. the People or Praerogative all one with them are also the Supream Judicatory of this Nation having Power to determine all appeals from the Magistrate and to question him for his Administration In the next place that * Marchion Needham the supposed Author of Merc. Pol. Independant Brute that Assertor of his Free State as he calls it i. e. to be unconfin'd and live like Savages In Mr. Hobbs his Language The State of Nature or if you please in Mr. Harringtons The Balance of Beasts This inveterate Villain that vilifi'd our Monarchy tho that Heaven instituted it self after its own Theocracy that debused this Divine Institution even below their Human Invention and †The Brutish Principles of Monarchy Merc.
be their Kings Judges that they can not absolutely Judge of the mere Right of a meum and tuum among themselves Several other Instances both the Books Rolls abound with that Evidence our Kings the only Judges of the Law in all Causes and over all Persons for in the 13th year of the same †13. R. 2. Richard the Second the Commons Petition'd again the King that his Council might not make any Ordinance against the Common Law and the King Graciously granted them but with a salvo to the Regalities of the Crown and the right of his Ancestors The Court of Star Chamber which the worst of times Abolish'd and my Lord Coke makes almost the †It is the most Honorable Court the Parliam excepted that is in the Christian World of Honorable Proceeding just Jurisdiction A Court that kept all England in quiet Coke 4 Inst p. 65. and so it did till abolish'd by the Tumults of a Parliam best of Courts had heretofore Cognizance of property and detèrmin'd a Controversie touching Lands contain'd in the Covenants of a Joynture as appears in the Case of the Audleys Rot. Claus 41. Edward the 3d. There the King heard too a Cause against one Sir Hugh Hastings for with-holding part of the Living of the poor of St. Leonard in York as is Evident from the Roll. 8. Edward 4. p. 3. And tho the Proceedings of this Court were so much decryed by those that clamor'd so long for its Suppression till they left no Court of Justice in the Land unless it were that of Blood and Rebellion their High one tho the King in his giving year was so gracious that he made the very Standard An. 1641. page and rule of his Concessions to be the very request of his People and gratified them in an Abolition of this Court establish'd by the Common-Law ‖ Coke 4. Inst C. 5. and confirm'd afterward per †3. H. 7. c. 1. Act of Parliament yet ‖ Cambden Britt 130. Cambden our Historian as well as our Coke our Lawyer could commend it for the most Honorable as well as the most Ancient of all our Judicatories and if they 'll have the Reason Why it treated of Matters so high as the Resolution even of Common-Law and the Statute it may be told them in the weighty Words of their own Oracle Because the King in Judgement of Law as in the rest also was Coke 4. Inst p. 65. 63. ne dignitas hujus Curiae vilesceret always in that Court and that therefore it did not meddle with Matters of ordinary Moment least the dignity of it should be debased and made contemptible and tho by the gracious consent or rather an extorted Act of Grace the late King was forc'd to forego it yet the Proceedings of some Cases there may serve to show what a power our Kings had and ought to have in all manner of distributive Justice Several other Citations I could here set down to prove the Subjection of the very Common-Law to the Soveraign Power as Henry the Sixth superseding a Criminal Process and staying an Arraignment Verney's Case 34. H. 6. Rot. 37. for Felony Henry the Seventh's that debar'd the Beckets by decree from pursuing their suit for Lands because the merits of the Cause had been heard by the King his Predecessor and also by himself before but these will abundantly suffice to satisfy any sober Person that does not set himself against all assertors of his Soveraigns Supremacy And then if Custom and Common Usage which Plowden in his Commentaries is pleased to call the Common-Law lies in many Cases Subject to the Resolution of the Supream Soveraign no doubt but the Statute the result of his own ‖ 'T is that which gives them Life as I have shown before and makes them any thing besides waste Paper And the Judicious Hooker in his politicks seems to be of the same opinion when he says Laws take their force not from those that devise them but from the power that gives them the strength of Laws Sanction must of necessity submit and acknowledge a subjection to the same Power and that I think we have sufficiently prov'd already upon several occasions both from the Letter of the Laws themselves and our little light of Reason both from Arguments and †The seven Kingdoms of the Saxons had all their Laws made by their 7. several Soveraigns of which confuss'd number the Confessor cull'd out the best and call'd them after his own name St. Edward so did also the other Saxon and Danes Kings their own after theirs as you see in Lambert's Book of Laws Laws that have evidenc'd their own Resolutions to be reserv'd to the King and that we had Kings long before the Commons Commenc'd Conven'd or Concur'd in their assent to such Laws 'T is prodigiously strange to me that these mighty Maintainers of the Peoples Legislative and their Judicial Power eeven over their own Soveraigns cannot be guided by those very Laws they would have to govern their Kings thus you shall see a Needham a Nevil or a Sidney amongst our selves in all their Laborious Libels that the drudges of Sedition who seem to verify the Sacred Text in drawing Sin it self with a Cart-Rope in all that they tugg toil and labour in you seldom see that they cite you so much as a single Statute on their side or if they do only such an one as is either Impertinently apply'd or as Industriously perverted And in the same sort does the Seditious Scot Buchanan and the rest of the Books of their discontented Demagogues that ‖ Omne malum ab aquilone Northern Mischief that threaten'd us always with a Proverbial Omen till averted of late by the Loyalty of their latter Parliaments that have aton'd even for the last age and the perfidiousness and Faction of the former those all in their Libels hardly Name you so much as one single Law of their Nation to countenance the Popular Paradox the pleasing Principle of the Peoples Supremacy which the poor Souls when prescrib'd by those Mountebanks of the State must take too like a Common Pill only because 't is gilded with the pleasant Insinuations of Natural Freedom Free-State Subjection of the Soveraign Power of the People and all the dangerous Delusions that lead them directly to the designs of these devilish Republicans i. e. a damnable Rebelion whereas would they but submit their Senses to the Sanctions of the Laws of their several Lands their Libels they would find to be best baffl'd by the Statute Books as well as their Authors to be punisht by them for their Publication 'T is strange that should not obtain in this Controversy which prevails in all polemical disputes that is some certain Maxims and Aphorisms Postulates and Theorems not to be disputed these determin our Reason even in Philosophy and the Mathematicks and why should not the Laws then in Politicks too and where
part of that general Plot and Conspiracy that has been since discovered and that all sorts of Pens were imployed as well as all Heads Hearts and Hands at work for the carrying on Mr. Sidney's OLD CAVSE as indeed all this Gentlemans Works tended to for which the Almighty was supposed so often to have declared and signaliz'd himself and illustrates only this That there was not any Person qualified for undermining of our Monarchy either from his Wit or Parts Boldness or Courage from his Virulency in Satyr or his Knowledge in History from his skill in any Science or Profession but what some or other of the most eminent was made Serviceable to this Faction and contributed his Talent to the carrying on the Design according to the gift and graces that they had in their several Abilities to promote it neither can this Gentleman think himself libell'd in this Accusation unless he would give his own works the Lye for who but him that had such a Design for the subverting our Monarchy would at a season when the Succession of our Crown was struck at in the Commons Vote a Succession that several Laws of our Land have declared to be Hereditary even by that of God who but one so Seditious would not only have encouraged such unwarrantable Proceedings which was the late Kings Car. 2d Speech to the late Oxford Parliam own Words for 't in such an Assertion of the Commons Right but in that too brought upon the Stage several Arguments from our History several Presidents of our Soveraign's being here Elected by their Subjects when they might as well too tell us That our present Soveraign was so chosen because the Question was put to the People upon his Coronation but yet this elective Kingdom of ours did this Laborious Petyt's Right of the Commons asserted from his Cleri populi consensu drudg of Sedition drive at too Does he not tell us William Rufus and several others were Elected that is Henry the First King Stephen King John tho I am satisfied that consent of the Clergy and People they so much rely upon was nothing more than the Convention of those Persons that appeared upon the solemn Coronation or at least the Proclaiming of the King Themselves are satisfied all our old Statutes clearly confirm'd the sole Legislative Power of the Prince and therefore they won't when they are objected to them allow them to be Statutes at all because made I suppose only by their King but so my Lord Coke says they said of the Statute of Edward the First which notwithstanding he 4. Inst calls an Act of Parliament but yet however we see that the Style of all other Acts of Parliament put all the enacting part in the power of the King so that Mr. Sidney's making his People and Parliament the Supream Judges of their Kings violating the Laws is only a Position that opposes every Act in the Statute Book from the Great CHARTER to the last grant of our late King CHARLES But our Author Triumph'd as he thought over his Adversaries in forcing back their own Argument upon his Foes for says Mr. Sidney if no man must be Judge because he is party then neither the Tryal pag. 24. King and then no man can be try'd for an Offence against him or the Law I confess with such a sort of disputants as are resolv'd to beg the Question and take their Premisses for principles of eternal truth you cannot avoid the Conclusion tho it be the greatest Paradox and an absolute Lye for he presumes the Parity of Reason and then concludes they are both alike Reasonable he takes it for granted the People may judge the King tho party as well as the King the People who must be suppos'd as much partial and that is truly just as if he had said A Sophism Logician call the Petitio principi when we believe as they do and what then Why then we shall be of their mind i. e. that it would follow the King or his Judges could not hang a Fellow for Fellony or this Author himself for a Traytor to the State Nay more as the Gentleman has manag'd the matter it is made an Argument a Fortiori for he supposes the Absurdity to be such that if the King in his own Case must Judge the People and not the People the King in theirs that this Contradictory Consequence would be as much conclusive That the Servant entertain'd by the Master must Judge him but the Master by Page 42. no means must the Servant or in the Metaphor of his own more Blasphemous Sedition The Creature is no way bound to its Creator but the Creator it self to the thing it has Created and now all is out and all the large Volume all his mighty Treatise not to be finisht in many years is founded upon that first Principle of all Republicans The Peoples Supremacy or as Mr. * Vid. Paper at his Execution He has too that Old Seditious Aphorism us'd by Junius Brutus all the rest of the Republicans Singulis Major Tryal p. 23. tho in the next paragraph he is no more than any of his Subjects Sidney says the Soveraign being but a Servant to his Subjects a Creature to these God Almightys of the People the Creators of their King truly this they are resolv'd we shall grant or as resolutely suppose we cannot Contradict and so put upon us their presumptive absurdities for our own and make them the Consequence of those Concessions that were never yeilded who taught this Gentleman who granted him that the Magistrate was the Peoples Creature but a Brutus in his Vindiciae or that as abominable a Book De ‖ This Gentleman seems only to have translated that Authors own words non populus propter Magistratus sed Magistratus propâ—eâ— poâ—ulum fuisse creatos jure Magistratuum and for this must it follow that Filmer is so absurd only because he does not suppose the very pernicious principles of those very Rebels and Republicans he endeavours to refute It is an easy sort of a Conquest and you may soon prove your Foes to be De Jure Magist Quaest 5. p. 10. Edit Francs Fools too if you 'll oblige them to maintain their own positions from the Contradictory Maxims of their Enemies they oppose and this Collonel that once was a Souldier and in Arms for his Common-wealth as well as a Polemical pen man against the Monarchy would soon have remain'd sole Master of the Field had the Measures of his Foe been forc't to be taken from the Rules and Maxims of the Enemy which he fought and many would think the Man a little mad that could imagine two Armies that faced in their Fronts to meet so as to stand upon the same ground It can't be well effected without a penetration of body neither can Mr. Sidney conclude us in that absurdity unless he would make us mingle Principles a thing perhaps
among the Romans and if the People had any Right to this Judicial power those Miscreants more modestly place it among the most eminent whereas our brisker Assertor of this Anarchy makes it out That therefore our more eminent Memberships have this Original Power only because Communicated them from the meanest People so that now we have a Parliament that has an Original Natural Liberty of the People tho their very Constitution it self commenc'd from the very Grant Grace and Favor of the King I could never meet with any Record yet that rehearsed these Privileges of Parliament But we have many extant and Presidents even of the House of Commons themselves that their Privileges and much of their Power proceeds from the Liberalities of their Prince more than this Natural Liberty of the People not to mention that their very being was first the result of such an Act of his Grace for from whom pray had they that freedom of Speech they upon every Session desire by their Speaker but from that King before whom they are to Speak who is it that fills their Chair those that present him or the King that accepts or disapproves whom they have presented who is it that gives them access to his Person the Commons that desire it or he from whom 't is desir'd 2. Lastly who impowers them to consent to a Bill those that supplicate his Majesty would be pleased to enact or his Majesty that says Be it enacted could this Natural Original power of the People be communicated to their Representatives the dispute about the Commons Right would be carried for ever on their side and we need not date their Original from Henry the Third or the Barons Wars or from the Saxon Heptarchy it self to be sure they then had their Representatives assoon as they had this Power and this Power it seems was assoon as they were a People And by this Original Power which they delegate for ought I see they may by the same rule as well retain it suffer no Representatives at all but assemble themselves and exercise the Soveraignty If the People delegate an Original power and a Natural Liberty to this Parliament it cannot certainly be comprehended how these Parliaments as now constituted could commence by the Grants and Concessions of the Prince and yet all will allow tho they disagree in the time that they did begin at first to be so Assembled by the Bounteous Permission of the King and that all the Privileges they claim were the result of an entire Favour of the Soveraign and not the Original freedom of the Subject if they 'll call that an Original Power to send Representatives it must be somewhat like that Author 's Secondary Original we so lately consider'd and that tho they prescribe to it for this seven hundred year as well as they cannot for above four or five 100 still it will recurr to this That this first power was the Grant of the Crown And these prescriptions as themselves allow being whenever they begun the result of the Soveraigns Bounteous Permission I cannot see why those Immunities may not be resign'd to the same Crown from which they were once receiv'd or those Franchises for prescription it self in this case is properly no more may not be Absolutely forfeited by those that at best can but be said to hold them on Condition I know the Common Law Favours a Prescription so far as in Inheritances to let it have the force of a Right when their cannot be made out any other Title but this I look upon to be of another Nature when the Original of what they prescribe too by their own Concessions was the Grant of their King and even this Common Law commonly in all its Customary Rules excepts the Prerogative of the King nay this very Prerogative of his by that very Law is allowed to be the Principal * Case of Usurpation Coke Litt. 344. B. The Prerogative of the King is given by the Common Law and is part of the Laws of the Realm 3. Instit p. 84. Stamf. pl. Cr. 62. a Prerog 5. part of it I urge this because it is both apposite here and a Case upon our late Elections much controverted and to say as some do That such a Prescription cannot be forfeited proceeds from a confounding of the word in this Case with that Prescription by which some of them have a Title to their Estate for their Common Objection about this their Elective power is That the King may as well deprive them of their Birth-right when this their Birth-right might commence by an Original Right but the Power of this Electing must Necessarily and Originally first come from the Crown But yet they know too that this their very Birth-right is in many Cases forfeitable by their own Act to the Crown and for their Burgage it self should we abstract Burgh an Antient Town holden of the King Coke Litt. 164. from that Elective power that attends it nothing else but an Antient tenure of their very King And if in the Saxons time as the popular advocates would persuade us the Commons were call'd to sit in Parliament 't is certain they could not come as Burgesses too for all that Borâ—oe in their Toungue signified if we can â—elieve my Lord ‖ Ibid. Our Neighbours Kingdom of Scotland had Parliaments not above 700. years agon and even their Republicans will allow they had Kings long before that call'd only the Preceres as a worthy Author of theirs observes Sir G. M. Jus. Reg. That their old Laws run just like ours here the Kings only Acts and that their Burgesses did not begin till about 300. year agon Which makes it more likely that our own was not summon'd much long before for tho they were different Kingdoms yet Neighbouring Nations and might nearly follow our Innovations vvhen in a thing that must be lik'd by all Subjects Coke and from which the word Burgh was since deriv'd its signification was only this Those ten Companies or Families that were one anothers pledge and so should they prove it to us as clear as the Sun as well as they have left it much in the dark still those their Commons could never be of those that had any Right to come but only such as the Grace of the King should call and even in Edward the first 's time those very Barons some say that were only most wise were summon'd by the King and their Sons if they were not thought so prudent as their Fathers were not call'd to Parliament after their Fathers death Therefore since Prescription since Parliament it self depended all heretofore upon the pleasure of the Prince I cannot see how the Subject shall ever be able to make it his Original Right and tho some are so bold as to say such a prescription cannot be forfeited or resign'd by the Subject resum'd or restor'd to the Crown for they must maintain those propositions or else they have no reason for their
his beloved Low-Countries laboring under a Magistracy that Lords it with as much Power as that from which they were delivered For this his Original Power of the People must be as much delegated to those that govern there as well as it is inherent in any sole Soveraign that is the Governor neither are any besides the best of their Burghers admitted to Administration so that even that State that comes nearest to a Common-wealth is at last but a sort of Aristocracy which their Harrington condems Ocâ—anâ— for worse than Monarchy it self And I believe their Commons find the Impositions of their Burgo-Masters as great and as grievous as ever were the Gabels of Spain So from what has been premis'd this must be concluded that since we see they can't punish or Judge even their own Representatives only their Suffragans in an house of Commons when they have delegated to them their Original power which for once we 'l suppose them able to delegate much less shall they their Soveraign tho they did as they will have it confer upon him the power that he has for the Members of the lower House represent only the Commons of the Kingdom whereas the Soveraign is in some Sense the whole Kingdoms Representative Since we have seen this Original Power of the People wheresoever it has been delegated to have created nothing but Usurpation and wrong where can this Power be better plac'd but in the King that can alone pretend to a Right and tho we are so unhappy as to have presidents wherein they can prove to us that their Representatives were once call'd to an Account by the People that sent them that is so far from proving that they have a natural or Original right so to do that it shows the danger of such a position that they may do it and that when in the late Rebellion they presum'd upon this their Right in Equity they made it appear to be nothing else but the power of the Sword for in respect of a Right they are really so far from being able to censure their Representatives whom they send that themselves are punishable for medling in those Parliamentary concerns with which they have enâ—rusted others What force this has in the Case of their Commons holds a Fortiori in that of their King In the last place give me leave to close this their Rebellious Argument of their Monarch being accountable to the Majesty of the people with some few more Reasons against this Damnable Doctrine that has within the Memory of man desolated and destroy'd three Kingdoms A Doctrine that confounded us in the last confus'd us in this and will be Condemn'd by all Ages A Doctrine that places the Divine right in the People and then indeed such an one as Mr. Hunt makes it Impious Sacrilegious * H. posts p. 68. Treasonable Destructive of Peace Pregnant with Wars and what absolutely produc'd the Civil one of England and Sacrific'd its Soveraign Head to the Fury of an ‖ Sidney's Tryal p. 24. Headless Multitude This Principle is the very Basis upon which all their Babel of Confusion of a Common-wealth of Anarchy is all Built and Establisht And I shall never look upon it as loss to have Labour'd in it so long if we can at last but undermine its very Foundation And that is laid even by the Libel of Mr. Sid. upon the Contract and Condition upon which they 'll suppose he receiv'd the Crown which he must be made to renounce if he does not Perform when Accepted And in answer to this we 'll suppose for once what the most Seditious Souls themselves can suggest and that this part of the Rebellious position abounds both with Sense Truth and Reason that our Kings have but a Conditional bargain of it which indeed would be but a bad one too and such I dare Swear as the Greatness of our present Soveraigns Soul would hardly submit to and if we 'll but believe his own word as firm as fate that never fail'd his Friends and surely will not then be first violated for a debasing of himself and a gratifying of his Foes that has told us or decreed that he will not suffer his Government and his Crown to be His Majesties Speech 22. May 85. p. 5. Precarious And I am apt to think that the that stemn'd the Tide the fierce influx of Blood and Rebellion as well as without a Metaphor withstood the noise of many Waters and baffl'd the Billows of â—he main will hardly when Seated at â—ast in a Peaceful Throne be regardless of it's ‖ Ibid p. 4. Right and Prerogative which even his meritorious sufferings have deserv'd should we bate his Virtue and Birth were not in the Ballance And 't is much unlikely that he that kept his Grandeur when a Duke of York should dwindle into that of Venice and thâ—â— too when a King of Great Britain ' Tâ—â— their Doeg I confess that accepts upoâ— Condition 't is their Duke with whoâ— they do Contract our Crown as I havâ— shown has been resolv'd an Imperial one from the Letter of its own Laws anâ— the very Statutes of the Land Theiâ— from the very Constitution it self Subject to the Senate Ours from its Foundation RESOLV'D not to be Precarious as well as now too from the Resolâ—tion of its Prince But in answer to this position of ouâ— Republicans I shall depone this as â— principle that notwithstanding such â— Contract upon Conferring the Supremacy the same cannot be Dissolv'd eveâ— by the Consent of all those that Constituted it I wont repeat to them thâ— Reason I have already urg'd from the * Rex Legia Royal Law of the Romans which one of their very Republicans says was noâ—-without ‖ Certis tamen Limitibus nec sine Exceptione probata jure Magist Quest 6. Condition or Limitation which if so then we see that both Augâ—â—tus for whose Establishment in the fiâ—â— true Imperial Throne of their Rebellioâ— Rome that very Law was first founded as also the Emperor Vespasian for whom it was again Confirm'd both these from all the Famous Historians of their Times unless we 'll believe them like the late Writers of the new Rome to be all Legends too both appear'd absolute in their power unlimited in their Jurisdiction notwithstanding those Conditions they will have Exprest in that Law neither did the People pretend to their deposition upon their Non performance Julius himself that was not absolutely prefer'd to be the Royal Emperor for he liv'd before that Law was made yet was allowed such a perpetual Dictatorship as may be well resolv'd into what our Republicans reproach with their present Soveraign an Arbitrary Power And he too whom the Miscreant we before mention'd says was ‖ Jure Occisus qd nimis Multas dignitates cumulasset ibid. p. 38. justly Murdered and why only because he dignify'd himself too much as if it were a Crime for a King to be
Subject but also between the several Subjects to one another for 't is a consent upon Condition among themselves that this Man transfers his Power to some single Soveraign because the rest have does or design to do it so that the Person upon whom the Supremacy is confer'd is secured upon a double Obligation both of that which is made among them all to themselves and that which to him is made by them all and therefore that Opinion of Mr. Sidney of the Power of the People being delegated to some particular Persons the Major part of which can act for the whole Kingdom is even unreasonable according to the Notion of their own Hypothesis For while he supposes it a Natural Liberty and Original Power that the People have at the same time he lays down a Position that destroys it For 't is Unnatural and against Nature if they consider it that the major part should determine it against the Minor and be taken for the consent and Approbation of the whole when it is to be turned by a single suffrage and one casting voice And this carrying it by a Majority is against the Nature of their Original Liberty for we see that even in all Seditious Assemblies and tumultuary Meetings every Man would have every thing carried his own way but the being concluded by the Major part has always been the result of some civil Institution in the Government that thought it reasonable things should be so carried for an avoiding of Confusion and Disorder so our Representatives in Parliament are chosen by the Majority of their Electors and they pass their Bills when elected by pluralities of Voices but this proceeds from President Regulation Institution Custom and Law and yet we see thâ—t mâ—ny times notwithstanding these râ—câ—iv'd Rules and tacit Agreements to which all have submitted they are loth in their Elections to stand to their own accord in such Cases and that those that have lost the day or the Causâ— by some few voices are restless tumultuary and their natural Liberty that is iâ—herent in every individual so prevalenâ— that what they have lost by Law they endeavour to compass by force or fraud and from that has proceeded those Rioâ—ous forcible Decisions of some of our Elections those clan destine and fraudulent ones of others from that proceeded in our late Confusions even in Parliamentary Vide perfect Diurnal Affairs The Remonstrances of the Army Excluded Members the Impeachment and Imprisonment of the Eleven Members Prides Purge The Peoples Agreement Abolishing of Lords House and at last Olivers Dissolution Hist of Independency for the Independant Faction prevailing in force would by no means be concluded by Law the Presbyterian suffrages were all along the most numerous in the Senate and by all their Presidents in Parliament must have carried every Vote by the Majority This the Independant that fill'd not above the third part of the House found to their grievance saw themselves still out-voted â—â— Law and so betook themselves to their â—â—med Suffrages and their Legislative â—â—ords Now tho the plurality of Voices tho against their Natural Power of the People for they don't like it even in Parliaments now since things are not carried all to their liking may be allowed to determine the Debates in a great Senate conven'd by the Soveraign Power yet it cannot be imagined that the Majority here too shall carry it for an abolishing that very power that called them unless we can imagin the Supream Power had summoned them on purpose to be deposed and that this politick BODY was Assembled as once they were too sadly in the natural Sence to cut off its own HEAD the Writ that summons Deliberaâ—â—ri de arduis Regni â— Inst C. 1. Parl. them in our Parliament is in order to deliberate about the difficult Affairs of the Kingdom and it would be a difficult Bussness indeed should it be by a casting voice extended to a debate whither they had a King And from these Reasonings and Suggestions which I submit to Men of more Sense and Reason I dare to draw this Conclusion that even from their own Principles Their Contract with their King or as Sidney says The Condition upon which he receives the Crown he can not possibly be punish'd or depos'd because 't is almost impossible that every one of his Subjects should concur in such an Act and the Major part must by no means determine it by their own Maxims of Natural Liberty even in affairs of lesser Moment 2. Because 't is no Consequence that because they have confer'd the Supremacy upon some single Person that therefore they may reassume it too tho it were forfeitable even on Condition which I 've shown the Romans themselves never pretended to tho their own †De jure Magistrat Quest 6. Democraticks tell us their very Lex Regia was Conditional and ‖ Dig. 50. 12. 2. D. 50. 12. 1. their Laws which by all Nations are allowed the most equal resolve it that tho with them bare promises if made to private Persons were were not Obligatory yet when offer'd to the publick they oblige and that in a Monarchy is always the King and what then must it be when there 's Oath made Faith pawn'd and fealty sworn And those Laws resolve it too as reason must that when the Supream Power was confer'd on the Prince all Magistracy was Zouch El. p. 101. past over too and in that lies all Judicial Power and who then shall Judge of those Conditions that forfeit a Crown but him that wares it and then they 'll be but little the better for the Controversie when a King cannot be deposed unless like a Richard the Second by his own consent I have taken this Course as the best way for the Confutation of such Principles not that I can really grant them the Concessions I have made for I could assoon believe Mr. S. dy'd a Loyal Subject as be satisfy'd with the positions he has lain down but I therefore grant them their own Hypothesis that they may confute themselves that they may see their own Babel of Anarchy will not be built upon the very Basis and Foundation of those Foolish positions they maintain that the work never was or will be carried on far without terminating as that of their Fore-fathers in Confusion and by that they mean perhaps a Common-wealth and have I hope in some Measure manifested that even by their own wicked assertion of the Peoples Divine Natural and Original power they cannot really pretend to any Right of Judging Punishing or deposing their King what force can do we have both felt and fearfully to our Terror seen but in all Arguments of this Nature the Question is of the Reason and Right and not of any Fact that may be justify'd by wrong and the refuting them from their own Maxims must be more effectually convincing then the maintaining of ours for one opinion in Politicks is not absolutely
and in the Mines If we must be put upon such a piece of Impertinence as the Postscript would have it to find out this King Adam 's Court too I 'll just take the Liberty to put them to just such another task They will have their instituted Common-wealth to Commence from the World 's in sancy even before that of Israel before that Moses as they say had divided their Plat. p. â—â— Land unto them by Lot and turned the several Tribes into so many Republicks And then let them tell me what sort of a Republick it was that the Patriarchs liv'd under and were ruled by where it was that Abraham and his Fellow Citizens consulted to make Laws for the Benefit of the Common-wealth of his Family so great that his train'd Servants 318 fought 4 Kings where it was that Lot and his Herds-men when they pitch'd their Tents in the Plain set up Stadtho their use and commenced Burgomasters if in those days there was any Government purely Democratical that is lewdly Licentious it must have been seen in the Cities and Towns of those times some Sodom or Gomorrah yet even Gen. c. 14. verse 2. there the Text tells us Bera was King of the one and Birsha of the other let them tell us where Isaac when he settled in the Valley of Gerar set up his Servants for Senators tho he was grown so great since they will have it so in the Common-wealth of his Houseshold that a mighty King of those times Gen. C. 26. whom the Text expresly calls so Abimilech told him that he was much mightier than he and the Philistines envyed and feared him too for it Let them tell us how Jacob liv'd in the Republick of his Sons and Servants in Succoth tho such a numerous train that they could venture to invade the City of the Shechemites inhabited by the Subjects of Hamor the Hivite whom the Scripture calls the Prince of the Country and sure these Patriarchs were somewhat more than the ordinary Page 32. Fathers of Families as Plato would make them when their Forces were so great and their strength so formidable that they fought Kings and were feared by Princes And now let them prove that this paternal Power of these ‖ One of their Republicans much countenances the Notion of Kings being but Fathers or Fathers Kings Prisci Reges vocabantur Abimilech quod Hibraice sonat Pater meus Rex Jun. Brut-Vindiciae Quest 3. Patriarchal Kings was no more than that of a Burgher in the Town of Antsterdam or that the Cities that were several of them then erected and where the sacred writ expresly says Kings and Princes Reign'd that those were nothing else but as perfect Republicks as Venice Genove or the united Provinces in the Netherlands And cannot our Seditious Souls be convinc'd that this their Patriarchal Power was Monarchical unless we can prove every patriarch a Crown'd King should we oblige them to make out their same Common-wealths of those days after the same manner their Modern ones are now Establish'd they would be put to find out in those primitive times some general revolt of a Rebellious people from their Lawful prince For that was the first Foundation of their fam'd Republick pag. 25 26. in the Low-Countries as Mr. Sidney himself will allow tho against common Sense and Reason he cannot let it be called a Rebellion And also is it not one thing to say a paternal Right was once Monarchical but must it make all Monarchs to Rule by a paternal Right conquest of the Sword grounded upon a good pretence of Right is what a great many Kings claim by a long series of Successive Monarchs makes the Title of a great many more as much unquestionable and yet I cannot see why Monarchy may not still be said to have been first founded in a paternal Right tho the claims to Soveraign power since in such several Kingdoms and Nations where it is now Establish'd are of as several sorts too as there are Subjects that have submitted to be govern'd by it It is a pleasant sort of Diversion to see Mr. Hunt Harangue out half of his Tretise in an impertinent pains to prove the Father of every Family at present not to be the King of it we would have granted it him quietly and the postulate should have been his own in peace without raising upon his War of Words and the thundering charge that he gives Postscr p. 100. this Opinion of puzzl'd senseless vain unlearned paradox For once every parent shall not be a Crown'd Head and every City but a Common-wealth of Kings for that is all they must contend against and then what 's the Contention but just about nothing but that parents have nothing in them that is Analogous to a Monarchical power that they have no Right to govern those very Children He that but curseth his Father shall dye Levit. C. 20. V. 9. they have begot as this Gentleman with his mighty performances thinks he has perfectly prov'd that I think will be found at last to be the greater paradox if not a perfect Lye For first the very Deut. 2. verse 18. decalogue declares the contrary And the command we have to Honour our Father and Mother implies an Authority that they have that requires Obedience by the Levitical the Laws of the Jews the Rebellious Son was to be ston'd to Death and if the very Bible can call it Rebellion Certainly it must suppose some power against which he could Rebel And what does Mr. Hunt who himself admits of this say to the refuting the very Objection that he raises why he says this was an unnatural severity permitted the offended parent that is an unnatural severity commanded by the very God of Nature For all those their Laws were so many Divine precepts for the regulating his own Theocracy and the very Text tells us this exemplary punishment of Dissobedience to parents was shown that Israel might fear i. e. fear those parents in whom the Almighty's Law had lodged such a power and then if we consider it in the Abstract from any positive Law of God or Divine precept if we look upon it in a pure natural State as the result of Generation for all whatever the postscript impertinently suggests with his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all the distracted noise that he makes with the procreation work being such an Act of Affection and mere impetus of Love I cannot see why by that darling work that delights Mr. Hunt so much the power of governing those very Children he has begot should be superseded The Gentleman among his many Malancholy moods had it seems some pleasant Fancies For in effect he tells us no more than this that Coition being an Act of Love to the Mother the Government over the Child that she bares him must by no means be call'd a power and if this be not indeed a puzzl'd senseless Opinion I submit to persons that abound
with more sense and if it have the least shadow of a consequence I will forfeit all my Right to Reason might it not be as well infer'd too that every Father that chastises his froward Child is an absolute Tyrant because that sort of severity savors of Anger and fury but the Generation work obliged him never to exercise it because that was an Act of extream Love But besides that precept in the Decalogue Honouring our Parents is an Eternal Law of Nature engraven in our Hearts as well as it was in the two Tables of Stone and whereever there is a Natural Veneration there is at the same time an imply'd subjection for those we always reverence most to whom we are most Subjected I know there are inferior Objects upon which many times we place our affection and may in some sense be said to have for them an Esteem but that cannot be properly call'd Honour but is better exprest by the Name of Love and this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Friends have for one another tho they are Equals or Parents to their Children tho Subject to their power but if we consider the word Honouring it self which in all the Versions of the Decalouge is still render'd so as if it would remember us of the subjection we owe to those we are commanded to Honour that very word it self implys Power in the Person that is to be Honoured for if we abstract our selves from any prepossessions and Engagements of Love we still find we still Honor those most that are also most in power thus our Nobility are respected by us as Honourable because they are in great places of Power and Trust And our King more Honoured by us agen because the very Fountain of Power it self and lastly what strikes us more into a Venerable Horror of the Majesty of Heaven but that awful attribute of his being Almighty so that uncorrupted Nature it self from the Rules of Common gratitude obliges us to Honour our Parents as well as the express precept of the Divine will and then by Consequence Subjects us to those whom we are requir'd to respect so much and esteem for Nature as it never according to the Maxim of the Naturalists in Philosophy is said to do any Plato himself not the Redivivus allows those that beget to Rule over what they have begotton thing Foolishly or in vain so neither will it require any thing that is so from others to be done and therefore there is no Natural Law that obliges us to Honour our Servants and those that are subjected to our Power but the very Act it self would seem preposterous awkward and unnatural And this agrees even with the very Vis lex nature semper in ditionae parentum esse liberos Jussit Plin. Paneg notion of as Learned a Republican perhaps as ever publisht any thing Politicks for Aristotle that liv'd under a Common-wealth tho he had less I believe of its principles then our Seditious Souls that are Born Subjects to a King and sworn to be true to an Establisht Monarchy he to Confirm his opinion of the paternal Right which in several parts of his Politicks that Antient Heathen that vast Body of the Primitive Philosophy is pleas'd to maintain when he tells us that Families and Houses were at 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. first Govern'd after the manner of Kingdoms by the Eldest head in it that Cities were herteâ—fore as most Nations now are under the Goverment of Kings and then in another place in his Ethicks ‖ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de Rep. l. 1. c. 2. more Expresly to this purpose plainly says directly contrary to the Sense of Mr. H. and some of our Democraticks that have ador'd some part of his Political Observations †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ethic. lib. 8. c. 12. That an Empire or Monarchy or according to the Literal Greek a Kingdom will be a Paternal Government and one would think the Authority of such Antiquity should at least have prevail'd upon Mr. Hunt and his Historian not to have Libell'd the Hypothesis for Novel or new but agreeable to this his position does that wise Heathen define Honour in the same Sense as I have Suggested aboue i. e. that it does imply wherever it is paid a Power and Subjection in him that pays it for he makes all his Honour peculiarly properly in his ‖ Arlstot Polit. lib. 3. cap. 7. and then agen lib. 5. cap. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the â—aâ—c that â—e expressâ—s in other places by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Politicks to signify nothing else but Empire and Magistracy and in other places by those that are in HONOR he understands the same persons whom at other times he dignifies with the Title and appellation of those that are in POWER which has made me many times think that as the Romans receiv'd the first rudiments of their Learning from the Greeks so they might retain some roots of their Language and mixt them among their own as we see among our selves those Modern Nations do at present that Correspond and then we may imagin since their Sense and Etymology is not so wide and irreconcilable that the Latinisms Timor and Timeo were but borrow'd from the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for whom we fear we must Honour and whom we Honour we fear I know that it is but a sorry sort of reverence that is the result of our being afraid but yet we oblige our selves to pay it tho it be but with reluctancy so that I can confirm the position I lay'd down and return to the very words of what was first asserted and that with none of the worst Syllogism in Logick a sort of Sorites or Gradual Climax i. e. Where ever there is any Natural Honor there always will be an awful fear and wherever there is any thing of awful fear it is of somewhat that has an absolute Power And then in my poor Apprehension it is almost as natural an inference in the Rules of Logick from the proposition of A being the Father of B that therefore he is his Lord and Master too as it is in the Common Conclusion that is made among Logicians of B's being an Animal from the Proposition that he is a man for tho Dominion be not absolutely exprest in the definition of a Father yet it is so apparently Imply'd that it makes an essential part of him from the Closeness of the Connexion neither can Mr. H. overthrow the notion with his Fruitless Labours about the sublim'd Love that exerts it self in the work of Generation for it is not the bare procreation that Entitles the Father to this Dominion for then the Mother too would at least have as great a Power over the Production being as much contributory to its being produc'd and for some reason more Right and Jurisdiction over her Infant as being the Fruit of her own
Northumberland and Durham and prey upon those Counties they had promised to protect while the Parliament at London will not give their King leave or the Citizens lend a penny for opposing those that came to pull him out of his Throne At the Treaty of Rippon they quarrel with their King for calling them Rebels that had invaded his Realm the Commissioners of the Scots conspire with the English who then fall upon Impeaching his Privy Counsellers and the unfortunate Strafford suffers first because so ready to Impeach some of them and they make that Treason in a Subject against the King which was heard known and commanded by the Soveraign Then follows Lawd a Loyal Learned Prelate and that only for defending his Church from Faction and Folly As they posted the Straffordians and repair'd in Tumults to their King for the Head of that Minister of State so Pennington with his pack of Aprentices petition'd against the Bishops and the Pillars of the Church Then Starchamber must down High Commission be abolisht Forest bounds limited yet all too little to please when the Irish Rebellion followed to which the Scots had led the Dance no Moneys to be levied in England for suppressing it till the King had disclaim'd his power of Pressing Soulders and so disarm'd himself that is he was not to fight for his defence till they had disabl'd him for Victory They quarrel with him because he would not divide among them the Lands of the Irish before they were quell'd and subdued at the same time they had quite incapacitated him to Conquer and Subdue them Then Acts must be past for Annual Triennial and at last perpetual Parliaments And whereas the Law says The King never Dies they made themselves all Dictators more Immortal They were summon'd in November and by the time that they had sate to May they had made of a Mighty Monarch a meer precarious Prince And in August following supposing he had sufficiently oblig'd the most Seditious Subjects which I think he might Imagine when he had made himself no King he sets out for Scotland to satisfie them as much there while the Senate of Sedition that he left to sit behind him resolv'd it self into a sort of Committee of Conspiracy and that of almost the whole House made a Cabal among themselves to to cast off the Monarchy which the Knaves foresaw could not be done but by the Sword and therefore cunningly agreed to second one another for the putting the Kingdom into a posture of Defence against those dangers abroad which they themseves should think fit to feign and fancy at home To carry on their Plot against the Bishops they put in all probability that lewd Leighton upon writing of his Plea which was Bring out those Enemies and slay them before him to smite those Hazaels under the fifth Rib For which in the Starchamber he was Fin'd and Imprison'd but for his Sufferings and the Dedication of his Book to the Commons they Vote him Ten thousand pound Upon the Kings return from his Northern Expedition which was to procure Peace only with a shew of War they having had a competent time for Combination and Plot were arriv'd to that exalted Impudence that notwithstanding he was received with Acclamations from all the common People of the Kingdom the People whom they were bound to represent the welcome from his Parliament was to present him with Remonstrances and Petitions which against his very express order they Printed and Publisht of such sort of Grievances that sufficiently declared they were griev'd at nothing more than his being their King They put upon his Account the thirty thousand pounds they had pay'd the Scots for Invading England that is they gave them the Moneys for Fighting of their King and then would have had the King paid his own Subjects for having against him so bravely Fought They should for once too have made him responsible and his Majesty their Debtor for the two hundred thousand pounds they paid the same Fellows at Newark to be gone whom with their thirty thousand pounds they had invited in before They should have made the King pay for his own purchase and answerable for the Price the Parliament had set upon his Head This seem'd such an unconscionable sort of Impudence that their hearts must needs have been Brass and seer'd as well as their Foreheads in offering it An Impudence that none but such an Assembly were capable of Impudence the Diana of these Beasts of Ephesus the Goddess of all such designing Democraticks * Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris carcere dignum si vis esse aliquid Juvenal Satyr that to be somewhat in the true sense of the Satyrist must defie a Dungeon These their Petitions they seconded with Tumult and Insurection sent the Justices of Peace to the Tower only for endeavouring to suppress these Forerunners of a Civil War when they had taken the Liberty to Impeach some of the King 's best Subjects for Traytors yet deny'd their Soveraign to demand their Members that had committed High Treason About the twenty eighth of January 1641 they humbly desire the Soveraignty and their Petition that BEGUN Most Gracious Soveraign ENDED only in this Make us your Lords for they 1st demand the Tower of London 2ly All other Forts 3ly The Militia and they should have put in the Crown too The stupid Sots had not the sense to consider or else the resolv'd blindness that they would not see that those that have the power of the Army must be no longer Subjects but the Supream power The King you may be sure was not very willing to make himself none and might well deny the deposing of himself tho' he after consented even to this for a time but what he would not grant with an Act they seiz'd with an Ordinance and though they took the Militia which was none of theirs by Force and Arms yet Voted against their King's Commission of Array that was settled upon him by Law they force him to fly to the Field and then Vote it a Deserting the Parliament they necessitate him to set up his Standard at Nottingham and then call it a Levying War they Impeach nine Lords for following their King and yet had so much nonsense as to call them Delinquents which the * Vid. Com. Lit. 1 Inst p. 26. B. For adherency to the Kings Enemy without the Realm the Delinquent to be attainted of High Treason Law says none are but what adhere to his Enemies they send out their General fight their King and after various events of War force him to fly to the perjur'd Scot to whom they had paid an hundred thousand pounds to come in and were glad to give two to get out and for that they got the King into the bargain An Act of the Scot that was compounded of all the sublimated Vices that the Register of Sins or Catalogue of Villanies can afford feigned Religion forc'd Hypocrisie Falshood Folly
the Parliament A. D. 1625. Finch then the Lord Keeper as things unwarrantable and unusual they prosecuted too Buckingham with the more violence only because the King had told them That he acted nothing of publick Employ without his special Warrant That he had discharged his trust with fidelity That he had merited it by desert and that it was his express Command for them to desist from such an unparliamentary disquisition And for my part I cannot apprehend how according to common sense and reason both in this case and Strafford's that succeeded they could make those Traytors to their King of whom their King declar'd they had never betray'd their trust It was such a sort of Treason against their King which their King knowing and approving did not think High Treason and the person against whom it could only be committed apprehending no Commission of it at all But those Statesmen were so unhappy as to live in an age that made Treason as unlimited as ever it was before Edward the Third and which for all his * 1. Mâ—â— twenty 25. Ed. 3d. fifth and the first of Mary restrained Treason to conspiring against the King and the Laws of all the World makes it a Crime only of †Lex Julia Inst 4. 18. 3d. Laesae Majestatis they could bring it now to a levying War against the Majesty of the * Merc. Polit. People A hard fate for many Ministers of State that are sacrific'd sometimes only for serving too well But these proceedings against the King were long I hope before the King proceeded only to take Traytors out of an House of Commons this was seditiously done in twenty five the other not lawfully attempted till forty one And judg now malitious Miscreants where when and by whom were the first provocations given to discontent and who were the first Agressors in a barbarous and a bloody Civil War Why don't they tell us too our present Soveraign invaded first the Rebels in Scotland and those that â—anded at Lime The next age may as well be brought to believe this as the present that All that their best Advocates unless absolute Rebellious can urge in their defence is the Parliament seiz'd only upon the King's Forts for fear he should fortify them against the Parliament very good that is they first made War upon him for fear he should make War upon them that 's the English trick of it And I can tell it them in a Spanish one too so Gondamor got Raleigh's Head he told them not for the mischief he had done them but for that which he might do But had not the Laws provided so particularly for the King this would be madness and cruel injustice even among common Subjects reduce us both into Hobs's his state of nature and his fear to kill every one we meet for fear of being kill'd or set our Neighbours House a fire for fear it should catch of it self and consume our own And now be witness even the worst and the most warm Assertor of a Common-wealth in this case be for once what you so much affect Judge between you and your King The King had his Court of Starchamber constituted by a 4 Institutes c. 5. Common Law and confirmed by special b Reg. Hen. 7. Act of Parliament The Commons they send up a c The 9th of June 1641. Vote and Bill for suppressing it The High Commission was establisht by the d 1 El. c. 1. Statute of the Queen the Commons come and would put it down with a e The ninth of June 1641. Vote The Court of Wards and Livery the tenures of which were even f 4 Inst p. 192. before the Conquest and drew Ward and Marriage after it was establisht by particular g 32. H. 8. c. 46. Act the Commons clamour to have it supprest which to please them is done The King had several priviledges that belong to the Clerk of his Market confirm'd by ancient h 4 Inst c. 61 Custom and i Ed. 1. Hen. 8. R. 2. H. 5. several Statutes abolisht by the Parliament in the Year 1641. The k Chart. Forest King had the Courts of his Forests his Judge in it constituted of old by Writ then by l 27. H. 8. c. 24. Letters Pattents This was a grievance which was never before and therefore must and was supprest with the rest The m Magn. â—har â— 29. and their Petition of Right Law required no person was to be Imprisoned or put out of his Lands but by due course and custom None to be adjudged to Death but by the Law establisht they n Dug view p. 68. 19. April confined several of the Kings Subjects send the Bishops by order of the House to the Tower and by special Bill attaint Strafford and Behead Laâ—d o 10. Jan. 1644. with an Ordinance Resolved by all the Judges in Queen Elizabeths time that to levy War â—o remove evil Counsellors â—s High Treason against the King they past a Vote p May. 20. Exact Coll. p. 259. that the King was seduc'd by evil Counsellors against whom they levied War to remove There is a q 12. H. 7. c. 1. special Statute that says expresly that the Subjects that aid the King shall not be molested or questioned They publisht their Declaration r 17. May. Ex. Coll. p. 193. That it was against the Laws and Liberty of the Kingdom to assist the King that the Sherriff of the County ought to suppress them The s Coke Lit. p. 164. Law makes those Delinquents that adhere to the King's Enemies they t 20. May. Vote those that serve him in such Wars Traitors by a Fundamental Law The u Ed. 2. Statute provides that the Parliaments should assemble peaceably they by particular order bring Horse and Foot into the Palace Yard In short The Parliament first seizes the Militia against an express x 7. Ed. 1. Act that setl'd it solely on the King The King sent out after his Comission of Array for which he was impower'd by y 5. H. 4. Act of Parliament The Parliament order the raising an Army against the K. declared Treason by special z 25. E. 3. Act The King then Summons his Subjects to his assistance at a 5 July 42. Exact Coll. York and comes and sets up his Standard at Nottingham for that was warranted by the Laws of the Land and b 1. Ed. 2. de mi. litibus 7. Ed. 1. several Statutes of the Realm I have taken this pains both to prove that bloody War that general Revolt to be a plain Rebellion and that the War it self was begun by those that were the only Rebels the Parliament because you see that both those positions have been laid down among our * Sidney 's Tryal p. 26. Plato Redivivus p. 167. Republicans either of which should it gain credit is enough to run us again