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
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
wrong but here those several alterations were all caus'd to be made for the securing of a Lineal â—egitimate and lawful Successor to the Throne for as a Reverend Author says the King Lamented that he should leave Bishp Godwins Histo H. 8. p. 37. the Kingdom to a Woman whose Birth was â—estionable and he willing to settle the Kingdom on his LAWFUL Issue and for this reason he got the 25th to pass against his Daughter Mary And the very Preamble of the Act tells us that it was for the Surety of Title and Succession and Lawful Inheritance Three years are scarce past till the 28 of his Reign repeals almost all that the 25 had Enacted their Protestant Queen Elizabeth made as well as the Popish Mary plain Bastard and tho our prejudic'd Author may make the same Vid. Pulton Stat. matter right and wrong as he stands affected he must think this his powerfuâ— Parliament dealt a little hard with thâ— latter whose Mother was never divorc't but from her Life and she paâ— off for a spurious Off-Spring only upoâ— the pretended suggestions of Anne Boleyn unknown impediments confess 't sine to Canterbury But whatever they were the Canons of the Church tho born bâ—fore Marriage and since after the verâ— Laws of the Land did make her Legitâ—mate But however this greater piece ofâ— justice to this good Protestant Queeâ— which they 'l say now proceeds from the Kings putting the Parlament In 's 31 as incontinency was made impediment in the first Anns Case they declared the suant of concupiscence an Impediment in the 2ds and only upon his sending some of his Lords to the lower house the Lady Cleves was unlawful too Vid Stow p. 581. Baker 288. Stat. 35. H. 8. upon too much Power wâ— palliated all along with the pretence of providing a Legitimâ—â—â— Lawful Successor and so the cleâ—â— Reverse and Contradiction of thâ— proceedings of our late Patrioâ— to whose Privileges those sort presidents were apply'd for those Parliamentary In the 33 the Parliament petition'd to him whom they knew it would please for the Attainder of Kat. Howard his 5th Queen Powers seculded but Bastards to make room for Heirs Lawful and Legitimate with us an Issue truly Legitimate should have been EXCLUDED for the setting up of a SPURIOUS ONE But then at last comes the 35th of his Reign and that like a Gunpowder Plot in the Cellars blows up all the former foundations of the whole House both the two former Stat. for Disabling Illegitimating are null voy'd repeal'd the LADY MARY Sister Elizabeth in those seven years suffered my Lord Bacons transmutation of Bodys and were turned all into new matter and what was Spurious Illegitimate and in Capable with the single Charm of be it enacted was become truly Lawful Lineal Heir of the Crown and Capacitated to succeed in an HEREDITARY DISCENT and so far from Invading the Prerogative so full of giving were the bountiful Parliaments of those times that they Impower their too Powerful Prince to dispose of his Crown by Letters Pattents or an Arbitrary Testamentary disposition an Oblation I think his present Majesty might esteem too great to be accepted who knows his Successor to be the Crown 's Heir scarce his own much less the PARLIAMENTS Edward the Sixth upon his Fathers death succeeded an Heir Lineal Legal and Testamentary yet the first thing this Author observes upon him is the greatest falsehood viz. That he took upon him a power what surely no King ever had to dispose of his Crown by Will When in the very Preceeding president his own Father by his Will manifested he had the Power and left it him by his last But his he 'll say was a Power given him by Parliament But that is not so plain neither both from the Preamble and the purport of both the dissonant Acts of 28 and 35. for the designs of both were only for the settling the Succession and then upon supposition of the failure of Issue from those upon whom it was setled they fairly leave it to his last Will or his Letters Pattents but supposing this Liberty had not been allow'd can he imagin that a King that had got them to alter the succession at his pleasure in his Life time would not upon the failure of the Limited Heirs have dispos'd of it by Will at his death but that none but this Edward of our Kings took this power upon him is utterly false from these several instances First the very first King of his name in the Saxon succession left it so to his Son to succeed And Athelstan Malmsbury Lib. 2. c. 6. fol. 27. Jussu patris in Testamento Athelstonus in Regen acclamatâ—â— est whom above this Gentleman recommended to the City of London for a Mon. and Illegitimate against the sense and silence of all Historians was declar'd King by the Command and last Will of his Father Edward the elder in the Reign of the Danes Canutus did the same bequeath'd Norway to Swain his eldest and England to his youngest Son and for the Norman Succession the very first King and who had the most right to do so from the Sword left to Rufus the right but of an Heir Testamentary tho followed by his Son Henry the first And Richard that had less reason so to do for his Daughter Maud by the Law of the Land would have been his Heir without the Legacy and so would to the latter his Nephew Arthur and tho both were by Rebellion rejected yet still sure their right remain'd But for this Edward the 6th disposing it by Will it was not only against the Customary Discent of the Realm in a right blood but of an Express Entail in several Acts of Parliaments I am so far of this Authors opinion that I believe it was no way warrantable but never the sooner for his Parliaments settlement had it not been at last upon the right Heirs for tho those Princes of ours heretofore took upon them to leave Successors by Will they still nominated those that by Blood were to succeed without such a Nomination so that the bequest was more matter of Form then Adoption only to let the Subjects know whom they look't upon to have the right of Succession rather than to superadd any thing of more right and that 's the reason or ought to be that we properly call the next in Blood the Kings Successor but the Crowns Heir 'T is a little prodigious Paradox to me that it must be such a receiv'd Maxim that a Parliament can do no wrong and that in plain Terms they tell us it can do any thing mollifying it only with an Exception that they can't make a Man a Woman yet that they bid pretty fair for too in these Presidents of Harry the 8th when they made Bastard Females of those that were Legitimate and then Legitimis'd again the same Bastards and 't is as mighty a Miracle to men unprejudic'd that our Parliament Patriots
Romulus ordein'd an 100 Senators which grew to 300 in Fortescues time there were just so many in our House of Commons Fortescue C. 18. fol. 40. Coke 4 Inst C. 1. And had we therefore then no King their number is greater now and must therefore our Monarch be less themselves can do so that should it be allow'd what is contrary to some of the very Express Words of our formention'd Historians that Romulus was not an absolute Prince yet still here is still matter and Evidence enough to make him a Monarch and the Government of Rome Monarchical which surely Contradicts his extravagant Assertion That it was a Democracy unless he can reconcile the Contradiction of Sole Soveraignty with the Government of a numerous Senate Another of his pretty Paradoxes is that all Empire is founded in Dominion and Property and that must be understood too of a Propriety in Lands so that where a Prince has not a foot of Land he can't have twelve Inches of Power a Position that would confine some Princes Authorities in the Dimension of a Span notwithstanding Kings are said to have such long Arms but pray let this positive Politician tell me How it comes to pass that the Property of an owners Land is so inconsistent with the Prerogative of a Prince over those very Lands that he owns or why those that have the greatest Interest in this his property must presently have the greatest Portion too of Power and Property in the Government that is only to contract his Absurdity why the Peasant that has two Acres of Land and the Prince that has but one should not presently be prefer'd to be the Prince and the Prince Condescend to be the Peasant The Question might be soon answer'd with another Quere Why this King cannot be as well Born an Heir to the Crown as his Countryman to the Cottage tho the latter commonly has Land about it when perhaps a Crown may have none For certainly according to his Position a King must have but an Insignificant Power that has not a Foot of Crown-lands and then to have it to any purpose to extend his Empire over all his Subjects the Hereditary Lands of the Crown must by his own Rule necessarily make up more Acres then all the Kingdom besides and as he observes that within this 200 years the Estates of our greatest Nobility by the Luxury Page 37. of their Prodigal Ancestors being got into the hands of Mechanicks or meaner Gentry by his own Platonick Dogma these Plebeians must have the Power and Aurity of our Nobles that is a Rich Commoner must presently run up into the House of Lords and a Lord perhaps less wealthy descen'd into their lower-House for they must allow their Lyes more power in our House of Peers they being a Court of Judicature which the other can't pretend too The Disorders Confusions and Revolutions of Government thâ—t would ensue from the placing this Empire and Power only in Dominion and Property which according to his own extravagant Position I think may be better render'd Demesn would be altogether as Great as those absur'd Consequences of this Foolish Maxim are truly ridiculous for we must necessarily have new Governours as often as a new Demesn All Lands are mediately or immediately held of the King as Soveraign Lord. Eliz. 498. Ass 1 18. could be acquir'd for meaner Persons must have greater share too in Publick Administration's assoon as they grow mightier in possessions But besides this simple suggestion as full of Folly as it is carries in it's self as much Faction too it is but another Invention of setting our Parliament again above our King and the making him according to their old Latin Aphorism Greater than a single Representative and less than all the Body Major singulis minor Universis Collective for he thinks it may be possible the King may have a greater portion of Land than any single Subject but I am sure it can never be that he should have more than all but this Sir Politick Ramble has wander'd so much in the wide World that his Wits are a straggling too so full of Forreign Governments that he has forgot the Constitutions of his own Is it not a receiv'd Maxim in our Law that there is no Lands in England but what is held mediately Vid. Eliz. 498. Ass 1. 18. or immediately from the King that are in the hands of Subjects does not himself know we have nothing of an Allodium here as some Contend they have in Normandy and France tho they too are by some of our best Civilians Duck. de Authoritate Lib. 1. c. 6 contradicted and as great many Eminent Lawyers of their own tell us that the Feudatory Laws do obtain and are in force through all the Provinces of France too so that their Lands are there held also still of some superiour Lords and he knows that our greatest Estate here in Fee is not properly free but held mediately or immediately of the King or Donor to whom it may revert and 't is our King alone as our Laws still acknowlege that has his Demesn his Dominion free and holds of none but God and our Lord Cook tells us whom this Gentleman may Credit as having in Vid. Cook 1. Inst C. 1. Predium Domini Regis est dominium directum cujus nullus Author est nisi Deus some things been no great Friend to the Monarchy as well as himself yet that Eminent Oracle tells us that no Subject here has a direct Dominion properly but only a profitable one not much better perhaps than the Civilians usufructuaries and what becomes now of this Gentlemans the peoples Power Empire founded in Dominion and Demesne must the King have the less Power over his Tenants only because they hold the more and can't he have a right of Soveraignty over the Persons and Estates of his Subjects without Injuring them or their property or must his Subjects according to this unheard of Paradox as this their Property grows greater encroach the further upon his Power and Praerogative none but our Elect Saints must shortly set up for our Governours and I know this Factious States-man can't but favour his Friends Anabaptists and Quakers his absurrd Politicks here Extraordinarily suit with some of their mad extravagant Principles he lets them know Empire is founded in Dominion and they thank him kind Souls and tell him Dominion is founded in Grace Two or Three whole Leaves the Copious Page 98 99 100. Author has alotted for the service of the Church and Clergy and there we find the Devil of a Re-publick has so possest the Politician that he openly declares against God and Religion and his Atheistical Paracelsus that confirms his Brother Brown's Aphorism to be none of his Vulgar Error that 't is thought their Profession to be so I mean the Doctor in his Dialogue interrogates his Matchiavel what he thinks of our Clergy why truly 't is answer'd
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
Heaven because he had his Clergy allowed here upon Earth can he Prescribe with the Laws of the Land to impunity from the Decalogue and tell the Almighty some Killing is mâ— Murder Here his God his Saviour is invoked in a Solemn and Sacred Oath upon the Gospel and one that should be a Divine Expositor of both consults upon it the Readings of Mr. Hunt and a Resolution of the Common Law here he Swears to the Vid. Form of Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy plain meaning of the Words without any Mental Reservation whatsoever and yet thâ—â— Mungrel in Divinity means now to taken in his mind according to a ereiv'd Maxim in the Law And this Libeller of the Primitive Christians looks like an Apostate that was as Primitive who kept pointing to the papers he put upon his Breast while he was Swearing to others that he held in his hand But yet I dare Appeal even to his own Breast who without doubt had often taken these Oaths being graduated in an University and Ordain'd a Divine tho unworthy of both whether the Words Heirs and Successors were not understood by himself of such as were to Succeed by an Hereditary Right by Birth and Blood to the Crown and whether that he did then Reserve to himself only such as did Actually succeed by Consent of Parliament and whether he did not think that by them he was not only obliged to obey those Heirs when they came to the Crown but also to do all that in him lay to promote in the due time their coming to wear it certainly to confine their Sense only to those that shall de facto succeed is but Swearing an Implyed Allegiance to any Rebel or Vsurper and the word Lawful that still accompanys Successors will not mend the Matter with such men for all is presently Legal and just with them that has but the shadow of a Parliamentary power for it's pretence And I am well assured That those that would have thought such an Exclusion just and equal with their King 's passing it would have thought it as Legal could they have sate till they had made it pass without The good old King at first disputed his Militia as hard with them and who could have believed any sort of men could have thought it the Parliament's without his Consent But assoon as the Rebel House had made their Ordinance for the Seizing it which of those Miscreants did not think it as much Law And the more than probable project at Oxford shrewdly Insinuates they would have warranted an EXCLVSION without their Kings leave Legal had they been allo'w but a further progress in their ‖ Vid. King's Speech to the Parliament there Vnwarrantable Proceedings But as much as Mr. Johnson Triumph 's with this his Maxim of the Law * Julian pag. 19 20. as if he were the first Divine that had discover'd this deceitful Evasion this Jesuitical interpretation of his Protestant Oath Tho he and his Hunt and all his Lawyers in the Hall should tell us Ten Thousand times of this Seditious sort of Construction this Senseless Sophistry upon the plain word Heir as well as he Page 19. says they do an Hundred still all their Noise and Nonsense about Presumptive Apparent Actual possible will be nothing more than what the late Rebels that had Actually Murder'd the best of Monarchs made their defence to Justifie Treason and Sacrilege it self so that all this Divine's Sophistry savours not only of Nonsense and Sedition but of an old odious rank Rebellion and for to satisfie him that the Suggestion is serious and founded upon Matter of Fact if he can find among all his Seditious Papers he has habituated himself to peruse and what if he pleases I can lond him for his perusal such an old obsolete piece as was publisht after they had Butcher'd the best of Kings * A Treatise perswading Obedience in Lawful things to Authority tho unlawful Printed London about 1649 Ibid. wherein they endeavour'd to persuade the people to be subject to their Tyrannous Usurpation there will he find the very two Pages that he spends to promote the Quaint Conceptions of his Noddle about nothing or what is worse Faction and Folly for tho he tells us these tales Fifteen Hundred times over they told us so much for Forty years agon and that to satisfie Tender and Malignant Consciences that there lay no Obligation from their Oath of Allegiance upon them to adhere to the right Heirs of Charles Stewart because that those Branches Page 10. of the Oath which the Providence of Ibid. God had made Impossible to be observed must be lay'd aside and then they go on to shew that Heirs and Successors must Page 12. be taken Copulatively and so the word Heirs must be meant only of those that do Actually succeed But the Providence of God * Vid. Also a Religious Demurrer about submission to the present Power Printed London 1649. as they call'd it having kept the Heir of Charles Stewart from succeeding his Father had made say they that part of the Oath Impossible to be Observ'd and so the power must now be Obey'd Actively in what hands soever it be Seditious Soul 'T is too much to be Senseless too Consider but upon this Occasion a Case your self have * Julian pag. 12. Cited 't is that of the Lady Jane Did not the Laws adjudge it Treason in that poor imposed Princess for endeavouring to hinder the True Heir from being the Actual Successor and to say Queen Anno Mariae 1. Mary was then already Succeeded will not salve the Matter for it was resolv'd Treason too in her Father Northumberland his Contrivance of the Will for the Queens Exclusion which confirm'd as it was by the Privy-Council was as much an Act of State as the Bill by which our present Heir was to be Excluded and then what they did was but in pursuance of that Will after Edward's Death and as the Duke told Arundel that Arrested him that he had Acted only by the Council and Commission of King Edward Yet all was adjudg'd a defence Insufficient and I cannot see why the same Law would not have made those Traytors had the Bill past that rebell'd upon pretence of such an Act of Parliament as well as it did others that resisted upon the pretext of a Will Confirm'd in Council and which * themselves would Julian p. 12. have a sort of Exclusion and is almost as much an Act of state 'T is strange that men that would be thought so mighty Rational should not only argue against the known Rules in all Logick but against the very Inferences of Common Reason a man of Ordinary Sense without the help of his Hereboord will allow that any Vniversal and General Assertion in includes all Particulars And shall vve vvhen vve svvear Faith and Obedience to the Kings Heirs and Successors Generally Reserve an Exception of such whom the
Actually done it were de Facto void besides if the Subject was freed in that Case it would be the result of the Soveraigns Act. they must suppose him at the same time as simple as themselves that suggest it and could they give us but a single Instance or force upon us any President all they would get by it is this That as their supposition was without sense so their Application would be nothing to the purpose for such a matter of Fact of their Kings would make him de Facto none at all I know they can tell us of one of our ‖ That alienation of King John was suppos'd to have been an Act of State and it has been adjudg'd particularly by particular Parliaments That even a Statute for that purpose made would be of no force It was resolv'd so â—n Scotland too own that lies under that Imputation of making over his to the Moor And of others that in the time of the Popes Supremacy resign'd themselves with submission to the Holy See for the first the most Authentick Historians not so much as mention it and were it truly matter of Fact that King had really no thing to resign for the Republicans of those times were the good Barons that Rebel'd and had seated themselves in a sort of Aristocracy before in short if it were solemnly done it would look like the Act of a Lunatick if not at all as is much more likely their Historians Labour in a lye and for the other we never had a Soveraign that Submitted the Power of his Temporal Government of the state to the Pope's See but only as it related to the Spiritual Administration of the Affairs of the Church and the Religion of the Times These sort of Suppositions have so much Nonsense in them especially when apply'd to Human Creatures and more then when to Monarchs that have commonly from Birth and Education more Sense than common Mortals that there is not so much as a Natural Brute but will use what he can manage as his own with all imaginable Care and Discretion How tender and fond are the most stupid Animals how do they most affectionately express that paternal Love for the Preservation of their little Young how abundantly do they Evidence that Natural * Posts C. p. 113. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with which Mr. Hunt gives us such a deal of impertinent disturbance and why cannot the King of a Country whom the Civil and Imperial Sanctions represent as the ‖ Princeps Pater patriae est D. 1. 4. 1. Atrocius est Patriae parentem quam suum occi dere Cicero in Philip 2d Father of it too be supposed to retain as much a paternal Care for its Conservation we do not find even in that their Free-State of Nature or that Common-wealth of Wars the Republick of unruly Beasts where there is the least Relation or resemblance tho perhaps they have power and opportunity that they delight to devour and destroy and much less do they covet the ruin of that from which they can reap somewhat of Advantage by its Preservation why then should we fancy Human beings and the best of Mankind Monarchs themselves whom th' Almighty has made * I 've said yee are Gods Psalms Gods too to be guilty of so much Madness and Inhumanity Where do we find the worst of Fools designedly to destroy their Patrimony though many times through Ignorance they may waste them and that tho there were no Laws to terrifie them from turning Bankrupts or punishing them for Beggers when they have embezell'd their Substance Away then Malicious Miscreants with such sordid Insinuation such silly Suggestions against your own Soveraigns which your selves no more believe them likely to be guilty of than that they would set Fiâ—e to all their Palaces and Sacrifice themselves and Successors in the Flames But to Return to our Argument they 'll tell us perhaps What signify the Sanctions of the Imperial Laws and the Constitutions of an Absolute Empire to a Common-wealth or a Council of three States that are Co-ordinate or at most but a Monarchy Limded and mixt and where whatever power the Supream Magistrate has must have been first Confer'd upon him by the People where the Parliaments have a great part of the Legislative and their Soveraign in some sense but a Precarious Prerogative what signifies the Authority of a Britton or a Bracton whose very works by this time are superannuated who wrote perhaps when we had no Parliaments at all at least ∥ none such as now * Hunt allows that himself posts p. 95. Constituted I won't insist upon in answer to all this to show the Excellency of the Civil Institutions that obtain o're all Nations that are but Civiliz'd I wont prove to them because already done That we don't Consist of three States Co-ordinate in the Legislative or that our Monarchy is Absolute and not mixt as I shortly may But yet I 'll observe to them here †Postquam populus Romanus Lege Regiâ in principem omne suum Imperium potestatem solum Contulit ex illâ non sub diti sed etiam Magistratus ipsi subâ—iciuntur Zouch Elem. p. 101. That the Romans themselves tho by what they call'd their Royal Law they look't upon the power of the Prince to be conferr'd upon them by the people yet after it was once so transferr'd they apprehended all their right of Judging and Punishing was past too And for their vilifying these Antient Authors and Sages of Law who did they Favour these Demagoges would be with them of great Authority and as mightyly searcht into and sifted Should I grant them they were utterly obsolete and fit only for Hat-cases and Close-stools that they both writ before the Commons came in play for their further satisfaction I 'll cite the same from latter Laws not two hundred years old and that our selves will say was since their Burgesses began And therefore to please if possible these Implacable Republicans I 'll demonstrate what I 've undertaken to defend from the several Modern Declarations of our Law For in * Edward the 3d. Edward the Third's it was resolv'd that the King could not be Judged And why because he has no Peer in his Land and 't is provided by the very first Sanctions of our Establisht Laws by the great ‖ Magn. Chart. cap. 29. No Freeman will we Imprison or Condemn but by Lawful Judgment of his Peers Per parium juorum Legale Judicium And my Lord Coke tells us they are to be understood of Peers of the Realm only when a Peer is to be try'd Comment upon the very words 2. Inst which he more fully explains in 's Comment on the 14. Chap. of Char. where he says pares is by his Peers or Equals for as the Nobles are understood by that word to be all equal so are all the Commons too ib. p. 29. Where note the form of this very Charter
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
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
to the Commons did they or could they call this an unheard of way or Irregular Proceeding and will the protection of their House extend to an Inditement for High Treason as well as an Execution upon Debt certainly this No priviledg of Parliament holds for Treason Felony or even Breach of the Peace 4. part Inst 25. President won't be found among all the Miscellanies of Parliament tho that Industrious Author might have cited too his Majestys Murder out of their Journal But let them blush at their late Arbitrary Proceedings against their Fellow Subjects and Remember what they deny'd their King Here was an obstruction of Justice that was already a Rebellion against the Executive Power of the Law such an one as only their next Ordinance for seizing the Militia could make it more so the Serjeant that was sent to Arrest their Persons is countermanded and if again attempted 't is Order'd and Resolved they 'll stand upon their Defence and make Resistance how should the Mildest Father of the most Merciful Son Mollifie so many Tygers Tugging for the Praerogative with the pretence of Privileges Why he tells us himself went attended with some Gentlemen his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 followers much short of his Ordinary Guard to desire he might proceed against Traytors only in a free and Legal Tryal that he had furnisht himself with proof and wanted nothing for that Evidence which he could have produced But what I am sure they were resolv'd to deny their Soveraign even what they made the Rabble clamor for against himself JUSTICE the Chronicle tells us none of his Followers mov'd farther than the Stairs but only he himself with the Palsgrave enter'd the House demanded whom before he had Accus'd and the Villains themselves so Conscious of his Equitable demand and their own Guilt that they fear'd their very delivery from their Friends and that Death I doubt they had so justly deserv'd the Criminals were fled he renews his Charge and so satisfy'd returns but so were not those whom nothing could Content at last but his Life they load it with all the Obloquies and Exasperations imaginable such Protectors of Liberties could only think Treason against him worthier of Protection then their injur'd King an Execution of Law is Voted a Breach of Priviledge the demanding the Benefit of it by him that gives it it's being they made MURDER the City Guards are set up in several places the Train-Bands are Commanded down to Westminster a greater Army sure then only the Kings Retinue to protect Impeacht Traytors and with the late Hosanna's of our Old-Baily they lead in Triumph that Primitive Council of Six accus'd for High-Treason and what Security had this present King that the like Cabal should not have been as well Secur'd from his Justice had they been but detected in some of their late Sessions they were all Members too the Difference between our King and Commons in as high a ferment the Charge that then was given to the Lords the Articles that were offer'd to the Commons appear upon Record but the Counterpart of this Kings Declaration only there they had not come so far as to contrive his Murder their Accusation was for aspersing of his Majesties Government Vid. Baker p. 516. An. 1641. Vid. Kings Declar. 1683. and altering the affections of his People Countenancing Tumults against him inviting a Foreign Nation the Scots as too this Actually did and Conspiring to Levy War as these did to Raise an Insurrection And might not any Jealous Soul fear such Parliaments that protected such Traytors and might not such Traytors been again protected by such Parliaments when the City too was their own again the Guards set the Watches plac'd the Streets Chain'd and that when they could accuse no King for Breach of Priviledge or Coming to their House with Arms and the having a Guard for their house was offer'd at now when nothing but their King was again in danger and can the retrieving the Memory of those immediate Forrunners of our first Misfortunes be made a Crime And the most Flagitious Villains concern'd in it no way Criminal can Hunt Plato p. 169. such a Senate sit till it has Murder'd a King and shall not an experienc'd King secure himself from such a Seditious Senate that the design of the whole House of late was to raise a Rebellion is utterly false but that some of the late Members have actually design'd it since is Certainly true 't is attested in their Sufferings and Seal'd in their Blood The Honour of that Assembly may be no way Tainted tho both Blood and Issue of some that did sit in it is since at present so by Law a man of Common Sense can apprehend the Constitution of a Body Politick to be one thing and the Constituent Members another and this without the help of Metaphysicks or Abstraction I am Sworn besides that Natural affection I still shall have for my Soveraign to be Faithful to my Liege Lord and should I fail in my Faith I should be for-sworn I know the privilege of having a Parliament is the Interest of every Subject and should I contend against that I should be a Fool but because there is a necessity of obeying your King does the same Obligation tye you to an Vsurper A Parliament is a great Privilege to a Nation but not so when it Vsurps all sorts of Privileges that you saw took away it's head lay'd the Land of it all in BLOOD I 'll maintain with my last Breath that a Parliament is the Subjects Birth-right but God forbid we should be Born to all sort of Parliaments that would make us Traytors by a Law and we have many besides what in this Kings were declar'd by Statute Treasonable Coventry Parl. 38. H. 6. declar'd Develish by 39. H. 6. 1. Edw. 4. that of Rich. 2 Treasonable Par. Car. 1. 1641. But to return to what is the Blackest piece of Treason our PLATO was the Glorious Martyr the First aggressor too or did they first seize his Militia when they could not have it by Consent was the withdrawing of the King Treason to his Parliament or were the Parliament the Traytors that made him to withdraw did the King Rebel against his own Garrison at Hull or was Hotham the Rebel that kept out his King let even prejudice here determine what the worst of Malice can suggest Does Matchiavel he cites countenance the Licentiousness of the People or rather allow too much Liberty to his Prince and make an Hero of a Tyrant an Agathocles and Grotius whom he Libels as much when he Matchiav in Princip C. 8. qui itaque hujus viri rerum gestarum rationes animo reputaretnihil â—ut parum in eis animadverteret aur fortunae asscribendum makes him to favour a Rebellion and who has expresly Condemn'd our own After this Re-publican like a Roman Velite has held our Monarchy his Foe in play all in the front of the
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
a plain puny Doeg and all this at a time the Government stood firm upon its Foundations and the best of Basis its Fundamental Law to what an height of exalted Insolence was the very Soul of Sedition then aspired to to suffer such a Serpent to see the Light that hist at the sight of a Soveraign and spit its Venom in the very Face of Majesty And whatever Recommendation this virulent Republican gives us of the Venetian Justice he would find sufficient severity sublim'd Cruelty instead of Law distributed to such daring Offenders as should offer at a Monarchy there tho but a mixt and of which they seem to have some necessitated resemblance in their constant creating of a Duke as if there were yet some remains of Royalty left which they could not extirpate and like Nature it self whom all the Art of Man can never expel the Libeller would not be long then without an Halter the Jealous State would soon send Vid. Resiquiae Wotton Foscarino 's case him the sight of his Sin and Sentence together and that by the Hands of his Hangman and some little Gondula to Ferry him to the deep No Magna Charta no Petition of Right no privilege of a Tryal of Peers or even a Plea allowed to the Prisoner and whom with a Praevious Sentence too they many times dispatch assoon as seiz'd And shall a Monarchy here founded upon Kingly Government has been the usage of the Land beyon'd History it self the Common Law is but Common usage Plowd Comment p. 195 Le Commen Ley n'est que Commen use its Fundamental Law and that for fifteen hundred years be invaded with impunity by the Pen of every virulent Villain each Factious Fellow that can but handle the Feather of a Goose I confess when they were arriv'd here to their Acme of Transcendent Villany when Vice had fixt her Pillars here and that in an Ocean too but of Blood when they had washt their Hands even in Insuperable Wickedness and shed that of their Prince when by a Barbarous Rebellion they had subverted the best of Civil Governments our Monarchy and establisht their own Anarchy a Common Wealth 2. part of the Inst fol. 496. Kings Praerogative is part of the Law of England then they might well be so bold as to write their Panegyricks upon their own Usurpation when they were to be paid for it by the Powers instead of Punshment Then they might tell us as indeed they did that the greatest of Crimes was the committing of High Treason against the Majesty of the People That the Romans gave us good Presidents for Rebellion Mâ—rc Pol. Num. 107. in the turning out of their Tarquins and the Government together that Caesar Usurpt upon the power of the People Marius and Sylla on the Jurisdiction of the Senate Pisistratus turned Tyrant at Athens and Agathocles in Sicily that Cosmus was the first Founder of a Merc. Pol. Jun. 17. 52. Dukedom and a fatal Foe to Florence that Castruccio made himself the Lord of all Luca and oppressed the Liberty of all the Freeborn Subjects of the Land that all our Kings from him they called the Conqueror to the Scottish Tyrant were but the same sort of Usurpers upon the power of the People All this with much more Execrable Treason was Printed Publish'd and Posted through the Kingdom with Approbation of Parliament and which we shall in its proper place represent in its own blackness black as Hell it self the seat of such Seditious Souls full of Anarchy and Confusion But why we should now have so lately left us such daring desparadoes to retrieve to us the same Doctrine to tell Plato us that Affairs of State must be managed by a Parliamentary that is in their own Phraseology a meer popular Power could proceed certainly from nothing but the deepest the most dangerous Corruption of the Times from the desperate Condition of a Goverment ready to be undermined by Treachery Plot and Machination brought so low that it did not dare to defend it self and its boldest Assertors so far frightened into a dishonest and imprudent sort of Diffidence as to distrust the strength of their own Cause and that was evident too from the sad servile Complyance of some fearful Souls otherwise well affected that seemed to give up their Government like a Game lost that had rather sink then swim against the Tyde But for a more direct Answer to this Proposition we shall shew that Affairs of State must be managed by our Monarch that matter of Fact has prov'd it by Prescription that it is our Kings Prerogative by the Lands Law and his unquestionable Right by the force of Reason For the first 't is evident from History that for above 600. years near a thousand before the Conquest we had Kings that had an Absolute and Soveraign sway over their Subjects as appears from the Gildas B. who was born Anno 493. most Antient Writer of our British History it is apparent that all our Monarchs Britains Saxons and Danes exercis'd unlimited Jurisdiction without having their Affairs Govern'd by any estabisht Council much less a Parliament and that to be prov'd beyond Contradiction from the several Authors that Lived Wrote and were Eye These were Nennius a Monk of Bangor who liv'd An. 620. Bede a Saxon who wrot in their Heptarchy dy'd in the 733. Asserius Menev. who writ the Acts of King Alfred Colemannus Ang. who liv'd in the time of the Danes and Harold the first Vortiger the British King on his own Head call'd in the Saxon without his Subjects consent Egbert an absolute Monarch of the Saxons over all the Isle Canutus as absolute among the Danes call'd only his Convention of Nobles at Oxford about 1017. Witnesses of the manner and Constitution of their Government and then sure must be suppos'd to understand that to which they were Subjected from those good Authorities can be easily gather'd that the power of Peace and War was always in the Prince that they were Govern'd by him Arbitrarily and at his Will that he call'd what Councils of whom when and where he pleased so far from being Limited that the most popular Parliamentarians would be loth his present Majesty should prescribe to such an Absoluteness and which nothing but the kind Concessions of some of his Predecessors to their Clamourous Subjects has given from the Crown and dispens'd with that power and right enjoy'd by their Royal Ancestors 'T is strange and unaccountable that those which stretch their Wit and Invention for this power of Parliament and run through all the Mazes of Musty Records for the proving it so Ancient yet will not allow that of their King so long a standing and which after all their fruitless Labour lost proves at last nothing but the Council of their King those Noble and Wise-men he would please to Assemble their Gemotes the name of that most Ancient Assembly implying nothing more as appears
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
the Statute and the Law William Writ against Pryn too in one Page proves his King Supream in the other his Parliaments Supremacy the most Mutinous Member would needs be Loyal when it was to late and the most Malitious Miscreant at the Pen Publisht his Memento when his Money with his Membership was sequestred from his own Home as well as his self from the Parliaments House and then palliated it with a piece against his Majesties Murder I the more Liberally enlarge upon this because his party the Presbyter would appropriate to themselves from some of his Papers the Vindication of their King but what I am sure in sincerity was thâ—â— own Reâ—enge They the Scot and the Todpole Spawn of both that Independant made use of unanimously the Defence of their Prince for the Destruction of his Person and then the differing Daemagogues with the very same * Vid. Answer of our English Presbyter to the Scots Commissioners The Scots reply from their Camp at Newark The Members to the Army The Armies Answer to the Members The Scots Remonst to the Army The Armies reply Pretences strove to put upon each other that is both alike full of the same falshood both alike fancyed their own Integrity they seemed to Labor for the two sublimated Vices Hypocrisie and self-conceit whereof the one made them twice Villains the other double Fools And this Confounder of Paper as well as the People Publisht then ∥ the very same An. From 41. to 48. Pamphlets or waste Papers 125. Principles this strach't Republican has proposed now for new Politicks of State Pryn and Plato differ only in this one Labour'd to make Law speak Treason the other Sense Lastly were not the Parliament very tender of this last this present Princes Power and Prerogative when they enacted a new * Act for Regulating Corporations Oath to be taken by all in Office for the Renouncing the Trayterous Position of resisting his Majesty with his own Authority And this Rebellious Proposal of our Republican is to make even the Parliament it self to make use of his †Vid. Plat. Parl. of Commons begun with H. 3. within 400 y. Kings in Caesars time 1000 y. since Authority even for an Usurpation upon his Prerogative and when once they come to Manage that they may be sure they 'll be his Masters too and I hope 't is now in some Measure prov'd even in the several particulars I undertook should be so that our Monarchs had heretofore an absolute Management of Affairs without an Interfering of Parliaments which then had not so much as Being and which were since they had it never called as their very Writs express it but to ‖ Deliberaturi de arduis 4 Inst 2. p. consult that they never offer'd to set a Council over their King much less themselves as this * Plato popular Pedant calls it to Manage his Militia and demonstrated this as was designed from Prescription even beyond Chronicle from the Laws of every Reign and my little Light of Reason All the following Propositions are as much against Reason and Law for the third is that the Judges be nominated by Parliament which as it would divest the King of part of his Supremacy so it would make themselves in effect both Judges and party for those then their own Creatures would have the Exposition of those Laws which themselves had made The ‖ Cook 5. fol. 62. 9. Ed. 4. Cook 8. f. 145. Law allows all the Four Courts at Westminster to be all Courts by Prescription and then let them tell me to whom belongs the power of Electing those that are to preside in it to the Kings of England that can prescribe to their Government even from the very Britains before Caesar ever set Foot in it neer 1700 Years agon and with whom their Courts of Judicature were ever Coeval or the Constitution of a Parliament that first within this four hundred years could be said to have a Being and so that which themselves would now controul had a Priority even in time to their Existence for near 1300 Years It is called the Court of Kings Bench Let them name the Judges it must be no longer His but the Parliaments 'T is Rebellion in them to assume it for they must at the same time too take the Soveraignty the Supremacy and 't is that such Seditious Proposals must aim at and truly do for 't is expresly declared for ‖ 3 El. Dyer 187. Cook 4 Inst c. 7. p. 73. Law that the Justices of the Kings Bench have Supream Authority the King himself sits there in them as the Law intends if the Parliament can chuse their Kings Representatives they can their King too and make the most Hereditary Kingdom Elective before the Reign even of Edward the * Ibid. p. 74. First the Chief Justice of this Court was created by Letters Patent 't is out ever was and will be out of the Parliaments power to create per Patents even a petty Constable 't is the King alone that by these his †32. H. 6. 13. Letters can constitute Courts and grant all Regal Rights He can erect a ‖ Plowden 334. Court of Common pleas in what part of the Kingdom he pleases and shall he that has a power over the very being of the Court not be able to place his Ministers of Justice in it The Chancery is a Court of such Antiquity that long before the Conquest we have several accounts of it tho some that were * Pollid Virg. Foreign to our Laws as well as Land would make it commence with the Conqueror Our very †4 Inst 6. 8. ibid. British Kings are said to have had such a Court and Ethelred the Saxon granted the * Mirror c. 1. §. 12. Fleta l. 12. c. 1. Glanvil l. 12. c. 1. and all the most ancient Lawyers speak of it Chancellorship even in Succession I need not it would be Nonsense to design to prove Parliaments had nothing to do with such Affairs so long before they themselves exsisted and in this Monument of Antiquity fam'd for the Distribution of the most Equal Justice since they cannot pretend without shame to the power of Electing such an Antient Officer of the Crown why what they can't presume to mend must Plato be quite Marr'd and utterly Abolisht Pryn himself could never pretend that this Great Officer was the Peoples tho that popular piece of Absurdity might have prov'd it too as well he did the rest from the paradox of all our Princes being Elected which tho allow'd them from their perverted Histories yet still those whom they say were Chosen had the Liberty of Chusing their own Ministers sure they can't have the least shadow for such a silly Conjecture therefore this ‖ Pâ—yn's Parl. right to elect great Officers and Judges Sophister having just so much sense as to conceive from the begging one false Principle the most Damnable
Falsehoods can be deducted concludes but yet very Cautiously with a beleive so that since Kings were first Elected by the People Officers of the Crown were so too that is first he Lyes like a Knave and then infers like a Fool. But the Printing and Publishing now the Reasons for the rejecting this Judicatory is only to try how near the natural Sons can tread in the Prints and the very footsteps of the former Rebellion of their Fathers for in the Reign of Henry the Third when this Mighty Parliamentary Power was first hatcht far from being brought to the Maturity to which Time and their popular Encroachments have since ripen'd it then the meer Embryo of State just modell'd and conceiv'd The Rebellious Barons being then the Parents as also a Rebellion since the Nurse of such Seditious proposals demanded the very same piece of Praerogative to have the * An. Reg. H. 3. 22. Dom. 1230. Vid. Baker p. 84 85 86. Vid. Stow. Chief Justice the Chancellor and Treasurers to be chosen by themselves and then exercis'd the power when they had got it like so many Tyrants too that Ostracism upon the Kings Officers of State succeeded no better then that at Athens only to make room for so much worse the Leaguers in ‖ Vid. Davila pag. 482. France Petition their King to remove his Counsellors and Officers that they might put in others of their own and shall the Presidents of Papists and that of Rebel ones obtain even with our Puritans to Rebel will they boldly own themselves Protestants and not Blush in the practices of those very Catholicks they condemn Did not our late Rebels and Regicides show themselves more Modest and Regular in their Attempts for Reformation than this more insolent Republican they never entered upon Abolishing this Court till they had extirpated the Monarchy it was the ‖ 5 Aug. 1653. Vid. Scob. Coll. Council of State that then voted it down the Rump it self the very Nusance of the Nation had but just thought it convenient among the midst of all their Innovation to root out a Constitution so Old they had but just Voted for the taking it away when Pride's Purge came and scour'd both these Legislators and the Law and tho then the Chancery was criminated with the same Aspersions we find lain upon it in * Plat. Red. this Libel for †Vid. Exact Relation of the Parl. Dissolved Decemb 53. Chargeableness Dilatories yet even by those most virulent Villains it was allowed if well managed to compare with any Court in the whole World whereas the ∥ Doctor of Sedition here Plat. p. 130. thinks that at the best there is not to be found a worse Tribunal in the Universe neither was it easily compast even in those Times of Confusion there being no less than three or four Bills brought in for the purpose before they could with the Corrupt Committees of that Council agree on one for the Commissioners for this Regulation understanding as little Law as they had broken much had hardly the Sense to propose their own Sentiments in such a way as might make the Members Sensible there was any Reason for the prosecuting the very Work they had Undertaken they seemed to resolve only to Ruin a Court constituted with the Monarchy it self before they could agree for the reestablishing another in its Room there seemed a sort of Sympathy between that and the Government both founded both fell together and both before the Subverters had or were like to find out a better Livy tells us like it of another such a sort of rash Rebellious Reformers in Italy a distempered State that fell out with their Aristocracy and designed a Deposition of their Old Governors and that only to chose new But before they could agree upon choice they found it I 'll assure you as difficult to get better as it was easie to destroy whom they thought worse and so with a wise Acquiescence were satisfyed and sate down with an unintended Submission It had been well for ours had they been so wise as to have thought so and done so too But so furious were they here in this very point of Reformation that tho * Vid. Exact Relation of the Proceedings of the Parl. dissolved Vid. Decemb. 12. 53. they could not agree upon what they would Reform before the Term approacht the Members that had Voted for the Abolishing as they call'd it this Corrupt Court would not care to pass through the Hall while it was sitting but moved to have its Jurisdiction suspended till they were agreed for the manner of its utter Extirpation and on they went with their Legislative Swords their Armed suffrages till they past that Second Vote for the new modelling of all the Law and so not only supprest the Chancery but that Malignant party Justice and Equity was Banisht by those very Villains that had broke all the Statutes of the Land In short they never did destroy these Judicatures but when they did Dethrone their King they never chose their Judges but when they had Vsurpt the Supremacy they never can do either without subverting the Monarchy for 't is their own Soveraign that sits and presides in them and the Judges Officiate but for him because not ‖ Et pur ceo que nous ne suffisons in nostr◠propre Person Oyer Terminer c. Vide Brit. f. 1. Vid. 8. H. 6. sufficient for it himself and therefore has committed all his power of Judicature to these several Courts of Justice The King is said to Judge by his Judges if the Parliament elect them they are none of his they chuse their Soveraigns Representatives while they would think it hard his Majestie should make the Peoples or nominate but to a single Burrough Thus much for their Management of the State the next part of the Proposition is their modelling of the Church and in that our modern Republican agrees with our Old Rebels for the depriving the Bishops of their Votes That was one of the Projects was set afoot as the very forerunner of our former Troubles that was publisht * Vid. Bishops Right and Discousre of Peerage 81. over again in several Papers and Pamphlets now besides in this very piece and could they condemn our Fears of a Subversion of the Government when their Libels in about 80 lookt only like the new Editions of those in ‖ Vid. Scots Libel on the Bish and Leightons in England 41 as if printed Rebellion was to suffer but a Reimpression You shall see how they began with the Bishops just before the last War in their Libels and then how of late they began to War upon Episcopacy again in their Papers and Pamphlets you shall see how the Parliament Espoused the Peoples Quarrel to that Hierarchy then and how near our late House of Commons was for falling upon the Prelacy now Leighton a virulent Scotch-man led the Dance with a Zeal like that the
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
they seemed to be ashamed of that very Bastard Honor of which they were brought to Bed and could not tell how to Christen the base Bantling they had begot till at last some simpering Gossips stept up and Named it an other House i. e. an House without a Name Distracted Dolts the Compounds of Madness and Folly did you for this destroy your Kings Nobility created by Law to dignifie the meanest Men the Vilest Villains against the †17. Ed. 4. an Act for degrading Nevil Marquess Montague Because not sufficient for the maintaining the Dignity adding that Men of mean Birth preferred to Honor promote all manner of Injustice Statutes of the Land did not you confess that of the Kings Lords to be a Lawful Government and the best by recalling it tho compounded of Wretches the very worst poor Prodigals whose Repentance only rendered you more Miserable and reverst the Fate of him that fed on Husks who returned to Herd with Swine Have we not had heretofore Peers by particular †Act degraded for being a disgrace to their Peerage Lords whom the Kings Law made Honorable only their Lands could not maintain their Lordships Honors and that tho Blood and Descent had entitled them to it whereas many of these their Parliament Peers had neither Law Land Blood or Money to make them so Did not the Parliament that very Parliament that Abolisht afterward our English Peers Petition the ‖ 2. Car. 1. King against Scots and Irish Titles and told him to this purpose that it was Novelty without president that persons should possess Honor where they possess nothing else and have a Vote for the making Laws where they have not a Foot of Land had their own Objection been afterward applyed to some of their own Country and that pitiful Peerage of their own chusing they must have Blusht upon the Reflection of their own Thoughts when they remember'd with what they upbraided their King The possessions of their Noble Peers being Just none at all or what was worse than nothing the purchase of their Villanies It is recorded I remember in the Conqueror's Time that Hugh Lupus Earl of Chester upon special Favor of his Prince being the Son of his own Mother by a Second Husband Arlott having Marryed Harlowin a Noble-Man of Normandy that his Earldom was granted him by William the First with as ample Jurisdiction as himself held the Crown A power I think beyond any of our present Palatinates upon which he presumed to make three or four Barons but Historians observe it was such an Honorable Concession as never any Subject before or since enjoyed and how they can presume to pretend to it now I cannot Apprehend It was alway a particular piece of Providence amongst all Nations not to render that pitiful and Contemptible to the People which they resolved should be Reverenced and Esteemed and unless we can imagine our Idolaters of the Peoples Peers would like some Infidels adore their Wooden Deities only for beeing Ugly and Deform'd or like the Israelites Worship Calves of their own Rearing I am sure that empty Title with which their Honors of that other House were only full could draw no other Reverence and Respect than that Ass in the Apologue from an Image that it carried This I remember was the result of the Petition of the Portugals to Philip the Second of Spain and he I think obtained that Kingdom too as our Republicans did once and would again ours with the Subversion of its Laws and the Force of Arms it was their request that he would not make their Nobility of which they are not a little proud pitiful and contemptible by preferring such to that Degree whose Quality could not deserve it what Peers we had when pickt by the Council of State What Lords when cullyed out by the Commons let those remember who are so ready to forget it Seditious Sots have not the Laws of all Nations as well as our own provided that this power be the peculiar prerogative of the Prince and must these Politicks would Be 's be wiser now than the wide World Do not the Digests declare those Civil Sanctions whose Authority obtain with all Civiliz'd Subjects i. e. with almost all besides our own and whose Reason can't be refuted by the best of the Rebellious Republicans that so little regard those that their so much admired Legislators their Solon or Licurgus never saw the like Laws that must be allowed the most Rational by being so generally received those †Postquam ad Curam Principis Magistratuum creatio pertinere cepit c. D. 48. 141. Ordinis vero cujusque arbitrium primo Penes Imperatorem Zouch de jure milit nobilitat pars 2. Sect. 2. tell us and the World that the conferring of Dignities depends upon the Sole care of the Soveraign that the Subjects ought not to dispute it and such a Religious Observance of this settled Soveraignty do those sacred Sanctions recommend that they Censure it for a Crime as great as †Sacrilegii instar sit dubitare An is Dignus sit quem Princeps elegit C. 19. 20. 3. Sacrilege it self to suspect his insufficiency whom the Prince should prefer some of those Laws were the Constitutions of Heathens as well as other of those that afterward learnt Christ and had not the Doctrine of his Disciples declared Kings even an Ordinance of God the pious Pagans always esteemed their Princes Sacred and such a source of Honor was in their Soveraign Emperors that even against their very Laws they could allow them to continue those Noble whom the Marriage with a Plebeian had degraded from their Nobility as Antonius Augustus did for his Neece Julia. 'T is Nonsense I confess to talk of the Laws of all Nations to those that cannot obey their own or the Decrees of Emperors for the Preservation of their Majesty to those that will break Statutes to Libel their King yet still it serves to shew that even in this very point the Laws so long before ours †Vid. Coke Calv. Case fol. 15. Coke 7. fol. 33. None but Peers of the Realm to sit In House of Peers no Peer to be made but by the King allowed this power to be the peculiar prerogative of the Prince and tho we are bound only to submit to the Singular Laws and Customs of our little Land yet still if in our Senses we must be Subject to such Laws as are founded upon an Universal Reason and for these Republicks that have revolted from that Regal Government from whence they must derive their Honors we find the best of their Nobility to be but Burghers And the very Nobleman of Venice this Courteous Author so much Caresses and Admires one that must make himself so and at best but equivalent if such great things according to the Latin Aphorism may be compared with small to a Gentleman of England who wears only a shorter Coat while the other a longer Gown 'T
the Word Country that was I believe as well as he antecedent to the King but must it be inferred because the Land was once without Kings therefore now no Kings must govern the Land For the Conclusion is as absurd to say That therefore the People have the Legislative and their Prince no Negative they do not consider the result of such rash Inferences which return upon themselves more stronger in the rebound and that even upon their tenderest places which they can hardly suffer to be touched Kings and Lords did a long time meet in Parliament before Commons in that Convention were so much as thought of and therefore must none now be convened The Papists proudly tell us their Religion was long before Luther and must we not now profess our Protestant Religion Another of the same Nature and as much Nonsense is * Ibid. this They infer from the possibility of the King 's dying without Heir and the Government returning to the People who then would be the Sole Legislators That therefore they must have much now of the present Legislative and be at least Co-ordinate that have a possibility of being Supream The Supposition sounds somewhat like the Song of the Children When all the Land is Paper c. Tho it spoils another good Proverb That no Man dyes without an Heir but the silly Souls do not consider that by the same Solecism and Supposititious Reason not a Subject has a Right to a Foot of His Land For the Law says All that is in England belongs to the King as ‖ 12. H. 7. 20. Coke 1. Inst p. 1. Lord which if the owners dye without Heirs must escheat to the Crown and sure 't is as possible for any Subject to dye without Heirs as his Soveraign when the †25. Ed. 3. Treason to destroy the Heir of the Crown Law has taken special Care for them and then 't is but turning their possibility of a Right into an actual one and they will be the most obliging Subjects to the Crown that bring such Arguments against it Another of * Pryn his Treatise ibid. Pryn's pretty Paradoxes is the very same with ‖ Postscript pag. 51. Hunt's impudent Assertion I may with Modesty call it so since himself says he dares to be so bold to assert it It is that our Kings anciently always consented to Bills offered for the publick good and the Postscript that never any Bill was lost or wanted the Royal Assent promoted by the GENERAL DESIRES of the People That Bills have been rejected they 'll find upon Record and in the Journals of almost every Session and whatever is presented in Parliament must be supposed the Desires of the People who Sit themselves there in Representative but the mistaken Gentleman meant it of the Bill of Exclusion to be the Peoples General Desire but that at last he finds a Lye too and that the Generality have for the most part protested against it in Addresses declaring more the Sense of a People than a prevailing Party in an House of Commons when the best part of the Nation too the Lords did not concur But did not in * Vid. Camb. vit Eliz. 106. Edocta fuit quantum emineat a successore designato periculum Queen Elizabeth's Time and that even so lately the Parliament and even every Individual in the Nation desire her to declare her Successor I am sure with greater Sollicitation and a more general Unanimity than they could be said to desire that Exclusion of the present King's did not the two Houses offer her four subsidy Bills upon that very Consideration and she as resolutely reject both And could the refusing to shew even a Kindness to her next Successor upon the importunity of all her People with Money in their Hands be less resented And shall the King for declaring only against a Bill that was never tendered him for declining to concur in this deepest Injury to his own BROTHER and Heir and to pleasure those only that denyed to part with a Penny be reproached and condemned so much more Did not the Parliament tender to King James three several subsidies to break of the Match with Spain and the Treaty of the Palatinate and he refuse tho tempted with what is seldom the Subjects Bait Money How many Bills of Rebellion did the Mutinous Members and that in the Name of all the People prefer in their Propositions to our Martyred Soveraign to which the poor Prince prefer'd the most Ignominious Death rather than condescend with his Veult or Avisera * Hunt's Phraseology pag. 94. Base Caitiff forgive but your own Billings-Gate should these neither have wanted the Royal Assent because offered in the name of all the People of England and as the general Desire of the Subject if that Suggestion must have extorted his Assent then mighty Miscreant he must have past an Act for his own Tryal Sign'd a Warrant for his Murder for in that name he was Arraign'd †Vide Bradsh K. Tryal in that name he was Sentenc'd and in that he dyed Poor prejudic'd Soul whose discontent and Transport makes his own Maxims undermine the very Cause he would defend Is then this general desire of the People such an absolute infallible Determination of Matters of Religion and Descent of the Crown the very only points he labours for that if their Desires be but promoted put up in a Parliamentary way by Bill or Petition it must presently oblige the Royal Assent Be it so base Creatures your own Arguments as basely betray your own Religion your own Arguments well help truly to subvert that which you seek to Establish with such a furious but false Zeal for ought I know the Protestant Religion had been so setled in its Infancy in its first efforts of Reformation in the Reign of him that was the first Defender of our Faith that it could never have been so often interrupted with a succeeding Persecution had but Henry the Eighth refused the Bill of the * 31 H. 8. Six Articles prest upon him by both Houses this was Judged a just and necessary Bill from Hunt's General desire of the People but had it not been better had it not saved the Blood perhaps of all the mighty Book of Martyrs had the sturdy Prince rejected this as he did many other general Desires It was this Royal Assent alone which would to God it had been wanting and this Sycophant would have wish'd so too did he really love the Reliligion he so falsely labors for It was the Le Roy vult the result of the Peoples importunity that then establish'd that Religion by a Law which had it been but then neglected that which our Zealots make such fearful clamor at standing upon its last Legs had quite languish'd dropt into the Grave and been buryed in the Ruins and Rubbish of its own Religious Houses they demolish'd For in the latter end of his Reign so enraged did he seem
unhappy Youths only for the thought of restoring that much better piece of Polity the Monarchy they had help'd but so lately to subvert that without the least Consideration of their past Services they soon sentenc'd them to suffer But were it granted them That in some places the Parties are permitted to be the Judges Does that argue for the Reason and the equity of the thing that they must be so in all others 't is sure a very sorry sort of an Argument that will conclude from a particular wrong to an universal Right 'T is such an one as themselves would not allow of in the like Case when it makes for the Monarchy For when 't is objected to them that God in the Sin of his Servant David did somewhat signifie he reserv'd the judging of KINGS to himself the King of Kings and Judge Vindiciae Quest 2. of all the Earth and that therefore the Elders of the Israelites or their Seventy which Brutus says were then to ' constitute their supream judicatory we see did not or could not call him to Account Falsa est conclusio non debuisse poenas de delicto aliquo sumi quia semel sumpte non sunt de jure Magist Franckfort page 72. Quest 6. why truly to this it is answered by his Predecessor in his Principles that Plato to this Aristotle That Author de jure Magistratuum That it is a false Conclusion to say Kings ought not to be punished by the People because David or any particular King was not I shall grant this renown'd Republican more than he 'll be willing to accept of especially in one of his Instances of the Father tho party to have heretofore been judge even in Capital of his Sons Offence tho against himself but that was when the Government of almost all the World was purely Patriarchal and then he had the same Despotical power over his Wife and Servant his whole Tribe and Family and even as their Aristotle a Common-wealth-man insinuates to us in his Politicks those ruling Fathers afford us the Foundation for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ethic. Lib. 8. c. 12. all Monarchy but says Sidney There being no mean Judg between King and People therefore they are his Judges and their own and why may it not be as well said therefore he is both his own Judge and theirs there is no one to mediate even in his own Instances between the Father and Son Husband and Wife Master and Servant and does therefore the Son Judge the Father the Wife the Husband and the Servant the Master or are either of them therefore the Judges in their own Case Certainly with Men of Common Sense the Supream power must conclude the Judicial too and that even themselves seem to suggest tho it be bottom'd upon a false Principle when they place it in the People For they tell us themselves in their old Antiquated Aphorism when they consider them Collectively they are satisfied they have the supremacy and then they would be not only Judges in their own Case but would for ever Exclude their King from being Judge but the very Foundation of this piece of folly under any Monarchy must needs be false and so the very Babel they would build upon it must needs fall into Confusion But to give a farther Confutation to this first Maxim of this Antimonarchist tho it be really no more than what was Printed in the Rebellion in another pernicious piece besides what we have mention'd above It went under the Name of a Treatise of Monarchy and its Author Anonymous who very fairly puts it in the very power of every Man to Judge the Illegal Acts of his Monarch * Treatise of Monarchy p. 28. But yet will not admit it to argue a superiority of the Persons Judging over him that is Judged and indeed 't is such an Inference as seems to be just as full of Folly as Faction only they that would make the People supream for it are the more lying Knaves and this that would make them decide the matter without the more Factious Fool for when you ask these Sophisters in policy if a Soveraign transcends his Bounds who shall be Judge of that excess of Soveraignty why themselves tell us there is no Judge and yet will have the People and the Party to be so but what if I should for once force them upon some shadow of Argument and tell them the Fundamental Laws of the Land to be the best Judge Yet still they be at a loss for this THEIR Judicatory for the King who is the Fountain of all the Laws is the best Judge too of their being violated But besides the very Supposition of such a Violation of the Laws by our own Soveraign is as false in Fact as 't is expresly against those very Laws to suppose it for by * Vid 4. Eliz. 2. 46. Ne poet estre diseisor ne faire ascun tort also 4. Ed. 4. 25. B. those he is declar'd to be never able to do any wrong and so his Subjects cannot be injur'd by him or the Statutes violated when by those very municipal Sanctions he is still presumed to do right but besides Regal Authority cannot in Reason be subject to the Penalty of any positive Laws tho it may perhaps be oblig'd to the Observances And this made as ‖ Sir Walt. Raleigh History of the World So the Civilians as Paulus says the Prince does do well to observe those Laws to which he is not oblig'd Learn'd a Person as any our Land bred to distinguish this Royal Obligation into the directive and coercive part to the first he thinks them somewhat subject tho never to be compell'd with the latter Consult but your Bibles and the most curious Decet tamen Principē servare Leges quibus ipse solutus est ut inquit Paulus d. 32. 1. 23. of our Common-wealth's-Men will hardly discover what these illuminated Virtuoso's of the State have of late brought to light that any of the Kings among the Israelites or the Men of Judah were tied to the Laws of their Land That very Description that Samuel gives them of their Soveraign Saul which our Democraticks delight to represent so very grievous and intolerable and which the late Mercury-maker calls the giving them a King in his Wrath Merc. pol. Num. 65. yet that serves sufficiently to satisfie these mighty Murmerers that the Nature the Constitution of Monarchy was look'd upon then to be much more Arbitrary than themselves the most Seditious Subjects would well allow or our present Soveraign aim at or offer For he tells them The manner of a King must be to 1. Samuel C. 8. verse 11 12 c. take their Sons for his Service set his Souldiers to devour the product of their Ground seize their Daughters for Cooks and Confectioners their Vineyards and their Seeds their Cattle and their Servants all must be his such an absoluteness and even an Opprestion that
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
runs all in the sole Wil of the King Charter it self their Act of Liberty they so much Labour in that not the meanest Subject can be Try'd or Judg'd unless it be by his Peers Equals much less so mighty a Monarch that has none and a Fortiori then with lesser Reason by those that are his own Subjects so far from being his Peers or Equals that they are together his Inferiors which has made me think many times these preposterous Asserters of so much Nonsense these Seditious Defenders of those Liberties they never understood did apprehend by the word Pares in the Law not the common Acceptation of it in the Latin but only the abused Application of it of our own English only to our House of Lords And conclude the King might be Judg'd by those we commonly call PEERS because they sit in that Honorable House and at the same to be Judg'd according to Magna Charta that all Judgements be per pares But does not each Dunce and every Dolt understand that the very Letter of the Law looks after this only that every Person be tryed at the least by those that are of his own Condition and that in the Legal Acceptation of the Word every Commoner of the Lower House nay every one of their Electors is as much a Peer as the greatest Person of the House of Lords In short they must put some such silly Seditious Exposition upon the plainest Letter when they pretend to Judge their King or else from the very Law of their own Liberty they labor in allow that their King has no Judges In that Act against Appeals that was enacted in the time of Henry the 8th 24. H. 8. c. 12. the very Parliament upon whom the People and even these Republicans so much depend tells us even in the very Letter of that Law That it is Manifest from Authentick History and Chronicle That the Realm of England is an Empire That its Crown is an Imperial one That therefore their King is furnish'd by the goodness of Almighty God with an intire Power and Prerogative to render and yield Justice to all manner of Folk in all Causes and Contentions This by solemn Act is declared of their King this Excludes the People from Judging of themselves much more their Soveraigns This the Resolution of a popular Parliament they would make even the Supream and this by them resolved even in Opposition to that Popery these Panick Fools so much and so vainly fear Do not the Books the best Declarations of the Law let us understand that which they against the Resolutions of all the Law it self would so foolishly maintain that it was resolved in Edward the 4th's time That the King cannot be said to do any wrong and then surely can't be Judg'd by his very People for doing it when impossible to be done and was not this the Sense of †Vid. 1. Ed. 5. fol. 2. all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of Si Le Roy moy disseisit pur ceo que Le Roy en le ley ne poit moy disseisir il né serrá appell disseisor mes jeo sue mis a petition à Roy. 4. Ed. 4. 25. 13. the Law in Edward the 4th's time that because the Soveraign could not be said to injure any Subject therefore the Law never looks upon him as a disseisor a disposesser of any Man 's Right and all the remedy it will allow you is only Plaint and Petition Does not my Lord Coke himself that in several places is none of the greatest Assertor of the Right of the Soveraign fairly tell us * Coke Comon West 1. 2. Inst p. 158. least it should be vainly fear'd they should reflect upon the King 's own Misgovernment all the fault should rest upon the Officers and Ministers of his Justice Does it not appear from the ‖ Stat. to pursue suggestious 37. E. 3. c. 18. 38. Ed. 3. c. 9. Statutes of Edward the third that notwithstanding the strict Provision of the Charter for the Tryal by Peers that the King was still look'd upon as a Judge with his Council and Officers to receive Plaints and decide Suggestions and tho that and the subsequent of the next year provide against false ones yet it confirms still the power of the King to hear and determine them whether false or true Have they not heretofore answered touching Freehold even before their King and Council and a Parliament Parl. Glocester 2. Ric. 2. only Petition'd their Soveraign with all Submission that the Subject might not be summon'd for the future by a Chancery Writ or Privy Seal to such an Appearance but this they 'll say was the result of the Soveraigns Usurpations upon the Laws of the Land of a King Richard the 2d That did deserve to be deposed Brief History of Succession p. 7. as well as the Articles of his Depositions to be read †Plato Rediviv p. 116. 234. a King that forfeited the executive Power of his Militia for prefering worthless People and was himself of little worth or as the most Licentious and Lewdest Libel of a longer date has it †a King that found Fuel for his Lust in all Lewd and uncivil Courses Now tho March Needham Merc. Polit n. 65. Sept 4. 1651. we have the Authority of the best of our Historians for the good Qualities of this Excellent tho but an unhappy Prince and who could never have fell so unfortunately had his Subjects served him more faithfully tho Mr. Hollinshed Hollinshed 3d. Vol. Chron. F. 508. N. 50. tells us never any Prince was more unthankfully used never Commons in greater wealth never Nobles more cherish'd or the Church less wrong'd and as Mr. How has it in Beauty Bounty How 's Annals p. 277. and Liberality he surpassed all his Predecessors and Baker the best among our Moderns says there were aparent in him a great many good Inclinations that he was only abused in his Youth but if he had been Guilty afterward in his riper Age of some proceedings these Republicans had reason to reproach I am sure he was Innocent of those foolish Innuendo's those false and frivolous Accusations for which they rejected him viz. for unworthiness and insufficiency Vid. Trussel in vit R. 2. when he never appear'd in all his Reign more worthy of the Government than at the very time they deposed him for being unworthy to Govern But whatever were the vices of that Prince with which our virulent Antimonarchists would blast and blemish his Memory yet we see from the President that is cited the Sense of his Subjects Parl. Glocest did not then savor so much of Sedition as insolently to demand it for their Privilege and Birth-right which without doubt they might have pretended to call so as much as any of those the Commons have since several times so
clamored for with Tumult and Insurrection and was indeed more to be condemn'd than any of those Miscarriages the Seditious and Trayterous Assembly that deposed the same Prince did ever His deposers within the 25 of Ed. Coke Treason Object for if their Free-hold can't be call'd their Birth-Right then there 's hardly any thing of Right to which they can be born And yet we see that the King and his Council had heretofore Cognizance even of that as it appears from the Commons Petitioning him against it and his Answer which was That tho he would remand them to the Tryal of their Right by the Law and not require them there to answer peremptorily yet he did reserve the power at the suit of the Party to Judge it where by Reason of Maintenance or the like the Common Law could not have its Course then we may conclude that the judicial power was absolutely in the King and this was also at a time when this Richard the 2d was but a Minor no more than thirteen years old and so this his Answer without doubt by the Advice of the wisest of his Council and the most learned of the Land And for this reason notwithstanding it is provided by that Chapter of the Great * Mag. Chart. 9. H. 3. c. 29. Cap. 14. Charter none shall be Diseised of his Freehold but by Lawful Judgment of his Peers tho the Right was tryed before that sort of Statute by common Law as my Lord ‖ 2 Inst pag. 49. Coke observ's upon it by the verdict of 12 Peers or equal men yet still I look upon the King to remain sole Judge in every Case whether Civil or Criminal for these Peers are never allow'd to try any more than bare matter of Fact and the Soveraign always presides in his Justices to decide matter of Equity and Law And those †The writ of Conviction was the same with an Attaint and that was by Common Law too Coke 2. Inst p. 130. Vid. 3. Inst p. 222. 1. Inst pag. 294. 13. and tho this Judgment is given by no stat yet there are several Stat. that inflict penalty and that even in trespass where damages but 40. sh 5. E. 3. Chap. 7. Vid. also 28. E. 3. c. 8. 3 ◠E. 3. c. 4. 13. R. 2. and several other Stat. in H. 4 5 6 7 8th times about it very Laws to which he gives Life too and whose Ambiguities he resolves themselves also sufficiently terrifie the Jurors from pretending to give their own Resolutions by making them liable to the severe Judgment of an Attaint if their Verdict be found false i. e. to have their Goods Chattels Lands and Tenements forfeited their Wives and Children turn'd from their home and their Houses Levell'd and their Trees pluckt up by the Roots and their Pastures turn'd up with the Plough and their Bodies Imprison'd A sort of severity sufficient one would think to frighten the Subject from assuming to himself to decide the judicial part of the Laws and for this Reason in all dubious Cases for fear of their bringing in a verdict False they only find the Fact specially and leave the determination of it to the King in the Judges that represent him And as this was resolved for Legal even from the Common Usage and Custom of the Land confirm'd as you see by several Acts of Parliament so was it maintain'd also by those very Villains that had subverted the Government it self and violated all the Fundamental Laws of all the Land for when Lilburn a Levelling and discontented Officer a Lieutenant of Oliver's Army was put upon his * Vid. Lilburn's Tryal 24. Oct. 1649. Printed the 28. of November 1649. Page 3. Tryal for Treason only for Scribling against the Usurpation for which he had fought and as he boasted to the Bench to the very butt end of his Musket against his Majesty at the Battel of Brainford and the mutinous wretch only Troubled and Disgusted because he had not a greater share in that Usurp'd Power for which he had hazarded his Life and Fortune when he came to be pinch'd too with that Commission of High Court of Justice himself had help'd up for the Murdering of his Soveraign and his best of Subjects no Plea would serve him but this popular one which the Lieutenant laboured in most mightily that his Jury were by the Law the Judges of that Law as well as Fact and those that sate on the Bench only Pronouncers Ib. p. 121. of the Sentence and truly considering they were as much Traytors by Law as the Prisoner at the Bar he was so far in the Right that his Jury were as much Judges as those Commissioners that sate at the Bench yet even that Court only of Commission'd Traytors and Authoriz'd Rebels thought good to over-rule him in that point and Iermin one of the Justices just as Senseless in his Expression of it as Unjust and Seditious in the Usurpation of such a Seat in Judicature when no King to Commission him In an uncouth and clumsie Phrase calls his Opinion of the Juries being Judges of Law A Damnable Ibid. pag. 122 113. Blasphemous Heresie never heard in the Nation before and says 'T is enough to destroy all the Law of the Land and that the Judges have interpreted it ever since there was Laws in England and That contradicts directly out of their own Mouth the Doctrine of William Pryn of his Parliaments Right to it Keeble another of the Common-wealth-Commissioners told him 'T was as gross an error as possible any Man could be guilty off and so all the Judges even of a power absolutely Usurp'd and wherein they profest so much the Peoples Privilege over-rul'd the Prisoner in his popular Plea 'T is true Littleton as Lilburn observ'd to them in one of his Sections says Littleton Sect. 308. That an inquest as they may give their Verdict at large and special so if they 'll take upon them the knowledge of the Law they may also give it general But the Comment of Coke their own Oracle upon the place confirms the Suggestion I have made of Resolving it into the King's Judges For he says 't is dangerous to pretend to it because if they mistake it they run in danger of this Coke Com. ibid. Attaint and tho the fam'd Attorney General of those times with his little Law was so senseless as to allow it to Lilburn in the beginning of his Tryal tho at another at Reading in that time of Rebellion Prideaux Liburn's Tryal page 17. Ibid. page 123 they made the Jury to be covered in the Court upon that account yet you see those even then the Justices of the Land tho but mere Ministers of a most unjust Usurpation would not let it pass for Law And the Refutation of this false Position is so far pertinent to our present purpose as it relates to prove the Peoples being so far from being qualified to
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
est l. princ de legibus Law that fiâ—â— made that Government Imperial yâ—â— when once it was so Conferr'd by thâ— very Act all Magistracy i. e. all powâ—â— of Judging that the Subject had before was past over too And were our own â—onarch by the Compact and condiscent â—â— his first Ancestors such a precarious â—ince as they would make him have not â—ur own Statutes I have cited long since â—â—solv'd his Crown to be Independant and himself accountable to none but God And then abstracting from that Advantage we have of the Resolution of the Law Reason it self against which our Republicans rebell too that also will refute the absurdity of such a Position For first where for God's sake would they fix this their preposterous power of Judicial Process if in some single Persons then the Concession of their own renowned Aphorâ—sm will fly in their Face for that allows the Soveraign to be much superior to any Selected number of his Subjects and Major singulis Junius Brutus Vindic. de Jur. Mag. Will. Pryn Parliam Right Buchanan Sidney Tryal p. 23. â—hey won't be such Senseless Sots sure as to â—â—y That those whom themselves acâ—nowledge to be altogether inferior â—â—ould be invested with that Judicial Power which is the highest token and sign of Supremacy if they 'll place it as Mr. Sidney forsooth does in the Original power of the People delegated unto Parliament then should that be granted â—hem when ever this Parliament is dissolv'd if their King be never so great a Delinquent for I think they may assoon make their King so as they did foolishly those that followed him in the late Wars when the word implies a Deserting and the Law only calls them so that adhere to the King's Enemies then Coke Littleton 291. I say if their Soveraign be never so much a Criminal to the State upon such a Dissolution they devest themselves by their own Maxims of this power of Judicature and so put it in the power of the Monarch or the Prince at any time to blasâ— all his Judges in a moment and dissipate them all with the Breath of his Mouth and therefore Mr. Sidney was so wittilâ— Seditious as to foresee such a Consequence and for that Reason very resolutely does deny what some of our more moderate Republicans will allow That the King has a power of Assembling and Tryal page 26. Dissolving a Parliament But this piece of pernicious Paradox a Position so false that some of them themselves are asham'd to own has been already refuted and prov'd from the very Laws of the Land to be an absolute Lye but our Author having plac'd himself and his People above the Law tho it was his hard fate to fall under it and made the Subject Superior to those Sanctions to which themselves acknowledge none to be so but the Soveraign from whom they proceed all the Satisfaction such a Person can receive from the Statutes must be from something of Reason that is the result of them and 't is such an one as relates to their own Positions For they say therefore the Soveraign is obliged to submit to the Laws of the Land because he accepted the Crown upon such an Obligation and shall it not Seditious Souls be as good a Conclusion To say the People have passed away the power of Assembling themselves when they have passed their own Act for being by their King Assembled Then in the next place if this Original power of this People be delegated to this Parliament it would have been much to the purpose for some of them to have shown us from whence this People had this Original Power Certainly if any it must be deriv'd from God Nature or somewhat that 's Soveraign But for the Almighty In all the sacred Texts there 's not a syllable of such a Legacy left them but abundance of the bequest of it that is made to Kings For Nature there is nothing from it more evident than a whole series of Subordination and that to single Soveraignty setting aside even the paternal among Human Creatures almost to be made out among Insects and Animals Bees and Beasts And if some King indulged this their People to appropriate to themselves all the Supream Power which we never heard of any of ours that did or to participate part of their Prerogative which we know many Indulgent ones of ours to their Parliaments have done then still this their power can't be Original because 't is derivative and I dare swear no Prince ever granted them a power of being Superiors as they must be if they would Judge him or ever accepted a Crown upon that Condition supposing it were as they would have it conferr'd For the very Act of being such a Conditional King would absolutely make him none at all and therefore those whom the Lacedaemonians compounded withâ—â— to be regulated by their Ephori were in effect not so much as the Dictators of Rome and so not to be reckon'd to Reign as Crown'd Heads or mentioneâ— among those that we call our Monarchs In the third place if by this Original Tryal pag. 2â— power of the People delegated to the Parliament the two Houses are constituted the Judges of their King I cannot see how Mr. Sidney could avoid or any of his Associates can this Grand Absurdity and as great a Lye that the Parliament have a Natural Liberty not only to Judge but to lop off the Sacred Head of their Liege-Lord and Soveraign For 't is certain they can have no more Authority than the People they represent and 't is as certain they must have as much Now this Original Power must be a Natural one because not deriv'd from any grant and then this Parliament of theirs must have an Original Power by Nature tho it be but to commit the most unnatural Barbarities I confess we had such an one that upon the same Principles proceeded to the perpetrating that most Execrable Treason and the very Villany that any time may be the Consequence of such Positions A Parliament which this good Author presided in or very well understood the Scandal of our own Nation and the shame and reproach of our Neighbors now I say If this his Original power of the People be delegated to this Parliament as Mr. Sidney says it is then this Parliament hath a Natural and Original Power of being their King's Judges because their People has it whom they represent I confess this is a Bar beyond the Seditious Doctrine of their Author in his Right of Magistrates For he is mighty sollicitous least he should be misapprehended as if he design'd the common People should judge their Soveraign De jure Magistrat therefore tells us very carefully none but the subordinate Magistrates themselves can Judge the Supream and their Brutus that succeeded that Assertor of Rebellion says such only as the Spartan Ephori and the seventy of the Israelites Brutus the Centurions or Equestres
Great â—ven he was not depos'd and dispatcht by the suffrages of the people but by a Perjur'd band of Conspirators and Assassinates in the Senate and whom the very people * Plebs statim â— funere ad domum Bruti Cassii tetendit Cinnam per errorem nominis occidet caputque prefixum hastae circumtulit columnaÌ„ parenti patriae statuit in scripsit sacrificare per CaesareÌ„ jurare perseveravit in deonumerum relatum percussoruÌ„ nullussicca morte obiit Sueton. p. 51 52. too pursu'd for the Fact and even ador'd their deceas'd Emperor tho Heathens and their Empire was not Hereditary to the shame of some of our good Christian Subjects that live under a Monarchy that is so acquies'd more quietly under their oppressions of their Lawless Emperors then some of ours under the good Government of their Gracious Kings who as they have often promis'd so have still Govern'd according to Law The depositions and Barbarous Butcherys of some of the Roman Emperors was never an Act of State of the Citizens or the people but the Force and Fury of a Faction in the Army and 't is with that excuse I am sure our Presbyter with his good Excluded Members would wipe his mouth of the Blood of his Soveraign for those were several times ‖ As Nero Claudius Galba Vitellius Otho Vid. Sueton. set up by the Souldiers and assoon pull'd to pieces by those that had plac'd them on the Throne which effusion of Royal Blood was the clear effect of their not claiming it by an Absolute Inheritance of that Blood Royal for those Adoptions they many times made ware of little force against the salutations of a Legion and the powers of the Field and therefore * Unde Apparet ipsos etiam Caesares Juridice damnari coerceri potuisse de jure Magistrat p. 38. that Author when he says even those Caesars were Legally and justly Condemn'd as if the Romans too â—ad once their High Court of Justice abuses â—he world both with a Factious insinuation and in the very matter of Fact In the next place they must consider that if there was such a Contract and Agreement among the People to accept of such an one for their King upon his performance of such Conditions tho I am sure his Deposition or Censure in our Kingdom were never formally annext to the Penalty of the Bond for his Non-performance neither can they show us in all their Charter of Liberties such a Conditional License to Rebel yet yet still it must be supposed the consent of every individual Subject which was somewhat difficult to be compast was required to such an Agreement for upon the first Constitution of our Government 't is certain we had no such Parliaments wherein they could deleâ—ate their Suffrages to some few Representatives and then by the same Reason we must have the Concurrence of all the particular Persons in the Land when we would Judg of the breach of that Covenant upon which all their Ancestors were supposed to have accepted their King And then I think from the Result of their own Seditious Reasoning our Soveraign may sit pretty safely and he rule as Arbitrary as he pleases when it must be carried against him with a true nemine Contradicente and not a single Subject left in the Land to be friend him with his Vote For upon such a conferring off the Supream Power it must be supposed that the several Subjects have bound themselves to one another to suffer such an one to be their Soveraign and made contract too with one another in some such implied Sense that A. confers hiâ— Right to Power and Government upon B. as Supream Governor upon Condition that C. does so too upon the same Person now to put it in the terms of our own Law the Subjects A. and C. here are both mutual Obligors and Obligees to one another and both Obligors to B. the Soveraign Obligee Now 't is certain that A. cannot recal this power he has confer'd on B. without the consent of C. his joint Obligor but iâ— must be with a breach of Covenant to his Fellow Subject as well as of Faith and contract to B. his Soveraign and this mutual Obligation between two to a third will extend as well to two Millions And I hope we may make at length â—he terms of our Law plead Loyally tho I 've heard an eminent Council at the Bar but commonly for none of the best Clyents Assert Loyalty to be nothing else but an adhering to the Letter of the Law with this good Innuendo as if that would contradict the common Acceptation of the word among the Royalists who make it to signifie an Asserting the King's Prerogative whereas in their Law French they would confine the word Loyalty to express nothing else but bare Legality And be it so I believe they 'll be but little the better for the quaintness of the Criticism for I dare avow that he that will be truly legal in their Sense must be as heartily Loyal in ours for nothing we see runs higher the Royal Prerogative then that The King's Prerogative part of the com Law very Law by which they would run it down But to come to the Nature of this political Contract this Stipulation of Monarchy as they would make it which will be better exprest in the Language of a Civilian when the Subject it self is about Civil Government and an Imperial Crown In this Case rhere is also a Convention as they call it of two Parties the Subject and he that is to be the Soveraign one upon such a contract stipulates to Govern the other to obey Now in such Stipulations it is a receiv'd Rule that no man stipulates but for himself and that there is no Obligation arises D. 45. 1. 38. from any one 's promising another Mans Deed so that every single Subject Alteri stipulari nemo potest nemo promitendo alienum factum obligatur Zouch Element pars 3. §. 8. Vid. Inst lib. 3. c. 19. must in Person here as I've said have made such a Subjection to that Authority to which he submitted if this their Convention and Contract with their King can be supposed and then by the same Rule every man must in his proper Person come and retract his Obedience before this Right to Govern can be absolutely Dissolv'd tho 't is the Opinion too of these sort of Lawyers that what is promised by Subjects to the publick which in a Monarchy is always represented in the King can't be revok'd D. 50. 12. 3. by them no not tho they have reason to repent of their promise and if this shall hold him tho without any Consideration or Cause and tho it be but of a Gift to the publick use much more then D. 50. 12. 1. will it oblige him in his promised Faith and Allegiance But here in this Case there is not only a Stipulation between the Soveraign and every
Civil constitutions that establish a Supream Soveraignty Paramount and some Measure demonstrated this from the very Word of God the course of Nature Light of Reason Laws of Nations and the Statutes of the Land And as I 've done with this paternal Right in Fathers so I shall consider now in the next place the Divine of my King a Right that none but Republicans dispute none but Rebels will really oppose and they deal with this Divine Doctrine not so kindly as some Indians are said to do with the Devil who paint him most ugly and deform'd only that he may be the more ador'd whereas these dress up somewhat of Divinity it self in the most frightful form to make it vilisy'd and Contemn'd they tell us 't is Monstrous Trayterous Papal Divelish Postscript and this is the dismal Varnish these Villains daub over it when all the while the Colours are only of their own laying This is their Trojan Horse that must introduce Popery and Arbitrary Power and carries Fire and Sword in its Belly but in these their aspersions as they bespatter the Bible and Burlesque the very Book of Life that in several places recommends to us the very Divinity Vid. Rom. c. 13. of Kings so they Libel the works of that Learned Person they so much oppose in a misrepresentation of his very principles and positions about it and then 't is no difficult matter to render an Hypothesis puzzel'd senseless and absur'd when with their own Pens they put upon it the Nonsense and absurdity for thus they deal injuriously even with the dead and disingenuously detract from the Learned dust of that Loyal Subject Sir Robert Filmer Thus Sidney says and endeavours to deduce from his Doctrine Paper at Execut. what was never lain down that all mankind was born by the Laws of God and the necessity of Nature to submit to an absolute Kingly Government not restrainable by Law or Oath Thus the Postscript will draw from it that it asserts such a Government Posts p. 959. to be Establisht by God and Nature for all mankind that it proves a Charter to Kings Granted by God Almighty But such Calumniators were barr'd from being so much as Evidence by the ‖ Dig. 22. 4. 2. D. 48. 2. 7. Civil Law they were forc't to subscribe their accusations and be punisht if their Falsehoods were detected with a retaliation and our own †37. Ed. 3. 18. 38. Ed. 3. 9. Statutes of King Edward provided once against such false suggesters with an incurring the like Punishment they would have brought others to suffer and 't is pity but those expir'd ones or the like should be revived for the prevention of Perjury it would be no discouragement to good Evidence tho deterring to the bad and these detractors and false Accusers of a person in his principles deserve in a Moral Sense as much Animadversion as those Perjur'd ones in the Civil why did not Mr. Sidney or the Postscript make their subscription too Why were they not so fair as to cite the places out of Filmer wherein these puzzel'd Senseless positions were asserted The Substance the whole design of that Loyal and elaborate piece is only to expose the Natural Liberty of the People or as they would make it the Subjects Divine Right to shew us the Royal Authority of the Patriarchs before the Flood that Fathers were first Kings of Families that the People were not concern'd as far as can be learnt from the Scriptures in the chusing of Kings That Monarchy has been always found more excellent then Democracy and popular Government more Bloody than Tyranny That People cannot ‖ Nemo Dominum suum judicet vel judicium proferet super eum cujus ligius sit Lex Hen. 1. Lamb. 187. Judge depose or punish their Kings That neither those of Israel or Judah were bound by their Law but were always the Law-givers and that our own have always been so too This is the Substance that by all the acquaintance I have had with his works I could ever collect out of them and as I remember from some particular passages he tells us That he does not quarrel at the Privileges and Immunities of the People but only question whither they have them from a Natural Liberty or the Bounty of the Prince Patriarch p. 6 ibid. p. 93. He tells us tho Kings be not bound by the Laws yet will they rule by them and that they degenerate into Tyrants when they do otherwise where then is this Bugbear Arbitrary Slavery Misery the result of a Doctrine full of an easie Government Freedom and Felicity the most that can be gathered from him is That Monarchys as well as other Estates do and ought to descend from some supream Father and common Ancestor and that there is some paternal Right by which the several Kingdoms of the Earth are Govern'd although by the Secret Will of God the long series of time the several Successions are altered and Usurp'd And then what must be meant by this Divine Right but what is consistent with the safety of the Subject and the Will and Intimation of the Almighty That God has made it part of the Decalogue That Moses had it delivered to him in hi Tables on the Mount that it is a positive Divine Precept that all the wide World should be govern'd by nothing else but a Succession of absolute Kings and as they would make every Monarch by a Divine Entailment of perpetual Tyrants these are only the Conclusions of rage and transports of those that are preposest and prejudic'd against such a Notion or opinion the rants of our implacable Republicans that are pleas'd with nothing that recommends a Monarchy no tho it be the very Bible and the Book of the Almighty Cannot those silly Souls that are transported out of Sense conceive that there is a difference in Assertion to say That Monarchy is by Divine Right and that every Monarch Rules by the same Right Divine then indeed we should run into Sidney's Absurdities of making every Rebel that could but reach at a Crown a Cromwell or a Monmouth as much a Divinity Monarch as our best and Lawful Soveraign tho it must be granted that those Successions even of Lines that have for a long time descended lineally do intimate to us somewhat of the Divine Will that it shall so succeed and even the paternal Successions in this sort of Royal Government was given us for our Instruction that God approv'd of it from the time he gave the Children of Israel and Judah their first King who throughout all the History of the Bible succeeded from Father to Son but that which garbles and really grieves our Republicans is that even the Divine Right of Monarchy it self can be Asserted that we have so much as the Intimation of the Will of God any Reason to conclude from his Word that he has given the Approbation to the Kingly Government any preference to
Prince but were they the worst of Men that officiated in Publick Administration under their King such Republicans have the least reason to find fault when always in their Usurpations the greatest Fools aswel as Knaves have been commonly preferr'd What more Illiterate Blockheads did ever blemish a Bench than some of those that sate upon it in our Rebellion and for that consult the Tryal of Lilburn they Arraigned where you 'l find a clamorous Souldier silence and baffle them with his Books and invert the Latin Aphorism in a litteral sense by making the Gown yield to the Sword And for their Villany let Bradshaw alone And for that only be the best of Presidents The very Beggars and Bankrupts of the Times that bawl'd most for Property when they had hardly any to a penny or a pin were set up to dispose of the peoples Fortunes and Estates Princes as they are above all Men so generally make those their Ministers that excel others in Desert or Vertue because their persons are to be represented by them And they may aswel imagine a King would croud his Courts with Clowns to shew his Magnificence as fill his Judicatories with Fools or Knaves to distribute his Justice 'T is * Qui aliquod munus gerere debent virtutis habita ratione eliguntur Maecenas Orat. pro Monarch enough for an Oceana an Oliver or a Common-wealth to set up such ridiculous Officers Brutes beneath the Ass in the Apologue that will not so much as be reverenced for the Image they bear but even the best of Common Men whenthey are rais'd to some supreme Government prove like Beggars on Horse-back unable to hold the Reins or riding off their necks the wisest in their own ordinary administrations prove but foolish Phaetons when they are got into the Chariot set all in combustion and confusion The not being born to Govern or educated under the Administrations of a state makes them either meanly submissive in the midst of their Grandeur or insolently proud of their Office which renders them as ridiculously Great whereas Princes from an Hereditary VERTUE that consists alway in a MEAN or their nobler Education that instructs them in the Mode preserves them too from running into the sordid absurdities of such Extremes Many of such like preferable Conveniences might be reckoned up that make a Commonwealth less Eligible but for Confirmation of it it is better to have recourse to matter of Fact When did their Rome ever flourish more than under the Government of their Kings by that it was * Vid. Tacit l. 1. p. 1. Lucius Florus p. 1. Founded by that it was most Victorious and with that it alway fell Romulus himself first gave them their Religion and their †Lact. de fals rel l. 1. c. 22. God as well as the Government and with the assistance of his Numa brought them to observe some Ceremonies which the Trojans had taught them under whom did their City Triumph more both in fame riches tranquility and ease than under the Empire of Augustus And one would think that when the Controversie upon his coming to the Crown was then in Debate it should have been decided by the two famous Wits of their time in their Dialogue Maecenas and Agrippa It was submitted to their determinations and we see what was the result A MONARCHY Vid. Orat. Maecenat pro Monarch And that prâ—ferency of this most excellent Institution themselves most evidenced when upon all Exigencies and Difficulties they were forc'd to have recourse to a Dictator whom all Writers agree to have differ'd only from a King in the found of his Name and the duration of his Office the very Definition ‖ Dictator quoniam dictis ejus totus parebat populus Rom. Antiq. p. 170. of his Name implying that all were bound to obey his Edicts he had his Magister Equitum an Officer in effect the same with the Praefectus Vrbis which under their King was his Mayor And after that rash Rebellion of theirs against Royal Government after so many Revolutions of Tribunes Triumvirs Quaestors Aedils Praefects Praetors and Consuls were never at rest or quiet 'till they were setled again in their Caesars Themselves know best what the Sedition of Sylla and Marius cost them how many lives of Consuls and Senators besides the blood of the Commons Let them consult Plutarch and see the bloody Scene of Butchery and Murder Pray tell me mighty Murmurers in which was your Rome most bless'd or suffer'd least with the bloody War between Caesar and Pompey or the settlement of it in Julius himself Did it not bleed and languish as much with the Civil Wars of Augustus Antony and Lepidus as it flourish'd when reduc'd to the only Government of Octavius And would it not have been much better had those succeeding Emperors been all Hereditary when we find that for the most the Multitude and Soldiers were the makers and setters up of the bad and the destroyers and murderers of the best 'T is too Otho Vitellius Heliogab they set up Alexand Aurelianus Probus they murder d. much to tell you the story of our own Chronicles as well as their Annals how happy our Land was for a long time in a Lineal Descent of Hereditary Kings how miserably curst in the Commonwealth of England what blood it cost to establish it what Misery and Confusion it brought us when unhappily establish'd And as an Argument that the Romans flourish'd most under those Emperors see with what Veneration their Imperial Sanctions speak of their power they make it * Sacrilegii instar est c. C. 1. 23. 5. Sacriledg to disobey it they made the very memory of those that committed Treason against them to be rooted out the very ‖ Quisque vel cogitavit C. 9. 8. 5. Thought of it they punish'd with as much severity as the Commission all his Children Servants and whole Family were punish'd though unknowing of the Crime They punish'd those with the same severity that Conspired against any Minister of State because relating to the Imperial Body and that if they did but think of destroying them and even those that were found but the movers of †Ibid. Sedition were Gibbeted or Condemned to their Beasts And as Dig. 48. 19 38. those Laws made all the Sanctions of all Princes Sacred and Divine so do our * 33. Ed. 3 10. H. 7. 16. own declare the King capable of all Spiritual Jurisdiction in being Anointed with Sacred Oyl by which they give him all power in Ecclesiasticals too to render his Person the more Venerable and call the †Coke Litt. Sect. 1. fol. 1. B. The Possessions of the King are call'd Sacra Par trimonia Lands of the 1 Inst King like the Patrimony of the Church Sacred Prince and Priest were of old terms Synonimous and signified the same thing The Jews and Egyptians had no Kings but what exercised the Offices for a long
to seize the King at Halyrood-House but unsuccessful forc'd to fly and returning better assisted the second time effected what only he design'd at first But the King escaping to Sterling Bothwell is pronounced a Rebel by the States but yet is so well be friended by these Disturbers of all Kingly Government that they gave him the very Moneys they had collected for their beloved Brethren in the Republick of Geneva by which with other Assistances they enabled him to fight his King in the Field Then is that succeeded with a second of the Gowry's the Son of him that rebell'd before where they contriv'd to get the King to dine in their House at Perth seduc'd him up into some higher Chamber and there left him to the mercy of an Executioner from which his Cry and the timely Assistance of his Servants only rescued Him These were the Confusions Distractions and even Subversions of some States that were occasion'd by the restlesness of Implacable Republicans Emissaries of Geneva throughout France Flanders Scotland and Germany You shall see now in the next place what disturbances they have created us here in our own Isle what Plots and Conspiracies their Principles have promoted in England as if in that expostulatory †Que regio in terris c. Virg. Aeneid Verse of Virgil there was no Region upon Earth but what must be fill'd with their diffusive and elaborate Sedition Queen Elizabeth was no sooner setl'd in her Throne but they as seditiously endeavour'd to subvert it They libell'd her Person set their Zealots tumultuously to meet in the Night invading Churches defacing Monuments and so full at last of the Rebellious Insolencies of that Italian Republick to which they commonly repair'd to receive Instruction that her Majesty thought fit to hang up Hacket with a half dozen more of them as dangerous Subjects to her Sovereign Crown and Dignity †In a Speech to her Parliament dissolv'd An. 1585 and of her Reign 27 She declared them dangerous to Kingly Rule vid. Holingshed Stow. When King James who succeeded her came to our Crown did these Malecontents that had molested him so much in Scotland disturb his Government here too as much Melvil that Northern Incendiary was as busie with his Accomplices here too to set Fire to Church and State and for that purpose publish'd several Libels against both for which being then at London he was sent to the Tower And so far had those darling Daemagogues insinuated themselves that the Hydra of a Popular Faction began to shew its fearful Faces in the very first Parliament of his Reign though * 1 Jacob. 1. in that they had so fully formerly recogniz'd his Right For in some of those several Sessions of which that consisted one of the Seditious Senators had the Confidence to affirm in the open Assembly †Fowlis Hist pag. 65. That the giving the King Moneys might empower him to the cutting the Members Throats an Insolency that some of our Modern Mutineers upon the same Occasions have * Vid. Printed Votes H. Com. That the giving the King Money c. as seditiously express'd King James Dissolv'd that Parliament call'd another and that as Refractory as the former which instead of answering the Kings Request draw up their own in a Remonstrance †Vid. even Rushworth Coll. p. 40. c. 16. E. second it with a Protestation for Priviledges representation of Religion and Popery intermedling with his Match of Spain and several Affairs of State so that he was forc'd to dissolve that Politick Body too and soon after suffer'd a Dissolution of his own Natural one dying under the Infirmities of Old Age and leaving behind him an old Monarchy rather weakned with Innovations of Republicans with the worst of Legacies to his Son and Successor A discontented People an Empty Purse with a Costly War into which he was not so much engag'd as betray'd And now we are arriv'd to what all the Stirs and Tumults of our Seditious Souls our discontented Daemocraticks in the Reign of King James did aim at and design the Destruction of the Monarchy which they could not accomplish till this of King Charles in that they never left till they laid such a Plot that at last laid all the Land in Blood and made an whole Kingdom an Akeldama For that they first quarrell'd at the Formality of his Coronation because in the Sacred Part of it the Prayer for giving him Peter 's Key was first added This some silly Sots suggested to savour of Popery tho' it struck purposely at the very Popes Supremacy it self For that they begun to Tax their King for taking his Tonnage without an Act and yet refus'd to pass one that he might take it by Law unless he would accept of it in Derogation of his Royal Prerogative for Years or precariously during the Pleasure of the Two Houses when most of his Ancestors enjoy'd it for life Turner and Coke led up the dance to Sedition and reflect upon their King in their Speeches The Commons command his Secretary Office and Signet to be searcht and might as well have rifled his Cabinets too They clamour against his favouring of Seminary Priests tho' he had sent home the very Domesticks of the Queen and that even to a disgust to France and a rupture with that Crown They upbraid him for dissolving Parliaments tho' grown so insolent as to keep out the Black-Rod when he came to call them to be Dissolv'd tho' their King notwithstanding the provocations assembled another assoon and that tho' he had the fresh President of the then King of France That had laid aside his for a less presumption Thus they call'd all his Miseries and Misfortunes Misgovernments and Faults when themselves had made him both faulty and unfortunate They accuse him for favouring the Irish Rebellion tho' the first disorders in Dublin were by his diligence so vigorously supprest their Goods confiscated their Lands seiz'd their Persons imprisoned and such severities shew'd them by his Commissioners there that two Priests hang'd themselves to prevent what they call'd a Persecution The Scot Mutinies upon the King 's restoring the Lands to the Church of which but in the minority of his Father it had been robb'd assail the Ministers in the Church in the very administration of the Sacrament because according to the Service-Book Protest against their King's Proclamations set up their four Tables at Edenburgh that is their own Councils in opposition to their King 's Hamilton had promised them as Commissioner to convene an Assembly they come and call a Parliament by themselves which tho' dissolv'd they protest shall sit still then desperate in a Sedition break out into open War Invite Commanders from abroad seize Castles at home agree to Articles of Pacification and then break all with as much Perjury Lowden their Commissioner sent to propose Peace At the same time treats with the French Ambassadour for War bring their Army into
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
Covetousness Cowardize Perjury and Treason for upon his refusal to Sign their Proposals they tell him the defence of his Person in the Covenant must be understood only as it relates to the safety of the Kingdom and upon the English profering them the Moneys they wou'd prettily perswade him that the promise their Army made him for his preservation could not be kept because the Souldiers and the Army were different things and the Army might promise what the Souldiers might refuse and were unwilling to perform But this purchase of their double Perjury was punisht with as much perfidiousness their Army got into their hands for nothing the poor Prince the Parliament thought they paid for too dear And as that Seditious Senate fought their Soveraign in the Name of King and Parliament so now the Souldiers of Fairfax set themselves to fight the Senate for the sake forsooth of the Parliament and Army Good God! Just Heavens that could visit such Vipers such Villains in the same villany they committed and make such Seditious Hypocrites suffer by as much Treason and Hypocrisie Their Agitators menace the King with Death and Deposition they make him their Prisoner move in the House their non-addresses make it Treason to confer with their King set up an Ordinance for his Tryal and there Sentence that against which Treason could only be committed as a Traytor to the State And here then With what face can the Faction justify such a Barbarous Rebellion or accuse their King for the beginning of the War Yet such a sort of Seditious Democraticks does our Land afford * Vid. Tryal p. 26. Sidney says Such a general revolt of the Subjects cannot be call'd a Rebellion And †Plato Redivivus p. 167. Plato Our Parliament never did as they pretended make War upon the King Till such persuasions are rooted up out of their Rebellious hearts as well as they are in them no Prince under the Heavens can protect himself from such resolute Rebels as will destroy all Subjection in the World and make the blackest Treason our own Civil War but a prudential act of State and even of Loyalty it self the * Ibid. rescuing the King only out of those Mens hands that led him from his Parliament But do not they tell us even by his own concession in one of their Votes That it was the King that was seduc'd and must it not be the King too that they would reduce and by what means why therefore they say they take up Arms and did they design to command their Bullets and Ball not to meddle with the King that was only seduc'd but only to take off the evill Counsellors that were his Seducers I confess could they have promis'd his Majesty so much he might have took them for good Gunners but must still have believ'd them bad Subjects that would have put it to the venture But with this Gentleman it seems it was a sort of proclaimed War of the King 's to take that * Ibid. unfortunate resolution of seizing the five Members Most Factious Fool did the King rebell against his Subjects only when he came to seize actual Rebels whom himself desired only to be Try'd for Treason and that of the deepest dye for inviting in a Forreign Foe the Scots must not the Parliament without the King be the Supream power if the King can be said to Rebel against the Parliament but this Republican that expresly makes them * Ibid. 168. Co-ordinate may as well call them Supream for these Gentlemen paid off the King for his unfortunate resolution and declare that his coming to their House was High Treason And well might the King shift for himself when they had made his Majesty reside in the House of Commons Prethee for thy senses sake who levy'd War first those that seiz'd upon the King's Forts Magazines Towns Ships and Revenues levy'd Soldiers or the King that had nothing of Military left him but the power and not a single Company of Horse or Foot that he had rais'd It was the twentieth of October 1641. they brought the Trainbands into the Palace Yard to protect themselves thousand that is to terrify their King It was the eighth of January 1641. that forty thousand of the Inhabitants of London put themselves in Arms to fight fifteen hundred of the King's Horse that were to come and surprize the City the one were actually Arm'd the other never came or design'd to come They rigg out the Navy on March the 2d the King's Militia is seiz'd and new Lieutenants set by their Ordinance the fifth of March 1641. and on the twenty third of April they deny'd him entrance into his own Garrison at Hull the tenth of May the Citizens are Mustering twelve thousand Men in Finsbury Fields the King does not summon his Yorkshire Gentlemen till the twelfth of May did not grant out his Commission of Array till the twentieth of June when they had sent out their Orders and Proposals for Men and Horse Money and Arms the tenth did not set up his Standard at Nottingham till after the twelfth of August when their Parliament had rais'd their Army the seventh of July And this Vote of their King 's being seduc'd by wicked Counsel from which this Sediious Daemagogue would infer the King clared to them War before was made on the twentieth of May which was after they had seiz'd his Forts and Militia his Shipping and Navy and Muster'd their Citizens in the Field And a Month before the King sent out his Commissions of Array and above two Months before his Standard was set up That this is exactly truth Consult even the Exact Collection And whether this Seditious assertion be not a Devilish lye but your own Breast And as they begun this War of Weapons in their House so they did that of Words too and invading the Prerogative before the least breach of Priviledge One * Vid. Baker p. 435. A. D. 1625. Turner a Physician under a pretence of reflecting on Buckingham abuses the best of Kings Cook amongst other Invectives says openly It was better to dye by a Forreign Foe than be destroyed at home These were but preludes to the Liberty the licentious Villains took afterward when Martin declared to the House * So Plâ—t Râ—â— p. â—17 That the King's Office was forfitable when †Vid. The Royal and the Royalist's Pâ—â—a printed A. D. 1617. Sir Hâ—nry Ludlow said to the same effect That his Majesty was not worthy to be King of England And Prideaux was at last come to make his Speech there for Abandoning Monarchy it was so early too that they were so forward to Usurp upon the Crown that even in this Year 1625. they offer'd to search the King's Signet Office and examin'd the Letters of his Secretary of State all this was offer'd at in the very first Parliament that he summon'd all of which the King complain'd to them of by * Vid. Lord Keeper's Speech to
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