Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
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A88699
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A letter written to a member sitting at Westminster
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L. L.
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1660
(1660)
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Wing L42; ESTC R179223
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4,241
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8
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A LETTER Written to A MEMBER Sitting At WESTMINSTER E R 〈…〉 LONDON Printed in the Year 1660. A LETTER Written to a MEMBER c. SIR OUt of that great service and high esteem I have for you both as a Gentleman and Christian I presume to give you the trouble of this paper which I beg of you most ingenuously to peruse as a Person of Reason and Civility which I hope as yet you have not wholly cancelled And therefore I take the freedom to present you with the Scene of their publick transactions as a Member of the House desiring you would be pleased to treat your self with the serious consideration of the Admirable dispensations of Divine providence and justice clearly evidenced to a common apprehension in that true Lex Talionis The House of Commons at the beginning of their Sessions having by their fair pretences gained a good opinion with the Vulgar did raise and foment great Tumults as a means when they could not convince by Arguments to over-awe with power of those who by their clamorous insolence so violently assaulted the late Kings sacred person that they forced him for his own defence to a retirement from Westminster Not many years after those very Contrivers the greater part of the House though they highly caressed Cromwell and the Army at Triploe-Heath near Cambridg promising them by Skippon an Act of Indemnity and their Arrears were beaten notwithstanding with their own weapons every Regiment crying Justice Justice which was the same language which the Tumults first used against the King by their connivance and instigation and afterwards was ecchoed by the Army against themselves to their seclusion in 1648. When these present Members the minor part of the House designing to make themselves absolute and to divide the large Revenues of the Church and Crown among themselves and their Adherents as a poor petty reward for their greater service to the Kingdom did fear the greater and honester part of the House would spoile their game in voting the concessions of the late King at the Isle of Wight to be a ground of a firm peace and being out numbred could not carry on their design by a Vote courted the Army into a compliance with their unhandsome sence which was to keep out the greater part of the House by force because they would not submit to their Judgments to their too too partial Interest I wish I could not call these proceedings Arbitrary which have no other Basis but the dictates of their own Will which would have been happily buried in their first conception without any farther product had they not received birth and sustenance from a military power good Physick in time of great distempers but an ill constant nourishment It had been better their Resolves had merited their value from a due number of Votes then from the unequal balance of an unjust weight of Arms But may be they will reply the least part of the House was the best the greater as they pretend was acted in principles destructive to the Kingdom This is the one sense if they may decide the dispute But they are not competent Judges in their own Case For they being the lesse ought to be governed by the greater part of the House and so Major pars signodi est tota the Major part of the convention is the whole and the lesse is to subscribe to the greater Else farewell all order and due determination of Controversies in publick or private Assemblies If the worsted party may be permitted to dispute every man is so much a kin to his own Judgments as part of himself that he will never acknowledg himself to be constious of error alwayes attended with the sad consequents of guilt and shame Therefore when the lesse considerable part of the House could not protect themselves by the reason of Law they over-powred the greater by the Law of the Sword in some cases a good hand of Justice but alwayes an ill head of Law of which the Souldiery is little versed in the Theory and therefore too much in the Practick being unfit Arbitrators of it although the unhappy differences of this unsober Age have too often made them so Now the Minor part of the House having created themselves sole Masters of the House of Commons did farther act the Polititians and did by Ragione di stato contrive a way to lessen the power of the Crown the Fountain of Honour by taking away the great stream of it the House of Barons who had a high obligation to serve him who had conferred their Honour upon them The surviving Fraction of the lower House did by an insolent Ordinance pull down the upper which was much more Antient and Honourable than their own This Action exceeding all rules of reason and sobriety did not give bounds to their Arrogance and Ambition setting their Feet on the Necks of the Lords that they might more easily strike at the head of the King when contrary to all Law Religion their Protestation League and Covenant and Oath of Allegiance by a pretended Court of Justice and their omnipotent power they Arraigned Sentenced and most inhumanely Murdered And afterward Banished the just Heir of the Crown and his Royal Relations making them first hear the Subject of their own Malice and abroad the Object of others Charity What English Heart that hath either sense of Humanity Loyalty or Religion but must highly resent thesâ— unheard of Barbarismes with no lesse aâ—â—onishment than indignation All which they have committed that they might hâ—â—…hthen themselves above all Law no body on Earth as they conceived being in a capacity to call them to an account for their Violations of Humane and Divine Laws But they were highly mistaken This illegal deportment towards their Fellow Members the House of Lords and our late most Gracious Sovereign chaulked out the way to their Servants that were Commissioned to fight for them to turn their Masters they constituting the Souldiery first Moderators between them and their Fellow Members devolved a power on the Army after the House had most Barbarously taken away their Head that most pious Saint and Martyr the King and when they had sate so long and expended so much Blood and Treason and done so little good for the Nation Cromwell by the power of the Sword did deem it a peice of Honour to himself and Justice to the Kingdom to take them out of the House they having so unnaturally destroyed their own Heads were no better than dead Members in Law as the Masters of that faculty do affirm When they had by the cursed insinuations of the Jesuits ever pernicious Counsellours to this Nation given that fatal stroke which at once determined our Royal Soveraign and themselvs and the Glory Happiness of these then three flourishing Kingdomes I wish they did travel abroad that they might be better educated and then their Ears would ring and their hearts I hope relent to hear the sad Character the World
giveth of them in their paralel with the Jews by reason of that horrid murther I wish them from my very Soul a hearty contrition of Spirit in an unfeigned Repentance that the most precious blood of that immaculate Lamb may wash them clean from the guilty of that innocent blood which else will cry loud against them at that greater Session above when they shall be divested of all power of the Souldiery to assist them Now I beg of them to entertain themselves in their own Ordinances in which they may be pleased to take a short view of their scandalous Transactions in ejecting their fellow Members the House of Lords the Reverend Bishops most Sacriligiously pocketing up the revenews of the Church and Crowns shedding that innocent blood invading all honest mens Liberties and Proprieties Who out of conscience would not sign the unworthy results of their arbitrary Counsels I appeal to their own Souls they being but the lesser faction of the House guilty of so many breaches of Trust for which they were twice ejected by that power which first gave them their monstrous being The People often resuming their Trust in Electing new Delegates to Act for them in many successive Parliaments Whether they have not great confidence in Entitleing themselves to a Monopoly all being put down but themselves of being perpetual Parliament men That they might offer a further Rape to the will of the Nation in debauching them from their first chast love of Monarchy the best of Policies for Order Unity and Commerce to gratifie their spurious Lust in the enjoyment of some new light Curtisan Ociana a meer Bawd and Romance of Government intending therein to Null all Antient Fundamental both Civil and Common Laws which else will stand as so many Records of their baser crimes to bring in them for the future to condign punishments Give me leave to tell them that the best way in order to their Temporal and Eternal happiness is to make peace above and below with God and the Nation in speaking a just restitution according to that good old School Divinity Non remittitur pecatum nisi restituatur ablatum for giving up those estates which they have most injuriously seized to the true owners the Church and Crown and call home again the just Heir a Person of so much Honour Piety and Clemency that he writeth the unworthy injuries of his Enemies in Dust and the loyal services of his Friends in Marble Who is of such a happy memory that he forgeteth nothing but disservices But suppose he were not a Person of that Candour Moderation as they would have him to remit those high violations which have been acted by them and their Adherents against him and the sacred Person of his Royal Father and his Loyal Subjects They need not possesse themselves with vain fear when he proffereth to resign all power of dis-obliging them into the 〈…〉 of a free Parliament and out of his gracious inclinations to a firm peace will condescend to Ratifie what shall be Enacted by them He saith a so in his late Declaration that they shall keep his and the Church Lands till they have received their Money both Principal and Interest which they have paid for them and then they must confesse if they be ingenious it is exquitable on all accounts to restore the Lands and Revenews to their true Masters the King and the Church Pray be pleased to consider that the Royal interest without which we have been a prey to Foreign Nations will again reconcile us to them and give us such a repute as to be able to hold a fair correspondence with Foreign Princes that the Merchants may receive a due incouragement who are the Honour and Support of the Trade of this Nation But some will reply if the King be enthrowned the Court will speak charge to the Kingdom but it is easily answered that it is much lesse expenceful then the Army which costeth two Millions to maintain against a just Court which never had scarce half a Million beside the Crown Lands to support it in its greatest Splendour and when the King shall be Estated in his Fathers Royal Throne there will be no need of an Army he will desire no other Guard but the innocence of his person and the Love of his Subjects Pray be pleased to communicate my desires to the House not to sacrifice these Nations once the envy of the world to the merciless fury of a Foreign Invasion to preserve their ill gotten Estates by Sacriledge and Oppression but to condiscend to the Election of a free Parliament made up of the three Estates of the Kingdom a most excellent Model of Government and a rare Harmony Composed of the different Interests of the Nation consentring together in this happy Fabrick the only expedient left to Reedifie our Ruined Church in the restaurations of the reverend Fathers of it commended to us from the holy Apostles through so many ages as a defence against Heresie and Schysme and to repair the breaches of our distracted State in the blessed inanguration of the Kings most Royal Person as an instrument of Gods Glory and our happinesse which that it may suddainly succeed is the earnest prayer of SIR Your most faithfull Servant L L. FINIS