Burgesses elected by themselves but this can't be gathered from Eadmerus the much better Authority 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 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 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 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 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 grants 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 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 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 not allow them to be called in either of their Reigns not so much as to be mentioned in any of their Councils and that even to the 18 of Edward the First wee 'll see I say now whether from these as they count them the most happy times That blessed Epoche wherein their Kings were first confined down to those which Posterity will blush at the Period of Villany when this Proposition was among the rest proposed whither ever the Parliament pretended unless when they actually rebelled as they did here to manage their King and his Affairs of State The greatest Lawyer and the most Equitable one that lived in this Henry the Thirds time tells us the King has a power and Jurisdiction over all that are in his Kingdom that all are under him that he has not an Equal in the Realm and sure the Project of putting the Parliament upon choosing of his Council for the managing of his Affairs or assuming themselves to manage it certainly would make the Subject have some power over him make him more then Equal or
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 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 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 Londoners 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 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 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 their Henry was forc'd to flie from Paris his Principal City His Metropolitan also of Sedition and that by Tumult too And what did it terminate in but in the Murder of their King too The calling in of the Spaniard that was like to inslave the People to a Foreign Yoke and at last weary of the Usurpt Dominion of the Duke of Mayne that had imposed on them a Council of State too the Tyrannous Assembly conven'd by Conspiraors was confusedly Dissolv'd in as much Distraction and Disorder And the recovered Nation return'd to their Lawful Lord. And did not our own late lamentable Distraction Commence in the Reign of King James and put all in Combustion in Charles the First did not they first practise upon his Necessities to which themselves had reduced him and then remonstrated against such Acts as were the very effect of his Necessity encumber'd with a War or rather betrayed into a breach they would not suffer the Father to make Peace and then denyed the Son the supplies of War A Parliament is summoned too here and that serves him just as the two preceding Ones did their Soveraign with Remonstrances of Oppressions For this the petition of Right was granted them as Gracious an Act as that of the great Charter but nothing could serve unless like that too 't was sealed in Blood and for that they began by Degrees to be so Tumultuous till this Prince was forc'd to fly his Capital City and that also as in the others prov'd the Head to the Rebellion that succeeded upon their Petition the War was first began And Hotham sent to surprize Hull as in the two former were Verdun and Dover and now was all in Arms and Blood which ended at last too in that of their King The Scots called in here as in the former the French and Spaniard the People enslaved by those that set up for their Protectors The Council of State set up here as well as in France and the ruin'd Realms never at rest till they had returned to that Soveraignty from which they revolted It is sad even to see the least thing now that looks like a prelude to such a sort of Tragedy The clamors of Sedition still the same Parliaments that are Assembled to redress them Remonstrating against Grievances they never yet felt Subjects Associating against their Prince for his Preservation the draught the Scheam and abstract of the Baron's Combination The French League the Scotch Covenant so far from an Abhorrence of either as to pitch upon a Compound of all three Designs discovered and detected for the seising of strong Holds the Tower instead of an Hull and the Scot invited once more to pass the Tweed for a better booty The Treason of such Practices is never the less because the Providence was so great as to prevent its Execution Had that not interposed the Parallel Lines I am sure would have led us on further but all their draught beyond it must have been Blood A Comparison between the Demands of our English Barons and the Desires of the French Leaguers from whence they have copyed as Counterparts The Propositions of our Parliament and the Proposals of Plato English Barons French Leaguers 1. That the King hath wronged the publick State by taking into his private 1. That the Disposals of Places of Office and Trust in the Kingdom Election the Justice Chancellor and Treasurer and require that they be chosen by the common Council of the Realm Parl. Tent. 22. H. 3. be in the Leaguers vid. Henry the 3d. of France's Answer to their Manifesto who told them 't was against the Prerogative of all his Predecessors 2. That it be ordained that 24 of the most grave and discreet Peers be chosen by the Parliament as Conservators of the Kingdom Baker pag. 8. Ann. D. 1238. Regn. H. 3.22 2. That the number of their Kings Council should be limited to 24. D'avila pag. 341. our Propositions were not to exceed 25. or under 15. 3. That those Conservators be sworn of his Majesties Council and all Strangers removed from it 3. The City of Paris set up a Council of 16. of themselves 〈◊〉 their Kings was to admit Persons whom they should chuse 4. That two Justices of the Kings-Bench two Barons of
the Question is what was Law since H. 7. time and he Labours to Confute it with what was said some three years before and to Bassle the Resolution of all the Judges of the Kingdom with the Suffrages of the Parliament that even of their own Laws have no right to Judge much less by any Preceding determinations of their house to Bind all the Succeeding Judges of the Realm let him first prove a even Vsurper's Parliaments opinion Law and then proceed to refute the resolutions of the Judges of a Lawful King In short nothing can be Law there but what is Enacted if Clarence his Attainder did not take away the Discent the resolution of the Judges since is certainly the more just if it did then yet still their opinion never the less Justifiable now for the opinion of that Parliament neither was or could be made Law for if they would have made it an Act it must have been done before Richard was in the Throne and then void for want of Royal Assent if after they had Crown'd their Usurper then sure too late to be enacted unless they would have made the Tyrant his own Judge And himself to have Attainted the second Pair of Nephews as well as he Butcher'd the First But as fearless as he says the Monster was from the pretensions of the D. of Clarence his Children whose Minority might well make the poor Infants not very formidable yet he did not think the Duke himself so Barr'd with his Attainder but that he might still have been a Bar against his Horrid Usurpation that truly sent the poor Prince to the Tower and got the Brother of the Monstrous Assassin to be suffocated in the Malmsey Butt The discent to Henry the 8 was both by Blood and Entail and so beyond contradiction and with their own concession Hereditary but where that objection to the Birth-right fails them there to be sure some subsequent Act of that Kings Reign shall be sifted and made to Countenance their suggested falsehoods tho the Succession of the Prince himself contradicts it who had all the Consolidated Titles in him that had been so long disputed all that his Mothers Blood and his Fathers Arms and the Law could Invest him with but because his Exorbitant proceedings his Arbitrary power and predominancy which themselves condemn'd him for over Parliaments awd them into an altering the Succession as often as he was pleas'd to Change his bed or chop off a Wife therefore must we conclude Parliaments to have a Power to do that by Right which against all right perhaps they were compell'd to do why does he not prove it a president for Polygamy and Murder because that furious Prince still sacrificed Women to his Lust and Men to his Anger But yet allowing them such a Power of medling with the Succession which certainly does not follow from their having some time Vsurp't it or been put upon that Usurpation by their very Prince for 't is against reason to make that a right only because they can plead Prescription for doing a wrong but here those several alterations were all caus'd to be made for the securing of a Lineal Legitimate and lawful Succesior to the Throne for as a Reverend Author says the King Lamented that he should leave the Kingdom toa Woman whose Birth was questionable 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 matter right and wrong as he stands affected he must think this his powerful Parliament dealt a little hard with the latter whose Mother was never divorc't but from her Life and she pact off for a spurious Off-Spring only upon the pretended suggestions of Anne Boleyn's unknown impediments confess 't sine to Canterbury But whatever they were the Canons of the Church tho born before Marriage and since after the very Laws of the Land did make her Legitimate But however this greater piece of Injustice to this good Protestant Queen which they 'l say now proceeded from the Kings putting the Parliament upon too much Power was palliated all along with the pretence of providing a Legitimate Lawful Successor and so the clear Reverse and Contradiction of the proceedings of our late Patriots to whose Privileges those sort of presidents were apply'd for those Parliamentary Powers secluded 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
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 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 Authority 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 〈◊〉 too The Disorders Confusions and Revolutions of Government 〈◊〉 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 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 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 Polilick 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 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 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 ofnone but God and our Lord Cook tells us whom this Gentleman may Credit as having in 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 Author has alotted for the service of the Church and Glergy 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 He could wish that there never had been any the Christian Religion would have done much better without He presumes much it seems upon his own Divinity but if that be no sounder then his Politicks either of them is enough to send him to the Devil and on he goes in a tedious railing against the Frauds and Rogueries of our Church when t was Romish all impertinently apply'd to the present that is now so much reform'd But would not the most refractory Jew take this Snarling Cur for a Mungrel Christian that libels that only Church that maintains the Gospel in it's greatest purity and as a wise Prince well observ'd the most reform'd in the whole Christian World And 't is 〈◊〉 wonder now that such irreligious Impostors who have so little veneration for the Church should broach such pernicious Doctrines against our
that must absolutely determine the Jurisdiction of the Prince 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 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 Republicans can cite even on their own Side but our own 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 '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'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 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 Antient Lawyers would not expound that absolutely for our 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 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 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 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
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 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 Fire 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 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 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 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 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 〈◊〉 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 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 all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of 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 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 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 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 as well as the Articles of his Depositions to be read 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Charter none shall be Diseised of his Fre hold but by Lawful Judgment of his Peers tho the Right was tryed before that sort of Statute by common Law as my Lord 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 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 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 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 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 Keeble another of the Common-wealth-Commissioners told him 'T was as gross an error
most prodigious piece of Paradox to see some of our Seditious Republicans to rail at Ministers of State and Mr. Sidney of all Men had the least reason to have reflected for his Sufferings upon those that sate on the Bench with the rest of the Rabble of his Democraticks who of late in these tumultuous times have talkt of nothing less than the punishing of those that held the Sword of Justice threatned them with the Fates of Tresilians Fulthorps Belknaps with the Gallows Fines and Imprisonments whereas these two were only punisht in the Reign of a King wherein they actually rebell'd and deposed their 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 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 Founded by that it was most Victorious and with that it alway fell Romulus himself first gave them their Religion and their 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 And that preferency 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 sound of his Name and the duration of his Office the very Definition 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 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 Sacriledg to disobey it they made the very memory of those that committed Treason against them to be rooted out the very 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 Sedition were Gibbeted or Condemned to their Beasts And as those Laws made all the Sanctions of all Princes Sacred and Divine so do our 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 Lands of the 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 time of the Priesthood too with which they then alone made the
our Crowned King He is there girt by the Arch-Bishop with a Sword takes fealty both of Clergy and Lay makes a Truce with the King of France and all this before ever he came into England to be Crown'd or Elected And shou'd we yield to this perverse Imposture the signification of his word for which he has so long labour'd yet all this while we find his very People more willing to Elect him that had an Hereditary Right than a spurious Invader that had none at at all and did actually Confirm him in his Succession unless the more powerful Usurper terrifi'd them from their Loyal Intentions and truly the mistaken Gentleman might have as well prov'd that he was the third time Elected too when after his Imprisonment that he suffer'd from Henry the Sixth the German Emperor after he came home and had held a Parliament at Nottingham he was again recognis'd for their King and Crown'd at Winchester But what can be better Evidence of the precedency that was allow'd to the nearest of blood in a Lineal Descent then this Princes Care he took in appointing his Nephew Arthur to Succeed him tho he had a Brother of his own to whom he had shown a liberal largess of his Love when he began to Reign in bestowing on him no less than half a dozen Earldoms a good part of his Kingdom Certainly this Earl John was nearer to him in Blood and Affection and then what cou'd move him to this Testamentary Disposition but the more nearness of the other to the Kingdom and the Crown But in spight of all Adoption and Right JOHN as great an Usurper as any laid hold of the Scepter and held it too only as some of our Tenures in Law by primer occupancy he had his Brothers Army in the field and that was then enough to have made a King of a Cromwel an Hewson a Brewer or a Cobler powerful Arms that filence any Law But still the Nobility were for maintaining the Right of Succession in Arthur and as they call'd it the usual Custom of Inheritance most of his Provinces in France stood firm to him and so did the King of it and had Fortune favor'd him upon whom for the most part it frowns the Justest pretender he had not been made a Prisoner to his Uncle to whom he was a King and been murder`d by him after the Siege of Mirabel But the Barons rebellious Insurrection soon aveng'd the Barbarous Butchery and but bloody consequences here too attended the Debar'd Right He is forsaken of all his People and the French Kings Son a perfect Forreigner invited in for a King and his end at the last as unnatural as the death he gave to his Nephew And here upon the Coronation of this intruding King John the factious Historian rehearses the Clause of Hubert the Bishop of Canterbury's Speech that declar'd the right to the Crown to consist only in the Election of the People but disingenuously omits the very reason of the self same Prelate who when he was pincht with the Interrogatory why he would preach up such pernicious Principles own'd it more a Design of Policy than the Sense of his Soul But to give him a perfect Rowland for his Oliver he will find in the Life of Richard the Second a better Bishop making of a more Divine Speech and asserting the Right of Succession more 〈◊〉 than ever this designing Metropolitan was able to confute But that worthy Prelates Doctrine did no way countenance our Authors seditious Observations and so directly different from his Huberts Harangue that he might well pass it by without reading and which must certainly have 〈◊〉 him into Blushes to have read Henry the Third a Prince too young to know his Right much less to be able himself to take Possession of it was presently upon his Fathers Death Crown'd King Certainly upon the Consideration of his Hereditary Right or the Testamentary Donation of his Father whom Paris says he appointed his Heir as his First-born made the Kingdom swear Fidelity to him sent his Mandatory Letter under the Authority of his Great-Seal to the Sheriff's of the Counties to the Keepers of his Castles that they shou'd all be intent upon the Business and upon his death they show'd themselves as ready to perform it and what can the most factious Pen make more of this than an Acknowledgment of Hereditary Right especially when the same Author in the beginning of the young Kings Reign says they only came together to Exalt him to the Throne of his Father and not one word of their Suffrages or Election therefore what could not be proved from matter of Fact must be suggested with an Innuendo and because the good Earl Marshal in a perswasive Speech exhorted them to adhere to their lawful Sovereign it imply'd the Consent of the People requir'd if such an Assent shall make the Kingdom Elective 't will be hard to proveany Hereditary for all people that do not actually Rebel and Oppose must in that sense be said to Consent and Elect and when ever our Kings are Crown'd 't is so far with the Consent of the people that they do not interrupt the Coronation But can he prove in any of his pretended Elections much less here that ever in England they balloted for the Crown or drew Lots for the Kingdom that they had ever any certain number of Electors as in Germany or carried it by Majority of suffrages as in Poland ' tho I believe some of them would make no more of his Majesty than a Bourrought Representative or a County Knight and 〈◊〉 allow him the Freedom of a Pole But with what face can he urge it here when the whole drift of Pembrokes Oration was only to satisfy them the Succession belong'd to the Son and that the French Usurper Lewis would be the ruin of the Realm which Speech was so effectual too that several of the Principal of the Barons not withstanding that open hatred to his Father in spight of Obligation of an Oath to Lewis they still thought their Loyalty and Allegiance more obliging and revolt from the French-man till all at last deserted of all he abjures his claim and the Kingdom together After he had been first routed by Land at Lncoln by Pembroke the Protector and his fresh supplys at Sea near Dover by Hubert the Gouernour And the bold Speech of that stout Souldiers to this powerfull Prince when he demanded Dover on the Death of King John was a better Evidence what sense the people had of a Lawful 〈◊〉 than he from the Marshals can evince that he succeeded by Election and against the Laws of Descent and all that he can pertinently draw from the Protectors Oration is that an Infant King did not speak for himself But if ought be a blot in his Succession 't is what this praejudiced Historian I am sure does not care to Hit and that is the weakness of his
Monster of Men as Lawful a King as his Nephew that he Murder'd That Arch-Rebel that of late mounted the Throne Cromwel himself as much right to sit there as a Charles the best of Monarchs they Martyr'd all these were by Parliament acknowledg'd for their Lawful Soveraigns against the very Fundamental Laws of all the Land Laws that even with the Allowance of one their late most Laborious most popular and pillor'd Advocate for this Power of Parliament Pryn himself have still plac't the Discent of the Crown in the right Heirs at Common Law and who himself Confesses that Acts of Parliament have translated it from them to others who had no good Title and then certainly such a translation at best can be but bad and Evidences that there is somewhat else requir'd besides their Power to the making of a King so powerful and prevalent are the Dictates of Truth and reason that they force their Confessions sometimes from the very Mouths of those that Labour to give them the Lye drop from them unawares and steal from their unadvised Lips Lastly 'T is most prodigiously Strange that such Seditious Sycophants as fawn upon this Parliamentary Power for altering the Succession and asserting of an absolute wrong yet are such unreasonable Souls as not to Consider the several Acts of the self-same Powers that have declar'd it unalterable and maintain'd the Monarchs Vnquestionable right Edward the 4th's first Parliament they themselves know declar'd those that came to the Crown by the Common Consent of the People to be but Vsurpers Kings only de Facto which implys ' its contrary to be just and that some de jure must be Kings they know the first of James declares his Royal Office an Heritage Inherent in the very Blood of him 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 Subject of England then they they 'l submit no more then the Czars of Muscovy a pecuniary 〈◊〉 must be but a bare oppression and a Capital Punishment MURDER But Will. Prynn I 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 a fairer 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 unfit 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 Ridicnlous 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 polisn'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
State to which after so long and preliminary Impertinence that half the piece is made a Preface the Courteous Traveller is at last arriv'd And first he begins with their old Factious assertion that the Soveraign power of England is in King Lords and Commons making his Majesty but one of their three States we all know when this pernicious principle was first set a foot what it terminated in BLOOD and that in the Destruction of the best of Governments with the best of Kings we quickly saw when once they had made their Prince Co-ordinate they soon set up their own Supremacy and then assoon made him none at all Did this prophetick Daemon foresee from his Astrological Judgments that his House of Commons were drawing another Scheam of Rebellion and that they had prepar'd a draught of a second Covenant not only for making our King Co-ordinate but Leveling the Monarchy with the Ground yet'twas convincing enough to me before that the broaching of the very same principles did as really design the same subversion of the State this Plot might as well have been seen in 80. when this Author and as great Incendiaries appear'd in publick and so popular and well might a late House of Commons animadvert on our Judges for suppressing such Seditious Libels which were so Zealously kind and impudently bold as to set up their Supremacy it had been ingratitude not to stand by those Villains that for their sakes had forfeited their Necks This very same Principle of the Subjects Soveraignty was Printed and publish't in 43. preparatory for the Covenant which the Commons had then call'd for out of Scotland and up rises this Ghost again in 81. as if even then it had heard for Spirits are very Intelligent of an Association talk't off in Parliament but I 'll tell him in short why the Soveraign Power of England is not in King Lords and Commons because King Lords and Commons are not all Soveraigns may not our Monarchy be call'd Mixt in Opposition to its being Absolute and Tyrannical without making it a meer Hotch-potch that if our King will have any thing of his right of a Soveraign power he must put it in Medley with that of his Subject as our Sisters are oblig'd in Co-parcenary But tho he take his Treasonable Maxim for Reason and Truth without shewing the least Law or Reason I shall shew him from all of them that it is both Irrational Illegal and a Lye First 'T is against Reason to Imagin there can be three such Powers Co-ordinate to make up one Soveraignty and that our King can at the same time pass for a Monarch for Soveraignty is inseparable from a King and that 's the Reason without doubt we promiscuously call him our King or Soveraign and if our Lords and Commons will assume it they may ee'n take the Crown too we saw how the participation of a Soveraign power tho it was but in a shadow and that by him that had a better pretence for the Soveraignty then all the Common Subjects can have by being the Crowns Heir was like to have unhinged the very Monarchy it self in the Reign of Henry the Second and rais'd such Commotions in the State till it was almost overturn'd And I am sure we have found and felt that this Co-ordinacy of their three States terminated at last like the participation of that Co-parcenary Prince into an insolent demanding of the whole and what they had made but half the Kings they soon made all the People's until the Government was quite run of the hooks and the Nation engaged in an unhappy War and a down-right Rebellion Does not the very Etymon of Monarchy it self express the sole Soveraignty of that Government they would make so preposterously Mixt and even Archon alone which was the next Titular Appellation the Loyal Athenians gave to the Son and Successor of their Matchless Codrus only because they thought that no Succeeding Prince could deserve the Title of Tyrannus which they made to terminate with him only because they presum'd his goodness 〈◊〉 imitation Tyrant then was not apply'd as some of our Inveterate Traytors have done it since in it's Corrupted sense tho to the most merciful King for a Tarquin or Caligula yet even this word Archon without addition of Sole that Moròs that has since succeeded to make it Monarch was then an Absolute Government of one amongst the Athenians and continued so in the same Family for a long Season till at last by popular encroachments it was made Annual and this Contender for this Co-ordinate power of the People has expos'd his Damnable designs so plainly to his Disputants that his own Conscience and Soul up-brai'd him for the Villany and makes his Venetian interrupt him for making an English Monarch but a Duke of Venice tho the Doctor the Pontaeus of the people that sucks up all the Poyson of Rebellion like that of Toads only for the Tryal of his Skill and then thinks to cheat the Devil with an Antidote He politickly opines however that he has made him too Absolute if ever there were a medley of more Malitious Villains 〈◊〉 to Libel a Government I 'll forfeit my Neck too it as well as they Heaven and Hell must be reconcil'd which without a Recantation will be so for their Confusion before these their Contradictory defamations can be made consistent But in this the Politick Rebels agree to secure an Odium upon our Monarchy in both extreams and making the most opposite Objections serve for one and the same purpose it 's absoluteness and Tyranny must make it all Bug-bear formidable frightful at the same time that their holding the Reins shall render it all Hobby-Horse Ridiculous and Contemptible 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 ofevery Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty 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 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 thereof against Charles Stewart Son of the Lale 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 〈◊〉 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 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 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 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 Eighth's time gives this Reason why 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 〈◊〉 next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power 〈◊〉 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 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 Government 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 Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure from this Authority they can have no proof and from Wise Men can be gathered nothing but such as were Noble or chief of the Realm for the meaner sort and that which we now call the Commonality were then far enough from having any great share of Learning or common Understanding and then besides these Wisest of the People were only such whom the King should think Wise and admit to his Council far from being sent by their Borroughs as elected Senators King Alfred had his Parliament and a great one was held by King Athelstan at Grately ' which only tells us there were Assembled some Bishops Noble-Men and the Wise-Men whom the King called which implies no more then those he had a mind should come But the Antiquity of a Parliament or that of an House of Commons is not so much the thing these Factious Roll and Record Mongers contend for 't is its Superiority Supremacy and there endeavours to make them antient is but in order to the making their Power Exorbitant and not to be controul'd by that of their King whom in the next place this Re-publican can scarce allow the power of calling them at his Pleasure and dissolving them when he pleases But so great is the Power of Truth and the Goodness of the Cause he Opposes that he is forc't to contradict himself to desend his Paradoxes For he tells us the King is obliged with an hear say Law which his learned in the Faculty and Faction can't find out yet to call Parliaments as often as need should be that is
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 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 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 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 Book he begins to rout it entirely when he comes up with the Body to the Battle and the Rear there he tells us plainly the Sweetness the profitableness of a Common-wealth that only 't is not to be set up during these Circumstances that is 't is too soon to Rebel yet and he has found out better expedients the King has too much Power the Presidents of John and Henry the Third are trumpt up again for being Compell'd to give it away the Murder of Edward and Richard the Second at least the Deposition of which that is an absolute Consequence is two or three times again Recommended for Instruction and now he tells the Parliament plainly what Branches of the Praerogative they must insist upon Power of making War and Peace Treaties and Allyances which the Kings wicked Ministers have made Destructive to the Interest of our English Nation You have here the best of Kings in effect tho apply'd to the Courtiers of which I think he must be the Chief resembl'd to the very Rebel that Vsurpt upon his Crown as if it were design'd by him as well as a Cromwel that had no right to maintain himself in the Throne but the Power of the Sword to Crave aid from FRANCE to keep Vnder his People of ENGLAND The Militia must be granted them because out of Parliament or Session it being in his hand they cannot raise the County Bands nor those of the City to Guard themselves that some irusty Members whom if the King pleases may take care of his Houshold that a Parliament meet of Course at a certain Day at the usual place without Writ or Summons and that because Peers depend so much upon the will of their Prince for Creation they should never be made but by Act of Parliament I appeal to the most moderate mild Soul Living whether any single Line of all this absolute Treason has not of late almost since the Publication of this Damnable piece been 〈◊〉 to be put in Execution was not the Haereditary Discent struck at in the Duke was not the Militia offer'd at in some of their Votes Frequency of Parliaments which would have been as good as without intermission Clamour'd for in some of their Speeches the Nomination of some of the Officers of Power by the People And lastly was it not agreed to meet without Writ and Summons when the Major part of Members were to be conven'd after Dissolution and can any still say that an alteration of the Government was never design'd by those that were then so busily concern'd and when some of the most popular and Active have been since Actually Convicted for the Compassing all this by the Blood of their King which they dispair'd of obtaining from his Le Roy vult But 't is to be hop'd that the God of Heaven who has brought to Light the Darkness even of Hell has so much illuminated Peoples understanding as well as Eyes that the next Assembly that shall constitute this Politick Body truly Honourable adsolutely Necessary in it's Constitution will be such as will transcend what has been one of their best Presidents An healing one and that of those wounds such 〈◊〉 and Doctors have scarifi'd instead of clos'd and with a merited Vote Condemn such Devils to their own Element the Fire that have so Seditiously set three Kingdoms in a Flame But tho this refin'd Statesman this polisht piece of the most accomplisht Treason may perhaps value himself upon the Product and Invention of his own Villany proud of the being reputed a witty Republican whose greatest Glory here is to be at the best but an Ingenious Rebel yet his very Reputation tho it be but in his Roguery must sink too When you consider what I shall soon satisfy any sober Person in any Soul that has but so much Sense as to distinguish an Author from a Plagiary a Man of Honesty from a Thief that even the very Notions and Principles he Prints for the establishing this Government were formerly Publisht and proposed by the very Villains that actually subverted it not one Expedient in all his Politicks but what was by sad
little more kindly than they did the Father and not seize his Militia with an Ordinance because they cannot Fight him with his consent nor Rebel first against their King with an open War and then send him Propositions for Peace and the making him a Slave And since some of our Seditious Souls have not only a great Veneration left for these Parliamentary Projects and as great esteem for this Statesman for the reviving them in his Politicks since some that would be thought Persons sober and moderate can think the Kings Complyance in some of these Grants and Concessions somewhat necessary and a Trifle of the Crowns prerogative to be pared from the State as requisite as a Surplice or Ceremony to be parted with in the Church since the Propositions of that Rebel Parliament and the Politicks of this rank Republican make up so perfect a Parallel It will supersede some separate labour and pains to be able to animadvert upon them together and at once His Answerer will be somewhat obliged to his Authors being but a Thief and will shew that whatever some think that such pieces of Power might be par'd from the Crown like some sappy Excrescencies from the Trunks of Trees for the better Nourishment of the Stock that all and every one of them strike directly at the very Root That the Government cannot well subsist without them all and that all of them are inseperably settled in the Crown by all the Fundamental Laws of all the Land The first that feels the reforming stroke of their Fury we find to be the Kings Privy Council and what is that why their own Oracle of the Law will assure them the most Noble most Honorable and reverend Assembly consulting for the publick good and that the number of them is altogether at the King's Will And shall those be numbered now and regulated at the Will of a Parliament whom their own Acts Statutes Rolls declare acknowledge and confess to depend upon the Nomination Power and Pleasure of the Prince would they repeal those Laws of their Ancestors enacted even according to the greatest Reason only for an Introducing their own Innovations against all Reason and Law Can it be consonant to common Sense that those whom their King is to Consult and Sit with at his Pleasure and that according to the very express Words of Authentick Rolls and Records that those should depend for their being and Existence 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 〈◊〉 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 Chusing their own advisers or would Calvin himselfhave recommended 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 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 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 supersluous one of the very Articles of such a Counsellors 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 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 voured 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 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 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 too And that the Laws great Oracle tells us too who is so far from letting them have no part in the Government that he tellsus they have a very great part even 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 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 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 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 how vainly he presumes upon his parts and Invention that he is a double Plagiary not only borrow'd this 〈◊〉 project against the present Privy Council from these proposals of our Seditious Senate in England but his very Quarantia of Venice was set up long before he could for an Author by those Zealots that were so resolutely resolv'd to Rebel in Scotland and he shall see those Daemagogues too those Devils of Sedition look't upon it even then as a praeparatory project and the best Expedient for their Invading of the Kingdom and the Crown Their Edenburgh their Metroprolis as well as ours here was then the Seat of Sedition so truly great that it's Faction and Villany was Commensurate even with it's very Walls And those too when Casually fallen were not suffer'd to be built as if they would have let the World known by praediction their Ominous Treason was to extend further 't was here that the Sycophants at the same time they pretended so much for their Kings preservation that they protested against the pious Prince's Proclamation only for the dispersing of that dangerous Rabble that seem'd to denounce with an Omen what too fatally follow'd his Death and Destruction his Majesties sincerity to them and their Religion was repeated in it often with assurances but what was as Sincerely promis'd from a King by these Monsters of the People was as Rebelliously Ridicul'd with scorn and derision and that the Government might be satisfy'd with a sure report of their Sedition they made those Heralds that proclaim'd their Princes pleasure to witness how much it displeas'd his Rebel Subjects and in defiance to their very Faces read their own Protestation Big thus with Rebellion and Labouring with their teeming Treason at last they are fairly deliver'd of the same Rebel Brat this Republican would adop't for his own a QVARANTIA they Covenant and agree and 't was time to Vnite for a Justification of those Villanies which nought but a Combination could defend for erecting four principal Tables and 't was time too to set up their own Councils when they had so Seditiously resisted their Kings To pursue the Contempt of this Proclamation which by his Majesties Council and Command was publish't for a further Violation of the Regal Authority they set up this truly Popular the first of their four Councels to consist of their Nobility the second of the Gentry the third of their Burgesses and the fourth of their Ministry and the Decrees of these their principal and general Tables as they call'd them as if as Universally to be receiv'd as Moses his Two of Stone what they did and was approv'd of by the General one the Choice Flow'r of all the Four was to be forc't as the Peoples Law but far I am sure from the Fundamental one of the Land from this their Rebellious assuming of the Soveraignty in their pretended Councils as they call'd them too but in truth a Convention of Conspirators proceeded presently the Renewing of their Negative Confession their Band their Covenant impos'd on all sorts of People with artiside force and Blood it self And can a Test now establish't by Authority and Law be look't upon an Imposition even by those that impos'd Oaths Vnlawful and Rebel'd against both it being by them expressly declar'd in two several Acts that all Leagues of Subjects amongst themselves without their Princes Privity to be Sedition and their Authors and Abetters to be punish't as movers of such And what did this Venetian Government terminate in in Scotland but a plain Confederacy to confound all and tho the Civil and Courteous contriver of our Ruin and Subversion minces the matter with making his Majesty to Exercise his four Magnalia with the consent of these four Councils 't would puzzle his Politicks to tell me the distinction between them and those principal Tables of the Scot what should confine them from Confederating against their King instead of Consulting for him what would signifie his Majesties having a president among those of his own placeing when every one of them would be their own Masters and out of his power to displace what should hinder those from protesting with their old Rebellious Assembly in Scotland against all their Kings desires intentions and Inclinations for the publick good while they presume their own Maxims the wisest and their measures the best and to tell us that these are to give Account and to be answerable to such a Parliament who chuses them is to say a Sidney is the best Judge of the Misdemeanor of a Nevil most qualifi'd to answer his Quaere whether this project be not a better Expedient than the Justitia of Arrogan or the Spartan Ephori or to tell us one that has suffer'd for Treason to a Monarchy is the fittest to Try him that would betray it to a Common-wealth The second Proposition in the Parallel is that Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament or by such Councils as they shall appoint The true Spirit the Life the Soul of Sedition that informes and animates the whole Body of the Faction speakes here the
Dictates of this Daemon this Devil of a Republick that has possest the Nation for this five years with greater Phrensy then e're he did before the Restoration when by the very Finger of God he was first ca lt out and would now return too with more worse than himself only because he finds it swept and garnisht For I defie the most diligent Perusers of the most pernicious Libels that were Printed in the most Pestilent time when Treason was Epidemick and spread as the Plague it self more than once did and that in their Mighty Babylon their Metropolis too I challenge even those to shew me so much Penn'd even then to persuade the setting up a Republick as has so lately been Published in this very piece His Majesty upon the presenting these their Proposals I have parralleld told them they designed him for a Duke of Venice and that they only dared to do when they had bid him defyance to his Face and made him fly for refuge to his Friends when they had a fund for Rebellion in the City A General and an Army in the Field but here we have a single Republican declaring expressly for the good Government of the Venetian Arraigning of our Monarchy condemning of our Courts reforming of our Councils only to set up their Republick for the framing their Decemviral the constituting their Quarantia the making every Member of Parliament but a Noble Man of Venice and his Mighty Prince that presides in it by Law as a Principal Head but 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 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 on 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 thebest of Civil Governments our Monarchy and establisht their own Anarchy a Common Wealth 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 Punishment 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 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 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 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 Government 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 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 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
and grant all Regal Rights He can erect a 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 Foreign to our Laws as well as Land would make it commence with the Conqueror Our very British Kings are said to have had such a Court and Ethelred the Saxon granted the 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 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 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 〈◊〉 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 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 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 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 aud 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 this Libel for 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 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 Itaely 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 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 〈◊〉 their King they never chose their Judges but when they had 〈◊〉 the Supremaey they never can do either without subverting the Monarchy for 't is their own Soveraign that sits and presides in them and the 〈◊〉 Officiate but for him because not 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 Burrough Thus much for their Management of the State the next part of the Proposition is their
hundred years for so long our Monarchs can be Chronicl'd can in every Reign the Clergies being concerned in Parliament be proved upon Record and may they with the Monarchy last that with its Christianity commenc'd They seemed always to sympathize in their very sufferings never to cease but by consent and Bishops were never excluded from their Votes but when their King himself had never a voice The Sixth pernicious Principle they propose is for Marriages Alliances Treatises for War and Peace to be put in the power of the two Houses And shall the meanest Subjects be Mightier than their Soveraign Not allow'd the Marrying his Issue when where and to whom he pleases That the Parliament has presumed to intermeddle with this undoubted Prerogative of the Soveraign since the Birth-Right of the poorest Subject can no more be denyed then that the two Houses have also actually Rebell'd too but they never pretended to make Matches for their Monarch but when they were as ready to make War too There was somewhat of that Mutinous Ferment got among the Members in the latter end of King * James's his Reign who tho they mightily soothed their Soveraign with some Inconsiderable subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate so small that notwithstanding the Preparation for War the poor Prince was forc'd to pursue Peace and to tell the Men at Westminster so much too that he intended to compass the Palatinate with an Allyance with Spain which he was not like to obtain from the smallness of their Subsidy and Aid But tho the Commons did not care much for the maintaining the War they were as much startled with this seeming tendance to Peace they knew their Prince poor and therefore thought that the time to show the Subject bold and so began the Puritan-Party to represent in a Remonstrance Popery Power Prerogative and their Averseness forsooth to the Spanish-Match The pious Prince tho none of the boldest to resist an invading People yet took the Courage to tell them they took too much upon themselves very warmly forbad them farther to meddle with his Government and deep Affairs of State and particularly with the Match of his Son with the Daughter of Spain And this account they 'll surely Credit since it comes from an Author a partial and popular Advocate for this power of Parliament And did not the Commons intermeddling with an other Spanish Match of Queen Mary's send their Memberships into the Country to mind their own Business and were presently Dissolv'd for meddling so much with their Soveraign's And this I hope will be as Authentick since it comes from an Author that has had the Thanks of the House But this Disposal of the Kings of his own Children and the Marrying them to what Princes he pleases has such an absolute Relation to the making Leagues and Allyances that the Laws which have declared the latter to be solely in the Soveraign are as Declaratory that the other is so too and this power of the Prince of making War and Peace Leagues and Allyances is so settled in him by the Laws of the Land that till they are subverted it can never be taken out In Henry the Fifth's Time a Prince under whose Courage and Conduct the Nation I think was as Flourishing at Home as it was formidable Abroad A Prince that kept a good Sway over his Subjects and wanted nothing to the making him a good Monarch but a better Title though his Expensive War in France cost his People a great deal of Money as well as Blood yet they were far from being animated into an Invading this part of Prerogative but declared as appears by the Law of his Time that to their King belonged only to make Leagues with Foreign Princes and so fully does this Fundamental Law of the Land place this power in the Prince that it absolutely excludes all the Pretences of the People for it tells us expressly that if all the Subjects of England should break a League made with a Foreign Prince if without the King's Consent it shall still hold and not be broken And must the Laws of our own as well as those of all Nations be subverted for the setting up a Supremacy of the People which both declare is absolutely in the King The Seventh Proposal about the Militia is the most Impudent because it has been the most confuted of any by Reason and baffled above all parts of the Prerogative Establisht by 〈◊〉 History tells us ever since Chronicle can Compute and that is for almost Fifteen Hundred Years that the Power of the Sword was ever in him that sway'd the Scepter and Statute tells us even the very First that was ever reckoned among Acts of Parliament That if the King lead or send his Subject to do him Service in his Wars that he shall be freed from such other Services as Castle-guard and the like so that you see that extorted Instrument the result of a REBELLION reserved this piece of Prerogative of the Soveraigns Sole Right That the Members of the two Houses should have the Management of the Militia was undertaken to be proved too by that Plague of the Press Pryn himself who proceeds upon his own false Principle and Premises which he beggs and then may well draw from them a Conclusion of an absolute Lye for he takes it for granted that by the Kingdoms Suffrages they made their King and them he could not as he says have this Military power without the Peoples consent but why may it not be with less Presumption supposed That a Parliament by special 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 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 Reign And in his Son and Successors that Usurpt upon his 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 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 Child They resolved it so when Subjected to the Government of a Woman The Commission of Array was revived again to King 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 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 Time that his Son and Successors tho necessitated for suppressing such Insurrections as themselves had raised 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 same in his Comment upon the very Charter of Liberties and will not that neither with our Licentious Libertines be allowed for Law Is not all the Military power both by Sea and Land declared the undoubted Right of His present Majesty and that by particular Act in his own Reign does not the very preamble of it seem to provide against this very Proposition of such a Parliament or a Plato when it tells us expresly that all Forts and places of Strength is and ever was by the Laws of England the Kings undoubted Right and of all his Royal Predecessors and that neither both or either Houses can or ought to pretend to the same and declares that all the late Principles and Practices that assumed the same were all Rebellious And could some of our Mutinous Members embrace such Propositions from the Press that presumed to tell them they had of late made two such Impertinent Acts in the House Acts invading the Subjects Property Acts betraying the Liberties of that very People they represent In short and that in his own Words Acts that empower the Prince to invade the Government with Force Acts to destroy and ruin the State hindering the Execution of the Laws and the preventing our Happiness and Settlement had they had but the least Reverence for their own Constitution and that Honorable Assembly wherein they sate sure there would have been some Ordered and Resolved for the sifting out such a Pen-man and sentencing such Papers to the Hangman and the Flames what can be the result of this to sober Sense or Common Reason that such Villanous Authors should appear in publick at such a Session of Parliament to Censure and Arraign the very Acts of their former Representatives but that they thought themselves secure from any Violent Prosecution from those that then were sitting and that it was not the Constitution it self of that most Honorable Assembly the Seditious Sycophants were so Zealous for but only the present Persons its Constituent Members they so much admired The last the Tenth of those pretty Proposals that deserves particular Animad version for several of them Symbolize with one another and so are by a general asserting of the Kings Supremacy sufficiently refuted is the Parliaments Right to the making Peers the prettiest Paradox that the Abundance of Sedition with the want of Sense could suggest I have heard the Laws declare the King to be the Fountain of Honor as well as Justice but the Commons I think as they are no Court of Judicature
so were never yet known to be concerned in the making Lords The King whom only our Law declares to have no Peer is sure the only Person that can make Peers has not this Power been unquestionably in the Prince ever since these Realms had one to Rule was not the Title of Baron in Edward the First 's Time confined expresly to such only as by the Kings Writ were sommoned to sit in Parliament And even when there was an Innovation in this Point In Richard the Second's Tumultuous Time this Power was then not taken from the King till they took away his Crown did not he take upon him to confer the Peerage and as the first President per his Letters Patents And Beauchamp Baron of Kederminster the First of that Creation did the Parliament ever pretend to make Peers but when the Body had rebelled against the Head and rejected their Prince But the Creation of Honors might well then be inverted when the State it self was turned Topsie It was then I confess they denyed their King too not only the conferring of Honors for the future but passed an Act for Voiding all Titles Dignities and Precedencies already given by him But this was done to extinguish the very Remains of Royalty that there might not be left behind him the meer marks the Gracious Dispensations of the very Favor of a King the inveterate Villains labouring with their Monarch to Murder his very Memory And sure none of the Nobility have great Reason to relie upon Parliaments for the maintaining of their Old Honor or creating New for the Privilege of their Peerage or the making Peers when the very First thing that they did when they had got the Power was an Ordered and Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be Abolisht And all the Kindness their Lordships could be allowed was to be capable of being elected into the Lower House and what an Honourable House of Lords was afterward Establisht even by those that had purged away the Peerage may be seen in the Persons of those that Usurper put up afterward for Peers But under the Name the Notion of that other House when they granted that power of their Nomination to that Arch Rebel which they but so lately denyed their Lawful King why we had there then Lords of no quality no worth little Land and less Learning Mr. Hewsons Lordship that Honest Cobler Sir Thomas Pride's Lordship Knight and Dray-man My Lord James Berry Black-Smith My Lord Barksted the Bodkin-Seller and the Cant of their Counterfeit Cromwell their Creator might well tell them from the Text not many Nobl's not many wise were called but a Creation according to the very Notion of the Schools An House like that of the World too out of nothing framed by Him that had Himself Sworn to be true to the Government without founded in the Perjury of him that made them Peers and of Persons that would have disgrac'd a Pillory Persons prefer'd for their little Honesty little Quality little Sense Persons whose Lands and Possessions could only qualifie them to be Noble by being purchased with the Blood of our best Nobility Lastly Persons that were only famed for their Villanies Mighty but in Mischief making it an House indeed not of Peers but Correction which the very Law tells us must be made up of Beggars and Malefactors This Gentlemen was the Peerage produced by a Parliament's Rebellion to make Peers of which it was too the most natural Result for that very Act upon a Just Judgment would have Tainted all their Blood but they provided here for the purpose Persons that defied superseded the Work of an Attaindure Persons whose Blood even Treason could not more Corrupt This Gentlemen was the product of that most preposterous Inversion when the Commons could make Lords and their Kings House of Peers with their very Titles and Honors Abolisht by an House of Commons 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 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 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
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 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 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's pretty Paradoxes is the very same with 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 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 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 in that name he was Sentenced 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 labors 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 will 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 Reformation in the Reign of him that was the first Defender of our Faith that it could never have been so soon interrupted with a succeeding Persecution had but Henry the Eighth refused the Bill of the 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 Religion he so salsely labors for It was the Le Roy vult the Result of the Peoples importunity that then establish'd Popery by a Law which had it been but then neglected that new moulded Mass of Idolatry standing upon its last Legs had quite languish'd dropt into the Grave and been buryed in the Ruins and Rubbish of its own Idol Houses they demolish'd For in the latter end of his Reign so enraged did he seem against some Persons of that Perswasion that he acted as if he would have executed their very Religion hanging up some iCarthusians even in their Habits and mmured nine Monks in their own Monastery where they dyed This was it that so settled what they call Superstitious Worship that it survived the short liv'd Reign of the pious Edward and in Spight of all his providential care for it's exterpation run only like the Guaronne that Miracle of a River in one of their Climates of Popery if their Histories of their Country be not Legends too only through a little Province in silent darkness underground but rose again and that with greater rage in the next Region This good Kings Laws about Religion would never have been so soon repealed the Commons House never have been so forward as the Divine Doctor whom themselves have thankt for it does make them for the sending up a Bill for the punishing all such as would not return to the Sacraments after the old Service Had the Six Articles been but past by in stead of being past into an Act they would have had no such Service to return to they would have been Strangers to Rome and it's Religion and tho they were repealed in Edward the Sixth's time his Fathers ratifying them made them take such root that his short Reign could never Eradicate that left so many Catholicks in the Kingdom that Commendone the Popes Legate might well come over to reconcile her Highness's Crown to his Holyness's See And here
had not the Queen if such a thing could have been expected from a Sister of that Church so Zealous done much better had she refused the Bills of both Houses brought her for introducing the Pope's power and Supremacy your selves Seditious Souls reproach this Royal Assent with Reflections so scurrilous upon her Memory that the worst of Monarchs could never Merit and then only give but Loyal Ones leave to think that your Excluding Bill tho never so much the General Desires might have been as much cursed by posterity when it had entailed upon it Misery and Blood the common Consequences of a debar'd Right To come now after this Ecclesiastical point of the Church to that Civil one of the State that other thing this Lawyer Labors for the Descent of the Crown Shall the Peoples general Desires in this too terminate the Will of the Prince why then that Monster of Mankind as well as Monarchs did mighty well too to pass that Murdering Bill presented by both Houses of Parliament to make good his own Title to the Crown by the Butchering of those Babes in the Tower for no less could be expected when it was once taken up by the Tyrant than their Destruction for the Maintaining it so that this Peoples Desires dispatch'd them in the Senate before ever they were strangled by Tyrril in the Tower Had it not been a much greater Honor to the Prince to have refused such a Barbarous Bill than turned Usurper and a Butcher for it's acceptance Had it not left a less Blot in our English Chronicle as well as upon the Nation less Blood Did not both Houses exhibite a Bill even for the making Elizabeth the best of their Queens a Bastard And does Mr. Hunt say this desire of the People too did mighty well to prevail as it always ought upon the King Did not that Royal Assent so blacken his Person and brought the Nations repute so low that the very Protestant Princes left him out of their League whom they had designed for its Head and look'd upon our England as a lump of Inconsistancy whom such Vnanimous Leaguers could not Trust And was it not in his Reign That a Zealous Papist said It was the Parliaments Power to make a King or deprive him a fortiori then a Popish Principle to destroy or exclude his Successor But as bold as this Gentleman thinks himself when he dares to say Never any King denyed to pass those Bills which the People pitcht upon to present 'T is none of his own Politick asseveration tho it be but a piece of Sedition It is no more than what a Seditious Senate told their King long agon A Senate that sate brooding on the pure Elements of Treason and of which Pryn himself was a principal Member A Senate that sowed so much Sedition in one age that all the Succeeding will hardly eradicate A Senate that sate drawing out the Scheams and Platforms of a Common-wealth A Senate that assumed to themselves indeed the Legislative the Nomothetical Disposition of the Law but they proved such a Confounded sort of Architects in the State that they drew a perfect plan a confus'd Ichonography for Rebels to build upon their Babel Those told us in plain Terms what these more cautious Coxcombs insinuate with a silly Circumlocution That the King is bound by His Coronation Oath to grant them all those Bills their Parliament shall prefer And that they gather from their contradictory conclusion that bandy'd Banter they have Box'd about in both Reigns for almost these two Ages the VULGUS ELEGERIT I am sorry to find these Seditious Souls not only to want Sense but Grammar Lilly would have told them more of the Law and his Constrctuion and Concord made a better Resolution than their Coke upon the Case But as the People when they have got the Power will soon decide on their side the Supremacy so these Times did here assoon turn the Tenses and transfer the past Laws into the Future and 't is no wonder that those that did the Statutes of their Prince could dare to break the Head of a Priscian Is not the perfect Tense much more agreeable to Sense and Reason here than the Future The question is Whether it shall be meant of those Laws the People shall Chuse or have Chosen I won't object here Our Kings being absolute and compleat Monarchs without so much as taking such an Oath without so much as being Crowned which is the Time it is to be taken tho of that the Law has in several Cases satisfied the most Seditious and so resolved their silly Suggestion The resolution I shall give is the Strength of Reason and that must at least be as Strong as the Law Let it be but once allow'd That their King by this Clause is obliged to pass all Bills that shall be brought why truly then he Swears with an implicite Faith to Repeal all the Laws if the People please for the bare possibility in such a sort of Argumentation may be supposed and we as well imagine for my Lord Coke tells us we have had Mad Parliaments such a Senate may prefer Bills for the Repealing all the Old Laws as well as for the passing any single New and I am sure 't is no more than what has actually been done in one since that Learned Lawyer lived even to the Subversion of all the Statutes of the Land so that this positive Oath in their sense may Labour under an implicite contradiction for while he swears in the latter Clause to confirm all the Bills they shall bring It may be extended to cancel all Custom and Common-Law he is in the former sworn to defend Mr. Hunt's General Desire of the People may be for the Repealing the 35th of Edward as well as that of Elizabeth and leave no Law in the Land to punish Treason as well as Recusants only that they may commit it with impunity for one of those Bills has twice been brought into the House and both may be to save their Bacon And should the King with their Elegerit be obliged especially so mild an one with an anticipated Mercy to Pardon Villains 〈◊〉 the cutting of his Throat and leave no Law to punish perhaps a Rumbold or the Ruffians at the Rye certainly were his Right not in the least Divine this would contradict all Sense and Reason Suppose Richard the Second took this Oath as well as the rest of his Successors since and afterwards the general desire of his Parliament we all know was that he would depose himself Senseless Sots was that King sworn too even in his Coronation to confirm his own Deposition In short must not this senseless Suggestion put upon the Royal Authority the greatest absurdity against all Sense and Reason must it not make him swear to confirm those Laws that have not so much as BEING and that before he knows whether they will be good
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 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 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 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 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 〈◊〉 is as false in Fact as 't is expresly against those very Laws to suppose it for by 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 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 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 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 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 they shall as Samuel says cry out because of their King yet even this after he was by the same Prophet anointed and endowed with all that formidable Power he so fearfully represented we don't find even him reproach'd for a Tyrant or upbraided for violating the Laws or any breach of Trust whereas their Brutus in his Description of a Tyrant calls it Tyranny only for a Prince to bring in Foreigners for his Gaurd and then our Haringtons Hunts Nevels and Needhams might have made it Treason too against the Majesty of the People for our Kings that have suffered several French Souldiers in their Troops I say seriously they might have made use of such a Ridiculous Argument of this Authors for accusing
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 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 Sophisters in the Politick's here proceed just like those Jugglers in the House they couple a supposititious 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 besacrific'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 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 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 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 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 nothing to resign for the Republicans of those times were the good Barons that Rebel'd and had seated themselves in a sort of 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 best of Courts had heretofore Cognizance of property and determin'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 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 and confirm'd afterward per Act of Parliament yet 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 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 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 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 Laws that have evidenc'd their own Resolutions to be reserv'd to the King and that we had Kings long before fore 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 〈◊〉 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 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 persidiousness 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
this Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons for that is the General Stile of the Enactive part of most of the Statutes of those Times and this was most agreeable with their mighty Notion of his Majesties making but up one of the THREE that so they might the better conclude from the very Letter of their own Laws That the TWO States which the Law it self implyed now to be Co-ordinate must be mightier and have a Power over their King whom the same Laws confest to be but ONE and the Reason why the forms of their Bill and the draught of the Lawyers and the Lower-House might be past into Act without any Alteration or Amendments of this Clause was I believe from a want of Apprehension that there ever could be such designing Knaves as to put it in to that Intention or such Factious Fools as to have inferred from it the Commons Co-ordinacy For the Nobility and Loyal Gentry that 〈◊〉 commonly the more Honesty for having the less Law cannot be presumed so soon to comprehend what Construction can be drawn from the Letter of it by the laborious cavil of a Litigious Lawyer or a cunning Knave and therefore we find that those Acts are the least controverted that have the fewest Words and that among all the multiplicity of Expressions that at present is provided by themselves that have commonly the drawing of our Statutes themselves also still discover as many Objections against it to furnish them with an Argument for the Merits of any Cause and the Defence of the Right of their Clyent at the same time they are satisfied he is in the wrong And for those Enacting forms of our Statutes whatsoever Sense some may think these Suggestions of mine may want That some Seditious Persons got most of them to run in so low so popular a Stile in the latter end of King James and Charles the first 's time such as Enacted only by the Authority of the Parliament by the Kings Majesty Lords and Commons yet upon the Restauration of Charles the Second the Words With the consent of the Lords and Commons were again reviv'd and afterward they bring it into this old agen With the Advice and Assent of Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons according to the form of Richard the 3d. and Queen Elizabeth that resolv'd them to be the THREE STATES and this runs on through all the Acts of his Reign and even in several of them the Commons humbly beseech the King that it may be so enacted I thought it necessary to bring home to our present tho most profligate time as much Acknowledgement as possible I could of my Kings Prerogative from the Laws of our Land and the very Statutes themselves because that some great Advocates for the power of the People some times pretend to plead for them too from Acts of Parliaments tho I think in this last lewd and Libellous Contest against the Crown that lasted for about five year in that Lustrum of Treason there was but one that was so laboriously Seditious so eminently popular as to endeavour to prove the Peoples Supremacy from Rolls and Records and Acts of State and for that recommend me to the good Author of the Right of the Commons Asserted tho I should rather approve of such an undertaking when endeavored to be done from the tracing the dark and obscure tracts of Antiquity and the Authority of a Selden than the single Assertion of a Sidney and the mere Maxims of some Modern Democraticks that have no other Foundation for their Establishments than the new Notions of their Rebellious Authors and that ipse dixit of such Seditious Dogmatists But I am satisfied too that this Gentleman who has laboured so much in vindicating the Commons Antiquity and their constituting an essential part of our Saxon Parliaments did design in it much more an Opposition of our Antient Monarchy and the Prerogative of the Crown than a mere clearing the dark foot-steps of our Old Chronicle and a real defence of Matter of Fact and the Truth And this is too clearly to be prov'd from the pestilent Pen-man's P-tyts own Papers that were publish'd at such a time when there was no great need of such an Asserting the Commons Right when themselves were more likely to have Usurp'd upon the Crown and as Mr. Sidney and his Associates would have it made themselves and the People Judges of their own wrong For to see such a task undertaken at a time when we are since satisfied such dangerous designs were a-foot looks only like a particular 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 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 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
but God and that he had God alone for his Avenger and it seems somewhat Improbable a person of his Loyalty and Judgment should not only detract from the Supremacy of his Soveraign which he seems so much to maintain but also in direct opposition to what himself had asserted and besides were they the sense as well as the words of that Author they are only true as I have before shown when they are taken collectively in a complicated Sentence and so seems a sort of Sophistry which the Logical heads call a fallacy in Composition But yet from that does Mr. S. conclude That the power is Originally in the People and so by Consequence in the Parliament only as they are their Representatives For my part I cannot Imagine this Gentleman's large Treatise to be any thing else but a Voluminous Collection of all the Rebellious Arguments that were publisht in our late War for as in this little fiftieth part of it as he professes it to be there is not one new Notion but what is to a Syllable the same with the Papers of Pryn and the Merc. Politicus out of the Author of the Treatise of Monarchy has he made a shift to borrow or else by chance very harmoniously to agree 〈◊〉 the pernicious Position That our Monarchy is not only Limited and Mixt for that wont content them alone but that this Limitation has oblig'd the Soveraign to be Subject to the Judgment and Determination of Parliament for says that more Antient Antimonarchist this Limitation being from some body else and the power confer'd by the publick Society in the Original Constitution of the Government and then he bethinks himself that Kings too may Limit themselves afterward by their own Grants and Concessions which he is pleased to call a Secondary Original Constitution i. e. if my little Sense will let me Comprehend the saying of a Politician that has none at all somewhat like a Figure in Speech the Country-man calls his Bull us'd when the Speaker can't express himself Intelligibly A Secondary Original sounds not much unlike the Nonsense of an Original Copy or a second first yet from this senseless Sophistry it must be concluded that the Soveraign being limited by this Original Constitution or as they call it After Condiscent and Secondary Original what then therefore every Mans Conscience must acquit or Condemn the Acts of his Governour and every man has a Power of Judging the Illegal deeds of his Monarch And so Mr. S. in almost the same Language As a man he is Subject to the People that made him a King That he receiv'd the Crown upon condition and That performance is to be exacted and the Parliament Judges of the Particular Cases arising thereupon I cannot but observe to this Gentleman upon this who was always such a great admirer of the Romans Common-wealth what I hinted before was the Sense of the very Romans when according to their own Notion of Original Monarchy the People of that Common-wealth first conferr'd their Power of Government upon a single Soveraign why their very Laws tell us That notwithstanding those Contracts and Limitations of which there were very likely some exprest even in that their very Celebrated and Glorious Law that first made that Government Imperial yet when once it 〈◊〉 so Conferr'd by that very Act all Magistracy i.e. all power of Judging that the Subject had before was past over too And were our own Monarch by the Compact and condiscent of his first Ancestors such a precarious Prince as they would make him have not our own Statutes I have cited long since resolv'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 Aphorism will fly in their Face for that allows the Soveraign to be much superior to any Selected number of his Subjects and they won't be such Senseless Sots sure as to say That those whom themselves acknowledge to be altogether inferior should be invested with that Judicial Power which is the highest token and 〈◊〉 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 them 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 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 blast all his Judges in a moment and dissipate them all with the Breath of his Mouth and therefore Mr. Sidney was so wittily 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 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
whose Establishment in the first true Imperial Throne of their Rebellious Rome that very Law was first founded as also the Emperor Vespasian for whom it was again Confirm'd both these from all the Famous Historians of their Times unless we 'll believe them like the late Writers of the new Rome to be all Legends too both appear'd absolute in their power unlimited in their Jurisdiction notwithstanding those Conditions they will have Exprest in that Law neither did the People pretend to their deposition upon their Non performance Julius himself that was not absolutely prefer'd to be the Royal Emperor for he liv'd before that Law was made yet was allowed such a perpetual Dictatorship as may be well resolv'd into what our Republicans reproach with their present Soveraign an Arbitrary Power And he too whom the Miscreant we before mention'd says was justly Murdered and why only because he dignify'd himself too much as if it were a Crime for a King to be Great even 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 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 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 that Author when he says even those Caesars were Legally and justly Condemn'd as if the Romans too had once their High Court of Justice abuses the world both with a Factious infinuation 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 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 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 delegate 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not a single Subject left in the Land to befriend 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 a contract too with one another in some such implied Sense that A. confers his 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 it 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 the 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 〈◊〉 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 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 〈◊〉 Now in such Stipulations it is a receiv'd Rule that no man stipulates but for himself and that there is no Obligation arises from any one 's promising another Mans Deed so that every single Subject 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 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
disputable Titles which will needs be the result of any alter'd Succession and what now do these Laws affirm to which Mr. H. must affix his discent of the Crown by his own words when he says 't is of a Civil Nature why the Civil and Imperial 't is true differ from our own in this that with them he is lookt upon an Heir that is left so by the Testator in his Will and by them a Testamentary Succession was more esteem'd then a Legitimate and Lawful one yet even that imply'd there was one that was Legitimate or born so and the Reason why they rely'd so much upon Testamentary Inheritances was I believe because those were confirm`d by the very Laws of their 12. Tab. which was their first and Fundimental and therefore as long as the Testamentary was valid they would by no means admit the Legitimate one But still even in those Testamentary donations I believe they for the most part 〈◊〉 most of their Patrimony to the Eldest as well as we see among our selves our Tenants in fee simple that have as absolute a disposition of it by Will or those that have recover'd against the tail by fine or the like still leave their Eldest their Heir tho Impower'd to give it to whom they please And then for our own Law the very Custom of the Realm by which we must be more immediately Govern'd that makes the Eldest Son the only Heir to his Ancestor or else the next of Kin to the Predecessor deceas'd and that is the Reason an old Aphorism obtain'd even with our own Antient Lawyers that expressly insinuates such an Hereditary Succession to be by Divine Institution when they tell us that 't is not mankind but the Almighty makes them Heirs I know that the saying more properly refers to the Order or appointment of the Divine Will that such an one shall be the First-Born because it makes him to come into the World first but if it can be prov'd from the Text as in many places it may and in some we have shown that God himself in express Terms made the younger Subject we may be so bold to say that he instituted too such a Subjection to be paid to the Eldest And now let us consider the paternal Right which our Republicans so much deride which Mr. Sidney in ridicule would force us to derive from the Eldest Son of Noah which Plato Redivivus would expose in the Empire of Reuben the Brief History calls a new Notion of the present Age and Mr. Hunt laughs at in the merry conceit of calling it the Court of King Adam and King Father 't is true the most Sacred and Divinest truth may be made Ridiculous only by laughing at it and the World has not wanted even such a Blasphemous Buffoon to burlesque the whole Bible but I shall shew them here as in the most proper place in what Sense those Fathers might be said to be Kings and that the Absurdities they suggest are sar from any Consequences of such a Supposition And why for Gods sake must we be put to prove only for Asserting that the first Man had a Monarchichal Dominion tho it were at first over Beasts why must we therefore make out too that he kept up his Majesty after the manner of our Kings And that Adam in his Garden of Eden in the first Year of the World had built him an House like a Solomon that was hardly finish'd in Fifteen That he that had but Fig-Leaves to cover him had laid the Foundations of his Court in costly Stone and erected a Pile whose Porches and Pillars were of pure Caedar and all the Building built up out of Caedar Beams they may as well expect we should make out this too 〈◊〉 bring all the Forrest of Lebanon to be laid out in a Palace of Paradice Is it not enough for us to maintain that the first Government in the World was Monarchial when we can prove all the Dominion and Power was imparted to a single Person and when God himself seem'd to make but that one Man to prevent even a possibility of a Competitor and a Division of the Soveraignty without being obliged to make the very Origen of Monarchy adaequate to the Improvement of it and that a Soveraign for almost seven thousand year agon had the same Pompous and Imperial sway that a series of time and a Revolution of Ages has settled in the King of Great-Britain Many things are clear from Analogy of Reason tho they cannot be demonstrated to Sense the naturalist and Chymical Operators may well conclude that the mineral Vermilion is made by some 〈◊〉 Subterraneous heat that 〈◊〉 the sumes of Mercury and Sulphur in which Mines 't is found from their being able to make the Cinnabar its Resemblance by an Artificial 〈◊〉 out of the Butter of Antimony in which is both Sulphur and Mercury tho themselves were never working under ground and in the Mines If we must be put upon such a piece of Impertinence as the Postscript would have it to find out this King Adam's Court too I 'll just take the Liberty to put them to just such another task They will have their instituted Common-wealth to Commence from the World's insancy even before that of Israel before that Moses as they say had divided their Land unto them by Lot and turned the several Tribes into so many Republicks And then let them tell me what sort of a Republick it was that the Patriarchs liv'd under and were ruled by where it was that Abraham and his Fellow Citizens consulted to make Laws for the Benefit of the Common-wealth of his Family so great that his train'd Servants 318 sought 4 Kings where it was that Lot and his Herds-men when they pitch'd their Tents in the Plain set up their Stadthouse and commenced Burgomasters if in those days there was any Government purely Democratical that is 〈◊〉 Licentious it must have been seen in the Cities and Towns of those times some Sodom or Gomorrah yet even there the Text tells us Bera was King of the one and Birsha of the other let them tell us where Isaac when he settled in the Valley of Gerar set up his Servants for Senators tho he was grown so great since they will have it so in the Common-wealth of his Houseshold that a mighty King of those times whom the Text expresly calls so Abimilech told him that he was much mightier than he and the Philistines envyed and 〈◊〉 him too for it Let them tell us how Jacob liv'd in the Republick of his Sons and Servants in Succoth tho such a numerous train that they could venture to invade the City of the Shechemites inhabited by the Subjects of Hamor the Hivite whom the Scripture calls the Prince of the Country and sure these Patriarchs were somewhat more than the ordinary Fathers of Families as Plato would make them when their Forces were so
Majesty and a severe one too besides its being Capital to have his Goods confiscated his Children 〈◊〉 and his very Memory damn'd and one would think it might have serv'd for Parricide too but they 〈◊〉 upon that Treason so gross such a Traytor so great that for a 〈◊〉 time he superseded even the Invention of a Torment from his Insuperable quiet Mr. Hunt would do well and like himself that is to 〈◊〉 very Foolishly even from this too that the Romans had once no Regard no respect for this paternal Right because the Punishment of Parracide was once left out of their Laws and yet at last that it might be no longer unpunishable only upon the same presumption that there could not be found such Criminals one Cnej. Pompeius is said to have been the Author and Inventor of a Natural Punishment if possible for a Crime so unnatural that is as he had Rebell'd against the Laws of Nature in this his Crime so he should be depriv'd while living of the benefit of all her Elements and neither her Heaven or Earth receive him after Death but to be Buried alive with wild Beast in a Bag and set a floating in the midst of the Sea whereas if they kill'd any other Kindred or Relation like Common Felons they were only punisht by the Cornelian Law And now by this time I hope I may with modesty maintain whatever our mighty 〈◊〉 do say to disprove 〈◊〉 that I 've shown the Paternal Power in the begining of the World to have been patriarchal and Absolute And in all succeeding Ages to have been sub ordinately Soveraign in the respective Families and several Households in which the Parent does preside and that asserted from the very Civil 〈…〉 that establish a Supream 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 only that he 〈◊〉 be the more ador'd whereas these dress up somewhat of Divinity it self in the most frightful form to make it 〈◊〉 and Contemn'd they tell us 't is Monstrous Trayterous Papal Divelish and this is the 〈◊〉 Varnish these Villains 〈◊〉 over it when all the while the Colours are only of their own 〈◊〉 This is their Trojan Horse that must 〈◊〉 Popery and Arbitrary Power and carries Fire and Sword in its Belly but in these their aspersions as they 〈◊〉 the Bible and 〈◊〉 the very Book of Life that in several places 〈◊〉 to us the very Divinity 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 what was never lain down that all mankind was born by the Laws of God and the 〈◊〉 of Nature to submit to an absolute Kingly Government not restrainable by Law or Oath Thus the Postscript will draw from it that it 〈◊〉 such a Government to be Establisht by God and Nature for all mankind that it proves a Charter to Kings Granted by God Almighty But such 〈◊〉 were barr'd from being so much as Evidence by the Civil Law they were forc't to subscribe their accusations and be 〈◊〉 if their Falsehoods were detected with a retaliation and our own Statutes of King Edward provided once against such false suggesters with an incurring the like Punishment they would have brought others to suffer and 〈◊〉 pity but those 〈◊〉 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. 〈◊〉 or the 〈◊〉 their subscription too Why were they not so fair as to cite the 〈◊〉 out of Filmer wherein these puzzel'd Senseless positions were asserted The Substance the whole design of that Loyal and 〈◊〉 piece is only to expose the Natural Liberty of the People or as they would make 〈◊〉 the Subjects Divine 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 us the Royal Authority of the 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 Democracy and popular Government more Bloody 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That People cannot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or punish their Kings That neither those of Israel or Judah were bound by their Law but were always 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 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 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 his 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 〈◊〉 and prejudic'd against such a Notion
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 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 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 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 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 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'dthemselves 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 fort 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 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 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 sought their Soveraign in the Name of King and Parliament so now the Souldiers of Fairsax 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 Sidney says Such a general revolt of the Subjects can not be call'd a Rebellion And 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
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 Common Law and confirmed by special Act of Parliament The Commons they send up a Vote and Bill for suppressing it The High Commission was establisht by the Statute of the Queen the Commons come and would put it down with a Vote The Court of Wards and Livery the tenures of which were even before the Conquest and drew Ward and Marriage after it was establisht by particular 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 Custom and several Statutes abolisht by the Parliament in the Year 1641. The King had the Courts of his Forests his Judge in it constituted of old by Writ then by Letters Pattents This was a grievance which was never before and therefore must and was supprest with the rest The 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 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 Laud with an Ordinance Resolved by all the Judges in Queen Elizabeths time that to levy War to remove evil Counsellors is High Treason against the King they past a Vote that the King was seduc'd by evil Counsellors against whom they levied War to remove There is a special Statute that says expresly that the Subjects that aid the King shall not be molested or questioned They publisht their Declaration 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 Law makes those Delinquents that adhere to the King's Enemies they Vote those that serve him in such Wars Traitors by a Fundamental Law The 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 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 Act of Parliament The Parliament order the raising an Army against the K. declared Treason by special Act The King then Summons his Subjects to his assistance at York and comes and sets up his Standard at Nottingham for that was warranted by the Laws of the Land and 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 Republicans either of which should it gain credit is enough to run us again all into Blood And both together as false as Hell and can be the Doctrine of none but what 's the Author of all Sedition the Devil These were the Plots which they practis'd upon that poor Prince whose Sincerity was always such that he could not suspect in Nature such a sort of designing Villains nor humane Wit well imagine such ingrateful Monsters that for their King 's continual Concessions to better the Conditions of his Subjects should still Plot upon him to render his own the worse Here we saw what all these Positions Principles Practises all their Preaching Praying Printing did tend to and terminate in the People enslav'd the Monarch murder'd the Government undermin'd But as these Maxims of our Democratick's were destructive to our Monarchy and produc'd as you have seen those Plots and conspiracies that subverted it so shall we see by subsequent Events and be inform'd from as much Matter of Fact what I have heretofore insinuated only from the force of Reason that the same Principles after they had set up their Commonwealth made them Plot too upon one another When the Parliament had imprison'd their King whom they bought for a Slave confin'd him with a merciless Cruelty at Holdenby-house then a Castle and Garrison and by that Act made him no more a Monarch but a Prisoner of War themselves no more his Subjects but his Masters and Sovereigns the Parliament having had so far the End of their Plot upon the King now the Army take their Turn to Plot upon the Parliament who when they had made their Monarch accountable to their Memberships might as well sure expect by their Servants to be call'd to account The Parliament when they had wrested the Sword out of the King's Hand knew themselves the Supream Power and were as certain they could as soon send him packing with his Supream Right The Soldiers now are sensible that the Members of the Army have that Sword in their Hand which the Parliament took out of the King 's and see no reason why they may not make themselves the Supream Parliament for this their Original Right of the People over the Magistrate will always I warrant you be appropriated to that part of it that has an Actual Power and that they found for Cromwel conspires with his Adjutators who like provok'd Beasts begin to be warm'd into a perception of their own Strength which even when a Horse comes to know to be sure he 'll throw his Rider For this he fools his Fellow-Senators with a Suggestion of his readiness to suppress any Soldiers Insurrection at the same time that he set them on to rise The Parliament had plotted by Subscription and Petitioning to advance their Power upon the King their humble Servants the Soldiers now subscribe petition that the Parliament would be pleas'd to submit to their Power send to the Good Houses at Westminster the Representation of their Army that they forsooth were the Delinquents now and that they be speedily purg'd of such Members as for Delinquency were not to sit there They make eleven of them Traytors impeach them of High-Treason to
Inst. C. 1. And had we therefore then no King their number is greater now and must therefore our Monarch be less Page 37. All Lands are mediately or immediately held of the King as Soveraign Lord. Eliz. 498. Ass. 1 13. Major singulis minor Universis Vid. Eliz. 498. Ass. 1. 18. Duck. de Authoritate Lib. 1. c. 6 Vid. Cook 1. Inst. C. 1. Predium Domini Regis est dominium directum cujus nullus Author est nisi Deus Page 98. 99 100. Page 98. He call's ours a mungrel Church from it's Innovation he means of Ceremonies The King calls them Adjourns Dissolves them at his pleasure and this long Practices prov'd from the Chronicles of our Land and its Fundamental Law Speed 645. 4. Inst. 27. 2. Medon Sidney whose very Motto 〈◊〉 haec inimica Tyrannis Page 114. Page 105. It is no Stat. if the King assent not 12. H. 7. 20. H. 8. An Act. March 1657. Vid. Act of Oblivion 51 15. Ed. 2. Great Stat. Roll. 26. H. 3. to Ed. 3. 1. Ric. 3. Exact Abridg fol. 112. 1. R. 3. 24. H. 8. Page 103. Coke first Institutes Lib. 2d C. 10. T. Burgage Page 111. 4. Insti 27. 2. 1. Inst. Sect. 164. Plato Red. page 105. Page 107. Ibid. page 108. 109. 25. Ed. 3. Plat. pag. 109. History of the Association Printed by Janeway Page 3. Hunt in post pag. 92 93. 〈…〉 Ibid. page 3. 〈…〉 Page 105. Page 107. Page 116. Ibid. Stanley's Case H. 7. 1 Edward 3. 1 C. 3. 2 Hen. 7. 4. 5. Mary This Commission was in force Rot par 5. H. 4. n. 24. repealed by this 4. and 5. of P. M. but this repealing Stat. is again repealed Jacob. 1. and so of force in this King now as well as when they deny'd it to his Father 2. Ed. 6. 2. C. 2d Cook 2. Inst. 30. Car. 2. C. 6. 7. Ed. 1. Plat. pag. 124. Daniel 53. H. 3d. K. John Henry 3. Vld. Stow page 183. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 5. 〈◊〉 1648. Plat. pag. 130. Which has been done too as one of 〈◊〉 own Authors tells us 〈◊〉 in 's Centurie Hist. 〈◊〉 the Grand Court of Equity 〈◊〉 moderating the common 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Crompton Jurisdiction For more of this Courts power practise see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reports The Chancellor 〈◊〉 two Powers one absolute the other ordinary by the first he is not 〈◊〉 as 〈◊〉 Judges or limited 〈◊〉 the Letter of the Law Vid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cap. 20. fol. 〈◊〉 Polldore Virg. makes the Chancellor only Coaeual with the Conqueror but 〈◊〉 in that too as well as others Mr. 〈◊〉 shews us they were long before in 's Orig. And so my Lord Coke also in his 4 〈◊〉 Certain it is that both British and Saxon Kings had their Courts of Chancery Coke 4. Inst. C. 8. Vid Mirror C. 1. §. 3. Glanvll lib. 12. C. 1. 〈◊〉 Lib. 2. C. 12. Vld. Reliq Wotton p. 307. Pages 167 168 169 c. 〈◊〉 Journal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No priviledge of Parliament holds for Treason Felony or even Breach of the Peace 4. part Inst. 25. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vid. Baker p. 516. An. 1641. Vid. Kings Declar. 1683. Hunt Pla. to p. 169. Coventry Parl. 38. H. 6. declar'd Develish by 39. H. 6. 1. Edw. 4. that of Rich. 2 Treasonable Par. Car. 1. 1641. 〈◊〉 in Princip C. 8. qui itaqae hujus viri rerum gestarum rationes animo reputaret nihil aut parum in 〈◊〉 animadverteret aut fortunae asseribendum Plato page 221. p. 234. p. 236. Making Leagues absolutely in the King 19. Ed. 4. 239. 249. 252. Plat. 239. Plat. p. 249. Plat. 252. 〈◊〉 Vi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato p. 〈◊〉 Cook 4. Inst. Cap. 2. p. 53. Vid. 〈◊〉 several Rolls of Par. cited by him for it's 〈◊〉 Rot. Par. 50. Ed. 3. n. 10. 1. 〈◊〉 2. 〈◊〉 4. c. Rot. Claus. 12. Ed. 3. Par. 2. m. 19.39 Ed. 3. fol. 14. Ad moderandum Regum 〈◊〉 Calvin's 2. edit Strasburg 1539. Plat. page 241. 16. Car. 1. 16. Car. 2. * 4. 〈◊〉 p. 54. ‖ 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. 〈◊〉 Coventry speach to the Commons Ibid. p. 57. Plat. page 〈◊〉 Cook 4. c. 2 Inst. Stanford 72. F Senators sunt partes corporls Regls Holl. fol. 169. Matt. Paris 205. 〈◊〉 Par. 3. H. 6. 〈◊〉 3. Coke 4. Inst. p. 53. Inas c. 46. Anno 1638. Vid. Sir Will. Dugdale's short view 45. p. 48 49 50. Baker 406. 10. Jac. 6. Act 12. Parl. 9. Regn. Marlae Act 75. Plato p. 240. Plato 242. 1642. Vid. Rings Answer to the 19. propositions Rex est principlum caput Finis Parl. Vld. Modus renend Parl. 4. Inst. fol. 3. Vid. Reliquiae Wotton â—oscarino's case 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 2. part of the Inst. fol. 496. Kings Praerogative is part of the Law of England Merc. Pol. Num. 107. Merc. Pol. Jun. 17. 52. Plato Gildas B. who was born Anno 493. 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 Sax on 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. 1. Inst. §. 164. p. 110. Magn. Chart. Chart. Forrest Stat. of Ireland made H. 3. the 1. Laws we had from their very words seem all made by the sole power of the King No Commons mentioned in Stat. Merton 20. H. 3. only discreet men mention'd in Stat. of Marlbrigd 52. H. 3. But all the Commonalty is said summon'd in the praeamb to Stat. West 1.3 E. 1. In Stat. Bigamy 4. Ed. 1. Stat. Mortemain 7. E. 1. Art sup Chart. 28. E. 1. Stat Escheat 29. E. 3. not summon'd 34. E. no Law to be made without Kt. and Burg. Vid. also Dr. B. Answer to P. 〈◊〉 10. But still left to the King how many of those he wou'd call And per Stat. 7. H. 4. the 〈◊〉 was first fram'd directing 2 to be chosen for each County Burrough Of Antient time both Houses sate together first sever'd a. H. 4.4 Inst p. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 95. Jani 〈◊〉 c. Argument Anti Norman Miscel. Parl. Postscript 〈◊〉 sup A Priest of 〈◊〉 Vid. Baker Vid. Eadmerus a Monk who writ the Life of William 2d lived in his Time Vid. Baker p. 34. 〈◊〉 William 2d So also Florence of Worst Baker p. 49. The words of a Priest lately tryed and convicted of High Treason 3 Car. 1.
all their Principles at least unfortunately transcribed them by Inspiration which I may demonstrate with as plain a Parallel as any Corollary can be drawn from a Mathematical Proposition when I come in the next Chapter to handle that Reproach to Christianity that Opprobrium of our Church In the mean while give me leave to close this with these few Animadversions upon some of this Lawyers Sentences before we come to the Lewd Maxims of the Divine He tells us with Passion and transport that this Opinion of a Divine Authority in Kings renders us all Traytors and this Doctrine of their Divinity is dangerous to the Peace of the Kingdom and pregnant with Wars Nothing but a Zeal that had overcome his Senses could precipitate him upon such Paradoxes the only thing that prevails most with me and I believe with all that are not open Enemies to the State or fled from its Justice for an entertaining of this Religious Principle of our Loyalty is that nothing can possible with Christians be a better Argument for their living peaceable under so good a Government or were it not so good than to believe that those that are their Rulers have Authority from their God and sure his Anointed is preserved the sooner from being toucht from the regard an Heathen would have to any thing that has a power Sacred and Divine what can be a stronger Conviction to a Reasonable Soul of the good the peaceable Consequences of such a pious Doctrine than that those that contend so much against it are still found to be Disturbers of our Peace Can he prove that the Consecration of a Church and the very presence of God in the Tabernacle shall be an Encouragement for Sacrilege and an Invitation for a Villain to rob it of its Candlestick Chalices Offerings and Oblations Only that he may break the Tables before the Face of his God that gave the Law But whenever our Peace is interrupted by this Doctrine It is only by such Sacrilegious Desperado's as dare attempt Majesty and that upon the same account for Plunder and Prey At the last he is mighty tender of his Fanaticks and their Throats from the Papists but sure he may be now less concerned when we can match them with an intended Massacre of their own as clearly proved as the noon-day but may well be disbelieved by such who can not only side with the Turks in their Arms but almost most in their Infidelity But I can tell them a more Ingenuous a better way of denying their Plot by confessing it by owning what indeed it was a bare-fac'd Conspiracy a Resolute Rebellion Hitherto Mr. Hunt has been animadverted on as his Lewd Expressions and the more abominable Principles in a Person pretending to so much sincerity lay scattered promiscuously so that our Remarks must have made a Miscellany as well as his Book but its whole substance of Sedition I shall reduce now to three several Heads First * That Assertion of the Legisative which he would not allow in the King Secondly That Divine Right which he would rather place in the People Thirdly That Succession of the Crown to depend upon a Parliament or the power of both The first Reason that he gives for the first is from his Rule and Inferrence in Arithmetick where a Unite added to two makes a Third And the Conclusion is because none can say therefore those two do not go to the making that number and what then Therefore the King hath not the Legislative and this is the Logick of this Body of Law when it sets up for the Mathematicks and would demonstrate the King's Co-ordinacy as plain as a Probleme and he might have told us too without turning pedant in his Latinisms of Vnites and Triads that one and two makes three which no body can deny as the burden of the Ballad has it and here upon the strength of his Performance he has found out this wonderful discovery I know not what kind of Figure he would make of the King here but I am sure such kind of Seditious Souls could with all their Hearts make him pass for a Cypher I could find in my Heart to cap the pretty fimile with another as silly A three legg'd Stool take away one and all tumbles to the Ground they being all Equal and Co-ordinate powers for the supporting of this Supremacy in Cathedra which sounds as well as their Curia or Camera their old musty Metaphysicks that distinguisht once the King from his Crown And this obliging Metaphor will serve Mr. Hunt's turn much better For here every foot of this Magisterial Stool is commonly made of the same Matter and Mold joint Supporters of the tripple Dignity whereas his Unite even amongst Mathematicians is allowed somewhat of Precedency and to be the First the Foundation of all number But to be serious if possible in an Inference so silly must he not suppose in such a simile of two Figures which by the Accession of an Unite is made a Triad and the two concurring as much to the making that number as well as that one must he not suppose I say this to result from the equality of every single Unite so that one can not confer more to the Composition of this Triad than another If they be not equally concerned or impowered then one would concur more to the making up that 〈◊〉 than the rest so that this Law Philosopher this Cook upon Hereboord will be reduced to this Dilemma either they do not equally go to the making up that number or they do If they do not he denies his own Supposition and gives himself the Lye if he grant they do then his simile is Nonsense in the Application and a very begging of the Question For we say that our Monarch who if he please shall be the Vnite for once is more than either of the other Two and if the peevish Malecontent won't be angry I 'll tell him more than Both his Assent is such an One as is attended with a power to deny and neither of them will pretend to the Negative and that is the true Reason we find all our Republicans so furiously contending for the taking away the Kings It was for this Pryn Printed and Pestered the Press For this he trump'd up his Treatise That his Majesty 's had not an absolute Negative Voice to deny Bills of Common Right For this 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 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