Secondly I 'll shew that this their confounded principle of perfect Confusion is not only against the Fundamental Law of the Land but against the sense of every Law that ever was made in it Every preamble of an Act and that of every Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty It is no Stat. if the King assent not 12. H. 7. 20. H. 8. by and with the CONSENT of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in the present Parliament Assembled And then let any sober person Judge where lies the Soveraignty would it be suffer'd to be thus exprest were they not satisfy'd they were not all Soveraigns or if they were ought it not according to this Rebel and Republican run We the King Lords and Commons Enact but I 'll let him know how and what the Libertine would again have that Enacting part of an Act of Parliament to be tho the Politick Knave fear'd it was too soon yet to declare plainly for an Usurpation viz. Be it Enacted and ordained An Act. March 1657. Vid. Act of Oblivion 51 by his Highness the Lord Protector Or the Parliament of England having had good Experience of the Affection of the people to this present Government by their ready Assistance in the defence there of against Charles Stewart Son of the Late Tyrant and his Forces invading this Nation do Enact c. That our Kings in the time of the Saxons Danes and some part of the Normans had more absolute Power over their Subjects than some of their Successors since himself can't deny the Charter of Liberties being made but in the Reign of Henry the Third and when the People had less of Priviledges the Kings must be supposed to have had more of Praerogative therefore we shall examine only what and where the Supremacy is at present and where the Laws of the Land not the Will of the Prince do place it In the Parliament that was held at York in Edward the Seconds time The Rebellious Barons that 15. Ed. 2. had violently extorted what Concessions they pleas'd from the Crown in His like those in the three foregoing Reigns when they seal'd almost each Confirmation of their Charter in Blood were all censured and condemn'd and the encroaching Ordinances they made in those Times all repeal'd Because says the Statute The Kings Royal Power Great Stat. Roll. 26. H. 3. to Ed. 3. 1. Ric. 3. Exact Abridg fol. 112. was restrain'd against the Greatness of his Seigniory Royal contrary to the State of the Crown and that by Subjects Provisions over the Power Royal of the Ancestors of our Lord the King Troubles and Wars came upon the Realm I look upon this as an absolute Acknowledgment of a Royal Power which is sure the same with his Soveraign sufficiently distinguisht here from the Parliaments or the Peoples co-ordinate Supremacy for those condemn'd Ordinances were lookt upon as Usurpations upon the Kings Supremacy which they call the Power Royal of his Ancestors and not as our Author would have too of the Sovereign power of Lords and Commons At the Convention of the three Estates first of Richard the Third where 1. R. 3. the Parliament call themselves so themselves expound also what is meant by it And say it is the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in present Parliament so that we have here the whole three States besides the King owning themselves such without assuming to themselves a Soveraign power recognizing the Right of Richard and acknowledging him the Sovereign And tho I shall for ever condemn as well as all Ages will their allowing his Usurpation a Right which was an absolute wrong yet this is an undeniable Argument that then they did not make their King Co-ordinate with themselves made themselves declared themselves three States without him and acknowledged their King the Sovereign and Supream That Act that punisht appeals to Rome with a premunire in Henry the Eighâ—h's time gives this Reason why 24. H. 8. none should be made to the Pope nor out of the Kingdom because the King alone was only the supream head in it It tells us expressly That England is an Empire that the King the Supream Head has the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Emperial Crown unto whom a body Politick divided into Terms and Names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden owe next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power Preheminence Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction Here his Body Politick is devided into Spiritual and Temporal here he is called the supreme Head and here I think is a full Recognition of his sole Sovereignty And 't is strange that what a Parliament did in Opposition to Popery should be so zealously contradicted by such Sycophants that pretend so much to oppose it In the next place he tells us of an error he lay under that he thought our Commonalty had not formally assembled in Parliament before Henry the Thirds time but of that now is fully Page 103. convinc'd by the Labours of some learned Lawyers whom he names and lets them know too how much they are obliged to him for the Honor But I suppose he reads but one sort of Books and that such as suit with his Humor and Sedition and of that Nature he can meet with Variety for I dare avow that within the space of six years all that ever was or can be said against the best of Governnent our own all that was or ever will be rak't up for justifying a Rebellion and restoring a Republick from falsifyed Roll and Record from perverted History and Matter of Fact by Pens virulent and Factious with all the Art and Industry and whatever thought could invent for its Ruine and Destruction has been Printed and Publisht such an Universal Conspiration of Men of several Faculties each assisting with what was his Excellency his Talent in Treason which seemed to be the Task-Master of the Town and Monopolizer of Trades But our Politician might return to his old Opinion again did he but consult other Authors I believe as learned Antiquarians I am sure more Loyal Subjects who can shew him that the Saxons Councils call'd the Witena Gemotes had in them no Commons That the Conqueror call'd none of them to his great Councils none in those of his two Sons that succeeded nor none in any of the Parliaments down to Henry the Third my Lord Coke tells us of the Coke first Institutes Lib. 2d C. 10. T. Burgage Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure
3. fol. 14. upon the suffrages of such a senate whom all our Laws declare has it self no other being but what it owes to the Breath of that Sovereign over whom they would so Preposterously Superintend as to set a Council can they think that even the Spartan Ephori would have ever been Constituted had their Kings by as strong Presidents of the Laws of their Land been allow'd the Liberty of Ad moderandum Regum Libidinem Calvin's 2. edit Strasburg 1539. Chusing their own advisers or would Calvin himself have recommonded them and the Roman Tribunes the Demarchi the Decemviral at Athens had he been assured that their Decrees and Edicts had all along placed it in the power of their Prince to be advised by whom he pleased and this Rebellious Project we now are examining I am sure would prove a greater Scourge and curb to our own Kings than ever the Romans or Athenians had for the management of theirs we must turn about even the very Text and invert our Prayers to the Almighty when a Parliament shall come to Counsel his Counsellors and teach his Senators Wisdom when it shall be in the Subjects power to set himself at his Soveraigns Table you may swear he 'll be first served too and that with his own Carving and therefore were they not forc't to rase Rolls and Records for the making such a Reformation in the State Reason it self is sufficiently the Faction's Foe and as much on the side of those that are the Kings Friends For let any sober Person but consider whether the greatest Confusion Disorder and Disturbance in the State would not be the Consequence of this very distracted Opinion do we not already too much experiment the disquiet of a divided Kingdom to be most dangerous when but a tumultuous part of a Parliament too much Predominates this Gentleman 's Quarantia Plat. page 241. or if you please the Kingdoms four General Councils are to be named in Parliament and then what would be the result of it but that his Majesty must be managed by a standing House of Commons or at best some Committee of Lords they need not then Labour for the Triennial Act of the late King confirmed 16. Car. 1. 16. Car. 2. by the too gracious Concession of this His Councils once their own Creatures would have too much Veneration for their kind Creators to diswade their King from a speedy Summons of a Senate tho assured secured of its being sufficiently Seditious they would soon supersede as superfluous one of the very Articles of such a Counsellors * 4. Inst p. 54. Oath where he swears to keep Secret the Kings Counsel for by such a Constitution they would be obliged to make a Report from the Council-Board to some Chair-man of a Committee a better Expedient I confess than an order for ‖ Parl. 25. Car. 1. just so took upon them to search the Signet Office and that of the Secretary whereof the King as justly complain'd Vid. Keeper Coventry Speech to the Commons Sr. Stephen's bringing in the Books And indeed none of the Kings Services should be then called Secret they would be soon Printed with their Votes and hardly be favoured with some of their own Affairs of Importance to be referred for the more private Hearing to a Committee of Secrecy the good advise his Majesty might expect from such Councils might be much like those of late from his Petitioners And he again told to be the mightiest Monarch by condescending to be the most puny Prince My Lord Cook tells us Ibid. p. 57. those Councils are there best proposed for the Kingdom when so that it can't be guess'd which way the King is enclined for fear I suppose of a servile Complyance but here the knowledge of his Inclination would be the most dangerous to the King which to be sure would be opposed and only because known the good the King would receive from such Counsellors might be put in his Eyes and the Protection the Nation could receive from such a King must be but in good Wishes and are we come to deny our Soveraign at last what every Subject can Consult his own Friends But tho this bold Gentleman as arrogantly tells us that this Privy Council is no part of the Government his imagined one he must mean a Common-wealth I 'll tell him more modestly and Plat. page 232. with better Authority than a Dixit only of a Platonick Dogmatist that he might as well have told us too what indeed are such a Republicans real thoughts that the King Himself is no part of it and shew him both from Law and Reason that they have a great share in it to◠And that the Laws great Oracle tells us too who is so far from letting them have no part in the Government that he tells us they have a very great part even Cook 4. c. 2 Inst Stanford 72. F Senators sunt partes corporis Regis in the very King That they are incorporated to the King himself His true Treasurers and the most profitable Instruments of the State And without doubt this great part they had always in Publick administrations made them of old so much esteem'd that in all Rolls and Acts of State they were mention'd with so much reverence and respect certainly had they been no constitution allow'd of by the Fundamental Laws of our Land they would never have been transmitted to posterity with such veneration to their Memories and that too through every Reign and all the Records of Time let them have but the benefit and priviledge of a Common Burrough and let their President an Office as old as King John's Time and that Holl. fol. 169. Matt. Paris 205. by Letters pattents but have as fair play as one of their Port-Reevs prescription would incorporate them into the Government as well as entitle those to their Franchises 'T is an absolute Contradiction to Imagin that Rolls then the Rot. Par. 3. H. 6. n. 3. very Parliaments Acts or Opinions in Transcript should have recorded them so Honourably for their Publick Administration were they not allow'd by the people so much as to be Ministers for the Publick good and such Honour was given them too by our Ancestors such Semblance of Soveraignty to their Persons that their Houses had in some sense the self-same privilege of the very Coke 4. Inst p. 53. Inas c. 46. Kings Palace and Verge wherein if a blow was given it was punisht with a Fine the loss of a good Summ of Money as in the other of a Hand And is it not at present Treason to destroy them and can Absurdity it self imagin that the Laws which are made always by those that Govern would make such provisions for those that were no part of the Government And lastly to prove this proposition of our Republican but a Rebels Plot and a fair progress towards a Rebellion I 'll shew this presumptious projector
for five hundred years before the Conquest and for above two hundred after Bishops and Abbots made up the best part of those petty Parliaments and that so long before these Contenders for their excludeing them their suffrages ever sate in that Assembly as part of the Senate And that antient piece that tells us of the ‖ Modus tenend Parl. manner of holding Parliaments tells us too that such Ecclesiasticks were always summoned Seditious Souls let those that are to take Care of them too have the same Subjects Liberty you so much Labour for Let Bishops be allowed their Birth-Right as well as your Lay-Lord-ships too your †Vid. Magna Charta the 1st thing in the first Chap. Articuli cleri Vid. Cook Com. on both 2. Inst Magna Charta was made for the Loyal Bishops as well as the Rebellious Barons and that expressly declares the Church shall enjoy all her Rights inviolate and tells us as plainly one of them was to sit in Parliament your selves know a discontented * Stratford Arch-bishop Ed. 3. Canterbury and I hope you 'll side with him because he was so claim'd for four hundred years agon his Privilege of Peerage in Opposition to His Prince petitioned for his Right and protested against the wrong for fifteen hundred years for so long our Monarchs can be Chronicl'd can in every Reign the Clergies being concerned in Parliament be proved upon Record and may they with the Monarchy last that with its Christianity commenc'd They seemed always to sympathize in their very sufferings never to cease but by consent and Bishops were never excluded from their Votes but when their King himself had never a voice The Sixth pernicious Principle they propose is for Marriages Alliances Treatises for War and Peace to be put in the power of the two Houses And shall the meanest Subjects be Mightier than their Soveraign Not allow'd the Marrying his Issue when where and to whom he pleases That the Parliament has presumed to intermeddle with this undoubted Prerogative of the Soveraign since the Birth-Right of the poorest Subject can no more be denyed then that the two Houses have also actually Rebell'd too but they never pretended to make Matches for their Monarch but when they were as ready to make War too There was somewhat of that Mutinous Ferment got among the Members in the latter end of King * James's his Reign who tho they mightily 19. Jacob. 1621. soothed their Soveraign with some Inconsiderable subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate so small that notwithstanding the Preparation for War the poor Prince was forc'd to pursue Peace and to tell the Men at Westminster so much too that he intended to compass the Palatinate with an Allyance with Spain which he was not like to obtain from the smallness of their Subsidy and Aid But tho the Commons did not care much for the maintaining the War they were as much startled with this seeming tendance to Peace they knew their Prince poor and therefore thought that the time to show the Subject bold and so began the Puritan Party to represent in a Remonstrance Popery Power Prerogative and their Averseness forsooth to the Spanish-Match The pious Prince tho none of the boldest to resist an invading People yet took the Courage to tell them they took too much upon themselves very warmly forbad them farther to meddle with his Government ‖ Dudgdale's short View 21. and deep Affairs of State and particularly with the Match of his Son with the Daughter of Spain And this account they 'll surely Credit since it comes from an * Rusworth Col. p. 40. Author a partial and popular Advocate for this power of Parliament And did not the Commons intermeddling with an other Spanish Match of Queen Mary's send their Memberships into the Country to mind their own Business and were presently Dissolv'd for meddling so much with their Soveraign's And this I hope will be as †Burnet's Abridgm 236. Authentick since it comes from an Author that has had the Thanks of the House But this Disposal of the Kings of his own Children and the Marrying them to what Princes he pleases has such an absolute Relation to the making Leagues and Allyances that the Laws which have declared the latter to be solely in the Soveraign are as Declaratory that the other is so too and this power of the Prince of making War and Peace Leagues and Allyances is so settled in him by the Laws of the Land that till they are subverted it can never be taken out In Henry the Fifth's Time a Prince under whose Courage and Conduct the Nation I think was as Flourishing at Home as it was formidable Abroad A Prince that kept a good Sway over his Subjects and wanted nothing to the making him a good Monarch but a better Title though his Expensive War in France cost his People a great deal of Money as well as Blood yet they were far from being animated into an Invading this part of Prerogative but declared as appears by the Law of his Time that to their King belonged only to make Leagues with Foreign Princes and so fully does this Fundamental Law of the Land place this power in the Prince that it absolutely excludes all the Pretences of the People for it tells us ‖ 2. H. 5. c. 6. expressly that if all the Subjects of England should break ‖ 22. Edw. 4. Fitz. Jurisd a League made with a Foreign Prince if without the King's Consent it shall still hold and not be broken And must the Laws of our own as well as those of all Nations be subverted for the setting up a Supremacy of the People which both declare is absolutely in the King The Seventh Proposal about the Militia is the most Impudent because it has been the most confuted of any by Reason and baffled above all parts of the Prerogative Establisht by Law History tells us ever since Chronicle can Compute and that is for almost Fifteen Hundred Years that the Power of the Sword was ever in him that sway'd the Scepter and Statute tells us even the very First * Magna Charta that was ever reckoned among Acts of Parliament That if the King lead or send his Subject to do him Service in his Wars that he shall be freed from such other Services as Castle-guard and the like so that you see that extorted Instrument the result of a REBELLION reserved this piece of Prerogative of the Soveraigns Sole Right That the Members of the two Houses should have the Management of the Militia was undertaken to be proved too by that Plague of the Press Pryn himself who proceeds upon his own false Principle and Premises which he beggs and then may well draw from them a Conclusion of an absolute Lye for he takes it for granted that by the Kingdoms Suffrages they made their King and then he could not as he says have this * Pryn's Parliam
laboured to prevent an Vsurpation and provided for the right Heir who succeeded in his paternal Inheritance before arrived even to the Romans civil age of Puberty 14. And the malicious Perverter might as well say as great a stress as you 'll find afterwards he truly does upon Richard the thirds Butchery and Usurpation the breaking of the Laws of God and Man for a Crown All the difference is Here were only two Nephews for a while debarred there Butchered and shall such bloody Miscreants pass upon the World for credible Authors who for robbing of a Divine-right can cite you Murder and for the breaking of our Humane Laws the blackest Crime in the Declogue And since this Antimonarchical Zealot has shown himself thus elaborately studious to rake every musty Record of those Reigns for a Rebellious remark give me leave only from the same times to make this last and Loyal Observation where Providence seemed to shew it self remarkably concerned for its crowned Head and that in the subsequent Judgment upon the Proto-Martyrdom of the Saxon Edward as well as what we suffered since for our Martyr'd Charles tho there 't was only for anticipating a right by blood but ours a bloody Usurpation of those that had no right at all Ethelred's passage to his Reign was but before his time and the Almighty's yet the Government suffered for it as many Pangs till it quite miscarried within fifty years the new Monarchy fell quite asunder rent and torn by two several Conquests He himself meets with the Defection of all his Nobility forc't to raise his Danegelt and his Subjects into Rebellion by it prepared his Navies only to be shattered with a tempest or consumed with Fire both Elements and Heaven it self seemed to conspire But because he came to the Kingdom by ill means arose Civil Wars p. 86. to make him Miserable Famine and Mortality were the dismal attendants of his Wars the Depredations of Invaders would not allow peace the Reign that begun in a Murder ended in a Massacre The incensed Danes soon invade him the perjured Edric falsely forsakes him he languishes a long time as well he might under Guilt and Misfortune and to put the only period to his days Miseries and Kingdom together Vid. Daniel p. 13. Dies You see how little success this Author met with among the Saxons Sovereigns for altering Succession how much of Imposture his Reader may there meet with in him and you shall as soon see he deals as disingeniously with the Danes And here thorough his double diligence this Parliament Historiographer has not omitted an Argument for his purpose much of the same strength as those that he has used viz. That Knute was no kin to Edmund or Ethelred And the Dane no way related to the Line of the Saxon that is the poor conquered England was not Cosin German to Denmark the Conqueror and yet the Title of the latter was preferred and their King acknowledged ours I can't conceive what necessity of Relation an Invader needs to the poor Prince he Invades and whether that be not a pretty sort of an Argument for altering Succession to say the Kingdom was Conquered Swayn had before cut out a fine Title for his Son with the Sword The North West and some of the South part of England had submitted frightned with his revengeful Cruelties which their own had provoked Canute himself after his Fathers Death lands as soon at Sandwich with a Navy of two hundred gave our English a great overthrow possest himself of what Swayn had before harassed the West and because the Nobility favoured only whom they feared and set him up in Competition for the Crown whom they could not keep down from being a Competitor ergo therefore the Succession must not run in the right Line and why because here it did not if more absur'd Inferences can be drawn from matter of Fact or greater Solecisms from Historical Observation I 'le forfeit all the little Right I have to Reason and with an Implicit Faith believe the Legend for a Bible and his History for the Revelations But yet this Prince though by Conquest and Composition he got half the Kingdom and upon Edmunds Death the whole foresaw what Power the pleas of Right and Succession might have for animating an Interest in the defence of the poor injured Heirs and therefore took all the ways to ingratiate himself with his wavering People his young and unexperienced Subjects and all manner of means for preventing the Lawful Heirs for attempting for their Right sticking at neither Murder Malice and Treachery and in order to the first he made a shew of governing with more Justice then he conquered and took mildness for the best means of his Establishment and to let the Nation know he designed only to subdue them sends away his Mercenaries ships away his Navy and for a popular Specimen of an Heroick Kindness to the memory of the Saxons he succeeded as a Satisfaction to their injured Dust prefers Edricks perjured Head to the highest place on the City Gate and with that Expedient reconciled himself at once to his own promise deserved Justice and the Peoples favour and yet for securing himself from any danger from the Lawful Heirs so politickly Cruel that all the Royal Blood felt of his Injustice sent the two Sons of his late Co-partner in the Kingdom to be murdered abroad and got his Brother to be butchered at home such an experienced truth is it that Powers usurpt Successions altered like the blackest Villanies can only be Justifyed and defended by committing more At his Death 't is true he disposed of his Crowns by Testamentary Bequest and well he might when there was so little known for Kingdoms of Feudatory Law and private Estates then far from being entailed yet in that very Legacy you can observe what Power the Consideration had with him of Right and Blood for he leaves his own Paternal Dominions Norway to his Eldest son Swayn and to his Youngest Hardicanute his conquered England considering his Mothers Blood which was Emma Wife to the late King Ethelred might as indeed it did give him some precedency to his middle Brother Harold the one having somewhat of Saxon in him the other all Dane especially if he was as some say Illegitimate tho' Baker calls him an Elder Brother by a former Wife so that upon the whole the Contest that rose about the Succession was but whether he had Right and when at last Harald was preferred 't was upon the Resolution of his being Legitimate so that here his own Inference contradicts the end for which 't was brought and instead of altering the discent shows they industriously contended to keep it in the right Channel and allowing they were mistaken in their Opinions of his Birth the Lords to make amends for their error streight on his Death fetch home Hardicanute who dying without Issue the Right of Blood prevailed again and the Saxon entred in Edward the
forsook the Lancastrians and set the House of York in the Throne shall the being declar'd but an Heir Apparent purge an Attainder And shall not an actual discent of the Crown take away the same defects shall here be thought the bare opinion of a Parliament sufficient to clear a Corrupted Blood And shall It was resolv'd so by all the Judges in the Chequer Chamber 1. H. 7. and so not extrajudicial but that which troubles them is that these the Kings Judges shou'd have the re-resolution of what is law which when we come to Mr. Sidney's paper that complains of it too we shall prove to be pretty reasonable Vid. Stows Ann. page 409. 406. not for the same the resolution of all the Judges suffice But as this contradicts all right and reason so the very next Line all History and Truth for it appears from all the Chronicles that can be consulted that the house of York was rather own'd by the Parliament for fear of the People then that the People were prevail'd upon by the Parliaments opinion for this Parliament of his had not above half a year before at Coventry declar'd the Duke and all his Adherents Traytors Disinherited and Excluded him and his Heirs Ludlow a Town that belong'd to him sack't to the bare Walls and as a Member in the late Houses moved for the banishment of Popish Women too so did the Parliamentary rigor of those Times extend also to that Sex and the Dutchess suffer'd then the same severe Exile with the Duke and as our Author says was spoiled of all her Goods yet as rigorous as they show'd themselves in their violent Votes against him and all that was his his Hereditary right was so rooted in the Peoples Hearts that it form'd for him an Army fought for him at Northampton and brought both the Usurper and his Parliament to a Composition for the Crown Thus much for the refuting of his little Reason and his less Law upon the Case And his Historical Inference that Brief History fol. 18. follows for its Justification fails him as much too for he tells us the Tale of Richard the Thirds letting the Children of his Brother Clarence live because their Father was attainted in Edward the 17. Edw. 4. Fourths time and that it was the Resolution of his Parliament that his Issue was thereby disabl'd to Challenge the 1. Rich. 3. Crown And truly the Case will admit of no better defence the badness of his cause can never be made good but with such a Justification as is much worse He verifies that Aphorism of the Tragedian that to secure your self in your Villanies you must commit more and 't is the Politicks too of a Matchiavel as well as a Seneca and Seneca in Traged this the practise now of our present Republican who first lays you down a Position perhaps truly Treasonable and then is forc't to fly to the Resolution of Traytors for the defence of the Treason and proves that the Crowns Discent does not purge Attainder because this Parliament of an absolute Usurper rather a pack of Rebels then a convention of States resolv'd it so Could it be imagin'd that those that had Bastardiz'd the Blood of their late Soveraign for him already would Boggle to Declare that of a Clarence and but their Kings Brother corrupt would those that promoted the spilling of the Blood of the two Nephews stick to Resolve that of the rest attainted the Malicious Impostor knows that they were then treating with a Tyrant that they themselves had advanc'd to the Throne and would he have had those demurred upon a point in Law to have argued of his Crown again which themselves knew against all the Laws of the Land they had plac't upon his head But this President if allow'd would still to the present purpose be as Impertinent as 't is Treasonable for 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 Baffle 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 Nephrews 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 Vid Baker p. 215. An. 1477. 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
confirmed Henry the 7th had his Negative Voice the thing those Seditious discontented Grumblers so much repine at maintained asserted for his undoubted Prerogative It is at present by the Law of ‖ 12. H. 7. 20. 7. H. 7. 14. his Time no Statute if the King assent not A Prince beloved and favoured only because he was their King who tho he had as many subsidies granted more than any before him His Subjects you see never thought it a Grievance then to contribute to their Soveraign's being Great but acknowledged his Supremacy even under their greatest pressure His Extortion upon penal Statutes * Vid. 4. Inst Baker page 248. Historians call and the Law the most unjustest way for raising of Money that was ever used yet still had he the Hearts of his People as well as their Purses They thought Rebellion then could not be Justifyed with clamor of Oppression as since by Ship-money and Lone tho levyed by a King whom themselves had Opprest The simplicity of those times made them suffer like good Subjects and better Christians when the refined Politicks of such Authors and a profligate age can tell them now to be Wise is to Rebel I need not tell him who managed Affairs in Henry the †H. 8. Eighth's Time when Parliaments seemed to be frightned into Compliance with a Frown and Bills preferr'd more for the pleasure of the Prince than the profit of the People Their Memberships then so far from medling with the measures of the State that they seemed to take them for their sole Measures so far was then an Order of the House from controuling that of the Board And I can't see that the Peoples * 1 Car 3. Petition of Right has since beg'd away too the King's Prerogative yet it was affirmed for ‖ 25. H. 8. C. 21. Law in this King's Time that he had full power in all Causes to do Justice to all Men. If the Parliament or their Council shall †Plato manage Affairs let them tell me what will become of this Power and Law His Son Edward succeeded him and tho a Minor a Prince whose Youth might have given the People an opportunity for an Encroachment upon his Power and the Subject commonly will take advantage of the Supremacy and that sometimes too much when the Soveraign knows but little what it is to be a King I am sure they were so Seditiously Wise in that Infancy of Henry the Third and yet he had Protectors too as well as this But notwithstanding such an Opportunity for the robbing the Rights of the Crown you shall see then they took the first occasion for the asserting them In the very First year of his Reign it was resolved that all Authoritie and Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived from the King but this Republican has found out another Resolution of resolving it into the power of the Parliament And in this very ‖ 5 Ed. 6. c. 11. Reign too it was provided as the common Policy and Duty of all Loving Subjects to restrain the Publishing all manner of Shameful Slanders against their King c. upon whom dependeth the whole Unity and Universal weal of the Realm what Sentence then would the Parliaments of those times have past upon Appeals to the City vox patriae's and a Plato Redivivus upon a Libel that would prove the †Plat. pag. 117. Kings Executive power of War forfeitable and that the * pag. 237. Prerogative which is in the Crown hinders the Execution of the Laws tho I am sure those very Laws are the best Asserters of the Prerogative there next resolve would have been to have ordered such an Author to the Flames by the Hands of the Hangman instead of that Honorable Vote the thanks of the House In Queen Mary's Time too the Law left all to her Majesty tells her all * 1 Mar. c. 2. Jurisdiction does and of Right ought to belong to her In Queen Elizabeth's ‖ 1 El. c. 1. Time what was Law before they were obliged even to Swear to be so Every Member of the House before qualified to sit in it forc'd to acknowledg his Soveraign SVPREAM in all Causes over all Persons And were their Memberships to be modelled according to the Common-wealth of this Plato their Oath must be repealed or they perjur'd Their very Constitution would be Inconfistant with his Supremacy they must manage and Command at the same time they Swear to submit and obey Was there ever a more full acknowledgment of Power and Prerogative than was made to King †Jac. c. 1. James upon his first coming to the Crown And tho I confess they took upon them to manage Affairs in his Son and Successors time yet this was not until they had openly bid him defyance to his Face and actually declared War against His Person then they might well set up their Votes for Law when they had violated the Fundamental ones of the Land yet themselves even in that Licentious and tumultuous time could own ‖ K. Charles his Collect. Ordinanc 1. part fol. 728. that such Bills as His Majesty was bound even in Conscience and Justice to pass were no Laws without his Assent What then did they think of those Ordinances of Blood and Rebellion with which themselves past such Bills afterward so unconscionable so unjust Here it was I confess these Commons of this pernicious Projector took upon them the management of the State their Councils their Committees set up for regulating the Kings Then their †Vid. wil. Prynns Parliam right to elect privy Councellors Pillor'd Advocate that lost his ears as this with his Treasonable Positions should his Head Publisht the very same Proposal in his pestering Prints the very Vomit of the Press to which the dangerous Dog did in the Literal Sense return to lick it up still discharing again the same choler he had brought up before in a Nauseous Crambe A Wretch that seemed to Write for the Haberdashers and Trunk-makers instead of the Company of Stationers that Elaborate Lining the Copious Library for Hat-cases and Close-stools that Will with a whisp whose fuming Brains were at last illuminated for the leading Men into Boggs and Ditches Rebellion and Sedition The Confusion of others only for the confounding of himself ‖ Vid. his Memento to Juncto for the for a King for the †2d his Parliaments Soveraigns Power For the Parliament for the * 3d. his Lords Bishops none of the Lords Bishops or the Buckle of the Canonical Girdle turned behind 〈…〉 every 〈…〉 for nothing but that ONE thing Scribble Compare the power of his Parliaments and his Vnparliamentary Juncto the meer Lumps of distorted Law or Legal Contradiction with the 25th of Edward He first deposes his King and even there then finds his Deposition Treason Their Divine Baxter never baffled himself more with the Bible and the Gospel than this Elaborate Legislator with
Pol. Numb 92. March 11. 1652. calls its Principles Brutish That Panegyrist of the Usurpation some of whose most Villanous Expressions I may hereafter revive for the Reproach of the last Age that suffer'd such a Miscreant to Murder Monarchy it self from the Press when they had Butcher'd it before on the Block and for the Information of this that think themselves so hardly dealt with when only their own Treason and Sedition is less severely handled That Opprobrium of Man as well as Subject That pursued the Sons of the Martyr'd Soveraign in such scandalous Satyr and bitter Invective such Satyr as themselves would think but rudeness if offer'd only to the very mark of Infamy their Perjur'd Evidence or their Pillor'd Oates such Invective as themselves would think Inhuman were it past upon Beasts or their own more Barbarous Regicides This most unnatural lump of Anarchy whom but to name is to digress into necessitated Horror and Detestation he publish'd too this very same position only in plainer Words and more expressive Treason viz. That the People were not only Judge of his Majesty but That it be made an unpardonable Crime to incur the guilt of TREASON against the MAJESTY of the PEOPLE * Ibid. and notwithstanding those gaudy things call'd MONARCHS the PEOPLE always made a shift to bring them to an Accountable Condition For this the Plato Redivivus or the Politick Plagiary ‖ Plat. Red. page 39. founds all his Empire and Dominion in Property according to the Doctrine of the Ancients or Oliver's old Oceana only a new Babel built upon Rebellion For by this their own Maxim of Balance or Property the People must be the supream Judges of their King and so the only deciders of their own Case for tho the King may be said to have and surely has more of this Property than any single Subject yet they are satisfi'd he can never come to have more than all unless we could imagin he had in actual Demesne the Major part of every foot of the Land in his whole Dominions tho I think I have shown in some foregoing Section in what Sense even the Law will allow the Soveraign to have some sort of propriety over all So that this their Ancient Prudence or Empire in property will allow the Collective Body of Subjects to be the best Judges of their own Case nay necessitate them to be so tho not some certain Subjects But then tell me Seditious Dolts the disparity between these Maxims you so much admire for their Antiquity Brutus's Vindiciae quest 4. p. 169. ut singuli Principe inferiores sunt sic universi superiores or Rex major singulis minor universis Pryn Parliam Rights as if founded upon Eternal Truths and the Doctrine of a Brutus or a Pryn the very Words of our Modern Common-wealths-Men which almost all the World will allow to be great Lyes and what does Hunt's Harangue tend to but to maintain all the very same Position of this Peoples judicial Power Does he not for this tell us That no * Postscr page 71. Civil Establishment but is controlable to the publick Weal ‖ Page 73. That the Crown is the Peoples Right and in a word in the very words of that Monster in his Mercury I mention'd above A Miscreant that did not dare to see the Light till the Monarchy it self was involv'd in its darkest Cloud and in his lewd Language does this illuminated Lawyer open too even in this very Case viz. That Treason may very well be committed against the Majesty of the People and the same says The Counterpart of this excellent Lawyer ‖ Ibid pag. 73. Will. Prin against the King's negative voice Wil. Pryn in one of his Treasonable Treatises Pamphlets or wast Papers Here you see the Harmony and agreeableness between the several sorts of these Seditious Demagogues that is the Seducers of the People according to the very Literal Etymology of that very word they so much delight in and Mr. Sidney when he says there being no Judge Tryal page 23. between King and People that therefore the Case admitting no other they must needs be Judges of things happening between them and him is just no more than what you see all those I have cited before have all all to a syllable said Could I distort my Soul and my little Sense so much as to wrest it for a while to play the Republican i. e. to be Senseless and Seditious sure common Prudence would prevail with me not to labor so much in such a Subject where the most sublimated Wits with their most exalted Sense can never say any thing that is really new any thing besides what has been as much baffl'd of old especially where the pains must be as unprofitable as the argument dangerous and well it may that sets up for a Common-Wealth under a Monarchy so well establish'd But since we have here seen all what such a series of time and such a number of Sedulous and indefatigable Authors have said upon this point they surely cannot but forgive us only for asserting this point of the Government which they with less Reason are so ready to oppose when our attempt if it merit nothing cannot be condemned from any Law only for defending its own Establishments and theirs for disturbing the publick Peace must be liable to be punish'd by the Laws of any Civil or Human Society But to take no advantage from our having the better end of the Argument consider the Case only in the absolute Abstract of pure and unprejudic'd Reason and Equity Mr. Sidney says ‖ Ibid p. 23. 'T is a most absurd folly to say a Man might not in some The words of a late learn'd Loyal Lawyer of our own are expresly the same Persons must not be Judg'd and Party Jenkins Lex Terrae Ed. London 48. Page 16. places kill an Adulterous Wife or a disobedient Son or Servant because he would there be both party and Judge tho the Romans for that Reason would have kill'd him that ston'd his Son to Death I don't know what Civil Society allows of such a sort of Severity or what Barbarous one he had been bred in but I am satisfi'd that for that very Reason they being the Parties most offended have therefore sure the less Reason to animadvert on the Offence unless we could imagine them God Almighties too as well as Governors that had Iâ—justice for their all their Attribute and nothing of Human Passion or Frailty from their suffering injury to transport or deceive them in their executive power beyond the Measures of its Administration The Sons of Brutus had sav'd once their ungrateful Rome from a Foreign Foe as well as the Father had delivered it from the Domestick Slavery as the Democraticks of those times termed too their Rebelling against their perpetual Tyrant their Caesar or their Prince yet so transported were the People with the unsuccessful Attempts of those
est Condere and * Quod principi placuit Dig. 1. 4. 1. Pleasure of the Prince only qualifies it with this Insignificant Restriction That it must not be understood of an Absolute Will and Ungovernable but such as is guided and regulated by good advice and the Rules of Equity and Reason and if this be a Warrantable Resolution and I warrant you the rankest Republican will take his Authority to be good should it in any place favour their Anarchy then it must be unavoidably concluded that where the Law is the Princes ‖ Britton that Bishop of Hereford by order of Ed. 1. pen'd a Book of Laws tells us 't is the Kings will that his jurisdiction and Judgment be above all in the Realm Will none of his People neither as aggregate or Jndividuals can be Judges of its Violation neither can it according to common Sense without the greatest Solecism and Absurdity be said by him to be violated at all for where the Custom of the Kingdom as it must be in all absolute Monarchies has plac'd the sole Legislative Power in that which is Supream There the same Will or Moral Action of the Sovereign that breaks an old Edict is nothing else but an Enacting of a new and the Common Objection that our Republicans Flourish withal against this is That then Murder and Sacrilege might be the Laws of the Land because perhaps it has been heretofore the pleasure of our own * Hen. 8. Prince But as such Observations are full of Venom and Spight so they are as much impertinent and nothing to the purpose for whether our own old English Lawyers had restrain'd the meaning Britton Bract. of the Word WILL to a WILL guided by right Reason and Judgment no Person of sober Sense but must Imagine that the very Principi placuit of the Romans was as much restrain'd to the Rules of Reason and Equity and therefore their Tiberius Caligula Nero and Domitian were as much Tyrants and by their own Authors so are term'd as Vid. Sucron In. vitas if they had been bound by the strictest municipal Laws of a mixt Monarchy and as the People themselves to the very Penal Statutes of the Land and therefore for that Reason the very same Civil Sanctions of their Imperial Law that allow such a Latitude to their boundless Prince abound too with this Restriction that still it becomes him to observe those very Laws to which he is not oblig'd Decet tamen Principem inquit Paulus Leges servare quibus ipse solutus D. 32. 1. 23. And for the spilling of Blood or Robbing of Churches and the like unnatural enormities which they say by the Soveraigns being thus absolv'd might become Lawful did not the very Directive part of some of their Municipal Laws forbid them in it the precepts of God and Nature the Unresistable Impulse of Eternal Equity and Reason to which the Mightiest Monarch must ever submit and themselves did ever own a Subjection those will always tye the hands of the most Absolute from Committing such Crimes as well as the Common Lictors do the meanests people for being by them perpetrated and Committed and 't is a great Moral Truth grounded upon as much Reason and Experience That those dissolute Princes that did Indulge themselves in the Violating the Divine Laws of God and Nature could never have been constrain'd to the Observance of our Human Inventions the Municipal Acts of any Kingdom or Country And therefore I cannot but smile to see the Ridiculous Insinuations of some of our Republicans endeavouring to maintain that by such silly suggestions which they can't defend with Sense and Reason for rather than want an Objection they 'll put us too suppose some Kings endeavouring to destroy their Subjects and alienating of their Kingdoms and then put their Question Whether the People shall not Judge and Punish them for it but in this they deal in their Argumentation against their King as some Seditious Senates of late indeavoured to Impose upon him to pass Bills by tacking two together A popular encroachment with an Asserting the Prerogative Just such another business was bandied about by that baffler of himself that pretious piece of Contradiction Will. Prin. Who tells us out of Bracton That GOD the Law and the Kings Courts are above the King where if you take all the Connexion Copulatively 't is not to be contradicted because no King but will allow his God to be above him under whom he Rules yet even there it may be observ'd that the Lower House he so much Labour'd for is not so much as mention'd So do these Sophâ—sters in the Politick's here proceed just like those Jugglers in the House they couple a suppositious piece of Premis'd Nonsense and then draw with it a pretty plausible Conclusion for what man can Imagin if he be but in his Wits that his Monarch unless he be quite out of them and Mad would destroy those over whom he is to Reign none but the Bosan in the Tempest with his Bottle of Brandy was so besotted as to think of Ruling alone and setting up for a Soveraign without so much as a single Subject so that should these peevish Ideots have their silly Supposition granted still they would be prevented from obtaining their end at which they aim for first if we must suppose all the Subjects to be destroy'd where would there be any left to judge this Author of their Destruction if they 'll suffer us only to suppose the Major part or some few certain Persons to be sacrific'd to his Fury then still that Soveraign that would destroy the most part or some certain number of his Subjects without Sense or Reason must at the same time be suppos'd to be out of his Senses and then no Law of any Land will allow the People to punish a Lunatick But if a King must be call'd a Destroyer of his People only for letting the Laws pass upon such Seditious Subjects that would destroy him which is all the Ground they can have here for branding with it their present Princes and for which these exasperated rebels really suggest it then in Gods name let the Latin * Fiat Justitia ruat Coelum Aphorism take place too Then let such Justice for ever be done upon Earth and trust the Judgments of Heaven for their falling Then let them deprecate as a late ‖ Vid. Paper of the Proceedings upon Armstrong his Outlawry Lady did the Vengance of the Almighty upon the Head of the Chief Minister of the Kings but let there be more such Hearts to administer as much Justice and the hands will hardly receive much harm for holding of the Scales And for that others silly supposition of these Seditious Simpletons of a Kings Alienating of his Kingdom * 'T is a receiv'd rule among civil Lawyers and may be well among our own That a King can't in Law alienate his Crown and that if it were
prevent these very Rebels and Republicans in such Factious Inferences did they for two hundred years agon in the first of Richard the Third Resolve what was â—â—gnified by the three Estates of the Realm for say they That is to say the Lords Exact Abridgem Fol. 117. p. 1. H. 3. â—piritual Temporal and Commons and even long since that much more lately out in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in that Act of Recognition of her Right where they endeavor to advance her Royalty as much as possible they can and â—â— make the Crown of this Realm as much Imperial there they tell her 'T is WEE your Majesties most faithful and Keeble Stat. 1. El. C. 3. and does not their own Oracle tell them so L. Coke 4 Inst C. 1. Parliam Obedient Subjects that represent the THREE ESTATES of your Realm of England and therefore in King James and Charles the First 's time â—hen the Commons began to be mutiâ—ous and encroach upon the Crown â—hen they having with the help of their â—â—merous Lawyers which were once by â—articular Act excluded the House and H. 6. if less had State in it perhaps it might have been once less Rebellious too those Gentlemen knowing too well the weight â—f Words and what Construction and Sense Sedition and Sophistry can deduct 4. Inst Stat. de Bigamis concordatum per Justiciarios 2. Inst ibid. Stat. West 2. 13. Ed. 1. Dominus Rex in Parlia mento suo Statuta edidit 2. Inst 331. Stat. Circumspectâ— agatis 13. Ed. 1. begius Rex talibus Judicibus Salutem and tho some would not have it an Act of Parliament my Lord Coke says 't is prov'd so by the Books and other Acts 2. Iust page 487. from a single Syllable I am confident it was they contriv'd the Matter and Method so as to foist in the Factious form of 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 have 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 21. Jâ—â—â— by the Kings Majâ—sty Lords and 6. Car. p. 1. C. 1â— 12. Car. 2. C. â—5 Staâ— 2. 13. Car. 2d 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 13 14. Car. 2. C. 10. 19. Car. 2. 8. 25. Car. 2. C. 1. 25. Car. C. 9. 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 Buchanan and his Disciples in Scotland maintain'd the same Doctrine of the King 's Co-ordinacy and therefore their Acts in the Rebellion too ran in the Name of the three States But when the King was returned to his Crowu and they to their Obedience the old form was retrieved The King with advice and consent of 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
Prince but were they the worst of Men that officiated in Publick Administration under their King such Republicans have the least reason to find fault when always in their Usurpations the greatest Fools aswel as Knaves have been commonly preferr'd What more Illiterate Blockheads did ever blemish a Bench than some of those that sate upon it in our Rebellion and for that consult the Tryal of Lilburn they Arraigned where you 'l find a clamorous Souldier silence and baffle them with his Books and invert the Latin Aphorism in a litteral sense by making the Gown yield to the Sword And for their Villany let Bradshaw alone And for that only be the best of Presidents The very Beggars and Bankrupts of the Times that bawl'd most for Property when they had hardly any to a penny or a pin were set up to dispose of the peoples Fortunes and Estates Princes as they are above all Men so generally make those their Ministers that excel others in Desert or Vertue because their persons are to be represented by them And they may aswel imagine a King would croud his Courts with Clowns to shew his Magnificence as fill his Judicatories with Fools or Knaves to distribute his Justice 'T is * Qui aliquod munus gerere debent virtutis habita ratione eliguntur Maecenas Orat. pro Monarch enough for an Oceana an Oliver or a Common-wealth to set up such ridiculous Officers Brutes beneath the Ass in the Apologue that will not so much as be reverenced for the Image they bear but even the best of Common Men whenthey are rais'd to some supreme Government prove like Beggars on Horse-back unable to hold the Reins or riding off their necks the wisest in their own ordinary administrations prove but foolish Phaetons when they are got into the Chariot set all in combustion and confusion The not being born to Govern or educated under the Administrations of a state makes them either meanly submissive in the midst of their Grandeur or insolently proud of their Office which renders them as ridiculously Great whereas Princes from an Hereditary VERTUE that consists alway in a MEAN or their nobler Education that instructs them in the Mode preserves them too from running into the sordid absurdities of such Extremes Many of such like preferable Conveniences might be reckoned up that make a Commonwealth less Eligible but for Confirmation of it it is better to have recourse to matter of Fact When did their Rome ever flourish more than under the Government of their Kings by that it was * Vid. Tacit l. 1. p. 1. Lucius Florus p. 1. Founded by that it was most Victorious and with that it alway fell Romulus himself first gave them their Religion and their †Lact. de fals rel l. 1. c. 22. God as well as the Government and with the assistance of his Numa brought them to observe some Ceremonies which the Trojans had taught them under whom did their City Triumph more both in fame riches tranquility and ease than under the Empire of Augustus And one would think that when the Controversie upon his coming to the Crown was then in Debate it should have been decided by the two famous Wits of their time in their Dialogue Maecenas and Agrippa It was submitted to their determinations and we see what was the result A MONARCHY Vid. Orat. Maecenat pro Monarch And that prâ—ferency of this most excellent Institution themselves most evidenced when upon all Exigencies and Difficulties they were forc'd to have recourse to a Dictator whom all Writers agree to have differ'd only from a King in the found of his Name and the duration of his Office the very Definition ‖ Dictator quoniam dictis ejus totus parebat populus Rom. Antiq. p. 170. of his Name implying that all were bound to obey his Edicts he had his Magister Equitum an Officer in effect the same with the Praefectus Vrbis which under their King was his Mayor And after that rash Rebellion of theirs against Royal Government after so many Revolutions of Tribunes Triumvirs Quaestors Aedils Praefects Praetors and Consuls were never at rest or quiet 'till they were setled again in their Caesars Themselves know best what the Sedition of Sylla and Marius cost them how many lives of Consuls and Senators besides the blood of the Commons Let them consult Plutarch and see the bloody Scene of Butchery and Murder Pray tell me mighty Murmurers in which was your Rome most bless'd or suffer'd least with the bloody War between Caesar and Pompey or the settlement of it in Julius himself Did it not bleed and languish as much with the Civil Wars of Augustus Antony and Lepidus as it flourish'd when reduc'd to the only Government of Octavius And would it not have been much better had those succeeding Emperors been all Hereditary when we find that for the most the Multitude and Soldiers were the makers and setters up of the bad and the destroyers and murderers of the best 'T is too Otho Vitellius Heliogab they set up Alexand Aurelianus Probus they murder d. much to tell you the story of our own Chronicles as well as their Annals how happy our Land was for a long time in a Lineal Descent of Hereditary Kings how miserably curst in the Commonwealth of England what blood it cost to establish it what Misery and Confusion it brought us when unhappily establish'd And as an Argument that the Romans flourish'd most under those Emperors see with what Veneration their Imperial Sanctions speak of their power they make it * Sacrilegii instar est c. C. 1. 23. 5. Sacriledg to disobey it they made the very memory of those that committed Treason against them to be rooted out the very ‖ Quisque vel cogitavit C. 9. 8. 5. Thought of it they punish'd with as much severity as the Commission all his Children Servants and whole Family were punish'd though unknowing of the Crime They punish'd those with the same severity that Conspired against any Minister of State because relating to the Imperial Body and that if they did but think of destroying them and even those that were found but the movers of †Ibid. Sedition were Gibbeted or Condemned to their Beasts And as Dig. 48. 19 38. those Laws made all the Sanctions of all Princes Sacred and Divine so do our * 33. Ed. 3 10. H. 7. 16. own declare the King capable of all Spiritual Jurisdiction in being Anointed with Sacred Oyl by which they give him all power in Ecclesiasticals too to render his Person the more Venerable and call the †Coke Litt. Sect. 1. fol. 1. B. The Possessions of the King are call'd Sacra Par trimonia Lands of the 1 Inst King like the Patrimony of the Church Sacred Prince and Priest were of old terms Synonimous and signified the same thing The Jews and Egyptians had no Kings but what exercised the Offices for a long
Northumberland and Durham and prey upon those Counties they had promised to protect while the Parliament at London will not give their King leave or the Citizens lend a penny for opposing those that came to pull him out of his Throne At the Treaty of Rippon they quarrel with their King for calling them Rebels that had invaded his Realm the Commissioners of the Scots conspire with the English who then fall upon Impeaching his Privy Counsellers and the unfortunate Strafford suffers first because so ready to Impeach some of them and they make that Treason in a Subject against the King which was heard known and commanded by the Soveraign Then follows Lawd a Loyal Learned Prelate and that only for defending his Church from Faction and Folly As they posted the Straffordians and repair'd in Tumults to their King for the Head of that Minister of State so Pennington with his pack of Aprentices petition'd against the Bishops and the Pillars of the Church Then Starchamber must down High Commission be abolisht Forest bounds limited yet all too little to please when the Irish Rebellion followed to which the Scots had led the Dance no Moneys to be levied in England for suppressing it till the King had disclaim'd his power of Pressing Soulders and so disarm'd himself that is he was not to fight for his defence till they had disabl'd him for Victory They quarrel with him because he would not divide among them the Lands of the Irish before they were quell'd and subdued at the same time they had quite incapacitated him to Conquer and Subdue them Then Acts must be past for Annual Triennial and at last perpetual Parliaments And whereas the Law says The King never Dies they made themselves all Dictators more Immortal They were summon'd in November and by the time that they had sate to May they had made of a Mighty Monarch a meer precarious Prince And in August following supposing he had sufficiently oblig'd the most Seditious Subjects which I think he might Imagine when he had made himself no King he sets out for Scotland to satisfie them as much there while the Senate of Sedition that he left to sit behind him resolv'd it self into a sort of Committee of Conspiracy and that of almost the whole House made a Cabal among themselves to to cast off the Monarchy which the Knaves foresaw could not be done but by the Sword and therefore cunningly agreed to second one another for the putting the Kingdom into a posture of Defence against those dangers abroad which they themseves should think fit to feign and fancy at home To carry on their Plot against the Bishops they put in all probability that lewd Leighton upon writing of his Plea which was Bring out those Enemies and slay them before him to smite those Hazaels under the fifth Rib For which in the Starchamber he was Fin'd and Imprison'd but for his Sufferings and the Dedication of his Book to the Commons they Vote him Ten thousand pound Upon the Kings return from his Northern Expedition which was to procure Peace only with a shew of War they having had a competent time for Combination and Plot were arriv'd to that exalted Impudence that notwithstanding he was received with Acclamations from all the common People of the Kingdom the People whom they were bound to represent the welcome from his Parliament was to present him with Remonstrances and Petitions which against his very express order they Printed and Publisht of such sort of Grievances that sufficiently declared they were griev'd at nothing more than his being their King They put upon his Account the thirty thousand pounds they had pay'd the Scots for Invading England that is they gave them the Moneys for Fighting of their King and then would have had the King paid his own Subjects for having against him so bravely Fought They should for once too have made him responsible and his Majesty their Debtor for the two hundred thousand pounds they paid the same Fellows at Newark to be gone whom with their thirty thousand pounds they had invited in before They should have made the King pay for his own purchase and answerable for the Price the Parliament had set upon his Head This seem'd such an unconscionable sort of Impudence that their hearts must needs have been Brass and seer'd as well as their Foreheads in offering it An Impudence that none but such an Assembly were capable of Impudence the Diana of these Beasts of Ephesus the Goddess of all such designing Democraticks * Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris carcere dignum si vis esse aliquid Juvenal Satyr that to be somewhat in the true sense of the Satyrist must defie a Dungeon These their Petitions they seconded with Tumult and Insurection sent the Justices of Peace to the Tower only for endeavouring to suppress these Forerunners of a Civil War when they had taken the Liberty to Impeach some of the King 's best Subjects for Traytors yet deny'd their Soveraign to demand their Members that had committed High Treason About the twenty eighth of January 1641 they humbly desire the Soveraignty and their Petition that BEGUN Most Gracious Soveraign ENDED only in this Make us your Lords for they 1st demand the Tower of London 2ly All other Forts 3ly The Militia and they should have put in the Crown too The stupid Sots had not the sense to consider or else the resolv'd blindness that they would not see that those that have the power of the Army must be no longer Subjects but the Supream power The King you may be sure was not very willing to make himself none and might well deny the deposing of himself tho' he after consented even to this for a time but what he would not grant with an Act they seiz'd with an Ordinance and though they took the Militia which was none of theirs by Force and Arms yet Voted against their King's Commission of Array that was settled upon him by Law they force him to fly to the Field and then Vote it a Deserting the Parliament they necessitate him to set up his Standard at Nottingham and then call it a Levying War they Impeach nine Lords for following their King and yet had so much nonsense as to call them Delinquents which the * Vid. Com. Lit. 1 Inst p. 26. B. For adherency to the Kings Enemy without the Realm the Delinquent to be attainted of High Treason Law says none are but what adhere to his Enemies they send out their General fight their King and after various events of War force him to fly to the perjur'd Scot to whom they had paid an hundred thousand pounds to come in and were glad to give two to get out and for that they got the King into the bargain An Act of the Scot that was compounded of all the sublimated Vices that the Register of Sins or Catalogue of Villanies can afford feigned Religion forc'd Hypocrisie Falshood Folly
time of the Priesthood too with which they then alone made the Monarchy mixt and of this even * Justin l. 16. 36. Justin can tell us in one of his Books And for making their Monarchy more Divine did Romulus and Numa the Founder of their Religion as well as of Rome Officiate in it sometimes too So much did the Fathers of old prefer Monarchy to a Popular Government that Sir Walter Rawleigh Praestat regem Tyrannum habere quam nullum p. 182. tells us of the saying of St. Chrysostom that recommended even a Tyrant before no King at all and that is seconded with a Sentence of Tacitus who tells us If the Prince be never so Tacit. Lib. 1. Praestat sub malo principe esse quam nullo wicked yet still better than none And for that of a Commonwealth it was as bravely said by Agesilaus to a Citizen of Sparta discoursing about Government That such a one as a common Cobler would disdain in his House and Family was very unfit to Govern a Kingdom In short all the Presidents that Mr. Sidney has given us of the Romans driving out their Tarquins of the French rejecting the Race of Pharamond of the Revolt of the Low-Countries from Spain of the Scots killing James the Third and Deposing Queen Mary are all absolute Rebellions were ever Recorded so in History and will be Condemned for such by all Ages He should have mention'd for once too the murder of our Martyr'd Sovereign for to be sure he had the same sense of that upon which he was to have sate But if any thing can recommend their Commonwealth it must be only this That it cannot be so soon dispatch'd it being a Monster with many Heads to which Nero's Wish would not be so cruel That it had but one neck to be cut off at a blow The clamour this Republican made against Monarchs in general was whatever he suggests appli'd to our own in particular when he tells in the very same Page of the Page 23. Power of the People of England and though he exclaims and all others do against this Arbitrary Power of Kings 't is certain themselves would make the People as Arbitrary The Question is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power but the Dispute is who shall have it there never was nor ever can be a People govern'd without a Power of making Laws and that Power so long as consonant to reason must be Arbitrary for to make Laws by Laws is Nonsense These Republicans by confession would fix it in many and the Multitude in Aristocracy 't is fix'd in a few and therefore in a Monarchy must be setl'd in ONE CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracies AND now that they may not think I have foully Libell'd them in a Misrepresentation of the dangerous Principles of their Republicans I 'll be so fair as to prove upon them too the natural product of their own Notions and that is the Plots of the same Villains assoon as they have been pleas'd to set up for Rebels And these will appear from Chronicle and History the Records of Time and the best Tryers of Truth these will not be falsified with Reflection but be founded upon matter of Fact And of these this will fall in our way as the first About the Year 1559 there was promoted in France a Plot and Conspiracy against their King and that founded upon the same pretext so many of ours have been of late in England that is Religion but truly fomented by what has been always the spring the very fountain of Blood and Rebellion discontent and disgust toward the Government For upon the death of Henry the Second and the Succession of Francis his eldest Son to the Throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon thinking themselves neglected and despised thrust out of Office and Employment at Court and finding the Family of the Guises still prefer'd whom they always as mortally hated resolved to revenge themselves upon the Crown that is to turn Rebels Of these Vendosme and Conde were the principal Engagers and drew in the two Castillions the * Gasper de Collign Mr. D' Andelot Admiral and his Brother who for the removal of the Duke De Montmorency their relation from that Court to which he had prefer'd them were as full also of resentment against the Crown as those that came to engage them with an invitation to invade it and after all their several seditious Assemblies after all the many Meetings they had made after all the Treasonable Consultations they had held no design was look'd upon by them more likely to prove effectual than the making themselves Head of the Hugenots And so hot were they upon this Project the pursuit of another kind of Holy War that among our modern Crusadoes has been nothing else but a Religious Rebellion that notwithstanding the coldness of the King of Navarr they drew in most of the Protesting part of France to be truly Rebels for the sake of their Seducers while they made them believe they had only engag'd themselves to fight for the Religion of those they had so wickedly seduc'd And so conducing then were the principles of a Republick to a Rebellious Plot that one †Alias Godfry de la Bar. Renaudie that was forc'd to turn Renegado to his Country for Misdemeanors committed in it and fled to Geneva as a Sanctuary for Sedition after he had lurk'd there like a concealed Criminal abroad upon his Return sets up for an open Rebellion at Home after he had layn so long in the lake the sink of Democracy you may be sure was well instructed how to resist a Monarch He soon blows the coals that could easily keep up the Blood of the warm Princes that was already set so well a boyling Him they pitch upon as the fittest tool to work out their design and in my conscience coming from that Common-wealth the Statsemen judged not amiss when they took him for an able Artist With his help and their own it went so far that Moneys Men and Amunition was provided and a Petition drawn for a Toleration of Religion though indeed but a Treacherous veil to cover their Intended Treason which was to seize upon the Young King upon his denyal of what they knew he would not grant surprize the Queen that still opposed them and put the Guises to the Sword whom she favoured But the Court being advised of the Conspiracy had retired to the Castle of Amboise and so far did they prosecute their Plot that their Petitioners were admitted into it though their Arm'd Accomplices that were without were compelled to fight for their Lives which Renaudie with the rest of the Ring-leaders of them lost and the Rabble to save theirs was forc'd to fly * To renew another about the end of this unhappy War were publisht those Treasonable Tracts De jure Magist Brutus his Vindiciae With another as pernicious a piece