for the Safety and Well-Government of his Subjects the abandoning tho for so short a time the Protection and Defence of the People committed to his Charge Whatever things are proper unto Supreme Majesty Scepters and Crowns Soveraignty the Purple Robe the Globe or Golden Ball and Holy Unction have as long appertained to the British Monarch as to any other Prince in Europe The Antiquity of anointing Kings in Britain has been already shewn out of Gildas and as for the other four they are by Leland a famous Antiquary ascribed unto King Arthur who began his Reign in the Year of our Lord 506. Which was as soon as they were ordinarily in use with the Roman Emperors The King of Great Britain is an absolute and unaccountable Monarch a Free Prince of Soveraign Power not holding his Kingdom in Vassallage nor receiving his Instalment or Investiture from another Nor does he acknowledge Superiority to any but to GOD alone He is not only the Supreme but sole Legislator within his Dominions The Power of making Laws whatever some Antimonarchists pretend to the contrary rests solely in him And altho the Gracious Condescension of our Kings has been such as to render the subordinate Concurrence of the Estates of each Realm a Condition requisite to the making of new or abrogating of old Laws within the respective Kingdoms yet are they not thereby admitted to any Share in the Soveraignty their Power being wholly derivative from the King who is Caput Principium Finis Parliamentorum the three Estates when assembled in Parliament being as much his Subjects as every particular Man of them is when the Meeting is dissolved All Bills passed by them are but so much dead matter till quickned by his Royal Fiat which alone gives Life and Form to all their Proceedings Nor is it ex debito Justitiae but of his Special Grace that he passes such Acts as are presented to him Thus Henry the IIId begins his Magna Charta with Know ye that WE of our meer and free Will have given these Liberties Thus we hear King Edward the Ist saying The King of his special Grace for Redress of the Grievances of His People sustained by his Wars and for the Amendment of their Estate and to the intent that they may be the more ready to do him Service the more willing to assist and aid him in time of need Grants 28. E. 1. c. 1. And altho of later times Laws are said to be made by Authority of Parliament yet if we look into our antient Statutes we shall find the meaning to be that The King Ordains the Lords advise and the Commons consent Those then are much mistaken who affirm the Parliament to be at the least as Essential a Part of the Government as the Prince Which if it were true whenever the Parliament is dissolved the Government would be so too But this with the Pernicious Maxim of Coordinacy or sharing the Soveraign Power between King Lords and Commons with other treasonable and Antimonarchical Doctrines daily dispersed amongst the People and with the utmost of his Art industriously asserted by the Author of a late seditious Book entituled Plato Redivivus together with his audacious Proposals aiming to take all the Flowers out of the Imperial Diadem of the British Monarch are most fitly to be answered in Westminster-Hall as tending no less to the subversion of our Government which being purely Monarchical may be without the two Houses whereas they cannot be without the King than those traitorous Designs for which Coleman and his Accomplices paid their forfeited Lives to the Justice of the Laws The King of Great Britain is Lord Paramount supreme Landlord of all the Lands within his Dominions all landed men being mediately or immediately his Tenants by some Tenure or other By the Laws and Ordinances of ancient Kings saith Sir Edward Cook in the first part of his Institutes and especially of King Alfred it appeareth that the first Kings of this Realm had all the Lands of England in Demesne and the great Manors and Royalties they reserved to themselves and of the Remnant they for the Defence of the Realm enfeoffed the Barons of the Realm with such Jurisdiction as the Court Baron now hath The King as it is evident by the Rolls of the Chancellery in Scotland which contain their eldest and fundamental Laws is Dominus omnium bonorum and Dominus directus totius Dominii the whole Subjects being but his Vassals and from him holding all their Lands as their Over-lord Thus none but the King hath Allodium and Directum Dominium the sole and independent Property in any Land Upon this Ground no doubt it was that Serjeant Heal in the three and fortieth year of Queen Elizabeth said in Parliament He marvelled the House stood either at the granting of a Subsidy or time of Payment when all we have is her Majesties and She may lawfully at her pleasure take it from us and that She had as much Right to all our Lands and Goods as to any Revenue of the Crown And he said he could prove it by Precedents in the time of Henry the IIId King John and King Stephen And upon the same Ground was it resolved by the Judges in the beginning of the Reign of King James when there was a purpose to have taken away Tenures by Act of Parliament That such a Statute had been void because the Tenures were for the Defence of the King and Kingdom And altho since that the Tenures which gave a Dependency upon the Crown and were the greatest Safety to the King and People have been taken away and thereby a great Blow given to Monarchy yet let those who have the Fee the Jus perpetuum and the Vtile Dominium have a care lest by following the mischievous Advice of Plato Redivivus and abusing the Grace and Bounty of the Prince by endeavoring to draw the Soveraignty to themselves they necessitate not their King for the Preservation of himself and People to have Recourse to his Prerogative which is a Preheminence in Cases of Necessity above and before the Law of Property or Inheritance For the Prevention whereof it is to be wished that either by an Act of Resumption of the ancient Demesns of the Crown which was a sacred Patrimony and by Law unalienable or by such other way as the Wisdom of the Nation shall think fit a Royal Support adaequate to the Charges of the Crown be made for the King to defend his Kingdom and protect his People so that he may not be reduced to the Infelicity of having a precarious Revenue out of the Peoples Purse and to be beholden to a Parliament for his Bread in time of Peace which is no good Condition for a Monarchy As the Legislative Power is solely in the King so he alone has the Soveraign Power in the Administration of Justice and Execution of the Law He is the Fountain of all Justice which by his Judges and
to make use of that Arbitrary Power whereof tho in the exercise of it he may restrain himself yet he can never be divested to secure himself and people from the Contrivances of malicious and ill-designing Persons Those therefore that argue for Limited or Mixed Monarchies do in effect only plead for Anarchy and Confusion For either these Limits must be such Laws and Bounds as the Monarch has set himself to Govern by to the Observance whereof tho he may by Promise so far engage himself that he cannot as has been said ordinarily transgress them without the Sin of Injustice yet this Promise of his which is but an After-act of Grace not dissolving that absolute Subjection which preceded it his Power if he will sinfully put it forth to act is no less Arbitrary than it was before the making of the Promise Or if you will imagin these Bounds of the Monarchs Power to be ab externo and not from the free Determination of his own Will then the Subject as they say not being legally bound to subjection in case the Prince commands beyond the Law if there arise a Dispute between the Monarch and the meanest of his Subjects about the Legality or Illegality of his Commands either the Monarch himself must be Judge and then farewel Limitation or else the whole people or some part of them and then farewel Monarchy or else there must be no Judge at all and then farewell Government So likewise in that which they call a mixed Monarchy or a Government composed of Monarchy Aristocracy and Democracy either the Soveraign Power must be Originally in the Monarch and derivatively only in the others and then farewel the Mixture or else it must tho acknowledged to be an indivisible Beam of Divine Perfection be originally shared amongst them all and then farewel the Monarchy So also in this Mixture as they call it of Power if a Difference arise between the Prince and the States there being according to their Principles no Authoritative judge to determin it the Government is dissolved and every man left at liberty to side with that Part which in his Reason and Judgment stands most for publick Good more than which the Wit of Man cannot say for Anarchy The unlimited Jurisdiction of Kings is so strongly asserted in Scripture that it occasioned one who writ in justification of the late Rebellion to affirm That to make a King by the Standard of GOD's Word is to make the Subjects Slaves for Conscience sake Than which I know not whether any thing can be said more impious The Paternal Empire as it was in it self hereditary so was it as other Goods are alienable by Patent and seizable by an Usurper Thus amongst the first Fathers of Families dispersed by the Confusion of Babel was Nimrod who being no doubt by good Right Lord or King over his own Family and not contented therewith did against Right enlarge his Empire by violently seizing on the Rights of other Fathers of Families and laid the Foundation of the first of those great Kingdoms which for the vast Extent of their Dominions were called the four Monarchies of the World Yet this Power he got by Usurpation and not by any Election of or Faction with the People or Multitude The Dominions indeed of Princes anciently were but small consisting generally but of Cities apiece with the adjacent Teritories Thus in a little Corner of Asia nine Kings met at once in Battle In the small Circuit of the Land of Canaan Joshuah destroyed one and thirty Kings Adonibezek made seventy Kings whose Thumbs and Toes he had cut off to feed under his Table Two and thirty Kings came to Benhadad King of Syria and seventy Kings of Greece went to the Wars of Troy But in process of Time partly by Conquest partly by Lineal Succession and partly by the Cession of many little Princes these Petty Kingdoms were united and greater Monarchies erected Whence tho Kings are not now the Natural Parents of their Subjects yet they all either are or are to be reputed the next Heirs to those Progenitors who were at first the Natural Parents of the whole people and as such succeed to the Exercise of Soveraign Jurisdiction not only over their own Children but over their Brethren and all that were subject to their Fathers As long as the first Fathers lived they were properly called Patriarchs but when the Fatherhood it self was extinct and the Right only descended to the next Heir they were more significantly styled Kings and Princes If through Negligence the Knowledge of the true Heir to any Kingdom be lost for the Right it self never can yet does not the Supremacy devolve to the multitude who never yet had right to Rule or choose their Rulers but to the Princes and independent Heads of Families and because the Dependency of ancient Families is frequently obscure and worn out of Knowledge to such persons as the Wisdom of the precedent Monarchs thought fit to adopt for Heads of Families and Princes of Provinces These and none but these have it such Case alone Power to consent in uniting or conferring their Fatherly Right of Soveraign Authority oâ— whom they please Nor does the person thus elected hold his Power as a Donative from the People but from GOD from whom alone he receives his Royal Charter of Universal Father tho testified by the Ministry of the Heads of the People And altho I do not say that all popular Governments are so far unlawful as to oblige them things being as they are to subject themselves to Monarchy yet this I must aver as a most undoubted Truth that no other Government but Monarchy had ever any lawful Original there never having been any Nation which was not for many years governed by Kings untill Wantonness Ambition or Faction of the People made them attempt new wayes of Regiment which Mutations alwayes proved bloody and miserable to their Authors and happy in nothing but the short time of their Duration The Excellency of Monarchy is not only manifest by the Divineness of its Originall Excellency but also by the singular Advantages it has over any other Form of Government The chief End of Government is that the People may according to the Apostle Lead a quiet and peaceable Life in all Godliness and Honesty Consequently whereunto we find that in all Monarchies both before the Law of Moses under it and ever since whether Grecian or Barbarian Jewish or Pagan Christian or Turkish a singular Care has been taken for Religion the Priests whereof have been alwayes had in such Respect and Veneration as to have an eminent Share in the Administration of the Government But in all popular States their main Devotion being exercised only in opposing and suppressing Monarchy their next is to exclude the Clergy from medling with Government wherein the Vnited Netherlands and Venice of which it is commonly said that the one hath all Religions and the other none do at this day
MARIA born the fifteenth of August 1682. and Baptized the day following by Dr. Henry Compton Lord Bishop of London her Godfather being the Duke of Ormond and her Godmothers the Countesses of Arundel and Clarendon Though the ambitious and designing Adversaries of His Royal Highness imploy their utmost Artifice to cloud and conceal from the eyes of the People his many admirable endowments and Princely qualities yet cannot they with any color of Truth deny him to be a most Glorious and Honourable Prince not only of a most high Spirit and invincible Courage but also a Commander of great experience both at Land and Sea where he has not only several times exposed his Life for the safety and honour of this Nation but also where-ever he appeared carried victory along with him which in his absence was not found He is of a quick apprehension and sound judgment sedulous and diligent in Business wary in Counsel speedy in execution and in his resolutions constant and inflexible He is a kind Brother a dutiful Subject an obliging Husband a tender Father a firm Friend and an excellent Master In his Word and Promises strictly Faithful and in payment of his Debts punctually just He is brave and generous liberal but not profuse manages his own fortune discreetly and yet keeps the best Court and Equipage of any Subject in Christendom He is affable and courteous to all and however the inveterate malice of his restless and factious Enemies may have possessd some credulous Persons to the contrary of no persecuting or vindicative Spirit nor hath any thing in his whole Conduct to be excepted against much less dreaded He is in a word what the French call un honneste homme A Person endowed with all the good Qualities that make a man truly valuable and seems born to retrieve the sinking glory of the English Nation Of the Prince of Orange AFter the Duke of York his Issue the next Heir to the Crown of Great Britain is William Frederick Henry of Nassaw Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of the united Provinces only Issue of the Princess Royal Mary Eldest Daughter of our late martyred Soveraign King Charles the I st and Wedded on the second of May 1641. to William of Nassaw only Son of Henry Prince of Orange then Commander in chief of all the Forces of the States General both by Land and Sea He was born at the Hague on the fourteenth of November 1650 being nine days after his Fathers decease He had for his Godfathers the Lords States General of Holland Zealand and the Cities of Delft Leyden and Amsterdam and for Godmothers the Queen of Bohemia and the old Princess of Orange His Governess was the English Lady Stanhope then Wife to the Heer Van Hemvliet Being eight years of Age he was sent to the University at Leyden On the fourth of November 1677. being then near Seven and Twenty years of Age he espoused the Lady Mary eldest Daughter to His Royal Highness James Duke of York His Revenue is about threescore Thousand Pounds Sterling per Annum besides Military advantages enjoyed by his Father and Ancestors amounting to about thirty thousand Pounds Sterling per Annum more He is a Prince of great valour and courage in whom the High and Princely Qualities of his Ancestors have always appeared and a great Lover of Souldiers Of the Queen of Spain THe next Heir after the forementioned to the Imperial Crown of Great Britain is Her most Serene Majesty the present Queen Consort of Spain Daughter of the Princess Henrietta youngest Sister to His present Sacred Majesty of Great Britain by the most illustrous Prince Philip now Duke of Orleans only Brother to the most Christian King Lewis the XIVth now reigning She was born in the year 1663. and was in December 1679 Married to Charles the IId King of Spain Of the Prince Elector Palatine THere being left alive no more of the Off-spring of King Charles the I st the next Heirs to the Imperial Crown of these Realms are the Issue and Descendents of Elizabeth late Queen of Bohemia only Sister to the said King who was on the fourteenth of February 1612 married to Frederick the Vth. Prince Elector Palatine of the Rhine afterwards stiled King of Bohemia Of these the first is Charles the present Prince Elector Palatine of the Rhine commonly called the Palsgrave from the High-Dutch Psaltzgraffe Palatii Comes Grandson to the said Queen by her eldest Son Charles Lodowick Prince Elector Palatine of the Rhine lately deceased His Mother was the Lady Charlotte Daughter to William the Vth. Landgrave of Hesse and to Elizabeth Emilia of Hanaw He was born on the one and thirtieth of March 1651. and has lately married the Sister of Christiern the Vth. present King of Denmark This Prince hath a Sister named Louise born in May 1652 and now married to the Duke of Orleans only Brother to the present French King Of Prince Rupert NExt unto the Prince Elector Palatine and his Sister is the illustrious Prince Rupert Duke of Bavaria and Cumberland Count Palatine of the Rhine Earl of Holderness and Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter born at Prague on the seventeenth of December 1619 not long before that very unfortunate Battel there fought whereby not only all Bohemia was lost but the Palatine Family was for almost thirty years outed of all their possessions in Germany till that in the year 1648 by the Famous Treaty at Munster Charles Lodowick eldest Brother to this Prince had the Lower Palatinate restored to him for which he was constrained to quit all his right to the Vpper Palatinate and to accept of an eighth Electorship at a juncture of time when his Uncle Charles the I st King of Great Britain had he not been embroiled at home by an horrid Rebellion had been the most considerable of all other at this Treaty and the Prince Elector his Nephew would have had the greatest advantages there Prince Rupert at the age of thirteen years marched with the then Prince of Orange to the Siege of Rhineberg At the Age of eighteen he commanded a Regiment of Horse in the German Wars and being at the Battel of Lemgou in the year 1638 taken by the Imperialists under the command of Count Hatzfield he continued a Prisoner above three years About the beginning of September 1642 he came into England with his Brother Prince Maurice to offer his service to the King his Uncle against a factious Party of the two Houses then rebelling against him and being within a fortnight after his arrival put in command over a small Party of those Forces which the King had at that time gathered together marched with them into divers parts of Warwickshire Nottinghamshire Leicestershire Worcestershire and Cheshire his Forces still increasing as he marched Being about the middle of October following made General of the Horse to the King he soon after fought and defeated Colonel Sandys neer Worcester on the