observe that our Saviour Christ as hee alwayes rejected all Civill judicature so on the other side he went up and downe healing mens bodies and otherwise doing good to their outward estate that his Doctrine might have a freer and fairer passage into their Soules For the corruption that I spoke of in the exercise of Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction I doe not meane any personall corruption but a deviation or aberration from the prescript of the Divine Rule And though it bee not easie to finde what that is in all particulars yet it is not hard to say what it is not and that I doubt may prove our case indivors things Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction we know extendes either to the Clergy onely and consisteth in the Ordination Admission Suspension and deprivation of them or else it extendeth to the whole Church and consisteth in Excommunication and Absolution As to the Ordination Admission Suspension and Deprivation of Ministers we see how it is wholy at the pleasure of one man and that of one man proceeding in a manner Arbitrarily and that of one man whose interest is concerned in it that the doore shall be shut against able and painful preaching Ministers and a wide doore set open to such as are unable and unfit for that function many and great and dangerous evills arise from hence As first that there is a constant bate and fewd between the Ecclesiasticall State and the Civill betweene Prelates and Parliaments betweene the Canon Law and the Common Law betweene the Clergy and the Common-wealth arising from the Disproportion and Dissimilitude which is betweene the Civill and Ecclesiasticall Government however it may seeme to some to agree well enough but the truth is if we consider his Majesty as the Common-head over the Ecclesiasticall State as well as the Civill wee shall finde that in the exercise of all Civill jurisdiction in all Courts under his Majesty the power is not in any one or his Deputies and Commissaries as it is in the Ecclesiasticall Government in the severall Diocesses throughout this Kingdome If wee looke first upon the Highest and greatest Court the High Court of Parliament wee know that is a Councell and a great Councell too In like manner in the inferiour Courts of Westminster-Hal there are many Judges in the point of Law and more in matter of Fact wherein every man is judged by twelve of equall condition unto him I meane the Juries which are Iudges of the Fact both in causes Civill and Criminall And if we look into the Country we shall find the Sessions and Assizes and other Courts held not by any one but by divers Commissioners And in short in the Civill Government every man from the greatest to the least hath some share in the Government according to the Proportion of his Interest in the Common-wealth But in the Government of the Church all is in the hands of one Man in the severall Diocesses or of his Chancellors or Commissaries and he exacts Canonicall Obedience to his Pontificall Commands with a totall Exclusion of those that notwithstanding have as much share in the Church and consequently as much Interest in the Government of it as they have in that of the Common-wealth Sir untill the Ecclesiasticall government be framed something of another twist and be more assimilated unto that of the Common-wealth I feare the Ecclesiasticall government will bee no good neighbour unto the Civill but will be still a casting in of its leaven into it to reduce that also to a sole absolute and arbitrary way of proceeding And herein Sir I doe not beleeve that I utter Prophesies but what wee have already found and felt A second and that a great evill and of dangerous consequence in this sole and arbitrary power of Bishops over their Clergy is this that they have by that meanes a power to place and displace the whole Clergy of their Diocesse at their pleasure and this is such a power as for my part I had rather they had the like power over the Estate and persons of all within their Diocesse for if I hold the one but at the will and pleasure of one man I meane the Ministery under which I must live I can have but little or at least no certain joy nor comfort in the other But this is not all for if they have such a power to mould the Clergy of their Diocesses according to their pleasure wee know what an Influence they may have by them upon the people that in a short time they may bring them to such blindnesse and so mould them also to their owne wills as that they may bring in what Religion they please nay having put out our eyes as the Philistins did Sampsons they may afterwards make us grinde and reduce us unto what slavery they please either unto themselves as formerly they have done or unto others as some of them lately have beene forward enough to doe Now whether it be safe to walke upon Stilts on the top of the pinacles of the Temple upon so high precipices as are the matters of Religion and Conscience which may have also a dangerous Influence upon our civill liberties I leave it to your consideration for my part I should not thinke it safe that such a power should bee in any one man though you suppose him to be a very good man A third evill and that of dangerous consequence is that the doore is shut against able and painfull Preaching Ministers and a wide doore set open to those that are unable and unfit for that function and the Bishops interest is concerned in it that it should bee so Interest of honour Interest of profit and Interest of power Interest of credit for they see that those painfull Preachers carry away all the credit from them and they neither can nor will doe the like themselves they cannot by reason they are so intangled with the affaires of this world and civill jurisdiction they will not their great Dignities and Honours make them so stately that they thinke it is not Episcopall to preach often and on the other side they are so fat and live so much at their ease that through idlenesse they cannot bring their mindes unto it and so first ariseth envy against those that doe take paines and thence after springeth persecution In the next place their Interest is concerned in matter of profit for they suppose that if the credit of their Diana fall to the ground their gaine will after cease and that the people will thinke much that some men should take all the paines and other goe away with all the profit Lastly their Interest is concerned in it in poynt of power for they finde that neither such preaching Ministers nor their Auditors are so plyable to yield blinde Canonicall obedience as others are and so it concernes them in poynt of power to stop their mouthes And now it must needes follow by the rule of Contraries that it must be for their profit
which time the sayd Iustice Seate was called by adjournment the sayd Iohn Lord Finch then Lord Chiefe Iustice of his Majesties Court of Common Pleas and was one of the Iudges assistants for them he continued by further unlawfull and unjust practices to maintaine and confirme the said verdict and did then and there being assistant to the Iustice in Eyre advise the refusal of the traverse offered by the County and all their evidences but onely what they should verbally deliver which was refused accordingly IV. That hee about the Moneth of November 1635. hee being then Lord Chiefe Iustice of the Common Pleas and having taken an oath for the due administration of Iustice to his Majesties Liege people according to the Lawes and statutes of the Realme contrived in opinion in haec verba when the good and safety c. and did subscribe his name to that opinion and by perswasions threats and false suggestions did solicite and procure Sir Iohn Bramstone Knight then and now Lord Chiefe Iustice of England Sir Humfrey Davenport Knight Lord chiefe Baron of his Majesties Court of Exchequer Sir Richard Hutton Knight late one of the Iustices of his Majesties Court of Common Pleas Sir Iohn Denham Knight late one of the Barons of his Majesties Court of Exchequer Sir William lones Knight late one of the Iustices of the said Court of Kings Bench Sir George Crock then and now one of the Iudges of the said Court of Kings Bench Sir Thomas Trevor Knight then and now one of the Barons of the Exchequer Sir George Vernon Knight late one of the Iustices of the said Court of Common Pleas Sir Robert Barkley Knight then and now one of the Iustices of the said Court of Kings Bench Sir Francis Crawly Knight then and now one of the Justices of the said Court of Common Pleas Sir Richard Weston Knight then and now one of the Barons of the said Court of Exchequer some or one of them to subscribe with their names the said opinion presently and enjoyned them severally some or one of them secresâ— upon their allegeance V. That he the fifth day of Iune then being Lord Chiefe Iustice of the said Court of Common Pleas subscribed an extrajudiciall opinion in answer to questions in a letter from his Majesty in haec verba c. And that he contrived the said questions and procured the said Letter from his Majesty and whereas the said Iustice Hutton and Iustice Crook declared to him their opinions to the contrary yet hee required and pressed them to subscribe upon his promise that hee would let his Majesty know the truth of their opinions notwithstanding such subscriptions which neverthelesse he did not make knowne to his Majestie but delivered the same to his Majesty as the opinion of all the Iudges VI. That hee being Lord Chiefe Iustice of the said Court of Common Pleas delivered his opinion in the Chequer Chamber against Master Hampden in the case of Ship-money that hee the said Master Hampdâ—n upon the matter and substance of the case was chargeable with the money then in question a Coppy of which proceedings the Commons will deliver to your Lordships and did solicite and threaten the said sudges some or one of them to deliver their opinions in like manner against Master Hampden and after the said Baron Denham had delivered his opinion for Master Hampden the said Lord Finch repaired purposely to the said Baron Denhams Chamber in Serjeants Inne in Fleetstreet and after the said Master Baron Denham had declared and expressed his opinion urged him to retract the said opinion which hee refusing was threatned by the said Lord Finch because hee refused VII That hee then being Lord chiefe Justice of the Court of Common Pleas declared and published in the Exchequer Chamber and westerne circuit where he went Judge that the Kings right to Ship-money as aforesaid was so inherent a right to the Crowne as an Act of Parliament could not take it away and with divers malicious speeches inveighed against and threatned all such as refused to pay Ship-money all which opinions contained in the foure five sixth Articles are against the Law of the Realme the Subjects right of property and contrary to former resolutions in Parliament and to the petition of right which said resolutions and petition of right were well knowne to him and resolved and enacted in Parliament when he was Speaker of the Commons house of Parliament VIII That hee being Lord chiefe Justice of the Court of Common Pleas did take the generall practice of that Court to his private Chamber and that hee sent warrants into all or many shires of England to severall men as to Francis Giles of the County of Devon Rebert Renson of the County of Yorke Attorneys of that Court and to divers others to release all persons arrested on any utlawry about 40. shillings fees whereas none by Law so arrested can be bailed or released without Supersedeas under seale or reversall IX That hee being Lord Chiefe Iustice of the Court of Common pleas upon a pretended suit begun in Michaelmas Terme in the 11. yeare of his Majesties Reigne although there was no plaint or Declaration against him did notoriously and contrary to all Law and Iustice by threats menaces and imprisonment compell Thomas Laurence an Executor to pay 19 pound 12 shillings and likewise caused Richard Bernard being onely over-seer of the last Will of that Testator to bee arrested for the payment of the said Money contrary to the advice of the rest of the Iudges of that Court and against thâ— knâ—wne and ordinary course of Iustice and his said Oath and knowledge and denyed his Majesties Subjects the common and ordinary Iustice of this Realme as to Mr. Liâ—â—rick and others and for his private benefit endammaged and ruined the estates of very many of his Majesties Subjects contrary to his oath and knowledge X. That hee being Lord Keeper of the great Seale of England and sworne one of his Majesties Privie Counsell did by false and malicious slanders labour to incense his Majestie against Parliaments and did frame and advise the publishing the Declaration after the dissolution of the last Parliament All which Treasons and misdemeanors above mentioned were done and committed by the said Iohn Lord Finch Baron of Fordwich Lord Keeper of the great Seale of England and thereby he the aforesaid Finch hath trayterously and contrary to his allegiance laboured to lay Imputations and Scandalls upon his Majesties government and to alienate the hearts of his Majesties liege people from his Majestie and to set a division betweene them and to ruine and destroy his Majesties Realme of England for which they doe impeach him the said Lord Finch Baron of Fordwich Lord Keeper of the Great Seale of England of high Treason against our Soveraigne Lord the King his Crowne and Dignity of the misdemeanours above mentioned And the said Commons by Protestation saving to themselves the libertie of exhibiting at any time
true Church hath not erred in Fundamentall points and that Salvation is attainable in that Religion and therefore have restrained to pray for the Conversion of our Soveraigne Lady the Queene Hence also hath come XIV The great Conformity and likenesse both continued and encreased of our Church to the Church of Rome in Vestures Postures Ceremonies and Administrations namely as the Bishops Rochets and the Lawne sleeves the foure-cornerd Cap the Cope and Surprisse the Tippet the Hood and the Canonicall Coat the Pulpits clothed especially now of late with the Jesuites Badge upon them every way XV. The standing up at Gloria Patri and at the reading the Gospell praying towards the East the bowing at the name of JESVS the bowing to the Altar towards the East Crosse in Baptisme the Kneeling at the Communion XVI The turning of the Communion Tables Altar-wise setting Images Crucifixes and Conceits over them and Tapers and Books upon them and bowing and adoring to or before them the reading of the second Service at the Altar and forcing people to come up thither to receive or else denying the Sacrament to them tearming the Altar to be the mercie-seat or the place of God Almighty in the Church which is a plaine device to usher in the Masse XVII The Christning and Consecrating of Churches and Chappell 's the Consecrating Fonts Pulpits Tables Chalices Churchyards and many other things and putting holinesse in them yea reconsecrating upon pretended pollution as though every thing were uncleane without their Consecrating and for want of this sundry Churches have beene interdicted and kept from use as polluted XVIII The Liturgie for the most part 's framed out of the Romish Breviary Ritualium Masse-book also the book of Ordination for Archbishops and Ministers framed out of the Roman Pontificall XIX The multitude of Canons formerly made wherein among other things Excommunication ipso facto is denounced for speaking of a word against the devises above said or subscription thereunto though no Law enjoyned a restraint from the Ministry without such subscription and Appeale is denâ—ed to any that should refuse subscription or unlawfull conformity though he be never so much wronged by the inferiour Judge also the Canons made in the late sacred Synod as they call it wherein are many strange and dangerous Devices to undermine the Gospel and the Subjects liberties to propagate Popery to spoyle Gods people insnare Ministers and other Students and so to draw all into an absolute subjection and thral dome to them and their government spoyling both the King and the Parliament of their power XX. The countenancing plurality of Benefices prohibiting of Marriages without their Lycence at certaine times almost halfe the yeare and lycensing of Marriages without Banes asking XXI Prophanation of the Lords day pleading for it and enjoyning Ministers to read a Declaration set forth as 't is thought by their procurement for tolerating of sports upon that day suspending and depriving many godly Ministers for not reading the same onely out of Conscience it was agaist the Law of God so to doe and no Law of the Land to enjoyne it XXII The pressing of the strict observation of Saints Dayes whereby great summes of Moneyes are drawne out of Mens purses for working on them a very high burthen on most people who getting their living by their dayly imployments must either omit them and be idle or part with their money whereby many poore families are undone or brought behind-hand yea many Church-wardens are sued or threatned to be sued by their troublesome Ministers as persured persons for not presenting their Parishioners who sayâ—ed in observing Holy-dayes XXIII The great encrease and frequencie of Whoredomes and Adulteries occasioned by the Prelates corrupt administration of Justice in such Cases who taking upon them the punishment of it doe turne all into moneyes for the filling of their purses and lest their Officers should defraud them of their gaine they have in their late Canon in stead of remedying their vices decreed that the Commutation of Pennance shall not be without the Bishops privity XXIV The generall abuse of that great ordinance of Excommunication which God hath left in his Church to be used as the last and greatest punishment the Church can inflict upon obstinate and great Offenders and that the Prelates and their Officers who of right have nothing to doe with it doe daily excommunicate men either for doing that which is lawfull or for vaine idle and triviall matters as working or opening a shop on a Holiday for not appearing at every beck upon their summons not paying a fee or the like yea they have made it as they doe all other things a hook or instrument wherewith to empty mens purses and to advance their owne greatnesse and so that sacred ordinance of God by their preventing of it becomes contemptible to all men and seldome or never used against notorious offenders who for the most part are their favourites XXV Yea further the pride and ambition of the Prelates being boundlesse unwilling to be subject to either man or Lawes they claime their Office and Jurisdiction to be Iure divino exercise Ecclesiasticall authority in their owne names and Rights and under their owne Seales and take upon them Temporall dignities Places and Offices in the Common-wealth that they may sway both swords XXVI Whence followes the taking Commissions in their owne Courts and Consistories and where else they sit in matters determinable of Right at Common Law the putting of Ministers upon Parishes without the Patrons peoples consent XXVII The imposing of Oathes of various and triviall Articles yearely upon Church-wardens and Side-men which without perjury unlesse they fall at jarres continually with their Ministers and Neighbours and wholly neglect their owne calling XXVIII The exercising of the Oath Ex Officio and other proceedings by way of Inquisition reaching even to mens thoughts the apprehending and detaining of men by Pursivants the frequent suspending and depriving of Ministers fining and imprisoning of all sorts of people breaking up of mens Houses and Studies taking away mens Books Letters and other writings seizing upon their Estates removing them from their callings seperating betweene them and their wives against both their wills the rejecting of prohibitions with threatnings and the doing of many other out-rages to the utter infringing the Lawes of the Realme and the Subjects liberties and arraigning of them and their Families and of latter time the Judges of the Land are so awed with the power and greatnesse of the Prelates and other wayes promoted that neither prohibition Habeas Corpus or any other lawfull remedy can be had or take place for the distressed Subjects in most Cases onely Papists Iesuits Priests and such others as propagate Popery or Arminianisme are countenanced spared and have much liberty and from hence followed amongst others these dangerous Consequences I. FIrst the generall hope and expectation of the Romish part that their superstitious Religion will ere long be
Ego Rex meus Or if there shall be sound any cruell Bonners c. such I confesse I would not spare for they will spare none But in the counterballance if there may be found but one good Cranmer or one good Latimer or Ridley I would esteeme and prize them as such jewels to be set in the Kings own Cabinet for such I am sure will pray for the peace of Jerusalem and for the peace of King Charles and his three Kingdomes which God long preserve in concord and unity But Master Speaker we must also be Actors in the preservations of Religions concordance which wil never be safe nor well at quiet untill these heavy drossie Canons with all their base mettall be melted and dissolved let us then dismount them and destroy them which is my humble motion A SECOND SPEECH made by Sir John Wray in the Commons-House 24. November 1640. Mr. Speaker BY the report made from the Committee of Religion you may see to what exorbitant height Poperie is growne and yet how slowly we go on to suppresse it I feare God is displeased with us or else no disaster should have prevented the sealing of our Covenant when intended and I hope it shall be performed the next Sabbath Had our Fast beene accepted and our Humiliation Cordiall no blow should have distracted our preparation Master Speaker if we had taken the good Counsell of our Teachers at the Fast and beleeved their Report we had done well and by this time no doubt we might have found out Achan with his Wedge of Godl and Babilonish garment But we have spent our time onely in peeling of the Barke and snatching the boughes and branches of Poperie and that will doe us no good for they will prove and grow thicker and harder What must we do then Master Speaker to preserve our Religion safe and sound to us and to our Posterity that our Candlesticke be not removed The only way is to fall to our worke in earnest and lay the Axe to the Root to unloose the long and deepe fangs of Poperie and Superstition which being once done the bodie will soone fall downe Let us then Master Speaker endeavour a through Reformation for if it be imperfect it will prove the seed of dissolution if not dissolutions which God forbid and to prevent it I shall humbly move that the Groves and High-places of Idolatry may be removed and put down and then Gods wrath will be appeased and till then never Mr. GRIMSTONS SPEECH In the House of Commons IN PARLIAMENT CONCERNING EPISCOPACY In Feb. 1640. Mr. Speaker THese two honorable Lords Lord Digby Lord Faulkland that spake last have not only prevented me in much I intended to have spoken my self but they have likewise taught me much I knew not before Therefore it is not much you can expect from me All that I shall say at this time is rather to prepare the matter for the question which hath already been so learnedly debated by them than to speak any thing of the matter it self I must confesse when I look upon the Bishops or at least upon some of them and the way of their Government and the sufferings of the people under their Tyranny I wonder not at all at the multitude of Petitioners and Petitions that have this Parliament been preferred against them and that they all cry out Crucifie Crucifie or that they would have been up by the roots but it is necessary we should distinguish between the persons of the Bishops which are so obnoxious and their Functions and Offices for there is no more weight in the Argument that because the Bishops have done amisse therefore take away Episcopacy than there is in it because the Judges of the Common Law are in fault therefore take away Judges and take away the Common Law For my own part I conceive it an easier matter and safer for us Addere Inventis to reform what is amisse in them and their Government then Creare Novum to set up a new form of Goverment which we have had no experience of nor do we know how it should suit either with the humours of the people or with the Monarchiall Government And it may be the new Government which is so much desired if it be brought in upon the grounds and foundations that some would have it it will be out of our powers ever to minister it again Whereas on the other side the Government which is already established if the Governours exceed their bounds they may fall into a Premunire and other penalties which the Law hath provided in that Case and if that be not sufficient we have yet another hanck upon them for our Parliaments have continually a command over them Then Sir It may be demanded of me of their being so much amisse what is that I would have done Truely Sir I am of opinion that much must be done or else we had as good do nothing Therefore I come to the particulars Church Government may be compared to a Castle let a Castle be never so strong once in four-score yeers for so long it is since the first reformation it may need repair and it is not the Castle alone I mean the Government that needs repair but likewise the Governours themselves who most wickedly and trayterously have turned their Canons upon us which should have been used for our defence In the first place therefore I conceive it not onely convenient but of absolute necessity and the payring of their excrescences I mean their temporall Jurisdiction I must confesse I know not to what purpose they should sit upon our Benches at our Sessions of the Peace and Goal-Deliveries or in the Starre-Chamber for by wofull experience we finde that their Judgements are guided there more by their boundlesse wills and fiery transported passions than by reason and the rule of Law which ought to have been their director I conceive that of lesse use their sitting at the Councell boord to be there at the Helm to guide and steer the temporall affairs of the Common-wealth certainly that is not the Plough they ought to follow and by the neglecting of it that is the reason that so many briers brambles and stinking weeds are sprung up in Gods House the Church to the great destruction of all his Majesties Kingdoms here at home and the great wonder and amazement of all the reformed Churches abroad And I conceive it of the least use of all their sitting in Parliaments as powers to give their voices in the making of Laws and yet I would not utterly exclude them For I conceive it might be convenient that all or at least some of them might alway be present there as Assistants to give their advice in Spirituall matters when they are thereunto required by the Lords as the Justices do in Temporall In the next place I conceive it of as absolute necessity the robbing of the Jurisdiction of the high Commission Court or at least to limit and bound
it that it may quadrare with the great Charter of our liberties and the Laws of this Kingdom This Court hath for many yeers together ridden upon the back of the common Law Courts which ought to have been subservient to them Each river must be kept within its own bounds and it is unpossible to have two Suns shine together in one Firmament They have likewise many superfluous Courts which I conceive might very well be spared as their Officiall Courts and Commissary Courts Sir they are no better than cozening Lotteries where the Kings Subjects are detained of their moneyes and where their Judges and inferiour Officers do like Physitians that alway cure themselves though they destroy their patients I confesse I could willingly give my consent that they should keep their Chancellors Court and an Archdeacon Court if such limits and bounds were put upon them as by the wisedom of this House may easily be done The Chancellor is custos consciencie the Keeper of the Bishops conscience and the Archdeacon is oculus Episc the Bishops eye And as I would not take away their consciences or their eyes so I would not have them like Briarius have their finger in every businesse This Sir I have shortly presented you with my opinion that is that I am not willing it that should be referred to or committed upon the point of subversion but I am willing it should be referred upon the point of reformation And if the sence of the House shall run that way I doubt not but at the Commitree I shall make it manifest that my heart stands affected with as much zeal for the having a reformation as any man that sits within these walls DENSELL HOLLIS Esquior His speech at the deliverie of the Protestation to the LORDS May the fourth 1641. My Lords THe Kuights Citizens and Burgesses of the House of Commons having taken into their consideration the present estate and condition of this Kingdome they finde it surrounded with variety of pernicious dangers and destructive designes practises and plots against the well being of it and some of those designes hatched within our owne bowells and Viper-like working our own destruction They finde Jesuits and Priests conspiring with ill ministers of State to destroy our Religion they finde ill ministers conioyn'd together to subvert the Lawes and liberties They finde obstructions of Justice which is the life-bloud of every State and having a free passage from the Soveraign power where it is as primarily seated as the life-bloud in the heart and there derived from the severall Judicatories or through so many veins into all the parts of this great collective Bodie doth give warmth and motion to every part and member which is nourished and inlivened by it But being once precluded stoppd and reared as the particular must of necessity faint and languish so must the whole frame of government be dissolved And consequently Soveraignty it selfe which as the heart in the body is primum movens ultimum moriens must dye and perish in the generall dissolution and all things as in the beginning in antiquum Chaos My Lords They finde the property of the Subject invaded and violated his estate rent from him by illegall taxations Monopolies and proiects almost upon every thing that is for the use of man not only upon superfluities but necessaries and that enrich the Vermine and Caterpillers of the Land and impoverishing good Subiects to take the meat from the Children and give it to Dogs My Lords if the Commons finde these things they conceive they must needs be ill counsels that have brought us into this condition These Counsels have put all into a combustion have discouraged the hearts of all true English men and brought two Armies into our bowels which is the Unlture upon Prometheus eats through and sucks and gnaws our very hearts out Hic Dolor sed ubi Medicina Heretofore Parliaments were the Catholicall the balm of Gilead which healed our wounds restored our spirits and made up the breaches of the Land But of late years they have been like the Fig-tree in the Gospel without effecacie without fruit onley destructive to their particular members who discharged their duties and consciences no way beneficiall to the Common-welth Nohis exitiale nec Reipublico profuturum As he saith in Tacitus being taken away still as Elias was with a whirle-wind never comming to any maturity or to their naturall end whereas they should be like the blessed old maâ— who dieth plenus dierâ—â—â— in a full ago after he had fought a good fight and overcomâ— all his enemies Or as the shâ—cke of wheat wâ—ich commeth in due season to fill our Garnaries with corn uphold our lives with the staffe of bread for Parliaments are our panis quotidianus our true bread all other waies are but Quelkachees which yeeld no true nourishment bread nor good blood The very Parliament which hath sate so long hath but beat the Ayre and strive against the streame I may truly say the wind and tyde hath still been against us The same ill counsell which first raised the storm and almost shipwrackt the Common-wealth they still continue they blow strong like the East wind that brought the Locusts over their Counsells crosse our designes cast difficulties in our way hinder our proceediâ—gs and make all that we do to be fruitlesse and ineffectuall They make us not masters of our busines and so not masters of many which have been the great busines of this Parliament that we might pay the Armies according to our promises and engagements For my Lords our not effecting of the good things which we have undertaken for the good of the Church and of the Common-wealth hath wounded our Reputation and taken off from our credit Is it not time then my Lords that we should unite and concentrate our selves in regard of this Anteparisiasis of hurtfull and malicious intentions and practises against us My Lords it is most agreeable to nature and I am sure most agreeable to reason in respect of the present coniuncture of our affairs for one main Engine by which our enemies work our mischief is by infusing an opinion and bâ—leiâ— into the world that we are not united among our selves But like Sampsons Foxes we draw severall wayes and tend to our severall ends To defeat the Counsels of these Achitophels which would involve us Our Religion our being our Lawes our liberties all that can be neere and deere unto an henest soule in one universall and generall desolation to defeat I say the Counsels of evill Achitophels the Knights Citizens and Burgesses of the House of Commons knowing themselves to be specially entrusted with the preservation of the whole and in their Conscience are perswaded that the dangers are so eminent as they will admit of no delay have thought fit to declare their united affections by entring into an assosciation amongst themselves and by making a solemne Protestation and vow unto their God that they will
Lalors c. Selden of tithes 415. Eighthly The matters which are meerly and only spirituall which are properly of Ecclesiasticall cognizance were anciently by the Lawyers of this Kingdome heard and determined in the County and hundred Courts by the Sheriffe and the Bishop and by William the Conquerour these matters were taken thence and appropriated to the Bishop alone 2 R. 2. Rotul Parliament num 12. Selden of tithes 412. Book of Martyrs 154. And by the Law of God as I conceive they ought to be heard determined by them that have rule in the particular congregations and Churches Mat. 18.17 1 Cor. 5. which if it were so among us would be a wonderfull ease and save great charges to the subject And where the difficulty of case or greatnesse of the persons whom it may concern or where the Governors in particular Congregations demean not themselves as they ought it ought to be referred to a Synod of Presbyters so many as shall be thought meet as Acts 15. a question of difficulty arising in the particular Church of Antioch and the dissention growing great about the same they sent to Hierusalem and there the Apostles and Presbyters convened debated concluded and decreed the matter and imposed the observation thereof upon Antioch and other Churches ver 1.2.6.28 The Apostles would not meddle in the question without the Presbyters and other Bishops there were none there nor in the Churches And faelicius expediuntur negotia commissa pluribus in the multitude of Counsellors there is safety Proverb 11.14 And the change of our Laws in case this House shall see cause for it will not be so great or difficult as is conceived by some For ordination admonition suspension and deprivation of Presbyters and the judgement of the fitnesse of persons to be invested into Benefices Ecclesiasticall and the care of providing for the serving of Cures during the vacancy and avoydance of Churches and taking of the subscription of Ministers to the Articles of Religion 13 Eliz. cap. 12.14 Eliz. cap. 5. and the visiting of Hospitals whose Founders have appointed no visitors which are now in the Bishop may be settled in a convention of Presbyters to be appointed for every hundred from whom appeale may be had upon every gravamen to a greater Assembly of them and those Presbyters or any one of them may be inabled to give the Oathes of Supremacy and alleageance where the Bishop is authorised to give the same And Excommunication may be ordered to be certified by the Parson 3 Eliz. c. 1.7 Jac. cap. 6. Vicar or Stipendary of that Church where the party is excommunicate And all Churches presentative may be filled by investure of the Patrons and all questions concerning them be determined by the same rules of law as Donatives are And loyall Matrimony be tryed by a Jury where the woman is party to the suit as now it is where she is not party so E. 3.15 P. 5.11 H. 4.4 B. 30. and as it is now where the issue is Nient sa femme 12. E. 3. Briefe 481.50 E. 3.15 B. 7. H. 6.12 June 35. H. 6.9 P. 10. Coke 8. E. 4.12 a Laton And Bastardy generall Bastardy beyond Sea within the Stature 25 E. 3. De natis ultra mare may be made tryable by Jury as now speciall Bastardy is 11 Ass 20.38 ass 24.39 E. 3.31.6 7. Ed. 6. Dier 79. P. 52. So tithes may be reduced to the Common Law and be sued for there as it was ever in the case of the King or his Debtor 38. ass 20. Cok. r. 5.16 a Cawdreis case and as it is by the Statute of 2 and 3 E. 6. cap. 13. And for the Bishops attendance on tryals of life it is needlesse he being no Judge in it but the Court who may appoint any other or doe it themselves And for Sacring of Churches and other dead things it is fit to be neglected and left off being a Popish vaine superstition and without colour of countenance from the word of God the Leviticall consecrations being typicall and shadows of the good things we enjoy under the Gospel Heb. 9.19 c. The Bishop being thus reformed and reduced to a condition and state agreeable to the word of God the only right rule of reformation The Deans Chapters Vicars Generall Chancellors 25 Exod. 9 40. 1 Chron. 28.11.19 Ezek. 4.10 2 Cor. 4 6. and the rest of his Traine qua tales being tellaris inutile pondus are to be removed and taken away also as superfluous and uselesse We have intrusted the Episcopacy these fourescore and two years with the cure of Soules a trust of the highest concernment if we consider the price of Souls Our Saviour is at a stand in it What shall a man give in recompence for his Soule Mat. 16.26 the price of it is best seen in the price given for it God and man must become a curse to redeem it How have they discharged this trust Survay the Churches throughout the Kingdome and you shall finde neer eight parts of tenne of them filled with Idoll idle or scandalous Ministers whom the Bishops might have by law refused if discovered unto them before-hand and ought to have removed being discovered unto them afterwards And it hath aboundantly appeared this Parliament upon examinations taken in this House of Commons and the Committees thereof that when Ministers extreamly scandalous have been discovered to the Bishops and their Officers and in the High-commission Court they have received no further censure then admonition or to be put to purgation and so sent home to destroy more Soules as if they had not done sufficiently in that way before But if any godly learned and painfull Preacher hath been discovered by them they have sought out all occasions against such to thrust them out of the Church and lay their Congregations waste and desolate and every trifle though indifferent in their own account hath been made use of and sufficed them for this yea they have made occasions and traps to overthrow such worthies without Law and against Law And herein they have inherited the vertues of Diotrephes their first Predecessor who would not receive the brethren and forbad them that would and cast both out of the Church 3 John 10. And though some of the Bishops have been and are good men yet look into their Diocesse and the Churches in their gift and judge whether they be good Bishops or no you shall sinde them as faulty concerning this great trust as any of the rest And whether it be not from hence evident or at least greatly to be suspected that some curse cleaves to the very Office of Bishops when good men cannot manage it to any better purpose then the bad let any man judge This Spirituall Monarchy hath two incidents inseparable unto it first that it is alwayes incroaching and usurping upon other powers and swallowing them up as the series of all ages aboundantly manifests Secondly that it is ever
sometimes to the great discomfort of many poore soules who for want of money can get no absolution 12 They claim their Office and Jurisdiction to be jure divino and doe exercise the same contrary to Law in their own names and under their own Seals 13 They receive and take upon them temporall Honours Dignities Places and Offices in the Common wealth as if it were lawfull for them to use both swords 14 They cognizance in their Courts and elswhere of matters determinable at the Common Law 15 They put Ministers upon Parishes without the Patrons and without the peoples consent 16 They doe yearly impose Oaths upon Churchwardens to the most apparent danger of filling the land with perjuries 17 They doe exercise Oaths Ex Officio in the Nature of an inquisition even unto the thoughts of mens 18 They have apprehended men by Pursevants without ciration or missives first sent they break up mens houses and studies taking away what they please 19 They doe aw the Judges of the Land with their greatnesse to the inhibiting of prohibition and hindering of Habeas Corpus when it is due 20 They are strongly suspected to be confederated with the Roman party in this Land and with them to be Authors Contrivers or Consenters to the present Commotions in the North and the rather because of a Contribution by the Clergy and by the Papists in the last year 1639. and because of an ill-named benevolence of six Subfidies granted or intended to be granted this yeare 1640. thereby and with these monies to ingage as much as in them lay the two Nations into blood It is therefore our humble and earnest prayer that all this Hierarchicall power may be totally abrogated if the wisdome of this Honourable House shall finde that it cannot be maintained by Gods word and to his glory And your Petitioners shall ever pray c. The Petition of the Citizens of London to both house of Parliament wherein is a Demonstration of their grievances together with their desires for Justice to be excuted upon the Earle of Strafford and other DELINQUENTS To the most Honorable Assembly of the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament The humble Petition of divers Citizens of London SHeweth that notwithstanding his Majesties gracious Answer to the humble Petition of his Loyall Subjects in summoning this Parliament with the great care and endeavoured pains taken by both Houses for the removing the heavy Grievances in Church and Commonwealth whereof the Petitioners have already received some fruit for which they desire to return their most humble and utmost thanks yet neverthelesse they are inforced with all Humility to represent to this most Honourable assemblly some of these Obstructions which doe still hinder that freedome and fulnesse of Trade in this City they have formerly had which considering the numerous Multitude thereupon depending they conceive it not able comfortably to subsist As the unsetled Condition of the Kingdome even since the troubles in Scotland hath caused both strangers and also of our own who did furnish great summs of money to Use to call it in and remit much of it by Exchange unto Forraine pars and stands now in Expectation of what the issue of things may be The stopping money in the Mint which till then was accompted the safest place and surest staple in these parts in the world still doth hinder the importation of Bullyon the Scots now disabled to pay such debts as they owe to the Petitioners and others in the City and by reason of the oppressions exercised in Ireland their debts also are detained there The English Trade by reason of our generall distractions and fears is so much decayed that Country tradesmen can not pay their debts in London as formerly The great summs of money unduly taken by his Majesties Officers and Farmers for impositions upon Merchandize exported and imported and the want of reliefe in Courts of Justice against them The drawing out from the City great summs of money which is the life and spirit of Trade for his Majesties service in the North and being there imployed is not yet returned Besides all which from what strong and secret opposition the Petitioners know not they have not received what so much time and pains might give and cause to hope but still incendiaries of the Kingdoms and other notorious offenders remain unpunished the affaires of the Church notwithstanding many Petitions concerning it and long debate about it remains unsettled the Papists still armed the Laws against them not executed some of the most active of them still at Court Priests and Jesnits not yet banished the Irish Popish army not yet disbanded Courts of Justice not yet reformed and the Earle of Strafford who as now appears hath counselled the plundering of this City and putting it to fine ransome and said it would never be well till some of the Aldermen were banged up because they would not yeeld to illegall levies of moneys hath so drawn out and spent his time in his businesse to the very great charge of the whol Kingdome and his endeavour to obtain yet more all which makes us fear there may be practices now in hand to hinder the birth of your great endeavours and that we lie under some more dangerous plot then we can discover All which premisses with their fears and distractions growing there-from and from things of the like nature the Petitioners humbly offer to the most grave consideration of this most honorable assembly as being the true causes of decay of Trade discouragement of Tradesmen and of the great scarcity of monies with the consequences they labour under And do humbly pray that their said grievances may be redressed the causes of their fears removed Justice executed upon the said Earle and other incendiaries and offenders the rather in regard till then the Petitioners humbly conceive neither Religion nor their lives liberties or estates can besecured And as in duty bound they shall ever pray c. Subscribed to this Petition 20000. all men of good ranke and quality Sir John Wrayes Speech concerning Bishops 1641. THE first challenge for Lordly Primacy hath of old been grounded out of the great Charter by which they hold an Episcopall Primacy or Jurisdiction to be long to their state of Prelacy this is their temporall soundation and main object Here I demand of them unto what Church this great Charter was granted and whether it were not granted unto the Church of GOD in England Let the words of the Magna Charta decide this which are these Concessimus Deo proâ—nobis in perpetuum quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit habeat omnia Jura sua iutegra libertates suas illaesas Now by this Charter if it be rightly interpreted there is first provision made that honour and worship be yeelded unto God as truly and indeed belong unto him Secondly that not only such Rights and Liberties as the King and his Progenitors but also that such as
Realme of England might be engaged in a Nationall and irreconciliable quarrell with the Scots 7. That to preserve himselfe from being questioned for those and other his traiterous courses hee laboured to subvert the right of Parliaments and the ancient course of Parliamentarie proceedings and by false and malicious slanders to incense his Majestie against Parliaments By which words counsels and actions hee hath traiterously and contrary to his allegiance laboured to alienate the hearts of the Kings Liege people from his Majestie to set a division betweene them and to ruine and destroy his Majesties Kingdomes for which they impeach him of high Treason against our Soveraigne Lord the King his Crown and dignitie 8. And he the said Earle of Strafford was Lord Deputie of Ireland and Lieutenant Generall of the Army there viz. His most excellent Majestie for his Kingdomes both of England and Ireland and the L. President of the North during the time that all and everie the crimes and offences before set forth were done and committed and hee the said Earle was Lieutenant Generall of all his Majesties army in the North parts of England during the time that the crimes and offences in the fifth and sixth articles set forth were done and committed 9. And the said Commons by protestations saving to themselves the libertie of exhibiting at any time here after any other accusation or impeachment against the said Earle and also of replying to the answers that hee the said Earle shall make unto the said articles or to any of them and of offering proves also of the premisses or any of them or any other impeachment or accusation that shall be exhibited by them as the cause shall according to the course of Parliaments require doe pray that the said Earle may be put to answer for all and every the premisses that such proceedings examinations trials and judgements may be upon everie of them had and used as is agreeable to Law and Iustice The further impeachment of Thomas Earle of Strafford by the Commons assembled in Parliament 1640 WHereas the said Commons have already exhibited Articles against the said Earle formerly expressed c. Now the said Commons doe further impeach the said Earle as followeth c. 1. That he the said Earle of Strafford the 21. day of March in the 8. yeare of his now Majesties Reigne was president of the Kings Counsell in the Northerne parts of England That the said Earle being president of the said Counsell on the 21. day of March a Commission under the great Seal of England with certaine Schedules of instructions thereunto annexed was directed to the said Earle or others the Commissioners therein named wherby amongst other things power and authority is limited to the said Earle and others the Commissioners therein named to heare and determine all offences and misdemeanors suits debates controversies and demaunds causes things and matters whatsoever therein contained and within certaine precincts in the said Northerne parts therein specified and in such manner as by the said Schedule is limited and appointed That amongst other things in the said instructions it is directed that the said President and others therein appointed shall heare and determine according to the course of proceedings in the Court of Starchamber divers offences deceits and falsities therein mentioned whether the same be provided for by the Acts of Parliament or not so that the Fines imposed be not lesse then by Act or Acts of Parliament provided for by those offences is appointed That also amongst other things in the said instructions it is diâ—ected that the said president and others therein appointed have power to examine heare and determine according to the course of proceedings in the Court of Chancery al manner of complaints for any matter within the said precincts as well concerning lands tenements and hereditaments either free-hold customary or coppy-holde as Leases and oter things therein mentioned and to stay proceedings in the Court of Common Law by Injunction or otherwise by all wayes and meanes as is used in the Court of Chancery And although the former Presidents of the said Counsell had never put in practise such Instructions nor haâ— they any such Instructions yet the said Earle in the moreth of May in the said 8. yeare and divers years following did put in practise exercise and use and caused to be used and put in practise the said Commission and Instructions and did direct and exercise an exorbitant and unlawfull power and jurisdiction on the persons and estates of his Majesties subjects in those parts and did disin-herit divers of his Majesties subjects in those parts of their inheritances sequestred their possessions and did fine ransome punish and imprison them and caused them to be fined ransomed punished and imprisoned to their ruine and destruction and namely Sir Conier Darcy Sir Iohn Bourcher and divers others against the Lawes and in subversion of the same And the said Commission and Instructions were procured and issued by the advice of the said Earle And he the said Earle to the intent that such illegall unjust power might be exercised with the greater licence and will did advise Counsell procure further directions in and by the said instructions to be given tha nâ— prohibition he granted at all but in cases where the said Counsell shall exceed the limits of the said instructions And that if any Writ of Habeas Corpus be granted the party be not discharged till the party performe the Decree and Order of the said Counsell And the said Earle in the 13. yeare of his now Majesties Reigne did procure a new Commission to himselfe and others therein appointed with the said Instructions and other unlawfull additions That the said Commission and Instructions were procured by the solicitation and advice of the said Earle of Strafford 2. That shortly after the obtaining of the said Commission dated the 21 of March in the 8 yeare of his now Majesties Reigne to wit the last day of August then next following he the said Earle to bring his Majesties liege people into a dislike of his Majestie and of his Governement and to terrifie the Iustices of the Peace from executing of the Lawes He the said Earle beeing then President as aforesaid and a Iustice of Peace did publiquely at the Assises held for the County of Yorke in the City of Yorke in and upon the said last day of August declare and publish before the people there attending for the administration of Iustice according to the Law in the presence of the Iustices sitting That some of the Justices were all for Law but they should finde that the Kings little finger should be heavier then the loynes of the Law 3. That the Realme of Ireland having been time out of minde anne xed to the Imperiall Crowne of England and governed by the same Lawes The said Earle being Lord Deputy of that Realme to bring his Majesties liege people of that Kingdome likewise into distike of his
bee bound together If this Treason had taken effect our Soules had been inthralled to the Spirituall Tyranny of Sathan our Consciences to the Ecclesiasticall Tyranny of the Pope our Lives our Persons and Estates to the Civill Tyranny of an arbitrary unlimited confused Government Treason in the least degree is an odious and a horrid Crime other Treasons are particular if a Fort bee betrayed or an Army or any other treasonable fact committed the Kingdome may out-live any of these this Treason would have dissolved the frame and beeing of the Common-wealth it is an Universall a Catholike Treason the venome and malignity of all other Treasons are abstracted digested sublimated into this The Law of this Kingdome makes the King to be the fountaine of Justice of Peace of Protection therefore we say the Kings Courts the Kings Judges the Kings Lawes The Royall Power and Majestie shines upon us in every publique blessing and benefit wee enjoy but the Author of this Treason would make him the fountaine of Injustice of Confusion of publike misery and calamitie The Gentiles by the light of Nature had some obscure apprehensions of the Deity of which they made this expression that hee was Deus optimus maximus an infinite goodnesse and an infinite greatnesse All soveraigne Princes have some Characters of Divinity imprinted on them they are set up in their dominions to bee Optimi Maximi that they should exercise a goodnesse proportionable to their greatnesse That Law terme Laesa Majestas whereby they expresse that which wee call Treason was never more thorowly fulfilled then now there cannot bee a greater laesion or diminution of Majestie then to bereave a King of the glory of his goodnesse It is goodnesse My Lords that can produce not onely to his people but likewise to himself honour and happiness There are Principalities Thrones and Dominions amongst the Divels greatness enough but being uncapable of goodness they are made uncapable both of honour and happinesse The Lawes of this Kingdome have invested the Royall Crowne with power sufficient for the manifestation of his goodness and of his greatness if more bee required it is like to have no other effects but povertie weaknesse and miserie whereof of late wee have had very wofull experience It is farre from the Commons to desire any abridgement of those great Prerogatives which belong to the King they know that their own Liberty Peace are preserved and secured by his Prerogative they will alwayes be ready to support and supply his Majesty with their lives and fortunes for the maintenance of his just and lawfull Power This My Mords is in all our thoughts in our prayers and I hope will so be manifested in our indeavours that if the proceedings of this Parliament bee not interrupted as others have beene the King may within a few moneths bee put into a cleare way of as much greatnesse plenty and glory as any of his Royall Ancestors have enjoyed A King and his People make one Body the inferiour parts conferre nourishment and strength the superiour sense and motion If there be an interruption of this necessary intercourse of bloud and spirits the whole Body must needs bee subject to decay and distemper therefore obstructions are first to bee removed before restoratives can be applyed This My Lords is the end of this Accusation whereby the Commons seeke to remove this person whom they conceive to have beene a great cause of the obstructions betwixt his Majesty and his People for the effecting whereof they have commanded mee to desire your Lordships that their proceedings against him may bee put into as speedy a way of dispatch as the courses of Parliaments will allow First that hee may bee called to answer and they may have liberty to reply that there may bee a quick and secret examination of witnesses and they may from time to time bee acquainted with the depositions that so when the cause shall bee ripe for Judgement they may collect the severall Examinations and represent to your Lordships in one entire Body the state of the Proofes as now by mee they have presented to you the state of the Charge Mr. PYM his SPEECH After the Articles of the Charge against Sr. GEORGE RATCLIFFE were read My LORDS BY hearing this Charge your Lordships may perceive what neere conjunction there is betweene this Cause and the Earle of STRAFFORDS the materials are for the most part the same in both the offences of the Earle moving from an higher Orb are more comprehensive they extend both to England and Ireland these except in one particular of reducing of England by the Irish Army are confined within one Kingdome the Earle is charged as an Authour Sir GEORGE RATCLIFFE as an Instrument and subordinate Actor The influences of superiour Planets are often augmented and inforced but seldome mitigated by the concurrence of the inferiour where merit doth arise not from well-doing but from ill the officiousnesse of ministers will rather adde to the malignity of their Instructions then diminish it that so they may more fully ingratiate themselves with those upon whom they depend In the crimes committed by the Earle there appears more haughtinesse and fiercenesse being acted by his owne principles those motions are ever strongest which are neerest the Primum mobile But in those of Sir GEORGE RATCLIFFE there seemes to be more basenesse and servility having resigned and subjected himselfe to bee acted by the corrupt will of onother The Earle of STRAFFORD hath not beene bred in the study and practice of the Law and having stronger lusts and passions to incite and lesse knowledge to restraine him might more easily be transported from the Rule Sir GEORGE RATCLIFFE in his naturall temper and disposition more moderate and by his education and profession better acquainted with the grounds and directions of the Law was carried into his offences by a more immediate Concurrence of will and a more corrupt suppression of his owne Reason and Judgement My Lords as both these have beene partners in offending so it is the desire of the Commons they may bee put under such tryall and examination and other proceedings of justice as may bring them to partake in a deserved punishment for the safety and good of both Kingdomes Mr SPEAKERS SPEECH At the presenting of these three BILLS viz. An Act For the shortning of Michaelmas Terme For the pressing of Mariners for the Kings Ships For the remainder of the six entire Subsidies May it please your most excellent Majesty THE great security of the Kingdome rests in the happy concurrence of the King and people in the unity of their hearts These joyned safety and plenty attends the Scepter but divided distraction and confusion as Bryers and Thorns overspreads and makes the Land barren No peace to the King No prosperity to the people The duties and affections of your subjects are most transparent most cleare in the cheerfull and most liberall contributions given to knit fast this union with
try the fitnesse of the block and take it up again before he would lay it down for good and all and so he did and before he layd it dow again he told the Executioner that he would give him warning when to strike by stretching forth his hands and then laid down his neck on the block stretching out his hands the Executioner struck off his head at one blow then took the head up in his hands and shewed it to all the people and said God save the King SIXTEENE QVERIES Propounded by the Parliament of Ireland to the Judges of the same Kingdome THat the Judges may set forth and declare whether the Inhabitants of this kingdome be a free people or whether they be to be governed onely by the antient common lawes of England II. Whether the Judges of the Land doe take the Oath of Judges and if so whether under pretext of any Acts of State Proclamation Writ Letter or direction under the great or privie Seale or privie Signet or Letter oâ—other commandement from the Lord Lieutenant Lord Deputie Justice Justices or other chiefe Governor or Governors of this Kingdome they may hinder stay or delay the suite of any subject or his judgement or execution thereupon if so in what cases and whether if they doe hinder stay or delay such suite judgement or execution what punishment they incurre by the Law for their deviation and transgression therein III. Whether the Kings Majesties privie Counsell either together or with the chiefe Governor or Governors of this Kingdome without him or them be a place of Judicature by the common Lawes where in case between party and party for Debts Trespasses Accounts Covenants possessions and title of Land or any of them and with them may be heard and determined and of what civill Causes they have jurisdiction and by what Law and of what force is their order or Decree in such cases or any of them IV. The like of the chiefe Governors alone V. Whether Grant of Monopolies be warrantable by the Law and of what and in what Cases and how and where and by whom are the Transgessors against such Grantees punishable and whether by Fine and mutilation of Members imprisonment losse and forfeiture of goods or otherwise and which of them VI. In what Cases the Lord Deputie or other chiefe Governors of this Kingdome and Counsell may punish by Fine imprisonment Mutilation of Members Pillory or otherwise they may sentence any to such the same or the like punishment for infrigeing the commands of any Proclamation or Monopolie and what punishment doe they incurre that doevote for the same VII Of what force is an Act of state or Proclamation in this Kingdome to bind the liberty goods possessions or inheritance of the natives thereof whether they or any of them can alter the common Law or the infringers of them lose their Goods Chattels or Leases or forfeit the same by infringing any such Act of State or Proclamation or both and what punishment doe the sworne Judges of the Law that are privie Counsellors incurre that vote for such Act and execution of it VIII Whether the subjects of this Kingdome be subiect to the Marshall Law and whether any man in time of peace no enemy being in the fields with displayed colours can be sentenced to Death if so by whom and in what cases if not what punishment doe they incurre that in time of peace execute Marshall Law IX Whether voluntary Oathes taken freely before Arbitrators or others for affirmance or disaffirmance of any thing or for the true performance of any thing be punishable in the Castle-Chamber or in any other Court and why and wherefore X. Why and by what Law and upon what Rule of policie is it that none is admitted to reducement in the Castle-chamber untill he confesse the offence for which he is censured when as Revera he might be innocent therof though subordined proofes or circumstances might induce him to be censured XI Whether the Judges of the Kings Bench and by what law doe or can deny the copies of Indictments of Fellony or Tyeason to the parties accused of Treason contrary to the statute of 42. Edw. 3. XII Whether the statute of Baltinglase take from the Subiâ—cts out-lawed for Treason though erroniously the benefit of his Writ of Error and how and by what meanes that blinâ— clause not warranted by the body of that Act came to be interted and by what Law is it countenanced to the diminution of the liberty of the subject XIII What power have the Barons and the Court of Exchequer to raise the respite of homage Arbitrarily to what value they please and to what value they may raise it and by what law they may distinguish betweene respite of homage upon the diversities of the true value of the Fees when as all Escuage is the same for great and small Fees and they apportionable by Parliament XIIII Whether it 's censurable in the subjects of this Kingdome to repaire into England to appeale to his Majesty for Redresse of Jnjuries or for other their accusers if so why and in what condition of persons and by what law XV. Whether Deanes and other Dignitanies of Cathedrall Churches be properly de mero jure donative by this King or not elective or collative if so why and by what law and whether the confirmation of a Deane de facto of the Bishops Grantee be good and valid in the law or no if not by what law XVI Whether the issuing of Quo Warranto's against Burroughes that antiently and recently sent Burgesses to the Parliament to shew cause why they sent Burgesses to the Parliament be legall CAPTAINE AVDLEY MERVINS SPEECH To the House of Commons in Ireland Mr. Speaker IT was equall care and policy in our Predecessours First to lay a foundation and then by a continued industry to build and perfect so glorious a fabrique as the house of Commons lawfull summoned by the Kings writ represents it selfe unto us at this day In which so elaborate and exquisite a structure being finished and crowned with those fruitfull and peace-speaking events may challenge by right the title of a Jubile To so great a modell with neate and provident husbandry they intend no lesse then sutable furniture which allowed pride disdaine to cloath it with any other but with what by his Majesties favour they had procured out of his owne store I meane those great and large priviledges which by severall acts of royall favor have bin dispensed annexed nay hypostatically united to the same Priviledges are the soule by which we move the Sinnes and Nerves by which we are compacted they are them by which we breath Priviledges for their birth allyed to the Kings Prerogative for their antiquity sacred for their strength so re-intrenched by common law fortified by statutes insconsed by precedents of all times that no man ever attempted their violation with impunity so that now and then it may be truly said The Kings
offences were contrived committed perpetrated and done at such time as the said Sir Richard Bolton Sir Gerard Lowther and Sir George Radcliffe Knights were privy Counsellors of State within this Kingdom and against their and every of their oathes of the same at such times as the said Sir R. Bolton Kt. was Lord Chancellor of Ireland or chief Baron of his Majesties Court of Exchequer within this Kingdom and Sir Gerard Lowther Knight was Lord chief Justice of the said Court of Common Pleas and against their Oathes of the same and at such time as the said John L. Bishop of Derry was actuall Bishop of Derry within this Kingdom and were done and speciated contrary to their and every of their allegiance severall and respective oathes taken in that behalf IV. For which the said Knights Citizens and Burgesses do impeach the said Sir Richard Bolton Lord Chancellor of Ireland Iohn L. B. of Derry Sir Gerard Lowther Kt. L. chief Justice of his Majesties said Court of Common Pleas and Sir George Radcliffe Kt. aforesaid and every of them of high Treason against our Soveraign Lord the King his Crown and Dignity The said Knights Citizens and Burgesses by Protestation saving to themselves the liberty of exhibiting at any time hereafter any accusation or impeachment against the said Sir Rich. Bolton Iohn L. Bishop of Derry Sir Gerard Lowther and Sir George Radcliffe aforesaid and every of them and also of replying to them and every of their answers which they and every of them shall make to the said Articles or any of them and of offering proof also of the premisses or of any other impeachment or accusation as shall be by them exhibited as the case shall according to the course of Parliament require And the said Knights Citizens and Burgesses do pray that the said Sir Richard Bolton Knight Lord Chancellor of Ireland Iohn Lord Bishop of Derry Sir Gerard Lowther Knight Lord chief Justice of his Majesties said Court of Common Pleas and Sir George Radcliffe Knight and every of them be put to answer to all and every of the premisses and that all such Proceedings Examinations Triall and Iudgement may be upon them and every of them had and used as is agreeable to Law and Justice Copia vera Signed PHILIP PHERNESLY Cler. Parliamenti Sir Thomas Wentworths speech XXij d. Martij 1627. MAy this dayes resolution be as happy as I conceive the proposition which now moves me to rise is seasonable and necessary for whether we shall look upon the King or the people it did never more behove this great Physitian the Parliament to effect a true consent towards the parties then now This debate carryes with it a double aspect towards the Soveraign towards the Subject though both innocent both injured both to be cured In the representation of injuries I shall crave your attention in the Cures I shall beseech your equall cares and better judgements surely in the greatest humility I speak it these illegall waies are marks and punishments of indignation The raising of Leavies strengthned by Commission with unheard of instructions the billetting of Souldiers by Lievetenants without leave have been as if they could have perswaded Christian Princes nay Worlds the right of Empire had been to take a way by strong hand and they have endeavoured as far as was possible for them to do it This hath not been done by the King under the pleasing shade of whose Crown I hope we shall ever gather the fruits of Justice but by Projectors They have extended the prerogative of the King beyond the just Center which was the sweet harmony of the whole They have rent from us the light of our eyes inforced a company of Guests worse than the Ordinaries of France vitiated our wives and daughters before our faces brought the Crown to greater want than ever it was by anticipating the Revenue and can the Shephard be thus smitten and the flock not scattered They have introduced a Privie Counsell ravishing at once the Spheers of all ancient government imprisoning us without Bail or Bond. They have taken from us what shall I say indeed what have â—hey left us all mean of supplying the King and ingratiating our selves with him taking up the roots of all propriety which if it be not seasonably set into the ground by his Maiesties hand we shâ—ll have instead of beauty baldnesse To the making of them whole I shall apply my self and propound a remedy to all these diseases by one and the same thing hath the King and people been hurt and by the same must they be cured to vindicate what New things No. Our ancient sober vitall liberties by reinforcing of the ancient Lawes made by our Ancestors by setting such a Character upon them as no licentious spirit shall dare hereafter to enter upon them And shall we thinke this away to break a Parliament Nâ— Our desires are modest and iust I speak truly both for the interest of the King and People If we enjoy not those it will be impossible to relieve him Therefore let us never fear that they shall not be accepted by his goodnesse Wherefore I shall descend to my motions which conconsists of four parts two of which have relation to the persons two to the propriety of goods for the persons the freedome of them from imprisoning Secondly from employments abroad contrary to the ancient customes for our goods that no leavies may be made but in Parliament Secondly no billetting of Souldiers It is most necessary that these be resolved that the Subiects may be secured in both Then for the manner in the second place it will be fit to determine it by a Grand Committee Sir Thomas Wentworths Speech 21. of Aprill Anno 1628. Right wise Right worthy TOo many instigations importune the sequell of my words First the equitie of your proceedings Secondly the honesty of my request for I behold in all your intendments a singularity grounded upon discretion and goodnesse and your consultations steered as well by Charity as extremity of justice This order and method I say of your procedings together with the importunity offered of the Subject in hand have emboldned me to solicite an extension of the late granted protections in generall The lawfulnesse and honesty of the propositions depends upon these two particulars I. The present troubles of the parties protected having run themselves into a further and almost irrecoverable hazards by presuming upon and feeding themselves with the hopes of a long continuing Parliament II. Let the second be this consequence That that which is prejudiciall to most ought to minister matter of advantage to the rest sith then our interpellations and disturbances amongst our selves are displeasing almost to all if any benefit may be collected let it fall upon those for I think the breach of our Session can befriend none but such nor such neither but by means of the grant before hand And because it is probable that his Majesty may cause a Remeeting
would scarce remunerat the iniuries repay the losses of this suffering Nation since the pronouncing of that fatall sentence What proportionable satisfaction then can this Common-wealth receive in the punishment of a few inconsiderable Delinquents But 't is a Rule valid in Law approved in equity that Qui non habent in crumen Luant in Corpore And 't is without all question in policy exemplar punishments conduce more to the safety of a State than pecuniary reparations Hope of impunity lulls every bad-great-officer into security for his time and who would not venture to raise a Fortune when the allurements of honour and wealth are so prevalent if the worst is can fall be but Restitution We see the bad effects of this bold-erroneous opinion what was at first but corrupt Law by encouragement taken from their impunity is since become false Doctrine the people taught in Pulpits they have no property Kings instructed in that destructive principle that all is theirs and is thence deduc'd into necessary state-policy whispered in counsell That he is no Monarch who is bounded by any Law By which bad consequences the best of Kings hath bin by the infusion of such poysonous positions diverted from the sweet inclinations of his own Naturall Equity and Justice the very essence of a King taken from him which is preservation of his people and whereas Salus populi is or should be Suprema Lex the power of undoing us is masqu'd under the stile of what should be Sacred Royall Prerogative And is it not high time for us to make examples of the first authors of this subverted Law bad Counsell worse Doctrine Let no man think to divert us from the pursuit of Iustice by poysoning the clear streams of our affections with jealous sears of his Majesties Interruption if we look too high Shall we therefore doubt of Iustice because we have need of great Justice We may be confident the King well knows That his Iustice is the Band of our Allegiance That 't is the staffe the proof of his Soveraignty 'T is a happy assurance of his intentions of grace to us that our loyalty hath at last won him to tender the safety of his people and certainly all our pressures weighed this 12 yeers last past it will be found the passive loyalty of this suffering Nation hath our-done the active duty of all Times and Stories As the Poet hath it fortiter ille facit qui miser esse potest I may as properly say Fideliter fecimus we have done loyally to suffer so patiently Then since our Royall Lord hath in mercy visited us let us not doubt but in his Justice he will redeem his people Qui timidè rogat docet negare But when Religion is innovated our Liberties violated our Fundamentall Laws abrogated our modern Laws already obsoleted the propriety of our Estates alienated Nothing left us we can call our own but our misery and our patience if ever any Nation might iustifiably this certainly may now now most properly most seasonably cry out and cry aloud vel Sacra Regnet Iustitia vel Ruat Coelum Mr. Speaker the summe of my humble motion is that a speciall Committee may be appointed to examine the whole carriage of that Extraiudiciall iudgement Who were the Counsellors Soliciters and subscribers to the same the reasons of their Subscription whether according to their opinions by importunity or pressure of others whether proforma tantum And upon report thereof to draw up a charge against the guilty and then Lex Currat Fiat Iustitia A brief Discourse concerning the power of the Peers and Commons of Parliament in point of Iudjcature SIR to give you as short an account of your desires as I can I must crave leave to lay you as a ground the frame or first modell of this State When after the period of the Saxon time Harold had lifted himself into the Royall Seat the Great men to whom but lately he was no more equall either in fortune or power disdaining this act of arrogancy called in William then Duke of Normandy a Prince more active than any in these Western parts and renowned for many victories he had fortunately atchieved against the French King then the most potent Monarch in Europe This Duke led along with him to this work of glory many of the younger sons of the best families of Normandy Picardy and Flanders who as undertakers accompanied the undertaking of this fortunate man The Usurper slain and the Crown by war gained to secure certain to his posterity what he had so suddenly gotten he shared out his purchase retaining in each County a portion to support the Dignity Soveraign which was styled Demenia Regni now the ancient Demeans and assigning to others his adventures such portions as suited to himself dependancy of their personall service except such Lands as in free Almes were the portion of the Church these were styled Barones Regis the Kings immediate Freeholders for the word Baro imported then no more As the King to these so these to their followers subdivided part of their shares into Knights fees and their Tenants were called Barones Comites or the like for we finde as in the Kings Writ in their Writs Baronibus suis Francois Anglois the Soveraigne gifts for the most part extending to whole Counties or Hundreds an Earl being Lord of the one and a Baron of the inferiour donations to Lords of Town-ships or Mannors And thus the Land so was all course of Iudicature divided even from the meanest to the highest portion each severall had his Court of Law preserving still the Mannor of our Ancestors the Saxons who jura per pages reddebant and these are still tearmed Court-Barons or the Freeholders Court twelve usually in number who with the Thame or chief Lord were Iudges The Hundred was next where the Hundredus or Aldermanus Lord of the Hundred with the chief Lord of each Township within their limits iudged Gods people observed this form in the publike Centureonis decam Judicabant plebem omni tempore The County or Generale placitum was the next this was so to supply the defect or remedy the corruption of the inferiour Vbi Curiae Dominorum probantur defecisse pertinet ad vice comitem Provinciarum the Iudges here were Comites vice comites Barones Comitatus qui liberas in hoc terras babeant The last and supreme and proper to our question was generale placitum apud London universalis Synodus in Charters of the Conquerour Capitalis curia by Glanvile Magnum Commune consilium coram Rege magnatibus suis In the Rolles of Henry the 3. It is not stative but summoned by Proclamation Edicitur generale placitum apud London saith the book of Abingdon whether Epium Duces principes Satrapae Rectores Causidici ex omni parte confluxerunt ad istam curiam saith Glanvile Causes were referred Propter aliquam dubitationem quae emergit in comitatu cum
more to offer unto you But this one compriseth many It is a neast of waspes or swarm of vermine which have over-crept the land I mean the Monopoles and Polers of the people These like the Frogs of Aegypt have gotten possession of our dwellings and have scarce a room free from them They sup in our Cup they dip in our Dish they sit by our fire we finde them in the Dy fat wash-boule and Poudering tub they share with the Butler in his box they have marked and sealed us from head to foot Mr. Speaker they will not bate us a Pin we may not buy our own Cloathes without their brokage These are the Leeches that have suckt the Common wealth so hard that it is almost become hecticall And Mr. Speaker some of these are ashamed of their right names they have a vizard to hide the brand made by that good law in the last Parliament of King James They shelter themselves under the name of a Corporation they make by-laws which serve their turns to squeese us and fill their purses unface these and they will prove as bad Cards as any in the pack These are not petty Chapmen but wholesale men Mr. Speaker I have ecchoed to you the cryes of the kingdome I will tell you their hopes they look to Heaven for a blessing upon this Parliament they hang upon his Majesties exemplary piety and great justice which renders his eares open to the just complaints of his Subjects we have had lately a gratious assurance of it they are the wise conduct of this whereby the other great affaires of the Kingdome and this our grievance of no lesse import And this may go hand in hand in preparation and resolution Then by the blessing of God we shall return home with an Olive branch in our mouths and full confirmations of the priviledges which we received from our Ancestors and ow to our posterity which every freeborn English man hath received with the aire he breathed in These are our hopes These are our prayers Mr. BAGSHAW his speech in Parliament 7 die Novemb. 1640. Mr Speaker I Had rather Act then speak in those weighty businesses of the Kingdome which have been so excellently handled by these foure worthy Gentlemen that spake last and therefore I shall be short For when I look upon the Body of this goodly and flourishing Kingdom in matters of Religion and of our laws For like Hippocrates Twins they live and dye together I say when I behold these in that state and plight as they have been represented to us Flere magis libet quam dicere But this is our comfort Mr. Speaker that we are all met together for the welfare and happinesse of Prince and People And who knows whether this may not be the appointed time wherein God will restore our Religion as at the first and our laws as at the beginning The honour of a King consisteth in the weale of his people this undoubted maxime his Majesty hath made good by his late gracious speech and promise to us to redresse all our grievances to destroy the enemies of our Peace and plenty To make a people rich they must have ease justice Ease in their Consciences from the bane of Superstition from the intolerable burthen of innovation in Religion and from the racks and tortures of strange and new fangled Oaths They must be eased in their persons being liberi homines and not Vilanes All illegall arrests and imprisonment against Magna Charta being our greatest liberties They must be eased in their lands from Forrest where never any Deer fed from depopulations where never any Farm was decayed and from inclosures where never any hedges were set But must lastly be eased in their goods from their exactions and expilations of Pursevants and Apparitors of Projectors and Monopolists Humanarum Calamitatum mercatores as an ancient finely calls them and if the people have all these easements yet if they have not Justice they cannot subsist justice is to the Civill body as food to the naturall If the streams of Justice be by unrighteousnesse turned into Gall and Wormword or by cruelty like the Aegyptian waters be turned into blood those which drink of these brooks must needs dy and perish The Law saith that all Justice is in the King who is stiled in our book Fons Justitiae and he commits it to his Judges for the execution wherein he trusts them with two of the chiefest flowers which belong to his crown The administration of his justice and the exposition of his laws but he will not trust them without an Oath required of them by the Statute of 18 E. 31. Which is so strict and severe that it made a Judge whom I know though honest and strict yet to quake and tremble at the very mention of it The effect of the Oath is that they should doe equall law and execution of right to all the Kings Subjects poore aswell as rich without regard of any person That they should not deny to doe common right to any man by the Kings letters and for any other cause And in case such letters do that they proceed to do come the law notwithstanding such letters or for any other causes as they will answer to the King in bodies goods and lands how this Oath hath been performed we have seen and felt I need say no more But when I cast mine eyes upon the inferiour Courts of Justice wherein no such oath is required I meane the High Commission and other Ecclesiasticall Courts my soule hath bled for the wrong pressures which I have observed to have been done and committed in these Courts against the Kings good people especially for the most monstrous abuse of the Oath Ex Officio which as it is now used I can call no other than Carnificina Conscientiae I have some reason to know this that have been an Attendant to the Court these five yeeres for my selfe and a deare friend of mine sometimes Knight of our Shire for a meer triviall businesse that the most that could be proved against him was the putting on his hat in the time of Sermon Of which Court I shall say more and make good what I say when those ulcers come to be opened Mr. Speaker I say these foure worthies that spake before me have told you of our miseries but I cannot tell you of the remedies For things are come to that height that I may say as Livy sayd of the Roman state in his time Nec Vitia nostra scire possumus neâ— Remedia for no Laws will now doe us good Better Laws could not have been made then the Stat. of Monopolies against Projectors and the Petition of right against the infringers of liberties and yet as if the Law had bin the Author of them there hath been within these few years more Monopolies and infringment of liberties than hath been in any age since the Conquest and if all those vile Harlets as Queen Elizabeth
Lord Sheffeild very differing from all that went before it being left out that they should enquire per sacramentum bonorum legalium hominum and to heare and determine secundum leges Angliae Relation being had only to the instructions which were the first instructions we can finde were sent thither though I told your Lordships there were some mentions of some In 1. Jac. I shall not trouble your Lordships with these Instructions nor with the other that followed in 14. Jacobi to the same man nor in 16 Jacobi when a new Commission was granted to my Lord Sunderland nor indeed with any till we come to these present Instructions and Commissions under which that part of the Kingdome groans and languisheth My Lord of Strafford came to that government in Decemb 4. Caroli and since the Commission hath been three severall times removed in the fist year in March in the eighth in Novemb. in the thirteenth year of his Majesties reigne into that Commission of 8. and 13. a new clause served in for the granting sequestring and establishing Possessions according to instructions crowded in a Masse of new exorbitant and intolerable power though our complaint be against this Commission it selfe and against the whole body of those instructions I shall not mispend your Lordships pretious time in desiring to have the whole read but shall presume to trouble your Lordships only with five or six of the instructions that by the vast irregularity of those your Lordships may judge how insupportable the whole burthen is I shall not trouble your Lordships with the nineth Instruction though it be but short which introduceth that miseram servitutem ubi jus est vagum incognitum by requiring an obedience to such ordinances and determinations as be or shall be made by the Councell Table or high Commission Court A grievance my Lords howsoever consuetudo peccantum claritas nobilitaverit hanc culpam of so transcendent a nature that your Lordships noble Justice will provide a remedy for it with no lesse care then you would rescue the life and blood of the Common-wealth Read the 19.22 23 24.29 and 30 I will not trouble your Lordships with reading more there being among them in the whole 58. Instructions scarce one that is not against or besides the Law Whether His Majesty may caution out a part of his Kingdome to be tryed by Commission though according to the rules of Law since the whole Kingdome is under the Laws and government of the Courts established at Westminster and by this reason the severall parts of the kingdome may be deprived of that priviledge will not be now the question that his Majesty cannot by Commission erect a new Court of Chancery or aproceeding according to the rules of the Star-chamber is most cleare to all who have read Magna Charta which allowed no proceedings nisiper legale judicium Parium per legem terrae for our Court of Chancery here by long usage and proscription is grown to be as it were lex terrae But my Lords the thircieth Instruction goes further and erects such an Empire such a Dominion as shall be lyable to no contrary The Courts of Westminster my Lords have superintendences over all inferiours Courts to regulate their jurisdictions if they exceed their limits As to hold Plea of greater value or the like in his exercise of Jurisdiction the Judges are sworn to grant and send prohibitions and to stop the granting of these prohibitions or to neglect them when they are granted is the greatest and boldest scorn of the Law and the Law-makers that can be imagined The Kings Courts at Westminster having been alwaies of that awfull and reverent esteem with inferiour Judges that the instances of such contempts against them are very rare and exemplary in the punishment The Bishop of Norwich in Trinity Term in the twentieth year of Edward the third in Rot. 289. in the common Pleas in Hilary Terme 21. in the Kings Bench was attached for disobeying a Prohibition at the suit of Stracill upon full and solemne dissension of the whole matter the Court resolved that the proceedings of the Bishop were inobedientiam diminutionem Domini potestatis Regiae authoritatis suae lectionem coronae suae exhereditationem manifestam c. As the words of the Records are and therefore adjudged the temporall tyes of the Bishop to be seised into the Kings hand and great very great dammages to be paid to Plaintiffes And whosoever gave directions for these stout Instructions might have remembred that no longer since then Michaelmas in the seventh year of Eliz. Rot. 31. an Attachment was granted against the Archbishop of Yorke then President of that Councell for forbidding the Goaler of Yorke to deliver one Lambert his Prisoner who was sent for by a habeas corpus from the Kings Bench and if they would have believed the resolution of all the Judges in England in Trinity Term in the 6 yeare of King James they would have known how unfit it had been to enlarge that Jurisdiction since most of their proceedings being of an inferiour nature to what they are now grown were then declared to be illegall and inconsistent with the liberty of the Subject And can such a Court as this my Lords deserve to live what a compendious abridgement hath Yorke gotten of all the Courts in Westminster Hall whatsoever sals within the cognizance or jurisdiction of either Courts here is compleatly determinable within that one Court at York besides the power it hath with the Ecclesiasticall and high Commission Courts What hath the good Northern people done that they only must be disfranchised of all their priviledges by Magna Charta and the Petition of Right for to what purpose serve these Statutes if they may be fined and imprisoned without Law according to the discretion of the commissioners what have they done that they and they alone of all the people of this happy Iland must be disinherited of their birth-right of their Inheritance For prohibitions writs of Habeas Corpus writs of errour are the birth-right the inheritance of the Subjects And 't is here worth your Lordships observation that to those many prohibitions which have been granted from above for till of late the court of Yorke had not the courage to dispose prohibitions nor indeed till our Courts here had not the courage to grant them T was never known that Court pleaded the Jurisdiction of their Councell which without doubt they would have done upon the advantage of many great persons in whose protection they have alwayes been had they not known the Law could not be misinterpreted enough to allow it Your Lordships remember the directions I mentioned of Magna Charta that all proceedings shall be per legale Judicium Parium per legem terrae now these Jurisdictions tell you you shall proceed according to your discretion that is you shall doe what you please onely that we may not suspect this discretion will be
under great penalties forbid all Parsons Vicars Curates Readers in Divinity c. to speake any other wayes of them then as they had defined by which meanes having seized upon all the Conduites whereby knowledge is convayed to the people how easie would it bee for them in time to undermine the Kings Prerogative and to suppresse the subjects liberty or both And now Sir I beseech you to consider how they have defined this high and great poynt they have dealt with us in matter of Divinity as the Judges had done before in matter of Law they first tooke upon them to determine a matter that belonged not to their Judicature but onely to the Parliament and after by their judgement they overthrew our propriety and just so have these Divines dealt with us they tell us that Kings are an Ordinance of God of Divine Right and founded in the prime Lawes of Nature from whence it will follow that all other formes of government as Aristocracies and Democracies are wicked formes of government contrary to the Ordinance of God and the Prime Lawes of Nature which is such new Divinitie as never read in any Booke but in this new Booke of Canons Mr. Speaker We all know that Kings and States and Iudges and all Magistrates are the Ordinances of God but Sir give mee leave to say they were the Ordinances of men before they were the Ordinances of God I know I am upon a great and high poynt but I speake by as great and as high a warrant if St. Peters chaire cannot erre as St. Peters Epistles cannot thus he teacheth us Submit your selfe to-every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake whether it bee to the King as supreame or to the Governour as to him that is sent by him c. Sir It is worthy noting that they are Ordinances of men but that they are to be submitted unto for the Lords sake and truely their power is as just and their subjects allegeance as due unto them though we suppose them to bee first ordinances of men and then confirmed and established by Gods Ordinance as if wee suppose them to bee immediate Ordinances of God and so received by men But there was somewhat in it that these Divines aimed at I suppose it was this If Kings were of Divine Right as the Office of a Pastor in the Church or founded in the prime Lawes of Nature as the power of a Father in a Family then it would certainly follow that they should receive the fashion and manner of their government onely from the Prescript of Gods Word or of the Lawes of Nature and consequently if there bee no Text neither of the Old nor New Testament nor yet any Law of Nature that Kings may not make Lawes without Parliaments they may make Lawes without Parliaments and if neither in the Scripture nor in the Law of Nature Kings be forbidden to lay taxes or any kind of impositions upon their people without consent in Parliament they may doe it out of Parliament and that this was their meaning they expresse it after in plaine termes for they say that Subsidies and taxes and all manner of ayds are due unto Kings by the Law of God and of Nature Sir if they bee due by the Law of God and of Nature they are due though there be no act of Parliament for them nay Sir if they bee due by such a right a hundred acts of Parliaments cannot take them away or make them undue And Sir that they meant it of Subsidies and aids taken without consent in Parliament is clearely that addition that they subjoyne unto it that this doth not take away from the Subject the propriety hee hath in his goods for had they spoken of Subsidies and aydes given by consent in Parliament this would have been a very ridiculous addition for who ever made any question whether the giving Subsidies in Parliament did take away from the Subject the propriety hee hath in his goods when as it doth evidently imply they have a propriety in their goods for they could not give unlesse they had something to give but because that was alledged as a chiefe reason against Ship-mens and other such illegall payments levied upon the people without their consent in Parliament that it did deprive them of their right of propriety which they have in their goods these Divines would seem to make some answer thereunto but in truth their answer is nothing else but the bare assertion of a contradiction and it is an easie thing to say a contradiction but impossible to reconcile it for certainely if it bee a true rule as it is most true quod meum est sine consensu meo non potest fieri alienum to take my goods without my consent must needes destroy my propriety Another thing in this first Canon wherein they have assumed unto themselves a Parliamentarie power is in that they take upon them to define what is Treason besides what is determined in the statute of Treasons They say to set up any coactive independent power is treasonable both against God and the King the question is not whether it bee true they say or no but whether they have power to say what is Treason and what not But now Sir that I am upon this point I would gladly know what kinde of power that is which is exercised by Arch-Bishops Bishops Deanes Arch-Deacons c. Coactive certainely it is all the Kingdome feeles the lash thereof and it must needs bee independant if it be jure Divine as they hold it for they doe not meane by an independant power such a power as doth not depend on GOD. Besides if their power be dependant of whom is it dependant not of the King for the Law acknowledgeth no way whereby Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction can bee derived from his Majestie but by his Commission under the great-Scale which as I am informed they have not I speake not of the High Commission but of that jurisdiction which they exercise in their Archiepiscopall Episcopall Archidaconall Courts c. and therefore if their owne sentence bee just wee know what they are and what they have pronounced against themselves But Sir it were worth knowing what they aimed at in that independent coactive power which they terme popular I will not take upon me to unfold their meaning but wee know Doctor Beale had a hand in the making of these Canons and if wee apply his Paraphrase to the Text it may give us some clearenesse I remember amongst other notes of his this was one that he did acknowledge the Kings Supremacy but would joyne unto him an assistant viz. the people meaning this House which being the representative body of the COMMONS of England and claiming as it is so a share in the Legislative power Doctor Beale calleth this a joyning of an assistant to the King in whom soly hee placeth the power of making Lawes and that it is but of grace that he assumeth either the Lords or Commons
Righteousnesse For the other Oath de parendo juri Ecclisiae stando mandatis Ecclesiae though it make lesse noyse than the other yet it is not of lesse dangerous consequence If I remember well the Storie this was the Oath that the Pope made King John to take and when hee had sworne stare mandatis Ecclesiae the Pope commandid him to resigne his Kingdome to him and truely bee hee Gentle man or Nobleman or what ever else when hee hath once put his necke into this nouse his Ghostly Fathers may drag him whither they will for they have the quantity and the quality of the penance in their owne breast and if they shal enjoyne him to give any summe towards the building of a Church or the adorning of a Chappell he must pay it or if they should enjoyne him any servile or base action as there are not wanting examples of that kinde in the time of Popery they are sworne stare mandatis Ecclesiae and so cannot recede but must performe it Nay I dare not warrant any man from the rods of Henry the second or of Raymond of Tholouze what hath beene done may bee done I am sure the power is the same And that other Oath also though more usuall in practise and more confirmed by these new Canons which is administred to Church-wardens would bee looked into For it is hardly possible for them that take it not to be forsworne being they sweare to so many particulars that they cannot minde and to some that they cannot understand as how many Church-wardens are there in England that understand what Socinianisme is in case they be sworne to present the offenders against that Canon which concernes that matter I shall only adde a word or two concerning two Canons more which seeme to be Canons of Reformation The first is concerning Excommunication to bee pronounced onely by a Divine wherein it is alledged for the framers of these Canons that if they have not more Law on their sides yet they may seeme to have more reason For my part as in all other things I thinke they have so mended the matter that they have made it far worse for before that which was found fault with was this that a Lay-man did that which the grave Divine should have done and now the grave Divine must doe what ever the Lay-man would have done for the cognisance of the cause and the power of Iudicâ—ture is wholly in the Lay-man onely the grave Divine is to be his servant to execute his sentences and hath such a kinde of managing the spiritual sword allowed onely unto him as the Papists in some cases were wont to afford unto the civill Magistrate in respect of the Temporalâ— sword â—or as if the Civill sword by an implicite Faith had been pinned to the Lawn-sleeves they condemned men of Heresie and then delivered them over to the Secular power but what to doe Not to have any cognisance of the cause nor to exercise any power of judicature but onely to be their executioners and to burne the Heretick whom they had condemned and so they judged men excommunicate and then the Civill power was to send out Writs de excommunicato capiendo against them but one said well that the sword without cognisance of the cause and judgement was like Polyphemus without his eye it became violence and fury But being accompanyed with the eye of judgement it is equity and justice and surely where the Spirituall or Civill Governour is called upon to strike hee must be allowed to see and judge whom and wherefore he strikes otherwise he will be able to give but an ill accompt to God of the managing of the sword wherewith he is instructed The other Canon is the last Canon against vexatious Citations wherein they seeme to have some sence of the great grievances that poore people lye under by occasion of vexatious citations and molestations in Ecclesiasticall Courts and I verily believe that there is not a greater oppression in the whole Kingdome upon the poorer sort of people then that which proceedeth out of these Courts But now Sir let us see what provision they have made against it by this Canon They say because great grievances may fall upon people by citations upon pretence onely of the breach of that Law without any presentment or any other just ground that no citations grounded onely as aforesaid shall issue out except it be under the hand and Seale of the Chancellour Commissarie Arch-Deacon or other competent Judge so that if there be any sence in these words though there be no presentment at all nor any other just ground yet a citation may issue out so it be under the hand and Seale of the Chancellour Commissary or other competent Judge and the partie shall not be discharged without paying his fees nor have any reliefe by this Canon But suppose the Citation be not under the hand and Seale of any competent Iudge and that there was neither presentment nor any just ground for it shall he then bee dismissed without paying any fees No unlesse first contrary to the Law of Nature there being no presentment nor just ground of accusation against him he shall by his Oath purge himselfe of pretended breaches of Law and then too hee shall onely have the fees of the Court remitted but shall have no satisfaction for his troublesome and chargeable journey and for the losse of his time and being drawne away from his affaires Nay lest they should seeme to have beene too liberall of their favour they adde a proviso in the close of the Canon that this grace of theirs shall not extend to any â—rievous crime as Schisme Incontinency misbehavious in the Church or obstinate inconformity And what do they call misbehaviour in the Church If a man doe not kneele at the Confession or have his hat on when the Lessons are reading In like manner what doe they call obstinate inconformity If a man will not thinke what they would have him thinke if a man will not say what they would have him say if a man will not sweare what they would have him sweare if a man will not read what they would have him read if a man wil not preach what they would have him preach if a man will not pray what they would have him pray In short if a man will not doe what ever they would have him doe then hee is an inconformist and after that they have duely admonished him primo secundo tertio all in one breath then hee is contumacious then he is an obstinate Inconformist Now Sir my humble motion is that in consideration of all the premisses and what besides hath beene well laid open by others wee should proceed to dam these Canons not onely as contrary to the Lawes of the Land but also as containing sundry matters destructive of the rights of Parliaments and of the fundamentall and other principall Lawes of this Kingdome and otherwise of very dangerous consequence
the learnedst of the Reformed Churches abroad and lastly a government under which till these late yeares this Church hath so flourished so fructified that such a government such a function should at the fagge end of 1640. yeares bee found to have such a close Devill in it as no power can Exercise no Law Restraine appeares Sir to mee a thing very improbable I professe I am deceived Sir if Trienniall Parliaments will not be a Circle able to keep many a worse Devill in order For the second I know not the strength of other mens fancies but I will confesse unto you ingenuously the weaknesse of my faith in the poynt that I doe not beleeve there can any other government bee proposed but will in time bee subject to as great or greater inconveniences than Episcopacy I meane Episcopacy so ordered reduced and limitted as I suppose it may bee by firme and solid Boundaries T is true Sir we cannot so well judge before-hand of future inconveniences for the knowledge of the faults and mischiefes of Episcopall government resulting from fresh and bleeding experience And the insight into dangers of any new way that shall be proposed being to rise onely from speculation the apprehension of the one is likely to be much more operative than of the other though perhâ—ps in just reason it ought to bee the weaker with us it is hard in such cases for us to preserve an equall and unpropense judgement since being in things of this world so much too hard for faith and contemplation yet as Divine as our inspection is into things not experimented if wee hearken to those that would quite extirpate Episcopacy I am confident that in stead of every Bishops wee put downe in a Diocesse wee shall set up a Pope in every Pariâ—h Lastly Mr. Speaker whether the subversion of Episcopacy and the introducing of another kinde of Government be practiceable I leave it to those to judge who have considered the Connexion and Interweaving of the Church Government with the Common Law to those who heard the Kings Speech to us the other day or who have looked into reason of state For my part though no Statesman I will speake my minde freely in this I doe not thinke a King can put downe Bishops totally with safety to Monarchy not that there is any such allyance as men talk of 'twixt the Myter and the Crowne but from this reason that upon the putting downe of Bishops the Government of Assemblies is likely to succeed it That to bee effectuall must draw to it selfe the supremacy of Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction that consequently the power of Excommunicating Kings as well as any other brother in Christ and if a King chance to be delivered over to Sathan judge whether men are likely to care much what becomes of him next These things considered M. Speaker let us lay aside all thoughts of such dangerous such fundamentall such unaccomplished Alterations and all thought of countenancing those thoughts in others let us all resolve upon that course wherein with union wee may probably promise our selves successe happinesse and security that is in a through Reformation To that no mans vote shall be given with more zeale with more heartinesse than mine Let us not destroy Bishops but make Bishops such as they were in the Primitive times Doe their large Terriories their large Revenues offend let them be retrencht the good Bishops of Hippo had but a narrow Diocesse Doe their Courts and subordinates offend let them be brought to governe as in the Primitive times by Assemblies of their Clergy Doth their intermedling in secular affaires offend exclude them from the capacity it is no more than what Reason and all Antiquity hath interdicted them That all this may bee the better effected M. Speaker my mottion is that First we may appoynt a Committee to collect all grievances springing from the misgovernment of the Church to which the Ministers head of Government will bee sufficient without countenancing this Petition by a Commitment and to represent it to this house in a Body And in the next place that wee may if it stand with the order of Parliaments desire that there may bee a standing Committee of certain members of both Houses who with a number of such learned Ministers as the Houses shall nominate for Assistants may take into consideration all these grievances and advise of the best way to settle peace and satisfaction in the Government of the Church to the comfort of all good Christians and all good Common-wealths Men. The Accusation and Impeachment of John LORD Finch Baron of Fordwich Lord Keeper of the Great Seale of England by the House of COMMONS IMprimis That the said Iohn Lord Finch Baron of Fordwich Lord Keeper c. hath traiterously and wickedly endeavoured to subvert the fundamentall Lawes and established Government of the Realme of England and in stead thereof to introduce an arbitrary tyrannâ—call government against Law which hee hath declared by trayterous and wicked words counsells opinions judgements practices and actions II. That in pursuance of those his trayterous and wicked purposes hee did in the third and fourth yeare of his Majesties reigne or one of them being then Speaker of the Commons House of Parliament contrary to the commands of the House then assembled and sitting denyed and hindred the reading of some things which the said House of Commons required to bee read for the safety of the King and Kingdome preservation of the Religion of this Realme and did forbid all the members of the house to speake and said that if any did offer to speake he would rise and goe away and said nothing should bee then done in the house and did offer to rise and goe away and did thereby and otherwise in as much as in him lay endeavour to subvert the ancient and undeubted rights and course of Parliaments III. That he being of his Majesties Councell at the Iustice seate held for the County of Essex in the moneth of October in the tenth yeare of his now Majesties reigne at Strafford Langton in the same County being then of his Majesties Councell in that Service did practise by unlawfull meanes to enlarge the Forrest of that County many Miles beyond the knowne bounds thereof as they had beene enjoyed neere 300 yeares contrary to the Law and to the Charter of the liberties of the Forest and other Charters and divers Acts of Parliament and for effecting the same did unlawfully cause and procure undue returnes to be made of Iurors and great numbers of other persons who were unsworne to be joyned to them of the Iury and threatned and awed the sayd Iurors to give a Verdict for the King and by unlawfull means did surprise the County that they might not make Defence and did use severall menacing wicked Speeches and Actions to the Iury and others for obtayning his unjust purpose aforesaid and after a Verdict obtained for the King in the Moneth of April following at
hereafter any other accusation or impeachmens against the said Lord Finch and also of replying to the answer that the said Iohn Lord Finch shall make unto the said Articles or to any of them and of affering proofe of the premisses or any of their impeachments or accusations that shall be exhibited by them as the case shall according to the course of Parliaments require doe pray that the said Iohn Lord Finch Baron of Ford wich Lord Keeper of the Great Seale of England may be put to answer to all and every of the premisses and such proceedings examinations tryalls and judgements as may be upon every of them bad and used as is agreeable to Law and Iustice. The Lord FAULKLANDS second Speech Made the 14. of January after the reading of the Articles against the Lord FINCH THese Articles against my Lord Finch being read I may bee bold to apply that of the Poet Nil refert tales versus qua voce legantur and I doubt not but your Lordships must be of the same opinion of which the House of Commons appeares to have beene by the choyce they have made of me that the charge I have brought is such as needs no assistance from the bringer leaving not so much as the colour of a colour for any defence including all possible evidence and all possible aggravation that addition alone excepted which he alone could make and hath made I meane his Confession Included in his flight Here are many and mighty Crimes Crimes of Supererogation So that high Treason is but a part of his Charge pursuing him fervently in every severall condition being a silent Speaker an unjust Iudge and an unconscionable Keeper That his life appeares a perpetuall Warfare by Mines and by Battery by Batteil and by Stratagem against our fundamentall Lawes which by his own confession severall Conquests had left untoucht against the excellent constitution of this Kingdome which hath made it appeare unto strangers rather an Idea than a reall Common-wealth and produced the honour and happinesse of this to be a wonder of every other Nation and this wiâ—h unfortunate successe that as he alwayes intended to make our Ruines a ground of his advancement so his advancement the meanes of our further ruine After that contrary to the further end of his place and the end of that meeting in which he held his place hee had as it were gagg'd the Common-Wealth taking away to his power all power of Speech from that body of which he ought to have beene the Mouth and which alone can perfectly represent the condition of the people whom that onely represent which if he had not done in all probability what so grave and judicious an Assembly might have offered to the consideration of so gracious and just a Prince had occasioned the redresse of the grievances they then suffered and prevented those which we have since endured according to the ancient Maxime of Odisse quos laeferis he pursued this offence towards the Parliament by inveighing against the Members by scandalizing their proceedings by trampling upon their Acts and Declarations by usurping and devolving the right by diminishing abrogating the power both of that other Parliaments making them as much as in him say both uselesse and odious to his Majesty and pursued his hatred to this fountain of Iustice by corrupting the streames of it the Lawes and perverting the Conduit Pipes the Iudges He practiced the annibilating of Ancient and Notorious perambulations of particular Forrests the better to prepare himselfe to annihilate the Ancient and Notorious perambulation of the whole Kingdome the meeres and bounders betweene the liberties of the Subject and Soveraigne power he endeauoured to have all tenures in durante bene placito to bring all Law from his Majesties Courts into his Majesties brest he gave our goods to the King our lands to the Deere our liberties to his Sheriffes so that there was no way by which wee had not beene opprest and destroyed if the power of this person had beene equall with his will Or that the will of his Majestie had beene equall to his power He not onely by this meanes made us lyable to all the effect of an Invasion from within and by destruction of our Liberties which included the destruction of our propriety which included the destruction of our Industry made us lyable to the terriblest of all Invasions that of want and poverty So that if what hee plotted had taken Root and he made it as sure as his Declaration could make it what himselfe was not Parliament proofe in this wealthy and happy Kingdome there could have beene left no aboundance but of grievances and discontentment no satisfaction but amongst the guilty It is generally observed of the plague that the infection of others is an earnest and constant desire of all that are seized by it and as this designe resembles that disease in the ruine destruction and desolation it would have wrought so it seemes no lesse like it in this effect he having so laboured to make others share in that guilt that his solicitation was not onely his action but his workes making use both of his Authority his Interest and Importunity to perswade and in his Majesties Name whose Piety is knowne to give that Excellent prerogative to his person that the Law gives to his place not to be able to doe wrong to threaten the rest of the Iudges to signe opinions contrary to Law to assigne answers contrary to their opinions to give Iudgement which they ought not to have given and to recant Iudgement when they had given as they ought so that whosoever considers his care of and concernment both in the growth and the immortality of this project cannot but by the same way by which the wisest judgment found the true mother of the Child discover him not onely to have beene the Fosterer but the Father of this most pernicious and envious designe I shall not need to observe that this was plotted and pursued by an English man against England which encreaseth the Crime in no lesse degree than parricide is beyond Murther that this was done in the greatest matter joyned to the greatest Bond being against the generall liberty and publike propriety by a sworne Iudge and if that salt it selfe because unsavory the Gospell it selfe hath design'd whither it must be cast that he poysoned our very Antidotes and turned our Guard into a destruction making Law the ground of illegalitie that he used this Law not onely against us but against it selfe making it as I may say Felo de se making the pretence for I can scarce say the appearance of it so to contribute the utter ruine of it selfe I shall not need to say that either this or more can be of the highest kinde and in the highest degree of Parliamentary Treason a Treason which need not a computation of many severall actions which alone were not Treason to prove a Treason altogether and by
Ratcliffe was not the man alone but others joyned with him in that Assembly and I am sure my Lord of Strafford moved it for the breach of Parliament I shall addresse myselfe to the body of his answere Now give me leave my Lords that I may open the nature of this great offence My Lords it is a charge of Treason which is a Treason not ended or expired by one single Act but a trade enured by this Lord of Strafford ever since the Kings favor hath been bestowed upon him My Lords it hath two parts to deprive us that which was good And secondly to bring in a Tyrannicall government it takes away the Lawes of the Land and it hath an arbitrary government bounded by no law but what my Lord of Strafford pleaseth It is the law my Lords which we reverence and cheerefully render to our gracious Soveraigne The Law as it is the ground of our libertie so it is the distribution of Iustice My Lords in all this my Lord of Strafford hath endeavoured to make them uncapable of any benefit it is true my Lords that Treason against the person of a Prince is high Treason and the highest Treason that can be to man but it falls short of this Treason against the State When blessed King Iames was taken to heaven he commended the lawes to his sonne our gracious Soveraigne But my Lords if such a design as this should take effect that the law of Iustice shouldbe taken from the Throne we are without hope of ever seeing happy dayes power is not so easily laid downe unlesse it be by so good and just a Prince as we have My Lord of Straffords accusation is conveyed into twenty eight Articles and I shall but touch the heads that wee shall insist upon and I thinke the best way to this is to consider what he did before he went into Ireland what then and what since He hath encroached jurisdiction where none was taking upon him a power to repell the lawes and to make new lawes and in domineering over the lives and goods and what ever else was the subjects My Lords this he hath not done onely upon the meaner sort but upon the Peeres and auncient Nobilitie and what may your Lordships expect but the same measure at his hands here as they have found there when he committed any to prison if a Habeas Corpus were granted the Officers must not obey and if any Fine were put upon the Officer for refusing them there was a command that he should bee discharged so that he did not onely take power to himselfe but the Scepter of Iustice out of the Kings hand When he was a member of the house of Commons it was his owne motion all Ministers of state should serve the King according to the lawes which he hath broken himselfe He doth as much as say that Fines shall not be payed by Officers if in this they fulfill his commands but those that release a prisoner upon a Habeas Corpus shall finde his displeasure My Lords if this had been a single Act we should not have accused him of high Treason but this hath beene his common course and this we present to your Lordships consideration The next thing is that in the North the people attending for Iustice you shall see what a dishonour he flung upon the sacred Majestie of the King that did advance him some of the Iustices saith he are all for Law but they shall finde that the Kings little fingers is heavier then the Loynes of the Law My Lords what a sad speech was this and what sad Accidents happened upon it you all know and he said in a solemne speech That Ireland was a conquered Nation and that the King might do with them what he would their Charters were nothing worth they did binde the King no longer then he pleased Surely you may see what hee would do if he had power but we hope never such counsell shall have acceptation in so gracious an Eare as our Soveraignes and he doth not stay in words but proceeds to Actions when a Peere of the Kingdome was expelled the Kingdome for suing at Law for recovering of his Right he saith he would have Ireland know that neither Law nor Lawyers should question any thing that he ordered My Lords he goes higher for when there was an occasion to speake of an Act of State he said it should bee as binding as an Act of Parliament My Lords he cannot goe higher then this hee tells them in Parliament they were a Conquered Nation and they must expect the usage of a Conquered Nation The Lord Mountnorris for a few words that fell from his mouth spoken privately at his Table had a Counsell of warre called against him and was judged to death My Lords it is no marvaile that he saie That the Kings little finger should be so heavie when his little too was so heavie to tread downe a Peere under his foote My Lords he makes Lawes of himselfe and hee makes a difference in matters of Iustice betweene the poore and the rich but when he hath executed his power upon the poore he will fall upon the rich My Lords he hath made that which was worth but five shillings to the value of twenty and my Lords by this he doth in effect take away what ere this commoditie is worth he saith he doth it for the Kings gaine but we shall make it appeare that the Crowne hath lost and he hath gained And for the Commodity of Flax my Lords it is but a Womans Commodity but yet it is the staple Commodity of Ireland Now my Lords this Commondity he hath gotten wholly into his owne hands for he made such a Proclamation that it should be used in such wayes as the Women could not doe it and if it were not used in such ways that it should bee seised upon no he doth not onely put impositions upon the Subject but take away the goods too and thus he hath levyed warre against the Kings Subjects and this is his course that if a Decree were made by him and not obeyed there issued a warrant to Souldiers that they should make Garrison and that they should goe to the houses of those that were pretended to be disobedient My Lords they have killed their sheep and their Oxen and bound their horses and took them Captives till they have rendered obedience which is expressely contrary to Law for it saith If any man set horse or foot upon the Kings Subject in a Military way it is high Treason My Lords it doth not onely oppresse them in their estates but provoke and incite his Majesty to lay downe his mercy and goodnesse and to fall into an offensive war against his Subjects and to say they are Rebels and Traytors He tels his Counsell that the Parliament having forsaken the King and the King having tryed the Parliament hee might use other wayes to procure money to supply his necessities My Lords the same day
studied Speech I come to speake my heart and to speake it clearely and plainely and then leave it to your clemencie and Justice and I hope if any thing shall slip from me to work contrary to my meaning or intention disorderly or ill placed you will be pleased to make a favourable construction and leave me the liberty of explanation if there shall be any but I hope there shall be no cause for it I hope for my affection in Religion no man doubteth me what my education what and under whom for many yeares is well knowne I lived neere 30 yeares in the Society of Grayes Inn and if one that was a reverend Preacher in my time Doctor Sibbs were now alive hee were able to give testimony to this House that when a party ill affected in Religion sought to weary him and tyer him out hee had his chiefest encouragement from me I have now Master Speaker been 15 yeares of the Kings Councell from the first houre to this minute no man is able to say that ever I was Author Advisor or Consentor to any project It pleased the King my gracious Master after I had served him divers yeares to preferre mee to two places to be chiefe Justice of the Common Pleas and then Keeper of his great Seale I say it in the presence of God I was so far from the thought of the one and from the ambition of the other that if my Master his grace and goodnesse had not been I had never enjoyed those Honours I cannot tell Master Speaker nor I doe not know what particulars there are that may draw me into your disfavour or ill opinion and therefore I shall come very weakly armed yet to those that either in my owne knowledge or by such knowledge as is given me and not from any in this House I shall speake somewhat that I hope being truth and accompanied with clearenesse and ingenuity will at last procure some allay of that ill opinion which may perhaps be conceived of me Master Speaker I had once the Honour to sit in the place that you doe from the first time I came thither to the unfortunate time I doe appeale to all that were here then if I served you not with candor Ill office I never did to any of the House good offices I have witnesses enough I did many I was so happy that upon an occasion which once happened I received an expression and testimony of the good affection of this House towards me For the last unhappy day I had a great share in the unhappinesse and sorrow of it I hope there are enough doe remember no man within the walls of this House did expresse more symptomes of sorrow griefe and distraction then I did After an adjournment for two or three dayes it pleased his Majestie to send for me to let me know that he could not so resolve of things as hee desired and therefore was desirous that there might be an adjournment for some few dayes more I protest I did not then discerne in his Majestie and I beleeve it was not in his thoughts to think of the dissolving of this Assembly but was pleased in the first place to give me a command to deliver his pleasure to the House for an adjournment for some few dayes till the Monday following as I remember and commanded me withall to deliver his pleasure that there should be no further speeches but forth with upon the delivery of the Message come and wait upon him hee likewise commanded me if questions were offered to be put upon my Alleageance I should not dare to doe it how much I did then in all humblenesse reason with his Majestie is not for me here to speake onely thus much let me say I was no Author of any counsell in it I was onely a person in receiving commission I speake not this as any thing I now produce or doe invent or take up for my owne excuse but that Which is knowne to divers and some Honourable persons in this house to be most true All that I will say for that is humbly to beseech you all to consider That if it had beene any mans cause as it was mine betweene the displeasure of a gracious King and the ill opinion of an Honourable Assembly I beseech you lay all together lay my first actions and behaviour with the last I shall submit to your Honourable and favourable constructions For the Shipping businesse my opinion of that cause hath layne heavy upon me I shall clearely and truly present unto you what every thing is with this protestation that if in reckoning up my owne opinion what I was of or what I delivered any thing of it be displeasing or coÌ„trary to the opinion of this House that I am farre from justifying of it but submit that and all other my actions to your wisedomes and goodnesse Master Speaker the first Writs that were sent out about Shipping businesse I had no more knowledge of it and was as ignorant as any one Member of this House or any man in the Kingdome I was never the Author nor Advisor of it and will boldly say from the first to this houre I did never advise nor counsell the setting forth of any Ship-writs in my life Master Speaker it is true that I was made chiefe Justice of the Common Pleas some foure dayes before the Ship-writs went out to the Ports and Maritine places as I doe remember the 20 of October 1634. they doe beare Teste and I was sworne Justice the 16 of October so as they went out in that time but without my knowledge or privity the God of heaven knowes this to be true Master Speaker afterwards his Majestie was pleased to command my Lord chiefe Justice of the Kings Bench that then was Sir Thomas Richardson and chiefe Baron of the Exchequer that now is and my selfe then chiefe Justice of the Common Pleas to take into consideration the Presidents then brought unto us which we did and after returned to his Majestie what we had found out of those Presidents It is true that afterwards his Majestie did take into consideration that if the whole Kingdome were concerned that it was not reason to lay the whole burthen upon the Cinque Ports and Maritine Townes Thereupon upon what ground his Majesty took that into his consideration I doe confesse I doe know nothing of it His Majesty did command my Lord chief Justice that now is my Lord chiefe Baron and my selfe to returne our opinions whether when the whole Kingdome is in danger and the Kingdome in generall is concerned it be not according to Law and reason that the whole Kingdome and his Majestie and all interessed therein should joyne in defending and preserving thereof This was in time about one 1634. In Michaelmas Terme following his Majesty commanded â—e to goe to all the Judges and require their opinions in particular He commanded mee to doe it to every one and to charge them upon their
duty and allegiance to keepeâ—t secret Master Speaker it was never intended by his Majesty so professed by him at that time and so declared to all the Judges that it was not required by him to be such a binding opinion to the Subject as to hinder him from calling it in question nor to be binding to themselves but that upon better reason and advise they may alter it but desired their opinions for his owne private reason I know very well that extrajudiciall opinions of Judges ought not to be binding But I did think and speake my heart and conscience freely my selfe and the rest of the Judges being sworne and by our Oaths tyed to counsell the King when he should require advise of us that we were bound by our oaths and duties to returne our opinions I did obey his Majesties command and doe here before the God of heaven avow it I did never use the least promise of preferment or reward to any nor did use the least menacy I did leave it freely to their owne consciences and liberty for I was left the liberty of my owne by his Majesty and had reason to leave them the liberty of their owne consciences And I beseech you be pleased to have some beliefe that I would not say this but that I know the God of heaven will make it appeare and I beseech you that extravagant speeches may not move against that which is a positive and cleare truth Master Speaker in the discourse of this as is betweene Judges some small discourses sometimes yet never any cause wherein any Judges conferred that were so little conference as between me and them Master Speaker against a Negative I can say nothing but I shall affirme nothing unto you but by the grace of God as I affirme it to be true so I make no doubt of making it appeare to be so This opinion was subscribed without Solicitation there was not any man of us did make any doubt of subscribing our opinion but two Master Justice Hutton and Master Iustice Crooke Master Iustice Crooke made not a scruple of the thing but of the introduction for it was thus That whereas the Ports the Maritine Towns were concerned there according to the Presidents in former times the charge lay on them So when the Kingdome was in danger of which his Majesty was the sole Iudge whether it was not agreeable to Law and reason the whole Kingdome to beare the charge I left this case with Iudge Crooke The next Terme I spake with him hee could give me no resolution because hee had not seene the Writs in former times but did give his opinion that when the whole Kings dome was in danger they of the defence ought to be borne by all So of that opinion of his there was no need of a Solicitation I speake no more here than I did openly in my argument in the Chequer Chamber This is the naked truth for Master Iustice Hutton he did never subscribe at all I will onely say this that I was so farre from pressing him to give his opinion because he did ask time to consider of it that I will boldly say and make it good that when his Majesty would have had him sometimes sent for to give his opinion I beseeched his Majesty to leave him to himselfe and his conscience and that was the ill office I did The Iudges did subscribe in November or December 1635. I had no conference nor truly I think by accident any discourse with any of the Iudges touching their opinions for till February 1636 there was no speech of it for when they had delivered their opinions I did returne according to my duty to my Master the King and delivered them to him in whose custody they be in In February 1636 upon a command that came from his Majesty by one of the then Secretaries of State the Iudges all assembled in Grayes-Inn we did then fall into a debate of the case then sent unto us and wee did then returne our opinion unto his Majesty there was then much discourse and great debate about it Mine opinion and conscience at that time was agreeable to that opinion I then delivered I did use the best arguments I could for the maintainance of my opinion and that was all I did It is true that then at that time Master Iustice Hutton and Master Justice Crooke did not differ in the maine point which was this When the Kingdome was in danger the charge ought to be borne by the whole Kingdome But in this point whether the King was the sole Judge of the danger they differed So as there was betweene the first subscription and this debate and consultation some 15 moneths difference It is true that all of them did then subscribe both Justice Hutton and Justice Crooke which was returned to his Majestie and after published by my Lord Keeper my predecessour in the Star-chamber For the manner of publishing it I will say nothing but leave it to those whose memories wil call to mind what was then done The reason of the subscription of Iustice Hutton and Iustice Crooke though they differed in opinion grew from this that was told them from the rest of the Iudges That where the greater number did agree in their vote the rest were involved and included And now I have faithfully delivered what I did in that businesse till I came which was afterwards to my argument in the Exchequer Chamber for the question was A scire facias issued out of the Exchequer in that case of Master Hampdens of which I can say nothing for it was there begun and afterwards rejourned to have advice of all the Iudges Master Speaker among the rest according to my duty I argued the case I shall not trouble you to tell you what my argument was I presume there are Copies enough of it onely I will tell you there are foure things very briefly what I then declared First concerning the matter of danger and necessity of the whole Kingdome I professe that there was never a Judge in the Kingdome did deliver an opinion but that it must be in a case of apparant danger When we came to an argument of the case it was not upon a matter or issue but it was upon a demurrer Whether the danger was sufficiently admitted in pleading and therefore was not the thing that was in dispute that was the first degree and step that led unto it I did deliver my selfe as free and as cleare as any man did that the King ought to governe by the positive Lawes of the Kingdome that hee could not alter nor change nor innovate in matters of Law but by common consent in Parliament I did further deliver that if this were used to make a further revenue or benefit to the King or in any other way but in case of necessity and for the preservation of the Kingdome The judgement did warrant no such thing My opinion in this businesse I did in my
conclusion of my argument submit to the judgement of this House I never delivered my opinion that mony ought to be raised but Ships provided for the defence of this Kingdome and in that the Writ was performed And that the charge ought not to be in any case but where the whole Kingdome was in danger And Master Justice Hutton and Master Iustice Crooke were of the same opinion with me I doe humbly submit having related unto you my whole carriage in this businesse humbly submitting my selfe to your grave and favourable censures beseeching you not to think that I delivered these things with the least intention to subvert or subject the common Law of the Kingdome or to bring in or to introduce any new way of government it hath bin farre from my thoughts as any thing under the heavens Master Speaker I have heard too that there hath bin some ill opinion conceived of me about Forrest businesse which was a thing farre out of the way of my study as any thing I know towards the Law But it pleased his Majesty in the sicknesse of Master Noy to give some short warning to prepare my selfe for that imployment When I came there I did both the King and Common-wealth acceptable service for I did and dare be bold to say with extreame danger to my selfe and fortune some doe understand my meaning herein run through that businesse and left the Forrest as much as was there A thing in my judgement considerable for the advantage of the Common-wealth as could be undertaken When I went downe about that imployment I satisfied my selfe about the matter of perambulation There were great difficulties of opinions what perambulation was I did arme my selfe as well as I could before I did any thing in it I did acquaint those that were then Iudges in the presence of the noble Lords with such objections as I thought it my duty to offer unto them If they thought they were not objections of such waight as were fit to stirre them I would not doe the King that disservice They thought the objections had such answers as might well induce the like upon a conference with the whole Country admitting mee to come and conferre with them the Country did unanimously subscribe It fell out afterwards that the King commanded me and all this before I was chiefe Iustice to goe into Essex and did then tell me he had beene enformed that the bounds of the Forrest were narrower then in truth they ought to be and I did according to his command I will here professe that which is knowne to many I had no thought or intention of enlarging the bounds of the Forrest further then H. and that part about it for which there was a perambulation about 26 Edward 4. I desired the Country to confer with me about it if they were pleased to doe it and then according to my duty I did produce those Records which I thought fit for his Majesties service leaving them to discharge themselves as by Law and Justice they might doe I did never in the least kind goe about to overthrow the charter of the Forrest And did publish and maintaine Charta de Foresta as a sacred thing and no man to violate it and ought to be preserved for the King and Common-wealth I doe in this humbly submit and what I have done to the goodnesse and Justice of this House FINIS Mr. Herbotle Grimstones second Speech in Parliament the 18. of December 1640. Master Speaker THere hath been presented to the house a most faithfull and exact report of the conference wee had with the Lords yesterday together with the opinion of the Committees that we imployed in the service that they conceaved it fit that the Archbishop of Canterbury should be sequestred and I must second the motion And with the favour of this House I shall be bold to offer my reasons why I conceive it more necessary wee should proceed a little further then the desire of a bare sequestration onely Master Speaker long Introductions are not suitable to waâ—ghty businesses wee are now fallen upon the great man the Archbishop of Canterbury looke upon him as hee is in highnesse and he is the Stye of all pestilentiall filth that hath infected the State and Government of this Common wealth Looke upon him in his dependances and he is the man the onely man that hath raised and advanced all those that together with himselfe have beene the Authors and Causers of all our ruines miseries and calamities wee row groane under Who is it but he only that hath brought the Earle of Strafford to all his great places and imployments a fit spirit and instrument to act and execute all his wicked and bloudy Designes in these Kingdomes Who is it but hee onely that brought in Secretary Windibank into this place of service of trust the very Broker and Pander to the Whore of Babylon Who is it Master Speaker but hee onely that hath advanced all our Popish Bishops I shall name but some of them Bishop Manering the Bishop of Bath and Wells the Bishop of Oxford and Bishop Wren the least of all these birds but one of the most uncleane ones These are the men that should have fed Christs Flock but they are the Wolfes that have devoured them the Sheepe should have fed upon the Mountaines but the Mountaines have eaten up the Sheepe It was the happinesse of our Church when the Zeale of Gods house eat up the Bishops glorious and brave Martyrs that went to the Stake in defence of the Protestant Religion but the Zeale of the Bishops hath beene onely to persecute and eat up the Church Who is it Master Speaker but this great Archbishop of Canterbury that hath sitten at the helme to steere and to mannage all the projects that have beene set on foot in this Kingdome this tenne yeares last past and rather then hee would stand out he hath most unworthily trucked and chafered in the meanest of them as for instance that of Tobacco wherein thousands of poore people have beene stripped and turned out of their Trades for which they have served as Apprentizes wee all know he was the Compounder and Contracter with them for the Licences putting them to pay Fines and a fee Farme rent to use their Trade certainly Master Speaker hee might have spent his time much better and more for his Grace in the Pulpit then thus sherking and raking in the Tobacco-shops Master Speaker we all know what he hath been charged withall here in this house crimes of a dangerous consequence and of a transcendent nature no lesse then the subversion of the Government of this Kingdome and the alteration of the Protestant Religion and this is not upon bare information onely but much of it is come before us already upon cleare and minifest proofes and there is scarce any grievance or complaint come before us in this Place wherein we do not find him intermentioned and as it were twisted into
make it such as the harme had not beene much if it had beene depressed the most frequent subjects even in the most sacred auditories being the Jus divinum of Bishops and tithes the sacrednesse of the clergie the sacriledge of impropriations the demolishing of puritanisme and propriety the building of the prerogative at Pauls the introduction of such doctrines as admitting them true the truth would not recompence the scandall or of such as were so far false that as Sir Thomas Moore sayes of the Casuists their businesse was not to keepe men from sinning but to enforme them Quam propè ad peccatum sine peccato liceat accedere so it seemed their worke was to try how much of a Papist might bee brought in without Popery and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospell without bringing themselves into danger of being destroyed by the Law Master Speaker to goe yet further some of them have so industriously laboured to deduce themselves from Rome that they have given great suspition that in gratitude they desire to returne thither or at least to meet it halfe way Some have evidently labour'd to bring in an English though not a Roman popery I meane not onely the outside and dresse of it but equally absolute a blind dependance of the people upon the Clergie and of the Clergie upon themselves and have opposed the papacy beyond the sea that they might settle one beyond the water Nay common fame is more then ordinarily false if none of them have found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England be so absolutely directly and cordially Papists that it is all that fifteene hundred pounds a yeare can doe to keep them from confessing it Master Speaker I come now to speake of our liberties and considering the great interest these men have had in our common Master and considering how great a good to us they might have made that interest in him if they would have used it to have informed him of our generall sufferings and considering how little of their freedome of Speech at Whitehall might have saved us a great deale of the use wee have now of it in the Parliament-house their not doing this alone were occasion enough for us to accuse them as the betrayers though not as the destroyers of our rights and liberties Though I confesse if they had been onely silent in this particular I had beene silent too But alas they whose Ancestors in the darkest times excommunicated the breakers of Magna charta did now by themselves and their adherents both write preach plot and act against it by encouraging Doctor Beale by preferring Doctor Mannering appearing forward for Monopolies and ship-mony and if any were slow and backeward to comply blasting both them and their preferment with utmost expression of their hatred the title of Puritans Master Speaker wee shall find some of them to have labour'd to exclude both all persons and all causes of the Clergy from the ordinary jurisdiction of the temporall Magistrate and by hindring prohibitions first by apparent power against the Judges and after by secret agreements with them to have taken away the onely legall bound to their arbitrary power and made as it were a conquest upon the common law of the Land which is our common inheritance and after made use of that power to turn their brethren out of their free-holds for not doing that which no law of man required of them to doe and which in their opinions the law of God required of them not to doe Wee shall finde them in generall to have encouraged all the Clergy to suites and to have brought all suites to the Councell-table that having all power in Ecclesiasticall matters they laboured for equall power in Temporall and to dispose as well of every Office as of every Benefice which lost the Clergy much revenew and much reverence whereof the last is never given when it is so asked by encouraging them indiscreetly to exact more of both then was due so that indeed the gaine of their greatnesse extended but to a few of that order though the envy extended upon all We shall find of them to have both kindled blown the common fire of both nations to have both sent and maintained that booke of which the Author no doubt hath long since wish'd with Nero Vtinam nescissem literas and of which more then one Kingdome hath cause to wish that when hee writ that hee had rather burnd a Library though of the value of Ptolomie's We shall finde them to have beene the first and principall cause of the breach I will not say of but since the pacification at Berwike We shall find them to have beene the almost sole abettors of my Lord of Strafford whilest hee was practising upon another Kingdome that manner of government which hee intended to settle in this where he committed so many so mighty and so manifest enormities and oppressions as the like have not beene committed by any Governour in any government since Verres left Sicily And after they had called him over from being Deputy of Ireland to bee in a manner Deputy of England all things here being govern'd by a Juntillo and that Juntillo govern'd by him to have asisted him in the giving of such Councells and the pursuing of such courses as it is a hard and measuring cast whether they were more unwise more unjust or more unfortunate and which had infallibly beene our destruction if by the grace of God their share had not beene as small in the subtilty of Serpents as in the innocency of Doves Master Speaker I have represented no small quantity and no meane degree of guilt and truly I beleeve that wee shall make no little complement to those and no little apologie for those to whom this charge belongs if wee shall lay the faults of the men upon the order of the Bishops upon the Episcopacy I wish we may distinguish betweene those who have beene carried away with the streame and those who have beene the streame that carry'd them betweene those whose proper and naturall motion was towards our ruine and destruction and those who have beene whirl'd about to it contrary to their naturall motion by the force and swinge of superiour Orbes and as I wish wee may distinguish betweene the more and lesse guilty so I yet more wish wee may distinguish betweene the guilty and the innocent Master Speaker I doubt if we consider that if not the first Planters yet the first Spreaders of Christianity and the first and chiefe Defenders of Christianity against Heresies within and Paganisme without both with their inke and with their bloud and the maine conducers to the resurrection of Christianity at least here in the reformation and we owe the light of the Gospell wee now enjoy to the fire they then endur'd for it were all Bishops and that even now in the greatest perfection of that order there are yet some who
Let every man wipe his heart as he does his eyes when hee would judge of a nice and subtile object The eye if it be pretincted with any colour is vitiated in its discerning Let us take heed of a blood-shotten-eye of Judgement Let every man purge his heart cleare of all passions I know this great and wise body politick can have none but I speak to inviduals from the weaknesse which I finde in my selfe Away with personall animosities away with all flatteries to the people in being the sharper against him because he is odious to them away with all feares lest by the sparing his bloud they may be incenst away with all such considerations as that it is not fit for a Parliament that one accused by it of Treason should escape with life Let not former vehemence of any against him nor feare from thence that he cannot be safe while that man lives be an ingredient in the sentence of any one of us Of all these corruptives of judgement Mr. Speaker I doe before God discharge my self to the uttermost of my power And doe with a cleare Conscience wash my hands of this mans blood by this solemne protestation that my Vote goes not to the taking of the Earle of Straffords life FINIS The Two last SPEECHES of Thomas Wentworth Late Earle of Strafford and Deputy of Ireland His speech in the Tower to the Lords RIght Honourable and the rest you are now come to convey me to my death I am willing to dye which is a thing no more than all our Predecessors have done and a debt that our Posterity must in their due time discharge which since it can be no way avoyded it ought the lesse to be feared for that which is common to all ought not to be intollerable to any It is the Law of Nature the tribute of the flesh a remedie from all worldly cares and troubles and to the truly penitent a perfect path to blessednesse And there is but one death though severall wayes unto it mine is not naturall but inforced by the Law and Iustice it hath been sayd that the Lawes vex only the meaner sort of people but the mighty are able to withstand them it is not so with me for to the Law I submit my self and confesse that I receive nothing but Iustice for he that politikly intendeth good to a Common-weale may be called a just man but he that practiseth either for his own profit or any other sinister ends may be well termed 2 delinquent person neither is delay in punishment any privilege for pardon And moreover I ingenuously confesse with Cicero That the death of the bad is the safety of the good that be alive Let no man trust either in the favour of his Prince the friendship and consanguinity of his Peeres much lesse in his own wisedome and knowledge of which I ingeniously confesse I have been too confident Kings as they are men before God so they are Gods before men and I may say with a great man once in this kingdome Had I strived to obey my God as faithfully as I sought to honour my King fraudulently I had stood and not fallen Most happie and fortunate is that Prince who is as much for his justice feared as for his goodnes beloved For the greater that Princes are in power above other the more they ought in verrue to excell other and such is the royall Soveraign whom I late served For my Peeres the correspondence that I had with them during my prosperity was to me very delightfull and pleasing and here they have commiserated my ruine I have plentifully found who for the most generous of them I may boldly say though they have detested the fact yet they have pitied the person delinquent the first in their loyaltie the last in their charitie ingenuously confessing that never any Subject or Peere of my rank had ever that help of Counsell that benefit of time or a more free and legall tryall than I have had of the like to which none of my Predecessors hath had so much favor from his Prince so much sufferance from the people in which I comprehend the understanding Commons not the many headed monster Multitude but I have offended and sentenced and must now suffer me And for my too much confidence in my supposed wisdome and knowledge therein have been the most deceived For he that is wise to himself and knowes by others faults to correct his own offences to be truly wise is to be Secretaries to our selves for it is meere folly to reveale and intimate thoughts to strangers wisdome is the most precious Gem with which the minde can be adorned and learning the most famous thing for which a man ought to be esteemed and true wisedome teacheth us to do well as to speak well in the first I have failed for the wisedome of man in foolishnesse with God For knowledge it is a thing indifferent both to good and evill but the best knowledge is for a man to know himself he that doth so shall esteem of himself but little for he considereth from whence he came and whereto he must he regardeth not the vain pleasures of this life he exaiteth God and strives to live in his fear but he that knoweth not himself is wilfull in his own wayes unprofitable in his life unfortunate in his death and so am I. But the reason why I sought to attain unto it was this I have read that he thâ—t knoweth not that which he ought to know is a bruit beast amongst men he that knoweth more then he ought to know is a man amongst beasts but he that knoweth all that may be known is a God amongst men To this I much aspired in this I much failed Vanitie of Vanities all is but vanity I have heard the people clamour and cry out saying That through my occasion the times are bad I wish that when I am dead they may prove better most true it is that there is at this time a great storm in ending God in his mercie avert it And since it is my particular lot lik Jonab to be cast into the sea I shall think my life well spent to appease Gods wrath and satisfie the peoples malice O what is eloquence more than air fashioned with an articulate and distinct sound when it is a speciall vertue to speak little and well and silence is oft the best oratory for sools in their dumbnesse may be accounted wise It hath power to make a good matter seem bad and a bad cause appear good but mine was to me unprofitable and like the Cypresse trees which are great and tall but altogether without fruit What is honour but the first step to disquietnesse and power is still waited on by envy neither hath it any priviledge against infamy It is held to be the chiefe part of honour for a man to joyn to his office and calling courtesie and affability commiseration and pity for thereby he draweth to
binds me Where there is nothing left the King loses his right Now Mr Speaker in a Parliamentary way we must withdraw and enter into our own Sphear Enter into a discusse of those objections that impugne Mr Fitz-Gerralds election admittance and priviledge of this House The first that ushers in the train is a sentence cloathed in sable standing on tip-toe and with a rusty dagger thrusting at a starre I mean a sentence speaking errour a sentence visitng the third and fourth generation a sentence striving to leap over the bounds of Magna charta thirty times confirmed a sentence awarded against a Judge of a higher Court than from which it issued The cause in question is to nullifie this sentence which if he appear a person capable of his priviledge more sua vivit and then neither it nor any thing derivatory or collaterall to it may be admitted against him by the rules of common civill or common Law it being a maxime consonant to them all Non potest adduci ejusdam rei excepio cujus petitur dissolutio Now to prove this sentence void Mr. Speaker I being no professor of the Law yet a Disciple of reason and the body of the audient Subject to the like guilt I will couch my self in arguments quae probant non probantur leaving precedents and Book-cases to the learned long Robe Then thus I argue By the Star 3. E. 4. All judgements censures sentences c. awarded against a member of Parliament are void so was this government some may say the King is not here included I say qui dicit omne excludit nullum And experience the mother of knowledge teacheth the same in precedents afore rehearsed and one I will adde for all which Trewman 38. Hen. 8. who was in execution upon a writ of exigent after a Capias adsatis faciend at the Kings suit and yet priviledged besides this is not at the Kings suit for the King is interessed here but secondarily both in name and profit Now I must make good my minor that he is a member of this house he that was duely elected and truely returned is a member of this house so was he Ergo c. My minor will be questioned I confirm it thus where the Kings writ for election is duly pursued according to the most used and received form there such an election is good so was this Ergo. Here Mr. Speaker falls the weight of their objection which we will master and answer with equall speed and first vellicat mibi aurem nescio quis and saith the writ is Burgensis de Burgo but he is not Burgensis de Burgo First I say quomodo constat here is none to offer in proof he is not so beside I offer it in Quaere whether the election doth not ipsofacto make him a Burgesse in omni instanti again I say the writ is directive not positive v. g. in a venire facias the Sheriff commanded to return 12. yet if he return not 24. he shall be fined in respect experience and practice proves some of the 12. may be questioned and challenged besides the writ explains it self the Knights must be Comitatus tui but the Burgesses and Citizens de qualibet Civitate Burgo which can admit of no other construction but these two Burgesses out of every Burrough not as Comitatus tui is which were then of every Burrough and certainly the Law provided this with great reason as not doubting every Shire could afford two Knights resident yet jealous whether every Burrough could provide two resident Burgesses qualified with these necessary adjuncts as could befit a member of so noble a place Again the writ commands duos milites and yet exception was never taken upon returning of Esquires so that the writ expounds it self it is not literally to be taken Next there is Thunder and Lightning shot out of the Statute 33. H. 8. being a Stat. to regulate election and absolutely commanding every Knight and Burgesse to be resident and have a certain Fee-simple in every burrough and County out of which they are elected Here they suppose our Priviledge will cry quarter as ready to be murthered by the Statute but it is ominous ante victoriam canere For first we answer that the disuse of a Statute antiquates a Statute as is observed upon the Statute of Merton and custome applauded by fortunate experience hath in all Parliaments ever prevailed a house of Commons would rather present Babell in it's confusion if the Tincker would speak his Dialect the Cobler his and the Butcher conclude a greasie Epilogue then the writ were well pursued these were Idonei homines to take and give counsell de rebus arduis but even to cut off the head of their own argument by a Sword of their own this Stat. of 33. H. 8. seems by the preamble to be made in repeal of all former Statutes by which election not qualified with residency was made void and so became a grievance to the Common-wealth and therefore this Statute makes the election not observed ut supra onely penall so that there is nothing offered in objection either from the writ or Statute to avoid this election Now I have placed him and dayly elected him and then his priviledge grows by consequence yet we have other objections minoris magnitudinis and to repeat them is to confute them First say they every Libeller is de jure excommunicated I answer every Libeller must be Scriptis Pictis or Cantilenis our member is guilty of none of them no he is not tearmed so neither in the censure nor in any present proceeding Another flourish is that he pleaded not his priviledge in the Castle-Chamber in which very objection they confesse him priviledged and make themselves guilty that they would proceed against a known member of our House But see the Roman spirit of Mr. Fitz-Gerald who would rather undergo the hazard of being a Starre-Chamber Martyr than to submit our Priviledge to an extrajudiciall debate It was in our honour he did this and for his eternall applause some body sayes the Castle-Chamber will think it self injured there being Lords of the house of Parliament at and in the censure As for the Lords humanum est errare but the Judges are rather involved in these words Premeditata malitia for his election was the 11 of November sitting then in Parliament and his censure the 13 of December so they had 22 or 23 dayes to repent of their ill-grounded resolution a greater affront never offered to the house of Commons being comparative as if the Recorder of the Tolsell should sentence the Lord chief Justice of Ireland a member of our house is a walking Record and needs not to melt the Kings picture in his pocket Others alleadge it was an election purchased by collusion but de non existentibus non apparentib cadem est ratio And since the end of his election is in it self and perâ—se for the advancing of the
publike service as well to prove a sentence not then in rerum natura both Law and charity in a benigne construction of these two ends will allow the more favourable Another objection is whispered that the entrance is not found in the Clerk of the Parliaments Role This is no matter to the validity of his election for his priviledge commenced 40 dayes before the Parliament therefore this and the like are to be judged of as accidentia quae possunt abesse adesse sine subjecti interitu Truely Mr. Speaker my memory and lungs begin to prove Traytors to me Another objection if omitted may be judged by these of what strength and maturity they even as by the coynage of a penny one may iudge of a shilling What hinders then since here is waâ—er but that he may be baptized Here are no non obstant's to be admitted in his new Pattent of Denization the common law the Statute law the Canon the Civill law plead for his admittance the writ of election the exemplification of the Sheriffs return all presidents of all ages all reports plead for his admittance our fore-fathers Ghosts the present practice of Parliaments in England plead for his admittance the Kings successive commands command and confirm his admittance Away then Serieant and with the hazarding power of our Mace touch the Marshals gates and as if there were Divinity in it they will open and bring us our Olive branch of peace wrested from our stock that with welcome Art we may ingraft him to be nourished by a common root Thus the King shall receive the benefit of an able subject who is otherwise civiliter mortuus we enjoy the participation of his labour and posterity both ours and this CAPTAINE AVDLEY MERVINS Speech to the Lords in the Upper house in the Parliament March 40. 1640. Concerning the impeachment of Sir Richard Bolton Knight Lord Chancellor of Ireland Iohn Lord Bishop of Derry Sir Gerrard Lowther Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Sir George Ratcliffe Knight with high Treason by the Knights Citizens and Burgesses of the Commons House My LORDS I Am commanded by the Knights Citizens and Bur-Burgesses of the Commons House to present unto you Irelands Tragedie the gray headed Common Lawes funerall and the Active Statutes death and obsequies this dejected spectacle answers but the prefiguring Type of Caesars murther wounded to the death in the Senate And by Brutus his bosome friend our Caesars image by reflexion even the fundamentall Lawes and Statutes of this Kingdome the sole means by which our estates are confirmed our liberties preserved our lives secured are wound to death in the Senate I mean in the Courts of Justice and by Brutus too even by those persons that have received their beings and subsistence from them so that here enters those inseparable first Twins Treason and Ingratitude In a plain phrase My Lords I tender unto you Treason High Treason such a Treason that wants nothing but words to expresse it To counterfeit the Kings Seale to counterfeit the Kings money it is Treason but this dyes with the individuall partie To betray a Fort is Treason but it dies with a few men To betray an Army is a Treason but it dyes with a limited number which may be reinforced again by politique industry To blow up both Houses of Parlament is Treason but succeeding ages may replant Branches by a fruitfull posterity but this High Treason which I do move in the name of the Houses of Commons charge and impeach Sir Richard Bolion Knight Lord Chancellour of Ireland and Sir Gerard Lowther Knight Lord Chief Iustice of the Common Pleas Iohn Lord Bishop of Derry Sir George Ratcliffe Knight is in its nature so far transcending any of the former that the rest seem to be but petty Larcenies in respect of this What is it to subvert the fundamentall Lawes of this Kingdome High Treason What is it with a contumacious malice to trample under feet the rich legacies of our forefathers purchased with sweat and expence I mean the Statute lawes what is it but High Treason What is it through an Innate Antipathie to the publick good to incarcerate the liberty of the Subject under the Iron and weighty chains of an arbitrary Government High Treason What is it since his Majestie the most amiable and delightful portraiture of flourishing and indulgent Justice to his Subjects to present him personated in their extrajudiciall censures and judgements but to possesse it possible the hearts of his loyall Subjects of this Kingdome That he is a bloody and devowring Tyrant and to provoke their never dying alleageance into a fatall and desperate Rebellion What is it to violate the sacred Graunts of many of his Majesties Progenitors Kings and Queenes of England confirmed under the broad Seale being the publique faith of this Kingdome by an extrajudiciall breath grounded upon no record What is it to insent a surreptitious clause forged by some servile brain in the preamble of our last Act of Subsidies by which the Kings most excellent Majesty and the Earl of Stofford are placed in one and the same sphear allowing them but equall influencies to nourish the alleageance of this Kingdome what is this but to extoll other then Regall Authority and to crucifie the Majestie of our most gracious Soveraign betwixt the two Theeves of Government Tyranny and Treason My Lords having such a full and lasting Gale to drive me into the depth of these accusations I cannot hereby steere and confine my course within the compasse of patience since I read in the first volumes of their browes the least of these to be the certain ruine of the Subject and if prov'd a most favorable Prologue to usher in the Tragedie of the Actors Councellers and Abetters herein What was then the first and main question it was the subvertion of the fundamentall Lawes of this Kingdome let then magna Charta that lies prostrated besmeared and groveling in her own gore discount her wounds as so many pregnant and undeniable proofs mark the Epethite Magna 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 confirmed by 30. Parliaments in the succession of eight Kings the violation of which hath severall times ingaged the Kingdome of England in a voluntary sacrifice a Charter which imposeth that pleasant and welbecomming oath upon all Soveraigntie to vindicate and preserve the Immunitie thereof before the Crown incircle their Royall Temples in this oath of so high consequence and generall interest his Majesty doth in a manner levie a fine to his Subjects use for avoiding all fraudulent conveyances in the Administration of Justice And this oath is transplanted unto the Judges as the Feoffees in trust appointed between his Majestie and the Subject and sealed by his Majesties provident care with that imphaticall penalty that their estates and lives shall be in the Kings mercy upon the violation of the same either in whole or in part neither hath the deserved punishment for the breach of this oath
enacted as fulgura ex vitrio or as bugbears to inforce the obedience of Children no my Lords the just execution of it upon their Predecessors though in breaches not so capitall might have warned them to have strangled their ill born resolutions in the Cradle before they now proclaim their infancie and petition for their punishment Witnesse Sir Thomas Weyland his banishment confiscation of his goods and lands only for his mercenarie Justice contrary to his oath who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the time of Edward the first Witnesse Sir William Thorpe Cheif Iustice of the Kings Bench in the time of Edward the third who was adjudged to be hanged because he had broken the Kings oath made unto the people wherewith he was intrusted in the Roll. Now my Lords though Magna Charta be sacred for antiquity though its confirmation be strengthned by oath though it be the proper Dictionarie that expounds meum tuum and assignes a Subiect his birth right yet it only survives in the Rolls but now miserable rent and torn in the practice These words Salvo cantenemento live in the Rolls but they are dead in the Castle Chamber These words Nullus liber bujus ejicitur è libero sue tenemento in praejudicium parium live in the Rolls but they are dead where property and free-hold are determined by paper Petitions These words Nulli vendemus nulli differemus Justitiam live in the Rolls but they are dead when the Suites Iudgements and excecution of the Subiect are wittingly and illegally suspended retarded and avoyded Shall we desire to search the mortall wounds inflicted upon the Statute Lawes who sees them not lying upon their death bed stab'd with Proclamations their primitive and genuine tenures escheated by Acts of State and strangled by Monoplies Will you surveigh the liberties of the Subiects every prison spues out illegad attachments and commitments every Pillory is dyed with the forced bloud of the Subiects and hath ears though not to hear yet to witnesse this complaint Do you doubt of the defacement of the amiable Offices of his Maiesties most transplendent and renowned Iustice and grace let then that Microcosme of Letters Patents confirmed under his Maiesties and his Predecessors broad Seale of the Kingdome being the publique faith thereof and yet unchristened by frivolous and private opinions rise up in iudgement let the abortive Iudgement of the tenure in Capite where no tenure was exprest nay let the Hereticall and Traiterous opinions where the Tenure was exprest yet to draw in all by Markets and Faires granted in the same Patents rise up in Iudgements What glasse hath this unhappy divided Kingdome from his Maiesties presence and andience to contemplate the fair and ravishing form of his royall intentions in but in the cleer and diaphanous administration of his Iustice and what do these traytrous and illegall practise ayme at but in affront to his Maiesty which we most tenderly resent and discontent to his Subiects to multiply as by a Magick glasse the royall dispensation of his favours into the ugly and deformed visage of their suppression of the liberties devastations of the estates and the deprivation of the lives of his loyall Subiects so that it may be sayd Regali Capiti cervicem consul equinanâ— Jungere sic vellet variasque inducere plumas My Lords these ought to be considered with as serious an eare as they were practised by mischievous experiments Inquire of the Netherlands why their fields are growne fertile by the inundation of bloud why the pensive Matrons solemnize too too frequent funeralls of their Husbands and issue and they will answer you it was for the preservation of their hereditary Lawes which Tyranny would have innovated This Kingdome personated in the sable habit of a widdow with dishelved hayrs seems to Petition your Lordships that since she is a Mother to most of us yet cerâ—ainly a Nurse unto us all that you would make some other for redresse of her Tyrannicall oppression These persons impeached resemble the opacious body of the earth interposed to eclipse that light and vigour which the solar aspect of Maiesty would communicate unto his Subiects They imitate the fish Sepia that vomits a darke liquor out of her mouth to cloud the waters for her securer escape They are those to whom the keyes have been committed yet they have barred the door to them that knoc't They are those unnaturall Parents that give their children stones in stead of bread and scorpions for fish Was it for this purpose that the royall authority scituated them in these eminent places that like Beacons upon high Hills they should discover and proclaim each innovation and stratagem against the publique weale whilest they in the mean time imploy therein fire to publique Incendiary or like Ignes fatui seduce the easie and beleeving Traveller into pits and unexpected Myres Were they sworne to seale their damnation and not their confirmation of our libertie estates and lives Shall a man be censured for perjury in that breach of his private Faith and those be justifiable in Treason aggravated by perjury against the dignity of the Crownes and publique faith of the Kingdomes No my Lords the grave judicious and mature examination and deserved punishment of these traiterous proceedings will speak these times as glorious to posterity in their information as they are now lamented in their persecution The bloud-thirsting sword of an hostile enemy by a timely union and a defensive preparation may be prevented The thin rib'd Carcasse of an universall famine may have his consumption restored by a supply from our neighbouring Nations The quick spreading venome of infectious pestilence may be prevented by Antidotes and qualified by phisicall remedies But this Catholick grievance like a snake in the most verdant walks for such are the unblemished lawes truly practised stings us to death when we are most secure and like the Kings evill can only be cured by his Majesties free and gracious permission of our modest and gentle proceedings for his vindication and our preservation therein concluded Spencer and Gamston who have left their names monumentally odious for the evill counsell they fed the Kings ear with yet did possibly advantage their own friends while these dart their envie and Treason for a common Center equally touching the bounds of every superficies for as concerning the valide estates they have illegally overthrown when the Lawes by your Lordships industry receive their native vigour they will re-assume their confirmation but the estates happily in themselves legall that they have in an extrajudiciall forme established will haste as speedily to their dissolution so that Judas-like they betray their best friends with a kisse My Lords I cannot finde any surviving Cronologie of times this season to be parallel'd with all circumstances which makes me view the Records amongst the infernall spirits to finde if match't there I might extenuate their facts where 1. they appear like the false spirit sent
of their own harvest But now the poor mans Plough goes to surrow the Seas to build Ships we labour not for our selves but to feed the excressions of Nature things grown up out of the ruines of the naturall members Monopolists Sir these are Maxima vitalia Religion Iustice property The Heart the Head the Liver of this great body and these distempered or obstructed can the subordinate parts be free No sir the truth is all is so farre out of frame that to lay open every particular grievance were to drive us into despair of cure In so great confusion where to begin first requires not much lesse care than what to apply Mr. Speaker I know 't is a plausible motion to begin with setting Gods House in order first who presses that moves with such advantage that he is sure no man will gain-say him 'T is a welbecoming zeal to prefer Religion before our own affairs and indeed 't is a duty not to be omitted where they are in equall danger But in cure of the body politique or naturall we must prefer the most pressing exigents Physitians know that Consumptions Dropsies and such like lingering diseases are more mortall more difficult to cure then slight externall wounds yet if the least Vein be cut they must neglect their greater cures to stop that which if neglected must needs exhaust the stock of nature and produce a dissolution of the whole man A Defection from the duties of our Religion is a Consumption to any State no foundation is firm that is not laid in Christ The Deniall of Iustice the abridgement of our liberties is such an obstruction as renders the Common-wealth Leprous but the wounds in our property lets out the life-blood of the people The Reformation of Church-Government must necessarily be a work of much time and God be thanked the disease is not desperate We serve one God we believe in one Christ and we all acknowledge and professe one Gospel The difference is onely de modo we vary but in Ceremonies to reduce which to the Primitive Practice must be a work of great debate is not a work for us alone to settle The stop of Iustice can yet injure but particulars 'T is true there may be many too many instances of strange oppressions great oppressors but 't will be hard to judge the Conclusion Et sic de caeteris But take from us the propriety of our estates our subsistence we are no more a people This is that veyn which hath bin so deep cut so farre exhaust that to preserve our being we must doubtlesse stop this current Then settle Rules to live by when we are sure to live Mr. Speaker he that well weighes this little word Property or propriety in our estates will finde it of a large extent The Leeches that have suckt this blood have bin Excise Benevolences Loans Impositions Monopolies Military Taxes Ship-money cum multis aliis all which spring from one Root And is it not high time to grub up that root that brings forth such fruit Shall we first stand to lop the branches one by one when we may down with all at once He that to correct an evill tree that brings forth bad fruit shall begin at the master bough and so lop downwards is in danger to fall himself before the tree falls The safer and speedier way is to begin at the root and there with submission to better judgements would I lay the Axe The Root of most of our present mischiefs and the ruine of all posterity do I hold to be that extraiudiciall Iudgement I cannot say but rather doom delivered by all the Iudges under their hands out of Court yet recorded in all Courts to the subversion of all our Fundamentall Laws Liberties and Annihilation if not Confiscation of our estates That in case of danger the King may impose upon his subiects and that he is the â—ole Iudge of the danger necessity and proportion which in brief is to take what when and where he will which though delivered in the time of a gracious and mercifull Prince who we hope will not wrest it beyond our abilities yet left to the Interpretation of a succeeding Tyrant if ever this Nation be so fortunate to fall into the hands of such it is a Record wherein every man might reade himself a slave that reades it having nothing he can call his own all prostistute to the will of another What to do in such a case we are not to seek for precedents our Honorable Ancestors taught us in the just and exemplar punishments of chief Iustice Tresilian and his Complices for giving their judgements out of Parliament against the established Laws of Parliament how tender they were of us how carefull we ought to be to continue those Laws to preserve the Liberty of our Posterity I am far from maligning the person nor in my heart wish I the Execution of any man but certainly it shall be a Iustice well becoming this House to lay their Heads at his Maiesties mercy who laid us under his feet who had made us but tenants at will of our Liberties and Estates And though I cannot but approve of Mercy as a great Vertue in any Prince yet I heartily pray it may prove a Precedent as safe and usefull to this oppressed State as that of Justice Mr. Speaker blasted may that tongue be that shall in the least degree derogate from the glory of those Halcyon dayes our fathers enjoyed during the Government of that ever blessed never to be fogot Royall Elizabeth But certainly I may safely say without detraction it was much advantage to the peace and prosperity of her Raign that the great examples of Empson and Dudley were then fresh in memory The Civility of our Laws tell us that Kings can do no wrong and then is the State secure when Judges their Ministers dare do none Since our times have found the want of such examples 't is fit we leave some to posterity God forbid all should be thought or found guilty there are doubtlesse some Ring-leaders let us sift them out In publique Government to passe by the Nocent is equall injustice as to punish the Innocent An omission of that duty now will be a guilt in us render us sham'd in History curst by Posterity our gracious and in that act of voluntary Justice most glorious King hath given up to the satisfaction of his afflicted People the authors of their Ruines the power of future preservation is now in us Et qui non servat patriam cum potest idem facit destruenti patriam What though we cannot restore the damage of the Common-wealth we may yet repair the breaches in the bounds of Monarchy Though it be with our losse and charge we shall so leave our childrens children fenced as with a wall of safety by the restauration of our Laws to their ancient vigor and lustre 'T is too true and 't is to be feared the Revenues of the Crown sold out-right
à me alienum puto was indeed the saying of the Comedian but it might well have becom'd the mouth of the greatest Philosopher We allow to sense all the works and operations of sense and shall we restrain reason must onely man be hindered from his proper actions They are most fit to do reasonable things that are most reasonable For Science commonly is accompanied with conscience So is not ignorance they seldome or never meet And why should we take that capacity from them which God and nature have so liberally bestowed My Lords the politike body of the Common-wealth is analogicall to the body naturall every member in that contributes something to the contribution of the whole the superfluity or defect which hinders the performance of that duty your Lordships know what the Philosopher calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Natures sin And truely my Lords to be part of the other body and do nothing beneficiall thereunto cannot fall under a milder term The common-wealth subsists by laws and their execution and they that have neither head in the making nor hand in the executing of them conferre not any thing to the being or well being thereof And can such be called members unlesse most unprofitable ones onely fruges consumere nati Me thinks it springs from nature it self or the very depths of Justice that none should be tied by other Laws than himself makes for what more naturall or just than to be bound onely by his own consent to be ruled by anothers will is meerly tyrannicall Nature there suffers violence and man degenerates into beast The most flourishing Estates were ever governed by Laws of an universall constitution witnesse this our Kingdom witnesse Senatus populusque Romanus the most glorious Common-wealth that ever was and those many others in Greece and elsewhere of eternall memory Some things my Lords are so evident in themselves that they are difficult in their proofs Amongst them I reckon this inconveniency I have spoken of I will therefore use but a word or two more in this way The long experience that all Christendom hath had hereof for these 1300 yeers is certainly argumentum ad bominem Nay my Lords I will go further for the same reason runs thorow all Religions never was there any Nation that employed not their religious men in the greatest affairs But to come to the businesse that lies now before your Lordships Bishops have voted here ever since Parliaments began and long before were imployed in the publike The good they have done your Lordships all well know and at this day enjoy for this I hope ye will not put them out nor for the evill they may do which yet your Lordships do not know and I am confident never shal suffer A position ought not to be destroyed by a supposition à posse ad esse non valet consequentia My Lords I have done with proving of this positively I shall now by your good favours do it negatively in answering some inconveniences that may seem to arise Object 1 For the Text No man that warres intangles himself with the affairs of this life which is the full sense of the word both in Greek and Latine it makes not at all against them except to intermeddle and intangle be tearms equivalent Besides my Lords though this was directed to a Church-man yet it is of a generall nature and reaches to all Clergy and Laity as the most learned and best expositors unanimously do agree To end this Argumentum symbolicum non est argumentativum Object 2 It may be said that it is inconsistent with a spirituall vocation truely my Lords Grace and Nature are in some respects incompossible but in some others most harmoniously agree it perfects nature and raises it to a heighth above the common altitude and makes it most fit for those great works of God himself to make Laws to do Iustice There is then no inconsistency between themselves it must arise out of Scripture I am confident it doth not formally out of any place there nor did I ever meet with any learned Writer of these or other times that so expounded any Text. Object 3 But though in strict tearms this be not inconsistent yet it may peradventure hinder the duty of their other calling My Lords there is not any that sits here more for preaching than I am I know it is the ordinary means to salvation yet I likewise know there is not that full necessity of it as was in the primitive times God defend that 1600 yeers acquaintance should make the Gospel of Christ no better known unto us Neither my Lords doth their office meerly and wholly consist in preaching but partly in that partly in praying and administring the blessed Sacraments in a godly and exemplary life in wholsome admonitions in exhortations to vertue dehortations from vice and partly in easing the burdened conscience These my Lords compleat the office of a Church-man Nor are they altogether tied to time or place though I confesse they are most properly exercised within their own verge except upon good occasion nor then the omission of some can be tearmed the breach of them all I must adde one more an essentiall one the very form of Episcopacy that distinguisheth it from the inferiour Ministry the orderly and good government of the Church and how many of these I am sure not the last my Lords is interrupted by their sitting here once in 3 yeers and then peradventure but a very short time and can there be a greater occasion than the common good of the Church and State I will tell your Lordships what the great and good Emperour Constantine did in his expedition against the Persians he had his Bishops with him whom he consulted with about his military affairs as Eusebius has it in his life lib. 4. c. 56. Object 4 Reward and punishment are the great negotiators in all worldly businesses these may be said to make the Bishops swim against the stream of their consciences and may not the same be said of the Laity Have these no operations but onely upon them Has the King neither frown honour nor offices but onely for Bishops Is there is nothing that answers their translations Indeed my Lords I must needs say that in charity it is a supposition not to be supposed no nor in reason that they will go against the light of their understanding The holinesse of their calling their knowledge their freedoms from passions and affections to which youth is very obnoxious their vicinity to the gates of death which though not shut to any yet alwayes stand wide open to old age these my Lords will surely make them steer aright But of matter of fact there is no disputation some of them have done ill Crimine ab uno disce omnes is a poeticall not a logicall argument Some of the Judges have done so some of the Magistrates and Officers and shall there be therefore neither Iudge Magistrate nor Officer more A personall
crime goes not beyond the person that commits it nor can anothers fault be mine offence If they have contracted any filth or corruption through their own or the vice of the times cleanse and purge them thorowly But still remember the great difference between reformation and extirpation And he pleased to think of your Triennall Bill which will save you this labour for the time to come fear of punishment will keep them in order if they should not themselves through the love of vertue I have now my Lords according to my poor ability both shewed the conveniences and answered those inconveniences that seem to make against them I should now propose those that make for them As their falling into a condition worse than slaves not represented by any and then the dangers and inconveniences that may happen to your Lordships but I haue done this heretofore and will not offer your Lordships Grambenbis coctam A Speech in Parliament delivered by Mr. PEARD against the Oath Ex Officio 1640. Mr. SPEAKER I Assure my selfe we are here met to discover and reforme as much as in us lyeth all abuses of the Church and Common-wealth many and great ones have been spoken against some contrary to all Law and some established by new Lawes contrary to all Law The Wolfe having put on the Lions skinne and rapine presuming to passe undiscovered under the robe of Justice But I shall not neede to light a candle to search out that which already the sunne hath made manifest That which I shall speak hath not been spoken but if I shall speak that that shall seeme to be against Law I humbly crave the pardon of this House since if it be law it is summum jus Law without conscience That which I shall speake against is the Oath Ex Officio It is acknowledged by themselves that Administer this Oath that it is unjustly done to tender it to any man unlesse there be a publique Fame or particular Presentment or Articles testified against him I make no question but the practice of this confest Injunction wil be found cōmon amongst them And I hope it shal be severely censured since unjust proceedings upon unjust grounds are double Injustice I shall therefore leave that as a plaine case and examine their best grounds First Fame they say is a just cause for them to take Cognizance of a matter to proceed against it Fame we know may arise upon very small and groundlesse suspitions by secret whisperings creeping at first but quickly gets it wings And as the Poët saith Creseit eundo This is the manner of all Fame if this be Fame their Court shall never want worke as long as a Promooter hath an ill tongue or a knave can slander an honest man Therefore I thinke Fame no good ground to proceed upon If Fame be just what most men speake certainly some men will testifie No man will testifie it is false Let no accusation then stand but out of the mouthes of two or three witnesses of Presentments are a just ground of proceedings in all Courts and upon all causes But neither witnesses nor presentments are or can be a just ground of the Oath Ex officio For if the partie accused be examined no further then is testified then the Oath Ex Officio is superfluous If he be examined further or upon other matters then is testified then a man is made to betray himselfe which is unjust Mr. Speaker such is the Mercy of the Common Law that Murderers and Poysoners are not examined upon the rack but the Civill law upon every occasion racketh the Conscience These are the Lyme-twigs which were set to catch the poore Martyrs in Queene Maries daies And in our daies I dare beleeve it will appeare that some good men are fallen into this snare Mr. Speaker If the foundations faile what shall the buildings doe If the conformity of good men shall undoe them who shall stand I desire nothing but that evill men may suffer I desire the Law may punish not make offenders I desire that our words and actions at this time and at other times may be subject to the Law I would have thought free Mr. Speakers Letter to Sir Jacob Ashley SIR WEE have had cause to doubt that some ill affected persons have endeavoured to make a mis-understanding in the Army of the intentions of the Parliament towards them To take away all mistaking in that kinde the house of Commons have Commanded me to assure you that they have taken the affaires of the Army into their serious Care And though for the present their moneys have not come as they wished and as was due by reason of the many distractions and other Impediments which this House could no wayes avoid yet they rest most assured that they shall not onely have their full pay but the House will take their merits into their further consideration in regard they take notice that notwithstanding their want and endeavours of those ill-affected persons they have not demeaned themselves otherwise then as men of honor and well affected to the Common-wealth which this House takes in so good part that we have already found out a way to get money for a good part of their pay and will take the most speedy course we possibly may for the rest From my house at Charing-Crosse the 4th of this present Moneth of May. 1641. So I remain Your very Loving Friend SIR 'T is the pleasure of the House that this Letter be Communicated to the Army to the end their Intentions may be cleerly understood by them Sir BENJAMIN RUDYERDS Speech Tuesday the 29. Decem. Mr. SPEAKER THe principall part of this businesse is Moneys and now we are about it I shall be glad we may give so much as will not only serve the turn for the present but likewise to provide that it come not quick upon us againe I beleeve that the two subsidies are spent already Wee know how much time this businesse hath cost us if we be but halfe as long about another it may cost more then money For if two Armies should be driven to extreame necessitie and they will be Judges of their owne necessitie we shall not be able to sit here and give more though we would Believe it Sir this is the businesse of all the businesses in the House of all the businesses in the Kingdom If we stand hacking for a little money wee may very thriftily lose all we have this being a businesse of so peremptory and destructive a nature Wherefore Mr. Speaker my humble and earnest motion is that we may dispatch it fully and at once If there should be an overplus of money remaining wee can soone resolve how to dispose of it Foure subsidies will doe the worke if they be given presently for every day tells us that we are not so much Masters of our owne time and occasions as to doe nothing when we would Let us doe this whilest we may though I dwell not
upon Bill or information and Cite such parties to appeare as stand accused of any misdemeanour and this was the Infancy of the Starchamber but afterwards the Starchamber was by Cardinall Woolsey 8 H. 8. raised to mans Estate from whence being now altogether unlimited it is grown a Monster and will hourely produce worse effects unlesse it be reduced by that hand which laid the foundation for the Statutes that are ratified by Parliament admit of no other than a repeale Therefore I offer humbly unto your Lordships these ensuing Reasons why it should be repealed First the very words of the Statute cleerly shew that it was a needlesse institution for it sayes they who are to Judge can proceed with no delinquent otherwise then if he were convicted of the same crime by due proces of Law And doe your Lordships holdth is a rationall Court that sends us to the Law and calls us to the Law and calls us back from it againe Secondly divers Judicatories confound one another in pessima republica plurimae Leges The second reason is from circumstance or rather à Consuetudine and of this there are many examples both domestique and forain but more particularly by the Parliaments of France abbreviated into a standing Committee by Philip the King and continued according to his Institution untill Lewis the eleventh came to the Crown who being a subtill Prince buried the volume in the Epitome for to this day when ever the three Estates are called either at the death of the old King or to Crown the new It is a common Proverb Allons voire Le van des Estates My Lords Arbitrary judgements destroy the Common Laws and in them the two great Charters of the Kingdome which being once lost we have nothing left but the name of liberty Then the last reason is though it was the first cause of my standing up the great Eclipse it hath ever been to the whole Nobility For who are so frequently vexed there as Peers and Noblemen and notwithstanding their appeale to this Assembly is ever good whilst that famous Law of the 4 Ed. 3. remaines in force for the holding of a Parliament once a year or more if occasion require yet who durst a year ago mention such a Statute without the incurring the danger of M. Kilverts persecution Therefore I shall humbly move your Lordships that a select Commitee of a few may be named to consider of the act of Parliament it selfe and if they shall thinke it of as great prejudice as I doe that then the house of Commons in the most usuall manner may be made acquainted with it either by Bill or conference who also happily thinke it a burthen to the Subject and so when the whole body of Parliament shall joyne in one supplication I am confident his Majestie will desire that nothing shall remaine in force which his people doe not willingly obey Lunae the 10. of May 1641. IT is this day ordered by the House of Commons now assembled in Parliament that the Lord Maior of London the Justices of Peace of Midlesex Westminster and the Liberties of the Dutchie of Lancaster and those of Surrey that are for the Burrough of Southwarke and the place adjoyning doe imploy their best endeavors to prevent that none of the Kings Subjects doe frequent the houses of any the Embassadors Somerset-house or St. James to heare Masse And that they give an accompt to this House of the Execution of this Order at all such times as by the said House they shall be required My Lord Finch his Letter to my Lord CHAMBERLAINE My most welbeloved Lord THe Interest your Lordship hath ever had in the best of my fortunes and affections gives me the Priviledges of troubling your Lordship with these few lines from one that hath now nothing left to serve you withall but his Prayers Those your Lordship shall never faile with an heart as full of true affection to your Lordship as ever any was My Lord it was not the losse of my place and with that of my fortunes nor being exiled from my deare Countrey and friends though many of them were cause of sorrow that afflicts but that which I most suffer under is that displeasure of the House of Commons conceived against me I know a true heart I have ever borne towards them and your Lordship can witnesse in part what wayes I have gone in but Silence and patience best becomes me with which I must leave my selfe and my Actions to the favourable construction of my Noble Friends in which number your Lordship hath a prime place I am now at the Hague where I arrived on Thursday the last of the last moneth where I purpose to live in a fashion agreeable to the poorenesse of my fortunes for my humbling in this world I have utterly cast off the thoughts of it and my aime shall be to learne to number my daies that I may apply my heart unto wisdome that wisdome that shall wipe all teares from mine eyes and heart and lead me by the hand to true happinesse which can never be taken from me I pray God of heaven blesse this Parliament with a happy both progresse and conclusion if my ruine may conduce but the least to it I shall not repine at it I truly pray for your Lordship and your Noble Family that God would give an increase of all worldly blessings and in the fulnesse of dayes to receive you to his glory if I were capable of serving any body I would tell your Lordship that no man should be readier to make knowne his devotion and true gratitude to your Lordship then Your Lordships most humble and affectionate poore kinsman and servant J.F. Hague Jan. 3. 1640. The Lord KEEPERS Speech TO HIS MAJESTIE at the Banquetting-house at White-hall in the name of both Houses May it please Your Majestie I Am to give your Majestie most humble and heartie thanks in the name of both houses of Parliament and this whole Kingdome for the speedy and gracious Royall assent unto the Bill Entitled An act for preventing of inconveniences happening by the long intermission of Parliaments which as it is of singular comfort and securitie for all your Subjects for the present so they are confident it will be of infinite honor and setlement of Your Majesties Royall Crowne and dignitie as well as comfort to their postiritie The Declaration of the Scots Commissioners to the House of Parliament touching the maintenance of their Army March the 16th 1640. IN the midst of other matters necessitie constraineth us to shew your Lordships that fourescore thousand pounds and above of the Moneys appointed for reliefe of the Northerne Countreys there is no more paid but 18000 l. the Country people of those Countreys have trusted the souldiers so long as they are become weary and unable to furnish them their cattell and victuall being so farre exhausted and wasted as it is scarce able to entertain themselves The Markets are decayed
profession and enter upon the work of another robe Since I have bin intrusted by the report of a learned Committee and confirmed by the uncontradicted rule of the House since I shall say nothing of this kind but in order to somewhat further And which moves me most to venture my opinion and to expect your pardon since I am confident that History alone is sufficient to shew this judgement contrary to our Laws and Logick alone sufficient to prove it destructive to our propriety which every free and noble person values more then his possession I will not professe I know of my selfe and all those who know me know that my naturall disposition is to decline from severity much more from cruelty That I have no particular provocations from their persons and have particular Obligations to their calling against whom I am to speak And though not so much yet far more then I have so I hope it will be believed that only publick interest have extorted this from me and that which I would not say if I conceived it not so true and so necessary that no undigested meat can lie havier upon the stomach then this unsaid would have lain upon my Conscience Mr. Speaker the constitution of this Common-wealth hath Established or rather endeavored to Establish to us the security of our goods and the security of those Laws which would secure us and our goods by appointing for us Judges so settled so sworn that there can be no oppression but they of necessity must be accessary since if they neither deny nor delay us Justice which neither for the great nor little seale they ought to doe the greatest Person in this Kingdome cannot continue the least violence upon the meanest But this security Mr. Speaker hath been almost our ruine for it hath been turned or rather turned it self into a Battery against us And those persons who should have been as Dogs to defend the Sheep have been as Wolves to worry them These Judges M. Speaker to instance not them onely but their greatest crime have delivered an opinion and judgement in an extrajudiciall manner that is such as came not within their cognizance they being Judges and neither Philosophers nor Politicians In which when that is so absolute and evident the law of the land ceases and of generall reason and equity by which particular laws at first were framed returnes to his throne and government where salus populi becomes not only suprema but sola lex at which and to which end whatsoever should dispence with the King to make use of any mony dispences with us to make use of his and one anothers In this judgement they contradicted both many and learned Acts and Declarations of Parliaments and those in this very case in this very reign so that for them they needed to have consulted with no other record but with their memories 2 They have contradicted apparent evidences by supposing mighty and eminent dangers in the most Cerene quiet and halcian dayes that could possibly be imagined a few conceptible pirats being our most formidall enemies and there being neither Prince nor State with whom we had either Alyance or Amity or both 3 They contradict the writ it selfe by supposing that supposed danger to be so suddaine that it would not stay for a Parliament which required but forty daies stay and the writ being in no such haste but being content to stay seventimes over Mr. Speaker it seemed generally strange that they saw not the Law which all men else saw but themselves Yet though this begot the more generall wonder three other particulars begot the more generall indignation The first of all the reasons for this judgement was such that they needed not any from the adverse party to help them to convert those few who before the last suspition of the legallity of that most illegall writ there being fewer that approved of the judgement then there were that judged it for I am confident they did not that themselves Secondly when they had allowed to the King the sole power in necessity the sole judgement of necessity and by that enabled him to take both from us what he would when he would and how he would they yet continued to perswade us that they had left us our liberties and proprieties The third and last is and which I confesse moved most That by the transformation of us from the state of free subjects a good phrase Mr. Speaker under Doctor Heylens favor unto that of Villeins they disable us by Legall and voluntary supplies to expresse our affections to his Majesty and by that to cherish his to us that is by Parliaments M. Speaker the cause of all the miseries we have suffered and the cause of all our jealousies we have had that we should yet suffer is That a most excellent Prince hath been most infinitely abused by his Judges telling him that by policy he might doe what he pleased with the first of these we are now to deale which may be a leading to the rest And since in proving of these Laws upon which these men have trampled our Ancestours have shewed their urmost care and wisdome for our unaffected security words having done nothing and yet have done all their words can doe we must now be forced to think of abolishing of our grievances of taking away this judgement and these Judges together and of regulating their successors by their examplary punishment I will not speak much I will only say we have accused a great Person of high Treason for intending to subvert our fundamentall Laws and to introduce arbitrary Government which we suppose he meant to doe we are sure these have done it there being no Law more fundamentall than that they have already subverted and no government more absolute than they have really introduced Mr. Speaker not only the severe punishment but the suddaine removall of these men will have a suddain effect in one very considerable consideration We only accuse and the House of Lords condemn In which condemnation they usually receive advise though not direction from the Judges And I leave it to every man to imagine how prejudiciall to us that is to the Common wealth and how partiall to their fellow malefactors the advice of such judges is like to be How undoubtedly for their own sakes they will conduce to their power that every action be judged to be a lesse fault and every person to be lesse faulty then in Justice they ought to doe Amongst these Mr. Speaker there is one that I must not lose in the crowd whom I doubt not but we shall finde when we examine the rest of them with what hopes they have been tempted by what fears they have been assaid and by what and by whose importunity they have been pursued before they consented to what they did I doubt not I say but wee shall then finde him to have been a most admirable solicitor but a most abominable Judge hee it
is who not only gave away with his breath what our Ancestors had purchased for us by so large an expence of their time their care their treasure and their blood and imployed their industry as great as his injustice to perswade others to joyne with him in that deed of gift but strove to root up those liberties which they had cut downe and to make our grievances immortall and our slavery irreparable lest any part of our posterity might want occasion to curse him He declared that power to be so inherent to the Crowne as that it was not in the power even of Parliaments to divide them I have heard Mr. Speaker and I thinke here that common Fame is ground enough for this House to accuse upon And then undoubtedly enough to be accused upon in this House She hath reported this so generally that I expect not that you should bid me name him whom you all know nor doe I looke to tell you newes when I tell you it is my Lord Keeper But this I think sit to put you in minde That his place admits him to his Majestie and trusts him with his Majesties conscience and how pernicious every moment whilst one gives him means to infuse such unjust opinions of this House as are exprest in a Libell rather then a Declaration of which many believe him to be the principall Secretary and th' other puts the vaste and most unlimited power of the Chauncery into his hands the safest of which will be dangerous for my part I thinke no man secure that he shall thinke himselfe worth any thing when he rises whilst all our estates are in his breast who hath sacrificed his Countrey to his ambition whilst hee who hath prostracted his owne conscience hath the keeping of the Kings and he who hath undone us already by whole-sale hath a power left in him by retaile Mr. Speaker in the beginning of the Parliament he told us and I am confident every man here believes it before he told it and never the more for his telling though a sorry witnesse is a good testimony against himselfe That his Majestie never required any thing from any his Ministers but Justice and Integrity Against which if any of them have transgrest upon their heads and that deservedly it ought to fall It was full and truly but he hath in this saying pronounced his owne condemnation we shall be more partiall to him then he is to himself if we be slow to pursue it It is therefore my just and humble motion That wee may chuse a select Committee to draw up his and their charge and to examine their carriage in this particular to make use of it in the charge and if he shall be found guilty of tampering with Judges against the publike security who thought tampering with witnesses in a private cause worthy of so great a Fine if he shall be found to have gone before the rest to this Judgement and to have gone beyond the rest in this Judgement that in the punishment for it the Justice of this House may not denie him the due honor both to preceed and exceed the rest Sir JOHN CULPEPPERS Speech in the Commons House of Parliament 9o. Novemb. 1640. Mr. SPEAKER I stand not up with a Petition in my hand I have it in my mouth and have it in charge from them that sent me hither humbly to present to the consideration of this House the grievances of the County of Kent I shall only summe them up they are these First the great increase of Papists by the remisse execution of those lawes which were made to suppresse them the life of the law is execution without this they become a dead letter this is wanting and a great grievance The second is the obtruding and countenancing of divers new Ceremonies in matters of Religion as placing the Communion Table Altar-wise and bowing or cringing to or towards it the refusing of the holy Sacrament to such as refuse to come to the Rayles These carry with them some scandall and much offence The third is Military charges and therein first that of Coate and Conduct money required as a loane pressed as a due in each respect equally a grievance The second is the enhancing the price of Powder whereby the Trayned Bands are much discouraged in their exercising howsoever this may appeare prima facie upon due examination it will appeare a great grievance The third is more particular to our County It is this The last Summer was twelvemonth 1000. of our best Arms were taken from the owners and sent into Scotland The compulsary way was this If you will not send your Arms you shall goe your selves M. Speaker the trayned Band is a Militia of great strength and honor without charges to the King and deserves all due encouragement The fourth is the Canons I assigne these to bee a grievance First in respect of the matter besides the c. Oath Secondly in respect of the makers they were chosen to serve in a Convocation that falling with the Parliament the Scene was altered The same men without any new election shufled into a sacred Synod Thirdly in respect of the consequence which in this age when the second ill president becomes a Law is full of danger The Clergy without confirmation of a Parliament have assumed unto themselves power to make Lawes to grant Reliefe by the name of benevolence and to intermeddle with our free-hold by suspensions and deprivation This is a grievance of a high nature The next grievance is the Ship-money This cries aloud I may say I hope without offence This strikes the first born of every family I meane our inheritance If the Lawes give the king power in any danger of the kingdom whereof hee is Judge to impose what and when hee please wee owe all that is left to the goodnesse of the King not to the Law M. Speaker this makes the Farmors faint and the Plough to goe heavy The next is the great decay of cloathing and fall of our woolls These are the golden Mines of England which gives a foundation to that trade which we drive with all the World I know there are many starres concurre in this constellation I will not trouble you with more than one cause of it which I dare affirme to be the greatest It is the great customes and impositions laid upon our Cloath and new Draperies I speak not this with a wish to lessen the King revenews so it be done by Parliament I shall give my voice to lay more charge upon the superfluities due regard being had to trade which we import from all other Nations sure I am that those impositions upon our native commodities are dangerous give liberty to our neighbours to under-sell And I take it for a rule that besides our losse in trade which is five times as much as the King receiveth what is imposed upon our Cloaths this it taken from the rent of our lands I have but one grievance
price of moneys must rise and fall to fit their occasions we see this by raising the Exchange of Franckford and other places of their usuall time of the Marts This frequent and daily change in the Low-Countries of their moneys is no such injustice to any there as it would be here for there they being all Merchants or mechanicks they can rate accordingly their labour and their Ware whether it be Coyne or other merchandize to the present condition of their own money in Exchange And our English Merchants to whose profession it properly belongeth do so according to their just intrinsique valew of their forreign Coyn in all barter of commodities or Exchange except usance which we that are rated and tyed by the extrinsiques measure of moneys in all our constant reckonigs and annuall bargains at home cannot do And for us then to raise our Coyn at this time to equall their proportions were but to render our selves to a perpetuall incertainty for they will raise upon us daily them again which we of course shall follow else receive no profit by this present change and so destroy the Policie Justice honor and tranquilitie of our State for ever To the Right Honourable the Lord Deputy The â—â—mble and just Remonstrance of the Knights Cittizens and Burgesses in Parliament assembled SHewing that in all ages since the happy subjection of this Kingdome to the Imperiall Crowne of England it was and is a principall study and Princely care of his Majesty and his most noble Progenitors Kings and Queens of England and Ireland to the vast expence of treasure and blood That their loyall and dutifull people of this Land of Ireland beeing now for the most part derived from Brittish Ancestors should be governed according to the municipall and fundamentall Lawes of England That the statute of Magna Charta or the great Charter of the liberties of England and other laudable lawes and statutes were in severall Parliaments heere enacted and declared that by the means thereof of the most prudent benign government of his Majestie his Royall Progenitors this Kingdome was untill of late in its growth a flourishing estate whereby the said people were heretofore enabâ—ed to aâ—â—iver their humble and naturall desires to comply with his Majesties Princely and royall occasions by their free gift of 150. thousand pounds sterling and likewise by another free gift of 120. thousand pounds more during the government of the Lord Viscount Faulkland and after by the gift of 40. thousand pounds and their free and cheerefull gift of siâ—â— intire Subsidies in the tenth yeare of his Majesties Reignâ— which to comply with his Majesties then occasions signified to the then house of Commons they did allow should ammount in the Collections unto 2 hundred and fifty thousand pounds although as they confidently believe if the Subsidies had been levyed in a moderate Parliamentary way they would not have amounted to much more then halfe the sum aforesaid besides the foure intire Subsidies graunted in this present Parliament Soe it is may it please your Lordship by the occasion of insuing and other grievances and Innovations though to his Majesty no considerable profit this Kingdome is reduced to that extreame and universall poverty that the same is lesse able to pay 2 Subsidies then it was hertofore to satisfie all the before-recyted great payments his Majesties most faithfull people of the Land do conceive great fears that the said grievances and consequences thereof may be hereafter drawne into presidents to be perpetuated upon their posterity which in their great hopes and strong beliefe they are perswaded is contrary to his Royall and Princely intention towards his said people of which greivances are as followeth 1 First the generall apparant decay of Trades occasioned by the new and illegall raising of the booke of rates and impositions upon native and other Commodities exported and imported by reason whereof and of extreame usage and censures Merchants are beggered both and disinabled and discouraged to Trade and some of the honourable persons who gaine thereby often Iudges and parties And that in the conclusion his Majesties profit thereby is not considerably advanced 2. The arbitrary decision of all civill causes and controversies by paper petitions before the Lord Lieutenant and Lord Deputy and infinite other Iudicatories upon references from them derived in the nature of all actions determinable at the Common Law not limited into certaine time cause season or thing whatsoever And the consequences of such exceeding by immoderate and unlawfull fees by Secretaries Clarkes Pursivants Serjeants at Armes and otherwise by which kinde of proceedings his Majesty looseth a considerable part of his revenue upon originall writs and other wise and the Subject looseth the benefit of his writ of Error bill of reversall vouchees and other legall and just advantages and the ordinary course and Courts of Iustice declined 3. The proceedings in civill causes at Counsell board contrary to the Law and great Charter not limited to any certaine time or season 4 That the Subject is in all the materiall parts thereof denyed the benefit of the Princely graces and more especially of the statute of limitations of 21. of Iac. Graunted by his Majesty in the fourth yeare of his Raigne upon great advice of Counsell of England and Ireland and for great consideration and then published in all the Courts of Dublin and in all the Counties of this Kingdome in open assizes whereby all persons doe take notice that contrary to his Majesties pious intentions his Subjects of this land have not enjoyed the benefit of his Majesties Princelie promise thereby made 5. The extrajudiciall avoyding of Letters Pattents of estates of a very great part of his Majesties subjects under the great Seale the publique faith of the Kingdome by private opinions delivered at the Counsell board without legall evictions of their estates contrary to the law and without president or example of any former age 6. The Proclamation for the sole emption and uttering of Tobacco which is bought at every low rates and uttered at high and excessive rates by meanes whereof thousands of families within this Kingdome and of his Majesties Subjects in severall Ilands and other parts of the West Indies as your Petitioners are informed are destroyed and the most part of the coyn of this Kingdome is ingross ed into particular hands Insomuch as the petitioners do conceive that the proffit arising and engrossed thereby doth surmount his Majestyes revenue certain or cosuall within this Kingdome and yet his Majesty receiveth but very little profit by the same 7. The universall and unlawfull increasing of Monopolies to the advantage of a few to the disprofit of his Majesty and Impoverishment of his people 8. The extream and cruell usage of certain late Commissioners and other stewards the Brittish Farmers and Inhabitants of the City and County of London Derry by meanes whereof the worthy Plantation of that Country is almost destroyed and the
God had endowed the Church of England with which God himself hath given by his Law unto the universall Church and in that which the Kings of England by their Charter have bequeathed to the particular Church of England and this we doubt not was the cause that moved Hen. 8. so effectually and powerfully to bend himselfe against the Popes Supremacy usurped at that time over the Church of England for saith the King we will with hazard of life and losse of our Crown uphold and defend in our Realms whatsoever we shall know to be the will of God The Church of God then in England not being free according to the great Charter but in bondage and servitude to the See of Rome contrary to the Law of God the King judged it to stand highly with honour and his Oath to reform redresse and amend the abuses of the same See If then it might please our gracious Soveraign Lord King Charles that now is in Imitation of that his noble Progenitor to vouchsafe an abolishment of all Lordly Primacy executed by Archepiscopall and Episcopall authority over the Ministers of Christ his Highnesse in so doing could no more rightly be charged with the violation of the great Charter then might King Henry the eight with the banishment of the Popish Supremacy or then our late Soveraign Lady Q. Elizabeth could be justly burdened with the breach of her Oath by the Establishment of the Gospell Now if the Kings of England by reason of their Oath were so straitly tied to the words of the great Charter that they might not in any sort have disanulled any supposed Rights or Liberties of the Church used and confirmed by the said Charter unto the Church that then was supposed to be the Church of God in England then be like King Henry 8. might be attainted to have gone against the great Charter and against his Oath when by the overthrow of Abbeys and Monasteries he took away the Rights and Liberties of the Abbots Priers for by expresse words of the great Charter Abbots and Priers had as large and ample a Patent for their Rights and Liberties as our Archbishops and Bishops can at this day challenge for their Primacy If then the Rights and Liberties of the one as being against the Law of God be duely and lawfully taken away notwithstanding any matter clause or sentence contained in the great Charter the other having but little reason by colour of the great Charter to stand upon their pantofles and to contend for their painted sheaves for this is a Rule and Maxime in Gods laws that In omni Juramento semper excipitur authoritas majoris Unlesse then they be able to justifie by the holy scriptures that such Rights and Liberties as they pretend for their spirituall Primacy over the Ministers of Christ be in Deed and Truth inferred unto them by the holy law of God I suppose the Kings Highnesse as successor to Hen. 8. and as most just inheritour of the Crown of England by the words of the great Charter and by his Oath is bound utterly to abolish all Lordly Primacy as hitherto upheld and defended partly by ignorance and partly by an unreasonable and evill Custome My Lord DIGBIES Speech in Parliament 1640. Master Speaker THis happie meeting is to bemoane and redresse the unhappie State of this Common-wealth Let me have I beseech you your leave to give you in a word a short view of our griefes then see whence they flow Our Lawes our liberties our lives and which is the life of all our Religion all which have been by the endeavours of so many Ages secured and made so much our owne can scarce be called ours Our Lawes the only finews and ligeaments of our estates which should run in an even streame are now made to disdaine their bancks and to overflow and drown their fields which they should gently redresse our liberties the very spirit and essence of our weale which should differ us from slaves and speake us English-men are held away by them that even whiles they take them from us cannot but confesse they are our proper dues Are not our lives in danger when an enemy disguised like a friend provoked is as it were suffered because indirectly and in vaine resisted to come almost into our bosomes to rifle some of their goods others of their loyalty which perhaps they could not neither would have touched might we with united force have resisted And lastly which is the soule of all our grievances our Religion which should have beene our Cordiall in all our distempers like a forced Virgin laments ever that her pure innocencie is taken from her and sure all these effects must have their causes That we have just and wise Lawes we may thanke those good Kings that made them the settled exposition of just circumscribed Lawes to binde and defend the Subject That they are so well framed and usefud and to containe enough to make a good King and people be perfect be safe and happie What do we owe to these grave Councellors who sate here before us and that they out-live the malice of some unbounded spirits we are beholding to them that Reprieved them from ruine with their lives and fortunes we call them ours because we are freely born to them as to the Ayre we breath in we claime them and should possesse them under the Protection of our gracious King who is their great Patron and disposes them not inconsiderately but by the advice of those learned expositors of the Lawes the Judges and those whom he trusts to be his great and faithfull Councellors If those pervert the ground and meaning of the Law and contract â—he power of it or make it speake lowder or softer as they themselves are tuned for it the blame should deservedly fall on those mistrusted ministers who are the base betrayers of his Majesties honor and his Peoples right to vindicate which necessitie hath here assembled you Mr. Speaker Is not this offence and m lice as great who should undermine my Tenour and surruptiously deprive me of my evidence by which I held my Inheritance as he who by violence should wrest it from me The Scots we have heard branded as Traytors because they have contrary to the law of Nations and their loyaltie invaded our Kingdome in Arms what other title have they merited who have invaded our Lawes and liberties the precious evidence by which we should freely enjoy our selves and our estates The first we may resist and drive forth by united force and it will be called pietie to the King and Countrie if force be lay'd against the other it will be stiled Rebellion What now remaines but that we should use the Law which because it hath beene inverted and turned against us contrary to its owne naturall and plaine disposition should now right us and it self against our Adversaries Surely the Law is not so weak and improvident to take care for others and never provide
for its owne defence against those be they Peeres or people that have abused it If we examine the Law well it will tell us what hath beene the reward of such ambitious men as have Monopolized and abused the Kings Authoritie what have beene the punishment of such as have betrayed the well meaning Subject to the Kings displeasure and his Princes Councell to his enemies what doe they deserve who have raised mountaines of Monopolies heapes of impositions oceans of grievances what have been the punishment of such as have belied Justice and their conscience and have made truth and honesty our of fashion And lastly If no penaltie be found for these sure there is some for such as have so disguised Religion in fantasticke dresses that Heaven andearth cannot be but angrie to see it and in their politique pride have beene so long moulding a new State and a new old Church for their owne advantage till they have by their too much order put all out of frame and made us objects of pitie and themselves of hate What if for these innovations we innovate an examplary punishment These are the ground-works of our miseries and surely Mr. Speaker there are too many of all these sorts which like envious clouds hinders us from â—he gracious shine our Sun intends us therefore for his great r lustre and our more assured comfort let us endeavour to remove these interposers that he may more freely see into his peoples bosomes and reade in their hearts firme characters of loyaltie and glad obedience which the practices of these later times have endeavoured to obliterate but in vaine I shall not dare to borrow one minute of you more but I shall alreadie end though I have just now begun If we consider the just extent of our grievances the deep search of which wound I leave to you better abilities and I beseech you think not that I sigh out these complaints undertaking to instruct the grave Councell of this great Assembly my infant advice presumes not to reach so high It is but to let you see how much the slightest parts of this abused Common-wealth is not only made sensible of our wrongs but what we feele is farre exceeded by the numberlesse number of our just feares which should have before this time utterly distracted us had not our great Phisition now at length applied his soveraigne remedie to keep up our fainting hopes by which we must either stand or fall Master Pyms Speech in PARLIAMENT 1640. THe distempers of this Kingdome are well knowne they need not repetition For though we have good Lawes yet they want their execution or if they are executed it is in a wrong sence I shall endeavour to apply a remedie to the breaches that are made and to that end I shall discover first the qualitie of the disease First There is a designe to alter Law and Religion the parties that effect this are Papists who are obliged by a maxime in their doctrine that they are not onely bound to maintaine their Religion but also to extirpate all others The second is their Hierarchie which cannot amount to the height they ayme at without a breach of our Law To which their Religion necessarily ioynes that if the one stands the other must fall Thirdly Agents and Pensioners to forraigne States who see we cannot comply to them if we maintaine our Religion established which is contrary to theirs here they intend chiefly the Spanish white gold works which are of most effect Fourthly Favourites such as for promotion prize not conscience and such are our Judges spirituall and temporall such are also some of our Councellors of State All these though severed yet in their contrivements they ayme at one end and to this they walke on four feet First discountenancing of Preachers and vertuous men they persecute under the law of purity Secondly Countenancing of Preachers of contrary dispositions Thirdly The negotiating with the faction of Rome by Preaching and to instructions to Preach of the absolute Monarchie of Kings Here follow severall Heads First The politicall interpretation of the Law to serve their turnes and thus to impose taxes with a colour of Law a Judge sayd it when a babe is corpus was payd for Secondly By keeping the King in continuall want that he may seeke to their counsells for r liefe to this purpose to keepe the Parliaments in distaste that their counsells may be taken The King by them is brought to this as a woman that used her selfe to poyson could not live with good meate Search the Chronicles and we see no King that ever used Parliaments was brought to this want Thirdly Arbitrary proceedings in Courts of Justice we have all Law left to the conscience of a single man All Courts are now Courts of conscience without conscience Fourthly Plotters to inforce a war between Scotland and us that when we had well wearied one another we might be both brought to what scorn they pleased The pertition wall is only unity Fiftly The suddaine dissolving of Parliaments and punishing of Parliament men all to affright us from speaking what we thinke One was committed for not delivering up the Petitions of the House then a declaration which slandered our Proceedings as full of lyes as leaves who would have the first ground to be our example And Papists are under appearance to the King his best Subjects for they contibute money to the War which the Protestants will not do Sixthly Another is Military by getting places of importance into the Papists hands as who are Commanders in the last Armie but they none more strong in Armes then they to whom their Armour is delivered contrary to the Statute Their endeavour is to bring in strangers to be Billited upon us we have had no accompt of the Spanish Navie and now our fear is from Ireland Lastly The next is Papisticall that proceeds of Agents here in London by whose desires many Monasteries and Nunneries here in London were erected Sir Thomas Baringtons Speech in Parliament 1640. My Lords WE have of late entred into consideration of the Petition of Right and the relation of it and upon good reason for it concernes our goods liberties and lives But there is a Right of higher nature that preserved for us farre greater things eternall life our soules yea our God himselfe a Religion derived to us from the King of Kings conferred to us by the Kings of this Kingdome enacted by Lawes in this place treading downe to us in the bloud of the Martyes and witnessed from Heaven by miracles even miraculous deliverances And this Right in the name of this Nation I this day require and claime that there may be a deepe and serious consideration of the relations of it I desire first that it may be considered what new paintings are layd on the old face of the Whore of Babylon to make the more lovely and to draw so many Suitors to her I desire that it may be considered how the Sea
and Liberties were of late more pressing than we were able to bear That our Complaints and Supplications for redresse were answered at last with the terrors of an Army That after a pacification greater preparations were made for war whereby many Acts of Hostility were done against us both by Sea and Land The Kingdome wanted administration of Justice and we constrained to take Arms for our defence That we were brought to this extreme and intolerable necessity either to maintain divers Armies upon our Borders against Invasion from England or Ireland still to be deprived of the benefit of all the Courts of Justice and not onely to maintain so many thousands as were spoyled of their ships and goods but to want all Commerce by Sea to the undoing of Merchants of Saylors and many other who lived by Fishing and whose Callings are upholden from hand to mouth by Sea trade Any one of which evils is able in a short time to bring the most potent Kingdome to Confusion Ruine and Desolation how much more all the three at one time combined to bring the Kingdome of Scotland to be no more a Kingdome Yet all these behoved We either to endure and under no other hope than of the perfect slavery of our selves and our posterity in our souls Lives and means Or to resolve to come into England not to make any Invasion or with any purpose to fight except we were forced God is our Judge our actions are our witnesses and England doth now acknowledge the truth against all suspicions to the contrary and against the impudent lies of our enemies but for our relief defence and preservation which we could finde by no other means when we had essayed all means and had at large expressed our pungent and pressing necessities to the Kingdome and Parliament of England Since therefore the war on our part which is no other but our coming into England with a Guard is defensive and all men do acknowledge that in common equity the defendant should not be suffered to perish in his just and necessary defence but that the persuer whether by way of Legall processe in the time of Peace or by way of violence and unjust invasion in the time of war ought to bear the charges of the defendant We trust that your Lordships will think that it is not against reason for us to demand some reparation of this kinde and that the Parliament of England by whose wisedome and justice we have expected the redresse of our wrongs will take such course as both may in reason give us satisfaction and may in the notable demonstration of their Justice serve most for their own honour Our earnestnesse in following this our Demand doth not so far wrong our fight and make us so undiscerning as not to make a difference between the Kingdome and Parliament of England which did neither discerne nor set forward a Warre against us And that prevalent faction of Prelates and Papists who have moved every stone against us and used all sorts of means not onely their Counsells Subsidies and Forces but their Church Canons and Prayers for our utter ruine which maketh them obnoxious to our just accusations and guilty of all the losses and wrongs which this time past we have sustained Yet this we desire your Lordships to consider That the States of the Kingdome of Scotland being assembled did endeavour by their Declarations Informations and Remonstrances and by the proceedings of their Commissioners to make known unto the Councell Kingdome and Parliament of England and to forewarn them of the mischief intended against both Kingdomes in their Religion and Liberties by the Prelates and papists to the end that our Invasion from England might have been prevented if by the prevalency of the faction it had been possible And therefore we may now with the greater reason and confidence presse our Demand that your Lordships the Parliament the Kingdome and the King himself may see us repaired in our losses at the cost of that faction by whose means we have sustained so much dammage And which except they repent we finde sorrow recompenced for our grief torments for our toyl and an infinite greater losse for the Temporall losses they have brought upon a whole Kingdome which was dwelling by them in peace All the devices and doings of our common enemies were to bear down the truth of Religion and the just liberties of the Subjects in both Kingdomes They were confident to bring this about one of two wayes Either by blocking us up by Sea and Land to constrain us to admit their will for a law both in Church and Policy and thus to make us a precedent for the like misery in England or by their Invasion of our Kingdome to compell us furiously and without order to break into England That the two Nations once entred into a bloody Warre they might fish in our troubled waters and catch their desired prey But as we declared before our coming We trusted that God would turn their wisedome into foolishnesse and bring their devices upon their own pares by our Intentions and Resolutions to come into England as among our Brethren in the most peaceable way that could stand with our safety in respect of our common enemies to present our petitions for setling our peace by a Parliament in England wherein the intentions and actions both of our adversaries and ours might be brought to light The Kings Majesty and the Kingdome right informed The Authors and Instruments of our divisions and troubles punished All the mischiefs of a Nationall and doubtfull warre prevented and Religion and Liberty with greater peace and amity than ever before established against all the craft and violence of our enemies This was our Declaration before we set our England from which our deportments since have not varied And it hath been the Lords wonderfull doing by the wise counsels and just proceedings of the Parliament to bring it in a great part to passe and to give us lively hopes of a happy conclusion And therefore we will never doubt but that the Parliament in their wisedom and iustice will provide that a proportionable part of the cost and charges of a work so great and so comfortable to both Nations be born by the Delinquents there that with the better conscience the good people of England may sit under their own Vines and Fig-trees refreshing themselves although upon our great pains and hazard yet not altogether upon our cost and charges which we are not able to bear The Kingdome of England doth know and confesse that the innovation of religion and liberties in Scotland were not the principall designe of our common enemies but that both in the intention of the workers whose zeal was hottest for setling their devices at home and in the condition so the work making us whom they conceived to be the weaker for opposition to be nothing else but a leading case for England And that although by the power of God which