in their pretensions to a Crown to which they were not 〈◊〉 no great Inducement certainly for any one to bepersuaded to personate the Royal Heir to set up for a Lambert or a Perkin only for their misfortune and fate Lastly I shall conclude my remarks upon this Kings Reign with an Animadversion upon a Paragraph or two that conclude his piece very pertinent to this place since it relates to the times of which we treat and that is the resolution of the Judges upon the Case of this their King that the Descent of the Crown purged all his defects and attainder This their opinion he refutes as Frivolous Extrajudicial and here Impertinent but I hope to show this Point a most material one the Resolution to be a good Judgment and their reply much to the present purpose First sure it was a matter and that of a high Nature to know how he was qualify'd to sit in the House that was to preside in it as the head And tho he might in some sense be said to have won the Crown with Arms yet he knew it would wear much Better sit much Easier if setled and establish't according to Law and tho a Conquerer that has the Sword in his hand can soon capacitate himself to sway the Scepter yet he 'l soon find the most regular Proceedings tend most to the Establishment of his Reign this made Henry the Seventh who had a Triple Plea for the Crown and that one by discent from the Lancasters consult his Oracles of the Law how far an Attainder past in the Reign of the Yorks would still taint his Blood and make it less Inheritable Secondly their Resolution that all preceding defects were purg'd in the discent was a Judgment both equitable and reasonable for 't was sure but equal that an Heir to whom an Inheritance and that ofa Crown was allowed to discend should be qualify'd to take too for if he was a King no Bill of Attainder could touch him that was past too when he was none And if he was no King all the concurrence of the Lords and Commons cou'd never have made him an Act for his being so there being no Royal Authority to pass it into Law and nothing by the very constitution of our Government can be made a Law without so that such a resolution certainly was highly reasonable and unavoidable that that should purge its own defects which no power had perfection anough to purge wou'd he have a King pass an Act with his two Houses for the reversal of his own Attainder or the two Houses reverse the Attainder of their King If the first the allowing him to pass such an Act supersedes the end for which it should be past and makes him de Facto capable whom they would capacitate if he allows the Latter then he must an Interregnum too extinguish that Monarchy for a while of which the very Maxim says the Monarch can't dye and place that Supream power in the People which all our Fundamental Laws have put in the King Thirdly this Resolution is very pertinent to the present purpose to which 't is commonly now apply'd and that is the Bill of Exclusion But his passion and prejudice would not permit him to Examin the little difference there is between them For certainly that ability that can discharge any attainder is as efficacious for the voiding and nulling any Bill that shall hinder the descent for a Bill of Exclusion would have been but a Bill or an Act of the House for disabling the next Heir And an Attainder can do the same and is as much the Houses Act and to distinguish that in an Exclusion the Discent it self is prevented by a Law makes just no difference for whoever is Attainted has his Discent prevented by a Law too and that antecedently also before the Descent can come to purge him so that they only differ in this formal sort of Insignificancy In an Exclusion the Discents prevention would be the sole Subject of the Bill in an Attainder it is by Consequence and Common Law prevented and so the disability being but the same in both the defects by the same means may and must be purged The president the Judges cite to justify this their Opinion is not only applicable to their Case for which 't was cited but much more so to the very project of Exclusion which I 'll prove too from this Sophisters own reasoning It is the Case of Henry the Sixth who by Act of Parliament was Disabl'd to hold the Crown which was as particular an Act for the depriving him of his presum'd right as this their Excluding Bill would have been of an unquestionable one Town one of the Justices that debated and argued this point vouch't this H. 6. Case as an Attainder but was Corrected by the rest and told that he was not attainted but Disabled to hold the Crown but even that that was void assoon as he came again to wear it and seem to conclude that then à fortiori that an Attaindere would be purg'd away by the Descent and sure if this was then Law and that even for the Line of Lancaster who had Defects of Title to be purg'd besides of tainted blood 'T is strange to me why a York now and such an one too in whom both those so long disputed Titles Terminate and Concenter should be Disabl'd for ever by that Expedient which was resolv'd unable to prevent the Succession so long agon For Argument that an Attainder hinders the Crowns Discent has this presumptious Interpreter of the Law brought the most impertinent piece of Application that the defect of sense could suggest and so has as little reason as Truth to tell us that this Judges Resolution on Attainder is not to the present purpose pertinent for that a discent is insufficient to purge attainted Blood he cites the Sense of the King of France and the Learned advice that was given him to send his Son Lewis Because King John's Blood was corrupted but he might as well have told us because John is said to make over his Kingdom to the Moor we are all now Subjects to the King of Morocco the true reason of the French mans sending of his Son is what will at any time incapacitate the Crowns Discent and that is the Rebellion of the Subjects and yet those very Barons that Rebell'd never insisted on his corruption of Blood never made it so much as a Plea for their Rebellious Insurrection nay themselves thought him so far from being disabl'd by it that they prefer'd him even to the very right Blood which was incorrupted in his Nephew Arthur but allowing it then Law this resolution that such Corruption is purg'd was made long since and must now be as Legal tho the Contrary before had been never so much Law so that here he has only taken the pains to be impertinent and that too for the telling of a Lye But as his Villanous
Monster of Men as Lawful a King as his Nephew that he Murder'd That Arch-Rebel that of late mounted the Throne Cromwel himself as much right to sit there as a Charles the best of Monarchs they Martyr'd all these were by Parliament acknowledg'd for their Lawful Soveraigns against the very Fundamental Laws of all the Land Laws that even with the Allowance of one their late most Laborious most popular and pillor'd Advocate for this Power of Parliament Pryn himself have still plac't the Discent of the Crown in the right Heirs at Common Law and who himself Confesses that Acts of Parliament have translated it from them to others who had no good Title and then certainly such a translation at best can be but bad and Evidences that there is somewhat else requir'd besides their Power to the making of a King so powerful and prevalent are the Dictates of Truth and reason that they force their Confessions sometimes from the very Mouths of those that Labour to give them the Lye drop from them unawares and steal from their unadvised Lips Lastly 'T is most prodigiously Strange that such Seditious Sycophants as fawn upon this Parliamentary Power for altering the Succession and asserting of an absolute wrong yet are such unreasonable Souls as not to Consider the several Acts of the self-same Powers that have declar'd it unalterable and maintain'd the Monarchs Vnquestionable right Edward the 4th's first Parliament they themselves know declar'd those that came to the Crown by the Common Consent of the People to be but Vsurpers Kings only de Facto which implys ' its contrary to be just and that some de jure must be Kings they know the first of James declares his Royal Office an Heritage Inherent in the very Blood of him and also that all our Books of Law besides the Fundamental Constitution of the Land do make the Regal Power Hereditary and not Elective and such an Elected Usurpers Laws can no further oblige the Subject of England then they they 'l submit no more then the Czars of Muscovy a pecuniary 〈◊〉 must be but a bare oppression and a Capital Punishment MURDER But Will. Prynn I Confess in another of his Treatises that he Printed will have all such Acts made by Consent of Vsurping Kings bind the right Heirs of the Crown that Reign by a just Title That all such Acts oblige them is utterly false for one of them is commonly for their Exclusion but that some are admitted to bind is as really True but that is rather upon a Political account of their being serviceable to the Publick and the Country's Good And is it not now an unaccountable boldness that the very same Cases of Usurpers upon the Crown that this Indefatigable piece of Faction publish't against the Father they fought and Murder'd should be retrieved against the Son whom the kind Heavens ev'n by Miracle so lately restor'd But at last allowing those palpable falsehoods they so much Labour for falsehoods so gross that they can be felt to be matter of Fact contradict the true sense of all Chronicle with a Seditious Supposition to be secur'd of Truth give all the Laws of the Land the Lye raze Rolls and Records the better to rise a Rebellion and grant the Kings of England have been all Elected all almost from that Union of the Heptarchy in the Saxon to that of our three Kingdoms in the Scot and sure no Soul living can conclude with them in a fairer Concession than in granting the very Postulate they require yet since they then in the End of K. James tho but so lately had settled the Succession and made it Hereditary can with men of Common sense the Presidents of its having been formerly Elective prevail for an utter Subversion of such a Settlement Popery was once in England by Law Establish't and must it therefore again be Establish't by Law Certainly all succeeding Reformation must null and abolish that from which they Reform and a Repealing Act will hardly be made Declaratory of the very Statute it Repeals if these be but their best Arguments the same you see will reason us back into the very Religion of Rome we have seen several Rebellions and some even of late to have lain the Land in Blood and can such sad Sufferance be made to Prescribe for our Misery warrant some such as Bloody to succeed but since all this suppos'd suggestion must vanish like to soft Air since the Succession has been settled for so many several ages to rake every musty Record only for a sad Review of some Time of Confusion is certainly but an Impious Industry to Confound the work of the very God of Order We may as well be discontented at the Frame of his World he so well digested and plead for Prescription the Primitive Chaos CHAP. II. Remarks upon Plato Redivivus THE best Animadversion that I can make on his whole first days Discourse is that it wants none that it's Impertinence has superseded reproof and the fulsome flattering Dialogue as unfit for a serious Answer as a Farce for a Refutation out of a Sermon The great acquaintance these pretending Platonicks would be thought to have with that Sect of Philosophers did not oblige them to be so morosely reserv'd as to know none other and they may remember an Ephesian Sophy I believe as Learned too in his Politicks that was never so much tickl'd as when he saw the dull Animal mumbling of the cross-grain'd unpalatable Thistle the disputing against the Laws of the Land and the Light of Reason they 'l find as uneasie as absurd and the latter as Impious and Profane and which deserves to be assimulated to a more serious sort of Obstinacy that of so many Sauls kicking against the Pricks but the Pleasant and Ridicnlous Disputants put in for another pretty Quality of that insensible Brute the length of their sordid and stupid Flattery outdoes their Original Beast and the sad Sophister would force one Smile more to see three of the same sort of Creatures for a whole day clawing one another Certainly whatever they fancy the Dialogues of Plato whatever the Favourers of his Principles can suggest surely they were never fill'd with such Fustian But that good old Philosopher did as plainly cloath his Disputes as well as himself in an honest homely Drugget of Athens Tho I confess they tell us of his rich Bed and his affectation of State which a Soul so sublime could not but Contemn while these Sectaries are such refin'd Academicks so much polisn't with Travel and the breeding of the Times That all the Fops of France the Dons of Spain his Adulano of Italy seem melted down into one Mass of Impertinence they can't pass by the thin Apartments of a Page without a Congee Bon-Grace and a formal Salutation upon one anothers Excellencies the Doctor claws the Patient with his Lenitives Frications Emollients of Praise and Adulation and the Patient who in the literal
wherein they were nibbling again at the Milittia and could so merciless a Miscreant be put in the pocket of a Member of Parliament much less then into his Heart and drop from his unadvised Lips can those that come to give their consent for the making Laws be thus Ignorant of those that are already made has not the Military power for above this 500 years been absolutely in the Crown and almost by their Parliament it self declared so in every Reign was it ever taken out but when they took away the Life of their King too was ever his Head protected from Violence when this the Guard of his Crown was gone or can any Hand long sway the Scepter when it wants the Protection of the Sword 1st Edward 3d. Chap 3. The King willeth that no man be charged to Arm himself otherwise than he was wont in the time of his Progenitors Kings of England In H. 7. declared by Stat. All Subjects of the Realm bound to assist the King in his Wars Queen Mary and all her Progenitors acknowledged to have the Power to appoint Commissioners to Muster her Subjects and array as many as they shall think fit The Subjects holding by Serjeantry heretofore all along to serve their Sovereigns in War in the Realm and a particular Act obliging them to go within or without with their King He and only He has the ordering of all the Forts and Holds Ports and Havens of the Kingdom confirmed to this very King and Cook tells us no Subject can build any Fortress Defensible Cook Litt. p. 5. And since some of our late Members of the lower House were so tickled with this Authors soothing them with the Kings Executive Power of War forfeitable I 'll tell them of an Act expressly made in some Sense against their Assuming it and for another Reason too because some mutinous Heads would argue to my Knowledge for their Members comming armed to the Parliament at Oxford and which was actually done too by Colledge and his Crew It was made in Edward the First 's time and expressly declares that in all Parliaments Treatises and other Assemblies every Man should come without Force and Armour and of this the King acquainted the Justices of the Bench and moreover that the Parliament at Westminster had declared that to us belonged straightly to desend Force of Armour and all other Force against our Peace at all times when it shall please us and the Judges were ordered to get it read in the Court and enroll'd And now can it with common Reason or Sense be suggested that the letting Favourites have some of the Treasures of the Kingdom or Courtiers as he calls it the Revenue or the preferring of such Persons as they shall think Worthless and Wicked which with such Villains as himself are commonly the most deserving that this shall be a sufficient violating as he terms it of a Kings Trust to the forfeiture of his Power of putting the Laws in Execution with which the common consent of almost all the Laws and all Ages have invested their King as an absolute 〈◊〉 singular Right of the Crown Certainly such an Opinion is as extravagant as Treasonable and could enter into the Head of nothing but a Madman the Heart of none but a Traytor Next we meet with another Assertion as false as Hell and then its clear contrary nothing but the God of Heaven is more True He tells us after having hardly allowed His Majesty a Negative Voice at least as such an Insignificant one as not to be made use of That 't is certain nothing but 〈◊〉 of Parliamentary requests produced the Baron's Wars and our last dismal Combustions when I 'll demonstrate to him as plain as a Proposition in Euclid that nothing but their too gracious and unhappy Concessions to their perfidious and ungrateful Subjects made those mighty Monarchs miscarry read but any of our Histories tho pen'd by the most prejudiced and those that ware at best but moderately Popular of our first Civil Wars The Barons Daniel that speaks most commonly as much as the Peoples Case will bear tells us his thoughts of those unhappy Dissentions that neither side got but Misery and Vexation We see that notwithstanding as often as their Charter and Liberties were confirm'd notwithstanding all the Concessions of those two yielding Monarchs still more was demanded The Charter in Henry the Third's was no sooner several times confirmed in one year but in the next presently they fell upon his Justiciary Hugo de Burg. and he must be removed or they threaten to do it with the Sword Then the poor Prince complies and sends him to the Tower Next the Bishop of Winchester is as great a grievance as the Chies Justice was before for bringing in the Pictavians and unless all those are put from him they tell him plainly they 'll depose him from his Kingdom and create a new The Bishop is sent away and those Pictavians expelled but still were there more grievances and assoon as one was removed be sure another would be found out and the true perfect Occasion of those Intestine Broils was rather the Concession 〈◊〉 King Henry in his Youth they having been used with so much Complyance in his Minority that being emboldened afterward with Age he grew too much a Soveraign to be overaw'd or overreach't by his Subjects and they having been accustom'd not to be oppos'd in their encroachments on the Crown which they had been long Habituated to he being Crown'd an Infant and they having the fresh Precedent before them with what arrogance they us'd his Father John upon any the least denyal betook themselves to the Sword for this you 'l find if Occurrences of those Times be but Impartially examin'd and for his Second Instance of our late Kings time his abominable Falsehood so far from Truth that not only Narrative and Record but the very Memory of man can give him the Lye did he not grant them these very Villains insolent demand Parliaments at last without Intermission was there not a Triennial one first Insolently demanded and as Graciously consented to was not that as ungratefully thought insufficient and nothing could satisfy till unhappily settl'd during the pleasure of the two Houses an Act of Concession which the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Prince could himself call as 〈◊〉 it was unparallel'd by any of his Predecessors nothing but their Ingratitude could equal so much goodness and only for bettering of theirs the Wretches 〈◊〉 his own affairs should be the worse what punishment would the Law have found for such Monsters of Ingratitude that punisht once all Common Offenders in it with Death were not his Gracious Answers at last to the Propositions so full of Concession that some of the Cannibals that thirsted for his Blood could Vote it a Ground for the House to proceed upon for Peace Lastly had he not granted to his Inveterate Foes whose Necks were forfeited to the
little more kindly than they did the Father and not seize his Militia with an Ordinance because they cannot Fight him with his consent nor Rebel first against their King with an open War and then send him Propositions for Peace and the making him a Slave And since some of our Seditious Souls have not only a great Veneration left for these Parliamentary Projects and as great esteem for this Statesman for the reviving them in his Politicks since some that would be thought Persons sober and moderate can think the Kings Complyance in some of these Grants and Concessions somewhat necessary and a Trifle of the Crowns prerogative to be pared from the State as requisite as a Surplice or Ceremony to be parted with in the Church since the Propositions of that Rebel Parliament and the Politicks of this rank Republican make up so perfect a Parallel It will supersede some separate labour and pains to be able to animadvert upon them together and at once His Answerer will be somewhat obliged to his Authors being but a Thief and will shew that whatever some think that such pieces of Power might be par'd from the Crown like some sappy Excrescencies from the Trunks of Trees for the better Nourishment of the Stock that all and every one of them strike directly at the very Root That the Government cannot well subsist without them all and that all of them are inseperably settled in the Crown by all the Fundamental Laws of all the Land The first that feels the reforming stroke of their Fury we find to be the Kings Privy Council and what is that why their own Oracle of the Law will assure them the most Noble most Honorable and reverend Assembly consulting for the publick good and that the number of them is altogether at the King's Will And shall those be numbered now and regulated at the Will of a Parliament whom their own Acts Statutes Rolls declare acknowledge and confess to depend upon the Nomination Power and Pleasure of the Prince would they repeal those Laws of their Ancestors enacted even according to the greatest Reason only for an Introducing their own Innovations against all Reason and Law Can it be consonant to common Sense that those whom their King is to Consult and Sit with at his Pleasure and that according to the very express Words of Authentick Rolls and Records that those should depend for their being and Existence upon the suffrages of such a senate whom all our Laws declare has it self no other being but what it owes to the Breath of that Sovereign over whom they would so 〈◊〉 Superintend as to set a Council can they think that even the Spartan Ephori would have ever been Constituted had their Kings by as strong Presidents of the Laws of their Land been allow'd the Liberty of Chusing their own advisers or would Calvin himselfhave recommended them and the Roman Tribunes the Demarchi the Decemviral at Athens had he been assured that their Decrees and Edicts had all along placed it in the power of their Prince to be advised by whom he pleased and this Rebellious Project we now are examining I am sure would prove a greater Scourge and curb to our own Kings than ever the Romans or Athenians had for the management of theirs we must turn about even the very Text and invert our Prayers to the Almighty when a Parliament shall come to Counsel his Counsellors and teach his Senators Wisdom when it shall be in the Subjects power to set himself at his Soveraigns Table you may swear he 'll be first served too and that with his own Carving and therefore were they not forc't to rase Rolls and Records for the making such a Reformation in the State Reason it self is sufficiently the Faction's Foe and as much on the side of those that are the Kings Friends For let any sober Person but consider whether the greatest Confusion Disorder and Disturbance in the State would not be the Consequence of this very distracted Opinion do we not already too much experiment the disquiet of a divided Kingdom to be most dangerous when but a tumultuous part of a Parliament too much Predominates this Gentleman 's Quarantia or if you please the Kingdoms four General Councils are to be named in Parliament and then what would be the result of it but that his Majesty must be managed by a standing House of Commons or at best some Committee of Lords they need not then Labour for the Triennial Act of the late King confirmed by the too gracious Concession of this His Councils once their own Creatures would have too much Veneration for their kind Creators to diswade their King from a speedy Summons of a Senate tho assured secured of its being sufficiently Seditious they would soon supersede as supersluous one of the very Articles of such a Counsellors Oath where he swears to keep Secret the Kings Counsel for by such a Constitution they would be obliged to make a Report from the Council-Board to some Chair-man of a Committee a better Expedient I confess than an order for Sr. Stephen's bringing in the Books And indeed none of the Kings Services should be then called Secret they would be soon Printed with their Votes and hardly be favoured voured with some of their own Affairs of Importance to be referred for the more private Hearing to a Committee of Secrecy the good advise his Majesty might expect from such Councils might be much like those of late from his Petitioners And he again told to be the mightiest Monarch by condescending to be the most puny Prince My Lord Cook tells us those Councils are there best proposed for the Kingdom when so that it can't be guess'd which way the King is enclined for fear I suppose of a servile Complyance but here the knowledge of his Inclination would be the most dangerous to the King which to be sure would be opposed and only because known the good the King would receive from such Counsellors might be put in his Eyes and the Protection the Nation could receive from such a King must be but in good Wishes and are we come to deny our Soveraign at last what every Subject can Consult his own Friends But tho this bold Gentleman as arrogantly tells us that this Privy Council is no part of the Government his imagined one he must mean a Common-wealth I 'll tell him more modestly and with better Authority than a Dixit only of a Platonick Dogmatist that he might as well have told us too what indeed are such a Republicans real thoughts that the King Himself is no part of it and shew him both from Law and Reason that they have a great share in it too And that the Laws great Oracle tells us too who is so far from letting them have no part in the Government that he tellsus they have a very great part even in the very King That they are
inseparable from the Right of Soveraignty did the Laws allow this unalterable part of the Prerogative that they have declared it Inherent even in such a sort of Soveraigns as seemed not very well qualified for an Execution of that Royal Power which the Judgment of their very Parliaments decreed to be entirely theirs They resolved it to be the Right of the Prince in the Reign of a Child They resolved it so when Subjected to the Government of a Woman The Commission of Array was revived again to King James in whose Time they resolved it such a Necessary Right of the Crown that they repealed for it the very repealing Statute of the Queen This their Oracle tells us and that in those parts of his Works which the Parliament that opposed this very power in their King themselves ordered to be Printed yet themselves could as impudently Assert against the Sense of the very Law they Published against the very Law that was reviv'd but in his very Father's Time that his Son and Successors tho necessitated for suppressing such Insurrections as themselves had raised could not Issue out such Commissions of Array tho the very preamble of the Act declares the very purpose of it was to prevent and preserve the Prince from such Rebellious Subjects And in truth the Rebels were Conscious of their Guilt and that it was which made them resolve not to know the Law But presently represented in a Declaration that this Commission was contrary to the Laws of the Land and the Libertie of the Subject tho the very express privilege the Statutable Right of all their Kings Royal Ancestors but would not those wicked Miscreants have made even the Crown an Usurpation in their King that just before declared that it was against the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom that the Kings Subjects should be commanded to attend him at his Pleasure And ordered that if they should be drawn in a Posture of Defence for their Soveraign the Sheriffs of the County should raise Forces to suppress them and then how can the most prejudiced partial Person presume to tell us that this their Kings Commission was contrary to the Liberty of the Subjects when they set themselves in Contradiction to all the Laws of the Land in the very Declaration that denyed him his Array Their Eighth Proposition is for the Forts and Castles and that the Fortifying them be in the Parliaments power but even that too base Caitiffs your selves know to be by the very Letter of the Law in the Kings the very Charter of their own Liberties in this point confirms also the Soveraign's Right where it is provided that the King can dispence with the Services that are due for the keeping of his Castles when he sends those that ought to do them to serve in his Host By the very common Law and Custom of the Realm before there was alway such Services due to the King for the keeping of Castles And certainly they were lookt upon then to be in the Disposal of the Prince when the Subject was but a Tenant to serve him in his Fortifications And this Chapter of their very Charter I hope proves sufficiently not only that the King can command his Castles to be defended but send his Subjects any where for his Defence which the Declaration of the Commons did as Rebelliously deny But besides the taking of the Kings Castles Forts Ports or Shipping is resolved and ever was reputed Treason and were not the two Houses Traytors then by a Law before that of this King made them so by Statute when they ordered upon the London Petition and that of the Cinque-Ports that all his Majesty's Forts and Castles should be presently fortified that no Forces should be admitted into Hull without the Consent of Lords and Commons seized their Kings Shipping and made Warwick Vice-Admiral of the Fleet This was a sort of accumulated Treason whose every Individual Act was truly so as if they designed that the Statutes should not declare more things Treasonable than they could dare to commit My Lord Cooke tells us whom they cannot but believe that no Subject can build a Castle or so much as a House of strength imbattailed or any Fortress Defensible without the Soveraigns consent much less sure shall they seise those that are the Kings and Fortifie them for the People and tells us again the same in his Comment upon the very Charter of Liberties and will not that neither with our Licentious Libertines be allowed for Law Is not all the Military power both by Sea and Land declared the undoubted Right of His present Majesty and that by particular Act in his own Reign does not the very preamble of it seem to provide against this very Proposition of such a Parliament or a Plato when it tells us expresly that all Forts and places of Strength is and ever was by the Laws of England the Kings undoubted Right and of all his Royal Predecessors and that neither both or either Houses can or ought to pretend to the same and declares that all the late Principles and Practices that assumed the same were all Rebellious And could some of our Mutinous Members embrace such Propositions from the Press that presumed to tell them they had of late made two such Impertinent Acts in the House Acts invading the Subjects Property Acts betraying the Liberties of that very People they represent In short and that in his own Words Acts that empower the Prince to invade the Government with Force Acts to destroy and ruin the State hindering the Execution of the Laws and the preventing our Happiness and Settlement had they had but the least Reverence for their own Constitution and that Honorable Assembly wherein they sate sure there would have been some Ordered and Resolved for the sifting out such a Pen-man and sentencing such Papers to the Hangman and the Flames what can be the result of this to sober Sense or Common Reason that such Villanous Authors should appear in publick at such a Session of Parliament to Censure and Arraign the very Acts of their former Representatives but that they thought themselves secure from any Violent Prosecution from those that then were sitting and that it was not the Constitution it self of that most Honorable Assembly the Seditious Sycophants were so Zealous for but only the present Persons its Constituent Members they so much admired The last the Tenth of those pretty Proposals that deserves particular Animad version for several of them Symbolize with one another and so are by a general asserting of the Kings Supremacy sufficiently refuted is the Parliaments Right to the making Peers the prettiest Paradox that the Abundance of Sedition with the want of Sense could suggest I have heard the Laws declare the King to be the Fountain of Honor as well as Justice but the Commons I think as they are no Court of Judicature
that were by special Act since declared Traytors made their King co-ordinate assumed to themselves so much of the Legislative that they left out the Fundamental form by and with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons that the said Earl of Strafford be adjudged and attainted of high Treason provided that no Judge or Judges shall adjudge or interpret any Act or thing to be Treason then as he or they should or ought to have done before the making of this Act as if this Act had never been made This piece of Paradox the Contradiction to Common Law Common Sense and Reason had all the Consents all the Concurrences that could if possible have made it truly Law and even his unhappy Majesties forc'd extorted Complyance But will any Creature that is barely distinguish'd from a Brute that can only offer at the mere privilege of his being Rational debase his very Nature so much as to call it Justice Would they ascribe an Omnipotency to this their power of Parliaments beyond that of the Almighty and blasphemously allow to this their Created God what the Schools would not the Divinity it self to reconcile Contradiction but still these Statute Mongers that can make any Miscellanies of Parliameut for their turn this they will defend to be Legal only because it was past into a Law Let it be so but still there must be much difference between this their Legality which now in their Sense can be nothing but the power of making Laws and common Justice which must be the Reason for which they are made and what is contrary to that and all Reason by the Laws of God and all Nations must be null and void otherways the most Barbarous Immoralities that an Heathen would blush at by such an indefinite Legislative would be truly Legal only because they are past into a Law Murder it self made Statutable as soon as ever those that have the power have Sign'd it for an Act. These Suggestions of Consequences are far from being extravagant because at present the Principles that lead to them are what but very lately have been Printed and Publish'd and the very Practices themselves not long since put in Execution This Author I am handling has made his Legislative not to be confined and that Plato we have pretty well examined allows his People can pass any thing for the good of the Common-wealth and then it may Polygamy too because it was practis'd in his Republick and is now tolerated amongst the Turks and what some Waggs tell us an indiscreet Member was once moving for here But that we can have Parliament Murders too for I cannot call it less since the Law has declared the Contrivers of them Traitors the Case of Strafford the Martyrdom of their King are too terrible Testimonies that our Legislative has been strein'd to make the greatest Injury Law and Treason it self the Statute of the Land for they past an Act for the Tryal of their Soveraign and then declared it Legal because it was past Their God Almighty of the Law Cook himself whose Words with them is all Gospel too tho he in his Pedantick Phraseology puts no period to this Power of Parliament yet in the very next Page condemns the self same sort of Proceeding and that was in the Case that hard Fate too of an other Earl as Innocent perhaps also and as unfortunate Cromwell was attainted in Henry the Eighth's time much after the same manner my Lord Strafford was in Charles the First but only if so great Injustice can be extenuated the latter was more Inhumane For tho the First was Sentenc'd and suffer'd by Parliament without being admitted to Answer A Proceeding against our own Laws those of all Nations and of Heaven it self against all that was Humane or Divine yet Wentworth's Measure was more hard whom they made to suffer with an Attainder after he had argued for his Life confounded his Accusers and convicted some of his own Judges The same sort of Severity Sir John Mortimer met with from this Parliamentary Po upon whom they past a Judgment without so much as permitting him to be arraigned but these Barbarities of Mr. Hunt's unlimited Legislative were condemn'd even by this their learn'd Lawyer tho' he would not did not or dared not question their Authority yet damned them in his own Words if it were possible to dark Oblivion if not to be buried in Silence but this more Dogmatical Judge with his Postscript has rather Encouraged such Injustice and Severity and represented to his Parliament a power they have of Proceeding more unwarrantably when he tells them tho the Succession of our Crown be Hereditary they can alter the whole Line and Monarchy it self by their unlimited power of their Legislative Authority But I shall also shew him that his Legislative power as it cannot justly extend to such great and impious Extravagancies yet but what we see it has been actually stretch'd to so neither can it to some other things that are less so In King Edward the Third's Time there were several Acts past that took away the power of Pardons from the Prince yet all these made void by the Common Law because against the Prerogative of their King And it was resolved by the Judges in King James his Reign that Himself could not grant away the power of Dispensation with the Forfeitures upon the Penal Laws because annext to his Royal Person and the Right of his Soveraignty And if what is only Derogatory from the Crown 's Right and King's Prerogative shall be actually voided by the Common Law as we see it did to the nulling three several Statutes I cannot see how this Bill of Exclusion had it past into an Act would not have been as much null and void unless it can be proved that our Hereditary Descent of the Crown is not so much the King's Prerogative that wears it as the Pardoning of a Felon or the remitting a Fine And that I believe will be difficult to be cleared by those that have spent so much Pains and Paper for its Justification and our Author himself so much Labors for so that even the Common Law it self will anticipate the Work of the Statute and perhaps his Highness need not have stayed till that of Henry the Seventh had taken away his Exclusion as well as Attainder and purged away all his Defects and framed in capacities by his coming to the Crown I have but two Cases more with which I 'll conclude Mr. Hunts great point of Legislative In Edward the Third's Time an Act was purposely declared void that was past and the King had declared to give his consent to it But it seems upon some oversight or error it was not actually done And in the First of King James when they recogniz'd his Right they petition him to put his own Acknowledgement too without which it
too that before the Conquest and for some time after Parliaments were held three times in one year They had then their Easter Parliaments their Whitsunday Parliaments their Christmas Parliaments but they know then that they were but so many Conventions of that Nobility and Clergy their King should please to call And which they did Arbitrary at their Will more frequently or less as they thought convenient and the Books tell us they many times were held but twice a year now if these Gentlemen will tell us so much of old Statute Laws why should not Custom which is Resolved by the very Books to be the Common decide the case too for the King as well as the other which is their own must for the People and then we find Our Kings had the sole power of Convening Parliaments by a long prescription of whom where and as often as they pleased Are not all our Judicial Records Acts of Parliament Resolved to be but so many Declarations of the Common Law and that by all our Lawyers even concerning the Royal Government which they make the very Fundamental Law of the Land and tell us That by Common Law is understood such things as were Law before any Statute by general and particular Customs and Maxims of the Realm Now if Statute must be but Declaratory of these Customs of the Kingdom how can it be concluded but that such Acts as directly contradict any of them must be absolutely void for by the same Reason that they can with a Be it enacted void any part of it they may the whole With the same Reason that they can invade any part of the Prerogative of their Prince which the Book tells us is the principal part of the Common Law they may abolish the whole make Killing no Murder and except Persons from the Punishment of Treason Does not this Common Law it self void any Statutes that are made against the Prerogative of their King Was it not in this very Edward the 3ds time that it was so Resolved even to the nulling three several Acts that put Pardons out of the Princes power The boldest of these Anti-monarchical Zealots cannot deny but that by the Common Customs of the Realm it always was Our Kings undoubted Prerogative to call and dissolve their Parliament when they pleased Chronicle confirms it Law Resolves it may practice for ever maintain it Now I cannot see why these Statutes that contradict the Customs of the Realm in determining their King to call Parliaments which the Common Law hath left at his Liberty should not be as much void as others that upon the like Reasons have been Resolved so And if the Common Law can avoid any particular Act of Parliament against the Prerogative of the Prince as we see it did more than one If Stanfords Authoty be Law then the Conclusion is unavoidable That for the same Reason it can any or all And in my poor apprehension that Act it self of the late Kings which reasonably repeals that of his Martyred Fathers that Act with which these reproachful fellows upbraided in their prints their deceased King is so far from countenanceing their clamorous Cause that it corroborates and confirms our own Case for it tells us the very Reason of repealing those Statutes To prevent intermission of Parliaments And what is that but what we say the Common Law would of it self void an Act as they say in derogation of his Majestys just Rights and Prerogative inherent in the Imperial Crown of this Realm for the Calling and Assembling of Parliaments Nay they tell us besides of Mischiefs and Inconveniences the two main matters the Law labours to avoid might be the Result of such an Act and endanger the safety even of King and Subject And what pray now was this Statute of Charles the First but what some even of these Factious Fellows themselves confess only a Reinforcement of the two Edwards If it were no more by the same Reason they are gone too as being against the King's Prerogative and in Derogation of his Right But Factious Fools that baffle themselves before they can be confuted by others the Statute they repealed did reinforce indeed those of Edward but it was with a Witness even as they resolved it with an invading the Rights of the King and endangering the Ruin of the People but still 't is true in that latter clause of their repealing Act they prevail upon their King to grant them a Triennial one how far obliging I leave their Oracles of the Law to Judge For if our Kings have had it by their prerogative indefinitely to call Parliaments by Custom or Common Law 't is as much against both for him to be obliged to convene them in three year as two one or without Intermission And I cannot see how the last enacting Clause is consonant to the Repealing Preamble which is so mighty for the Preservation of the Prerogative and we well know under what Circumstances of State Affairs then stood the People could not have more than so good so gracious a King was even in Policy ready to grant it was within a year or two of his being placed upon the Throne of his Father And a Turbulent Faction as furious again to pull him out A Seditious Sect had but just then alarm'd him that were setting up their Christ's Kingdom before his own was hardly settled Sots that thought their Saviour the great pattern of a Passive Obedience could be pleased with the Sacrifice of Fools and Rebels and an active Resistance unto Blood that has commanded us even to suffer unto it and even in the same Season and Session as damnable a Conspiracy detected as this Hellish one so lately discovered Arms seiz'd the Tower to be taken and an Insurrection contrived the parting at such a juncture with his Prerogative might be the product of his desire to please the People 't is too much to take the forfeiture in his own wrong when in this very particular the same Law provides so much for the Prince's Right But they 'll tell us the King by his passing such a Bill has parted with his Power and Prerogative But then do not the Laws tell us it cannot be past away Was it not resolved by all the Judges but in his Grandfathers time That himself could not grant away the Power of Dispensing with the Forfeitures upon Penal Statutes and why because annext to his Royal Person and the Right of his Soveraignty And shall it not be so much our Soveraign's Right which common Custom the Fundamental Law of all the Land has invested him with the convening of Parliaments at his pleasure But for my part for my Life I cannot apprehend did there lie such a great Obligation upon his Majesty from this his own very voidable if not void Act how 't is possible to bring him at the same time within the Letter of the Laws of
know not with what equity a mere Fiction in Law robs a man of so much Realty are frequently recovered with fine at Common Law against the Right Heirs he won't pretend therefore sure a Parliament shall a Kingdom and a Crown against a Royal Successor His own Reason for it is the best Refutation for I say too the Crown is Governed by other Rules than a private Estate and the Romans who were Governed by those Civil Sanctions that have since the whole World tho by those they had a Dominion over their Issues Heirs and Estates yet those will not grant even to Kings the power of Disenheriting their own Successors Nay such Favorers were they then of the Right Heirs that they would not permit their Common Citizens to be disinherited at the Arbitrary Will of the Parent but obliged them to observe such certain express Rules in their Exhaeredation And heretofore some of the Writers of our own Law could affirm that the Inheritance that descended from their Ancestors was scarce ever suffer'd to be disposed by Will but to the next Heir for my part I look upon the word Heir not to have the same Relation in case of the Royal end that it has in that of a Subject who always claims his Estate from his Ancestor Common whereas the other Heir is call'd more properly the Kings SUCCESSOR but the Crown 's HEIR And it will be hard then to make him pass for the Parliaments I won't tell Mr. Hunt here of the Blood and Miseries the common Calamities the dismal Attendants of a Royal Heir being bar'd of his Right How many Millions of Lives how much Blood it has cost us already And if any thing of 〈◊〉 would have frightned us for Excluding a Duke of York too but it seems Blood did not terrifie Mr. Hunts Members of Parliament to whom their Oracle gives all the properties of an Elephant and then they must be only provok'd at Red 't is the Justice of it and every Moral Action that must direct Communities as well as Common Persons and a Mighty Parliament as well as a single Peasant If Expediency shall come to warrant Injustice in Aggregate Bodies every Individual may as well commence Villain for Convenience Away with that Paradox of Folly and Faction that a Parliament can do no wrong since we have seen such a numerous Senate transported like one Man with rage and Folly even to the Ruin of Three Kingdoms And with what Justice an Exclusion which wou'd here have been the greatest Punishment next to Capital that a Crowns Heir could suffer could well be past and that for punishing an Offence Antecedent to the Law I leave such Legislators to Judge It looks so much like their Bills of Attainder that I am loth to tell them such an one even in this Kings time was reversed with Ignominy and Reproach and for a Repealing of the Infamy the very Records of it raz'd from the File and should the Crowns Heir too have suffer'd by a subsequent Law he cou'd never Transgress Would they have given their God the Lye and made Transgression where there was no Law Did the Seminary Priest suffer here for Officiating before that Statute was in being Should the Profession of the Catholick Faith and that but suppos'd have had the force of a Salique Law even against him that cannot well be said to sin against it Set the Mark upon the door where there is Death and the Plague and then let those that will enter dye CHAP. IV. Remarks upon Julian THat this Author was a better States-man than a Christian that he consulted more the Security of his Person than the Purity of his Religion that he had much rather burn his Bible that suffer but a Tomkin's Finger into the Flame are such undenyable Truths that you must suspend your own reason and give your own Writings the Lye but to suspect them but how far this Doctrine of self preservation is always consistent with the Gospel and whether a man may never deny himself to Confess his Christ requires I believe not an absolute determination of School Divines but may be Collected from the Practical Inferences that may be drawn from many a Text in the New Testament How far our Saviour's Suffering on the Cross should influence those that profess themselves his Disciples to Suffer How much the precepts of their great Master was Imitated by those Christians that were truly Primitive is a Disquisition proper for a Divine And has been as industriously enquired unto by several hands engaged in that Holy Function the tide is turned at last with the Time and Jovian remains as 〈◊〉 as his Julian was thought to be 〈◊〉 Answer that Learned and Loyal Author has fixt the Pillars to the Controversie and if this adventurer with the Second part of his Julians-ship will force beyond it he may discover to us a new faith a new Bible but can never confute him from either of the old most of my Remarks shall be upon his Political Observations for what he would Reform in the Doctrine of the Church is only as it relates to Matters and Affairs in the State The Loyal Addressers feel the first Effort of his fury and the 〈◊〉 of Mahomet's Hobgoblins are placed even within their Brows for expressing he thinks their contradictory Protestations but such Bugbears will hardly frighten them from following the Precepts of their Saviour that still inculcate on sufferance and Subjection but only may deter such as prefer the Crescent of that Imposture to the Cross in Baptism that can baffie their Bibles where it restrains their Liberty or admit an Alcoran of the Turks to tolerate Licentiousness it might well be a Grievance to such disaffected Creatures to see the good Effects of his Majesty's Declaration and that all his good Subjects had gotten an opportunity of shewing that Affection and hearty Loyalty which was over-awed by the Tumultuousness of a Faction from discovering it self they knew their own Party's power had been prevalent a long time in putting up Petitions and in those Numbers augmented too with Artifice as well as Sedition had placed a Confidence which they saw failed them and themselves foiled with a Weapon not much unlike their own in its make tho the Mettal and Matter of Another and better temper Here in truth lay the contrariety the Contradiction that confounded them more than in the Nature and tendency of such Addresses which if this prejudic'd Divine had examined he would have found no more Zeal in them than what was consistent with their Loyalty and Religion Their Allegiance which they had sworn and of which some of our Protestants make as little account as if a Jesuits Equivocation would absolve them from a positive Oath that obliged them to declare for the Kings Heirs and Successors and the Protestant Religion might still be maintained under any perswasion of their Prince unless the Nation was obliged to believe
Paradox of the Peoples right of being their own Judges and deciding the Controversie between themselves and their King but tho they are told ten thousand times that this would make the very party to be the Judge and produce the most preposterous and unequitable destribution of Justice such as a Barbarous Nation would blush at tho both our Common Law and Common Equity tho both the Canon and Civil provide even against all Prejudic'd Evidence and must then a Fortiori against a Judge that is so and tho this Equitable process is provided even in Favour of this People yet cannot these perverse implacable Republicans think the same Common Justice necessary in the Case of their very King And then I hope they will allow 〈◊〉 Soveraigns Cause to be 〈◊〉 by Witnesses as well as their own and then who shall give in Evidence the matter of Fact in which he has 〈◊〉 his trust why they must tell us again the People so that the People 〈◊〉 is Party Judge Evidence and all and no wonder then if among the People too we find a pack of Perjur'd Oates's that can impeach their Prince But it is not really the Reason of the thing they so much rely on for that I shall refute anon beyond Answer and Reply unless it be from such as are resolv'd to Rebel against Sense as well as their Soveraign but that which truly determines these dangerous Democraticks is the tradition of their positions which as I observ'd are deliver'd down to their posterity and rever'd for Revelation The Principles of a Republick like the root of Rebellion it self run in a Blood or are receiv'd like the Plague from the Company they keep by way of Contagion They are loth to dissent from their Friends and Relations or Condemn the resolution of their pious Predecessors But sometimes the Seditious Souls are Seduc'd and Prejudic'd with the Approbation of an Author whom they shall as much perhaps pervert as they little Comprehend sometimes impos'd upon with a pretended Antiquity of their opinion and policy with which too they would delude others so for the first we saw not long since a Plato Redivivus dealt with the Devil he would have raised in the Ghost of his Philosopher and endeavored to obtrude upon the World the lewdest Sedition for the Dogma Platonis so did also the Leviathan of the Usurper that took his pastime in his unfathomable Oceana i. e. a political piece of Paradox deep and un-intelligible besides the quaintness of its pretty Style that renders it a Composition of Pedantry and Romance That Illuminato was perswaded among the wonders in his deep that he had discovered what had been so long buryed in the Floods the old Model of the very Primitive Common-wealth as if his Idaea of Government had determin'd the Deity or at least had been concurrent with the Design of the Creator when he fram'd a World to be govern'd for the bold Gentlemen being very Opiniative and I think one might say a little impious too Appeals to God whither the Sentiments of this Oliver's Architeck do not suit exactly with the very Protoplasts the Almighty's Mind and whither his Model which all must acknowledge the result of a most unnatural Rebellion was uot the very Common-wealth of Nature And this his Prototype of the Primitive Republick the Pragmatical Dogmatist is pleas'd to call the Doctrine of the Antients or Antient Prudence but if such as he says were the Government before the Flood I shall only conclude it so because its Lewdness and Sedition might occasion the deluge and might have been preserv'd for them in the Ark too since there was Beast in it of every kind and their admir'd Aristotle will allow his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be Communicable to an Ant an Ape or an Ass as well as a Man This opinion of the Peoples deciding between themselves and their King you shall see is not only Mr. Sidney's but the Doctrine of all the Democraticks all the rank Republicans that ever writ Brutus in his Vindiciae makes the Magistrates whom the People shall Authorize by whom he understands their Representatives their Dyets or Parliament or else such as was the Ephori of the Lacedaemonians the Seventy Elders among the Israelites the Praefecti with the Centurians among the Romans these makes not onlythe Judges but the Avengers of the Perfidiousness as they call it of their Princes upon their presumption that they have Violated the Laws About a year before the Publishing of that Pernicious piece some say a Romish Priest a Catholick others a Reform'd one A Calvinist maintain'd the same Doctrine in a Treatise concerning the Soveraigns right over the Subject and the Subjects Duty towards his Soveraign for there he tells us tho it be a Common Objection that the King has no other Judge but God himself and the Example of David as commonly objected whose Murder and Adultery no less Laws could punish than the Almighty's he Answers to it very positively that the States of the Kingdom always retain'd a power of Judging and Bridling their King which if they do not do they are Traytors to God and their Country he would resolve the Case of King David whom the People could not Judge for his more than Ordinary Crimes to result from his sins and offences but being Personal ones and as he must mean I suppose not perpetrated against the Welfare of the Common-wealth it self tho I cannot see why the breach of any Law establisht in a Community may not be Constru'd to be a Transgression also against the Publick tho the Injury sustein'd more immediately relates to some private Person 'T is for that Reason all our Indictments run in the Kings Name and the Criminal Process in all other Nations at the suit of the Power that is Supream so that properly there is no Personal Crimes especially of this Nature but what can be consider'd too as they Commonly are against the National Interest and the very well being of the Civil Society So that if they 'l Punish or sit as Judges upon the Soveraign for designs against the Publick State it self they can as soon for any injury done to an private Member of the same But that we see the Israelites didnot pretend to do even in their David's Case and so his solution of the Nature of the Crime signify's just nothing Mr. Harrington whom his advocate and his Plagiary too in his Plato Redivivus is pleas'd to recommend for his Learning least the Notion of the Balance that he borrow'd from him should be taken for a Fool 's as well himself 〈◊〉 for it there and play'd the Knave why truly that Learned Gentleman Chimeson in the same Din of the Peoples Judicial power and these drudges of Sedition like the Common Pack-horses pursue all the same Track and the leading Bell for he tells us too the People or Praerogative all one with them are also the Supream
our Princes of their Arbitrary Power as well as they have borrowed from the same Senseless Soul as silly and Seditious stuff But least our Republicans as they really do should rely too much upon Samuel's frightful Description of an Arbitrary Prince which they now-a-days too much make the Bugbear of the People as if their Dogs can worry the best Government when drest in a Bear-Skin 't is the Sense of some Learned Men that the Prophet gave them only this draught of a Monarch to let them know the extent of his power and as Sir Walter says to teach the Subject to suffer with patience any thing from the Hands of his Soveraign and I think that unfortunate Gentleman when he Pen'd most of that Excellent piece as a Prisoner had no Reason to be suspected for a Dissembling Flatterer of Kings as Brutus representsany one that defends his Soveraign's Right for a Traytor Betrayer of the People as Hunt has it or as Needham Debauch'd with the Brutish Principles of MONARCHY but I am sure may be allowed to have had more than them all In the next place the Laws of Nature of all Nations and particularly our own all absolutely exclude the People from being Judges in the Case of their King For the first It is the most Preposterous and Unnatural Inversion in the World that inferior Subjects should be invested with such a Power as common Sense will not admit to be lodg'd tny where but in the Supream they may as well invert the common Course the constant Order of unalterable Nature it self expect the Sun and Lamp of Heaven should no longer move in an Orb so high but Stars of the meanest Magnitude set up for the sole Dispensers of the day and the simile for ought I see is not so Foreign neither for we find there is more than a mere ordinary Analogy between that Harmonious Symmetry of the World and such a System of Government as if that Eternal Protoplast had found it most agreeable for the frame of the Universe which he the very God of Unity had form'd as if the Institution of the one were nothing less Divine than the Creation of the other And for this I dare appeal even to the Almighty and that with better Authority than Mr. Harrington with his Antient Prudence The God of Heaven who by all unless they be Barbarous Heathens is allowed to be but one and he himself is pleased to call Kings his very Vice-gerents here on Earth and the very Polytheists of Old Rome that had their Gods for almost every day as numerous as they say the Modern Romanist in his Calendar of Saints yet they among the many Deities they ador'd still lodg'd the Supremacy in one and ascrib'd all the Government all the sole Supream Power to their Mighty Jove For this he framed one Sun to Rule by Day and a Moon by Night For this he Justified that paternal Right in one Man which even their Aristotle a Heathen Born bred under a Republick reckons for a sort of Monarchy But I confess such a sort of Argument can not be concluding with Men that will oppose Heaven it self and all the Harmony of its Creation rather than be convinced That their own Models end commonly in Consusion and are best represented in the Primitive Chaos For the Second Consult but the Imperial Laws and the Codes of Justinian Laws that were Collected from other Nations as well as made by their own Laws that their Solon and Lycurgus with all their Attick Legislators all the great Republicks of Greece which these Seditious Souls so much extol could never have reform'd and you 'll find what provisions those make for the Supream Magistrates being the sole Judge The resolutions of some of those Heathens of the Royal Authority their Humble Submission to the Supream Jurisdiction in all Causes and over all Persons as our Protestant Oaths have it one would think should make the boldest of our Christians blush that can run up resistance at the same time they are Sworn to submit and obey these their Laws which for their equity have obtain'd even thro the universe these tell us That the King is both the Maker and sole Interpreter of the Laws that what ever pleases the Prince has the Power and efficacy of a Law and that 't is a Crime equivalent to Sacrilege it self to resist a Proclamation or Edict of their Soveraign that he himself is bound by no Law and then I am sure can't be judg'd by any and that he is exempted from them here on Earth because Subject to none but the Judge of Heaven And for fear least Arguments drawn from the Laws of Nature and all Nations should be insufficient to convince men of such Seditious Sentiments we 'll for Confirmation of the Third Subjoin the Resolution of the very Lawyers of our Land and they tell us too what the God of Heaven and almost the Universal Concurrence of all the Nations upon Earth have agreed in before our Britton as I 've shown before has in effect with the very digest of the Imperial Law made our Statutes to consist in the Will and Pleasure of the Prince only qualifies it with this Insignificant Restriction That it must not be understood of an Absolute Will and Ungovernable but such as is guided and regulated by good advice and the Rules of Equity and Reason and if this be a Warrantable Resolution and I warrant you the rankest Republican will take his Authority to be good should it in any place favour their Anarchy then it must be unavoidably concluded that where the Law is the Princes Will none of his People neither as aggregate or Jndividuals can be Judges of its Violation neither can it according to common Sense without the greatest Solecism and Absurdity be said by him to be violated at all for where the Custom of the Kingdom as it must be in all absolute Monarchies has plac'd the sole Legislative Power in that which is Supream There the same Will or Moral Action of the Sovereign that breaks an old Edict is nothing else but an Enacting of a new and the Common Objection that our Republicans Flourish withal against this is That then Murder and Sacrilege might be the Laws of the Land because perhaps it has been heretofore the pleasure of our own Prince But as such Observations are full of Venom and Spight so they are as much impertinent and nothing to the purpose for whether our own old English Lawyers had restrain'd the meaning of the Word WILL to a WILL guided by right Reason and Judgment no Person of sober Sense but must Imagine that the very Principi placuit of the Romans was as much restrain'd to the Rules of Reason and Equity and therefore their Tiberius Caligula Nero and Domitian were as much Tyrants and by their own Authors so are term'd as if they had been bound by the
them whether false or true Have they not heretofore answered touching Freehold even before their King and Council and a Parliament only Petition'd their Soveraign with all Submission that the Subject might not be summon'd for the future by a Chancery Writ or Privy Seal to such an Appearance but this they 'll say was the result of the Soveraigns Usurpations upon the Laws of the Land of a King Richard the 2d That did deserve to be deposed as well as the Articles of his Depositions to be read a King that forfeited the executive Power of his Militia for prefering worthless People and was himself of little worth or as the most Licentious and Lewdest Libel of a longer date has it a King that found Fuel for his Lust in all Lewd and uncivil Courses Now tho we have the Authority of the best of our Historians for the good Qualities of this Excellent tho but an unhappy Prince and who could never have fell so unfortunately had his Subjects served him more faithfully tho Mr. Hollinshed tells us never any Prince was more unthankfully used never Commons in greater wealth never Nobles more cherish'd or the Church less wrong'd and as Mr. How has it in Beauty Bounty and Liberality he surpassed all his Predecessors and Baker the best among our Moderns says there were aparent in him a great many good Inclinations that he was only abused in his Youth but if he had been Guilty afterward in his riper Age of some proceedings these Republicans had reason to reproach I am sure he was Innocent of those foolish Innuendo's those false and frivolous Accusations for which they rejected him viz. for unworthiness and insufficiency when he never appear'd in all his Reign more worthy of the Government than at the very time they deposed him for being unworthy to Govern But whatever were the vices of that Prince with which our virulent Antimonarchists would blast and blemish his Memory yet we see from the President that is cited the Sense of his Subjects did not then savor so much of Sedition as insolently to demand it for their Privilege and Birth-right which without doubt they might have pretended to call so as much as any of those the Commons have since several times so clamored for with Tumult and Insurrection and was indeed more to be condemn'd than any of those Miscarriages the Seditious and Trayterous Assembly that deposed the same Prince did ever Object for if their Free-hold can't be call'd their Birth-Right then there 's hardly any thing of Right to which they can be born And yet we see that the King and his Council had heretofore Cognizance even of that as it appears from the Commons Petitioning him against it and his Answer which was That tho he would remand them to the Tryal of their Right by the Law and not require them there to answer peremptorily yet he did reserve the power at the suit of the Party to Judge it where by Reason of Maintenance or the like the Common Law could not have its Course then we may conclude that the judicial power was absolutely in the King and this was also at a time when this Richard the 2d was but a Minor no more than thirteen years old and so this his Answer without doubt by the Advice of the wisest of his Council and the most learned of the Land And for this reason notwithstanding it is provided by that Chapter of the Great Charter none shall be Diseised of his Fre hold but by Lawful Judgment of his Peers tho the Right was tryed before that sort of Statute by common Law as my Lord Coke observ's upon it by the verdict of 12 Peers or equal men yet still I look upon the King to remain sole Judge in every Case whether Civil or Criminal for these Peers are never allow'd to try any more than bare matter of Fact and the Soveraign always presides in his Justices to decide matter of Equity and Law And those very Laws to which he gives Life too and whose Ambiguities he resolves themselves also sufficiently terrifie the Jurors from pretending to give their own Resolutions by making them liable to the severe Judgment of an Attaint if their Verdict be found false i.e. to have their Goods Chattels Lands and Tenements forfeited their Wives and Children turn'd from their home and their Houses Levell'd and their Trees pluckt up by the Roots and their Pastures turn'd up with the Plough and their Bodies Imprison'd A sort of severity sufficient one would think to frighten the Subject from assuming to himself to decide the judicial part of the Laws and for this Reason in all dubious Cases for fear of their bringing in a verdict False they only find the Fact specially and leave the determination of it to the King in the Judges that represent him And as this was resolved for Legal even from the Common Usage and Custom of the Land confirm'd as you see by several Acts of Parliament so was it maintain'd also by those very Villains that had subverted the Government it self and violated all the Fundamental Laws of all the Land for when Lilburn a Levelling and discontented Officer a Lieutenant of Oliver's Army was put upon his Tryal for Treason only for Scribling against the Usurpation for which he had fought and as he boasted to the Bench to the very butt end of his Musket against his Majesty at the Battel of Brainford and the mutinous wretch only Troubled and Disgusted because he had not a greater share in that Usurp'd Power for which he had hazarded his Life and Fortune when he came to be pinch'd too with that Commission of High Court of Justice himself had help'd up for the Murdering of his Soveraign and his best of Subjects no Plea would serve him but this popular one which the Lieutenant laboured in most mightily that his Jury were by the Law the Judges of that Law as well as Fact and those that sate on the Bench only Pronouncers of the Sentence and truly considering they were as much Traytors by Law as the Prisoner at the Bar he was so far in the Right that his Jury were as much Judges as those Commissioners that sate at the Bench yet even that Court only of Commission'd Traytors and Authoriz'd Rebels thought good to over-rule him in that point and Iermin one of the Justices just as Senseless in his Expression of it as Unjust and Seditious in the Usurpation of such a Seat in Judicature when no King to Commission him In an uncouth and clumsie Phrase calls his Opinion of the Juries being Judges of Law A Damnable Blasphemous Heresie never heard in the Nation before and says 'T is enough to destroy all the Law of the Land and that the Judges have interpreted it ever since there was Laws in England and Keeble another of the Common-wealth-Commissioners told him 'T was as gross an error
as possible any Man could be guilty off and so all the Judges even of a power absolutely Usurp'd and wherein they profest so much the Peoples Privilege over-rul'd the Prisoner in his popular Plea 'T is true Littleton as Lilburn observ'd to them in one of his Sections says That an inquest as they may give their Verdict at large and special so if they 'll take upon them the knowledge of the Law they may also give it general But the Comment of Coke their own Oracle upon the place confirms the Suggestion I have made of Resolving it into the King's Judges For he says 't is dangerous to pretend to it because if they mistake it they run in danger of this Attaint and tho the fam'd Attorney General of those times with his little Law was so senseless as to allow it to Lilburn in the beginning of his Tryal tho at another at Reading in that time of Rebellion they made the Jury to be covered in the Court upon that account yet you see those even then the Justices of the Land tho but mere Ministers of a most unjust Usurpation would not let it pass for Law And the Refutation of this false Position is so far pertinent to our present purpose as it relates to prove the Peoples being so far from being qualified to be their Kings Judges that they can not absolutely Judge of the mere Right of a meum and tuum among themselves Several other Instances both the Books Rolls abound with that Evidence our Kings the only Judges of the Law in all Causes and over all Persons for in the 13th year of the same Richard the Second the Commons Petition'd again the King that his Council might not make any Ordinance against the Common Law and the King Graciously granted them but with a salvo to the Regalities of the Crown and the right of his Ancestors The Court of Star Chamber which the worst of times Abolish'd and my Lord Coke makes almost the best of Courts had heretofore Cognizance of property and determin'd a Controversie touching Lands contain'd in the Covenants of a Joynture as appears in the Case of the Audleys Rot. Claus. 41. Edward the 3d. There the King heard too a Cause against one Sir Hugh Hastings for with-holding part of the Living of the poor of St. Leonard in York as is Evident from the Roll. 8. Edward 4. p. 3. And tho the Proceedings of this Court were so much decryed by those that clamor'd so long for its Suppression till they left no Court of Justice in the Land unless it were that of Blood and Rebellion their High one tho the King in his giving year was so gracious that he made the very Standard and rule of his Concessions to be the very request of his People and gratified them in an Abolition of this Court establish'd by the Common-law and confirm'd afterward per Act of Parliament yet Cambden our Historian as well as our Coke our Lawyer could commend it for the most Honorable as well as the most Ancient of all our Judicatories and if they 'll have the Reason Why it treated of Matters so high as the Resolution even of Common-Law and the Statute it may be told them in the weighty Words of their own Oracle Because the King in Judgement of Law as in the rest also was always in that Court and that therefore it did not meddle with Matters of ordinary Moment least the dignity of it should be debased and made contemptible and tho by the gracious consent or rather an extorted Act of Grace the late King was forc'd to forego it yet the Proceedings of some Cases there may serve to show what a power our Kings had and ought to have in all manner of distributive Justice Several other Citations I could here set down to prove the Subjection of the very common-Common-Law to the Soveraign Power as Henry the Sixth superseding a Criminal Process and staying an Arraignment for Felony Henry the Seventh's that debar'd the Beckets by decree from pursuing their suit for Lands because the merits of the Cause had been heard by the King his Predecessor and also by himself before but these will abundantly suffice to satisfy any sober Person that does not set himself against all assertors of his Soveraigns Supremacy And then if Custom and Common Usage which Plowden in his Commentaries is pleased to call the common-Common-Law lies in many Cases Subject to the Resolution of the Supream Soveraign no doubt but the Statute the result of his own Sanction must of necessity submit and acknowledge a subjection to the same Power and that I think we have sufficiently prov'd already upon several occasions both from the Letter of the Laws themselves and our little light of Reason both from Arguments and Laws that have evidenc'd their own Resolutions to be reserv'd to the King and that we had Kings long before fore the Commons Commenc'd Conven'd ' or Concur'd in their assent to such Laws 'T is prodigiously strange to me that these mighty Maintainers of the Peoples Legislative and their Judicial Power eeven over their own Soveraigns cannot be guided by those very Laws they would have to govern their Kings thus you shall see a Needham a Nevil or a Sidney amongst our selves in all their Laborious Libels that the drudges of Sedition who seem to verify the Sacred Text in drawing Sin it self with a Cart-Rope in all that they tugg toil and labour in you 〈◊〉 see that they cite you so much as a single Statute on their side or if they do only such an one as is either Impertinently apply'd or as Industriously perverted And in the same sort does the Seditious Scot Buchanan and the rest of the Books of their discontented Demagogues that Northern Mischief that threaten'd us always with a Proverbial Omen till averted of late by the Loyalty of their latter Parliaments that have aton'd even for the last age and the persidiousness and Faction of the former those all in their Libels hardly Name you so much as one single Law of their Nation to countenance the Popular Paradox the pleasing Principle of the Peoples Supremacy which the poor Souls when prescrib'd by those Mountebanks of the State must take too like a Common Pill only because 't is gilded with the pleasant Insinuations of Natural Freedom Free-State Subjection of the Soveraign Power of the People and all the dangerous Delusions that lead them directly to the designs of these devilish Republicans i.e. a damnable Rebelion whereas would they but submit their Senses to the Sanctions of the Laws of their several Lands their Libels they would find to be best baffl'd by the Statute Books as well as their Authors to be punisht by them for their Publication 'T is strange that should not obtain in this Controversy which prevails in all polemical disputes that is some certain Maxims and Aphorisms Postulates and
that is made to Kings For Nature there is nothing from it more evident than a whole series of Subordination and that to single Soveraignty setting aside even the paternal among Human Creatures almost to be made out among Insects and Animals Bees and Beasts And if some King indulged this their People to appropriate to themselves all the Supream Power which we never heard of any of ours that did or to participate part of their Prerogative which we know many Indulgent ones of ours to their Parliaments have done then still this their power can't be Original because 't is derivative and I dare swear no Prince ever granted them a power of being Superiors as they must be if they would Judge him or ever accepted a Crown upon that Condition supposing it were as they would have it conferr'd For the very Act of being such a Conditional King would absolutely make him none at all and therefore those whom the Lacedaemonians compounded withal to be regulated by their Ephori were in effect not so much as the Dictators of Rome and so not to be reckon'd to Reign as Crown'd Heads or mentioned among those that we call our Monarchs In the third place if by this Original power of the People delegated to the Parliament the two Houses are constituted the Judges of their King I cannot see how Mr. Sidney could avoid or any of his Associates can this Grand Absurdity and as great a Lye that the Parliament have a Natural Liberty not only to Judge but to lop off the Sacred Head of their Liege-Lord and Soveraign For 't is certain they can have no more Authority than the People they represent and 't is as certain they must have as much Now this Original Power must be a Natural one because not deriv'd from any grant and then this Parliament of theirs must have an Original Power by Nature tho it be but to commit the most unnatural Barbarities I confess we had such an one that upon the same Principles proceeded to the perpetrating that most Execrable Treason and the very Villany that any time may be the Consequence of such Positions A Parliament which this good Author presided in or very well understood the Scandal of our own Nation and the shame and reproach of our Neighbors now I say If this his Original power of the People be delegated to this Parliament as Mr. Sidney says it is then this Parliament hath a Natural and Original Power of being their King's Judges because their People has it whom they represent I confess this is a Bar beyond the Seditious Doctrine of their Author in his Right of Magistrates For he is mighty sollicitous least he should be misapprehended as if he design'd the common People should judge their Soveraign therefore tells us very carefully none but the subordinate Magistrates themselves can Judge the Supream and their Brutus that succeeded that Assertor of Rebellion says such only as the Spartan Ephori and the seventy of the Israelites the Centurions or Equestres among the Romans and if the People had any Right to this Judicial power those Miscreants more modestly place it among the most eminent whereas our brisker Assertor of this Anarchy makes it out That therefore our more eminent Memberships have this Original Power only because Communicated them from the meanest People so that now we have a Parliament that has an Original Natural Liberty of the People tho their very Constitution it self commenc'd from the very Grant Grace and Favor of the King I could never meet with any Record yet that rehearsed these Privileges of Parliament But we have many extant and Presidents even of the House of Commons themselves that their Privileges and much of their Power proceeds from the Liberalities of their Prince more than this Natural Liberty of the People not to mention that their very being was first the result of such an Act of his Grace for from whom pray had they that freedom of Speech they upon every Session desire by their Speaker but from that King before whom they are to Speak who is it that fills their Chair those that present him or the King that accepts or disapproves whom they have presented who is it that gives them access to his Person the Commons that desire it or he from whom 't is desir'd 2. Lastly who impowers them to consent to a Bill those that supplicate his Majesty would be pleased to enact or his Majesty that says Be it enacted could this Natural Original power of the People be communicated to their Representatives the dispute about the Commons Right would be carried for ever on their side and we need not date their Original from Henry the Third or the Barons Wars or from the Saxon Heptarchy it self to be sure they then had their Representatives assoon as they had this Power and this Power it seems was assoon as they were a People And by this Original Power which they delegate for ought I see they may by the same rule as well retain it suffer no Representatives at all but assemble themselves and exercise the Soveraignty If the People delegate an Original power and a Natural Liberty to this Parliament it cannot certainly be comprehended how these Parliaments as now constituted could commence by the Grants and Concessions of the Prince and yet all will allow tho they disagree in the time that they did begin at first to be so Assembled by the Bounteous Permission of the King and that all the Privileges they claim were the result of an entire Favour of the Soveraign and not the Original freedom of the Subject if they 'll call that an Original Power to send Representatives it must be somewhat like that Author 's Secondary Original we so lately consider'd and that tho they prescribe to it for this seven hundred year as well as they cannot for above four or five 100 still it will recurr to this That this first power was the Grant of the Crown And these prescriptions as themselves allow being whenever they begun the result of the Soveraigns Bounteous Permission I cannot see why those Immunities may not be resign'd to the same Crown from which they were once receiv'd or those Franchises for prescription it self in this case is properly no more may not be Absolutely forfeited by those that at best can but be said to hold them on Condition I know the Common Law Favours a Prescription so far as in Inheritances to let it have the force of a Right when their cannot be made out any other Title but this I look upon to be of another Nature when the Original of what they prescribe too by their own Concessions was the Grant of their King and even this Common Law commonly in all its Customary Rules excepts the Prerogative of the King nay this very Prerogative of his by that very Law is allowed to be the Principal part of it I urge this because it is both apposite here and a Case upon our late Elections much 〈◊〉 and to say as some 〈◊〉 That such a Prescription cannot be forfeited proceeds from a confounding of the word in this Case with that Prescription by which some of them have a Title to their Estate for their Common Objection about this their Elective power is
That the King may as well deprive them of their Birth-right when this their Birth right might commence by an Original Right but the Power of this Electing must Necessarily and Originally first come from the Crown But yet they know too that this their very Birth-right is in many Cases forfeitable by their own Act to the Crown and for their Burgage it self should we abstract from that Elective power that attends it nothing else but an 〈◊〉 tenure of their very King And if in the Saxons time as the popular advocates would persuade us the Commons were call'd to sit in Parliament 't is certain they could not come as Burgesses too for all that Borhoe in their Toungue signified if we can believe my Lord Coke and from which the word Burgh was since deriv'd its signification was only this Those ten Companies or Families that were one anothers pledge and so should they prove it to us as clear as the Sun as well as they have left it much in the 〈◊〉 still those their Commons could never be of those that had any Right to come but only such as the Grace of the King should call and even in Edward the first 's time those very Barons some say that were only most wise were summon'd by the King and their Sons if they were not thought so prudent as their Fathers were not call'd to Parliament after their Fathers death Therefore since Prescription since Parliament it self depended all heretofore upon the pleasure of the Prince I cannot see how the Subject shall ever be able to make it his Original Right and tho some are so bold as to say such a prescription cannot be forfeited or resign'd by the Subject resum'd or restor'd to the Crown for they must maintain those propositions or else they have no reason for their Murmering since there has been none alter'd or destroy'd but what has been by Inquiry of the Kings Quo Warranto or their own Act of Resignation yet sure if the Common Law did not favour the King in this Case Common Equity would since those Priveleges were but the very Grant of his own Ancestors But if we must consider nothing but Mr. Sidney's Original Power and Right and all that lodg'd in his good People of England it may be their Birth-right too to Rebel they may and must Murder their Monarch and that by their own Maxims when they think him not fit to Govern or Live I have heard it often said that the Members in Parliament represent the people and for that Reason are call'd their Representatives but if this Original Power which is delegated to them upon such a Representation must Subject their Soveraign as Mr. S. will have it to these his Judges of the particular Cases arising upon such a Subjection then they must e'en represent their King too and every Session of Parliament that he Summons is but an unhappy Solemnity whom himself Assemblies for his own deposition if such positions should obtain 't is those that indeed would make the Monarch fearful of Parliaments and not those idle Suggestions of Mr. Hunt that the Weekly Pamphlets were endeavouring to make him forego them and it was this very opinion that promoted the last War which he would not have so much as mention'd Lastly if this Original Power of the People be delegated to their Representatives this People that did so Communicate it can at their pleasure recall it and exercise it themselves for that is essential to the Nature of a Communicated Power for upon supposition of the peoples having such a Power it would be of the same Nature that their Kings is for Power of Supremacy wherever it be lodg'd is still the same and you see that the Power which the King has is often Commission'd to the Judges in his several Courts of Justice and yet I cannot see how his Majesty by Virtue of such a Commissionating of his Servants does Exclude himself from the Administration of those Laws that he has only allow'd others to Administer or from a recalling of that power to himself which he has only delegated to another for 't is a certain Maxim in reason that whatsoever Supream does empower others with his Authority does still retain more than he does impart tho I know 't is a Resolution in our Law Books that if any one would render himself to the Judgment of the King it would be ofnone effect because say they all his power Judicial is Committed to others and yet even they themselves will allow in many Cases their lies an Appeal to the King But what ever was the Sense of my Lord 〈◊〉 in this point who has none of the fewest Faults and failings tho his Voluminous Tracts are the greatest ease and Ornament of the Law his resolution here is not so agreeable to Common Equity and Reason therefore I say in reason it must follow That Mr. Sid. people having but delegated their Power to the Parliament still retain a power of concurring with preventing or revoking of that power they have given but in charge to their Representatives and if so then they can call them to an Account for the ill exercise of that power they have intrusted them with set up some High Court of Justice again for upon this very principle the last was erected not only for the Tryal of their King but for hanging up every Representative that has abus'd them as they are always ready to think in the exercise of that Original power with which he was by his Electors intrusted these sad Consequences which necessarily flow from this lewd Maxim would make their house of Commons very thin and they would find but few Candidates so ready to spend their Fortunes in Borough Beer only for the Representing of those that might hang them when they came home upon the least misrepresentation of their proceedings and these sad suggestions of the sorrowful Case of such precarious representatives are 〈◊〉 Consequences from the very 〈◊〉 of our Republican even in those very Arguments that he uses for the subjection of his King for if his King 〈◊〉 man must be Subject to the Judgment 〈◊〉 his People that make him a King 〈◊〉 he cannot be so Impudently 〈◊〉 but he must allow his Members of Parliament that are much more made by them by Continual Election and 〈◊〉 very breath of their Mouth 〈◊〉 be as 〈◊〉 accountable to their Makers for if 〈◊〉 should recur in this Case as he has 〈◊〉 other refuge to the Peoples having excluded themselves from this 〈◊〉 Power once in themselves by conferring it on their Representatives 〈◊〉 farewel to the very Foundation
whose Establishment in the first true Imperial Throne of their Rebellious Rome that very Law was first founded as also the Emperor Vespasian for whom it was again Confirm'd both these from all the Famous Historians of their Times unless we 'll believe them like the late Writers of the new Rome to be all Legends too both appear'd absolute in their power unlimited in their Jurisdiction notwithstanding those Conditions they will have Exprest in that Law neither did the People pretend to their deposition upon their Non performance Julius himself that was not absolutely prefer'd to be the Royal Emperor for he liv'd before that Law was made yet was allowed such a perpetual Dictatorship as may be well resolv'd into what our Republicans reproach with their present Soveraign an Arbitrary Power And he too whom the Miscreant we before mention'd says was justly Murdered and why only because he dignify'd himself too much as if it were a Crime for a King to be Great even he was not depos'd and dispatcht by the suffrages of the people but by a Perjur'd band of Conspirators and Assassinates in the Senate and whom the very people too pursu'd for the Fact and even ador'd their deceas'd Emperor tho Heathens and their Empire was not Hereditary to the shame of some of our good Christian Subjects that live under a Monarchy that is so acquies'd more quietly under their oppressions of their Lawless Emperors then some of ours under the good Government of their Gracious Kings who as they have often promis'd so have still Govern'd according to Law The depositions and Barbarous Butcherys of some of the Roman Emperors was never an Act of State of the Citizens or the people but the Force and Fury of a Faction in the Army and 't is with that excuse I am sure our Presbyter with his good Excluded Members would wipe his mouth of the Blood of his Soveraign for those were several times set up by the Souldiers and assoon pull'd to pieces by those that had plac'd them on the Throne which effusion of Royal Blood was the clear effect of their not claiming it by an Absolute Inheritance of that Blood Royal for those Adoptions they many times made ware of little force against the salutations of a Legion and the powers of the Field and therefore that Author when he says even those Caesars were Legally and justly Condemn'd as if the Romans too had once their High Court of Justice abuses the world both with a Factious infinuation and in the very matter of Fact In the next place they must consider that if there was such a Contract and Agreement among the People to accept of such an one for their King upon his performance of such Conditions 〈◊〉 I am sure his Deposition or Censure in our Kingdom were never formally annext to the Penalty of the Bond for his Non-performance neither can they show us in all their Charter of Liberties such a Conditional License to Rebel yet yet still it must be supposed the consent of every individual Subject which was somewhat difficult to be 〈◊〉 was required to such an Agreement for upon the first Constitution of our Government 't is certain we had no such Parliaments wherein they could delegate their Suffrages to some few Representatives and then by the same Reason we must have the Concurrence of all the particular Persons in the Land when we would Judg of the breach of that Covenant upon which all their Ancestors were supposed to have accepted their King And then I think from the Result of their own Seditious Reasoning our Soveraign may sit pretty safely and he rule as Arbitrary as he pleases when it must be carried against him with a true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not a single Subject left in the Land to befriend him with his Vote For upon such a conferring off the Supream Power it must be supposed that the several Subjects have bound themselves to one another to suffer such an one to be their Soveraign and made a contract too with one another in some such implied Sense that A. confers his Right to Power and Government upon B. as Supream Governor upon Condition that C. does so too upon the same Person now to put it in the terms of our own Law the Subjects A. and C. here are both mutual Obligors and Obligees to one another and both Obligors to B. the Soveraign Obligee Now 't is certain that A. cannot recal this power he has confer'd on B. without the consent of C. his joint Obligor but it must be with a breach of Covenant to his Fellow Subject as well as of Faith and contract to B. his Soveraign and this mutual Obligation between two to a third will extend as well to two Millions And I hope we may make at length the terms of our Law plead Loyally tho I 've heard an eminent Council at the Bar but commonly for none of the best Clyents Assert Loyalty to be nothing else but an adhering to the Letter of the Law with this good 〈◊〉 as if that would contradict the common Acceptation of the word among the Royalists who make it to signifie an Asserting the King's Prerogative whereas in their Law French they would confine the word Loyalty to express nothing else but bare Legality And be it so I believe they 'll be but little the better for the quaintness of the Criticism for I dare avow that he that will be truly legal in their Sense must be as heartily Loyal in ours for nothing we see runs higher the Royal Prerogative then that very Law by which they would run it down But to come to the Nature of this political Contract this Stipulation of Monarchy as they would make it which will be better exprest in the Language of a Civilian when the Subject it self is about Civil Government and an Imperial Crown In this Case rhere is also a Convention as they call it of two Parties the Subject and he that is to be the Soveraign one upon such a contract stipulates to Govern the other to 〈◊〉 Now in such Stipulations it is a receiv'd Rule that no man stipulates but for himself and that there is no Obligation arises from any one 's promising another Mans Deed so that every single Subject must in Person here as I've said have made such a Subjection to that Authority to which he submitted if this their Convention and Contract with their King can be supposed and then by the same Rule every man must in his proper Person come and retract his Obedience before this Right to Govern can be absolutely Dissolv'd tho 't is the Opinion too of these sort of Lawyers that what is promised by Subjects to the publick which in a Monarchy is always represented in the King can't be revok'd by them no not tho they have reason to repent of their promise and if this shall hold him tho without any Consideration or Cause and tho
Inst. C. 1. And had we therefore then no King their number is greater now and must therefore our Monarch be less Page 37. All Lands are mediately or immediately held of the King as Soveraign Lord. Eliz. 498. Ass. 1 13. Major singulis minor Universis Vid. Eliz. 498. Ass. 1. 18. Duck. de Authoritate Lib. 1. c. 6 Vid. Cook 1. Inst. C. 1. Predium Domini Regis est dominium directum cujus nullus Author est nisi Deus Page 98. 99 100. Page 98. He call's ours a mungrel Church from it's Innovation he means of Ceremonies The King calls them Adjourns Dissolves them at his pleasure and this long Practices prov'd from the Chronicles of our Land and its Fundamental Law Speed 645. 4. Inst. 27. 2. Medon Sidney whose very Motto 〈◊〉 haec inimica Tyrannis Page 114. Page 105. It is no Stat. if the King assent not 12. H. 7. 20. H. 8. An Act. March 1657. Vid. Act of Oblivion 51 15. Ed. 2. Great Stat. Roll. 26. H. 3. to Ed. 3. 1. Ric. 3. Exact Abridg fol. 112. 1. R. 3. 24. H. 8. Page 103. Coke first Institutes Lib. 2d C. 10. T. Burgage Page 111. 4. Insti 27. 2. 1. Inst. Sect. 164. Plato Red. page 105. Page 107. Ibid. page 108. 109. 25. Ed. 3. Plat. pag. 109. History of the Association Printed by Janeway Page 3. Hunt in post pag. 92 93. 〈…〉 Ibid. page 3. 〈…〉 Page 105. Page 107. Page 116. Ibid. Stanley's Case H. 7. 1 Edward 3. 1 C. 3. 2 Hen. 7. 4. 5. Mary This Commission was in force Rot par 5. H. 4. n. 24. repealed by this 4. and 5. of P. M. but this repealing Stat. is again repealed Jacob. 1. and so of force in this King now as well as when they deny'd it to his Father 2. Ed. 6. 2. C. 2d Cook 2. Inst. 30. Car. 2. C. 6. 7. Ed. 1. Plat. pag. 124. Daniel 53. H. 3d. K. John Henry 3. Vld. Stow page 183. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 5. 〈◊〉 1648. Plat. pag. 130. Which has been done too as one of 〈◊〉 own Authors tells us 〈◊〉 in 's Centurie Hist. 〈◊〉 the Grand Court of Equity 〈◊〉 moderating the common 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Crompton Jurisdiction For more of this Courts power practise see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reports The Chancellor 〈◊〉 two Powers one absolute the other ordinary by the first he is not 〈◊〉 as 〈◊〉 Judges or limited 〈◊〉 the Letter of the Law Vid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cap. 20. fol. 〈◊〉 Polldore Virg. makes the Chancellor only Coaeual with the Conqueror but 〈◊〉 in that too as well as others Mr. 〈◊〉 shews us they were long before in 's Orig. And so my Lord Coke also in his 4 〈◊〉 Certain it is that both British and Saxon Kings had their Courts of Chancery Coke 4. Inst. C. 8. Vid Mirror C. 1. §. 3. Glanvll lib. 12. C. 1. 〈◊〉 Lib. 2. C. 12. Vld. Reliq Wotton p. 307. Pages 167 168 169 c. 〈◊〉 Journal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No priviledge of Parliament holds for Treason Felony or even Breach of the Peace 4. part Inst. 25. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vid. Baker p. 516. An. 1641. Vid. Kings Declar. 1683. Hunt Pla. to p. 169. Coventry Parl. 38. H. 6. declar'd Develish by 39. H. 6. 1. Edw. 4. that of Rich. 2 Treasonable Par. Car. 1. 1641. 〈◊〉 in Princip C. 8. qui itaqae hujus viri rerum gestarum rationes animo reputaret nihil aut parum in 〈◊〉 animadverteret aut fortunae asseribendum Plato page 221. p. 234. p. 236. Making Leagues absolutely in the King 19. Ed. 4. 239. 249. 252. Plat. 239. Plat. p. 249. Plat. 252. 〈◊〉 Vi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato p. 〈◊〉 Cook 4. Inst. Cap. 2. p. 53. Vid. 〈◊〉 several Rolls of Par. cited by him for it's 〈◊〉 Rot. Par. 50. Ed. 3. n. 10. 1. 〈◊〉 2. 〈◊〉 4. c. Rot. Claus. 12. Ed. 3. Par. 2. m. 19.39 Ed. 3. fol. 14. Ad moderandum Regum 〈◊〉 Calvin's 2. edit Strasburg 1539. Plat. page 241. 16. Car. 1. 16. Car. 2. * 4. 〈◊〉 p. 54. ‖ Parl. 25. Car. 1. just so took upon them to search the Signet Office and that of the Secretary whereof the King as justly complain'd Vid. 〈◊〉 Coventry speach to the Commons Ibid. p. 57. Plat. page 〈◊〉 Cook 4. c. 2 Inst. Stanford 72. F Senators sunt partes corporls Regls Holl. fol. 169. Matt. Paris 205. 〈◊〉 Par. 3. H. 6. 〈◊〉 3. Coke 4. Inst. p. 53. Inas c. 46. Anno 1638. Vid. Sir Will. Dugdale's short view 45. p. 48 49 50. Baker 406. 10. Jac. 6. Act 12. Parl. 9. Regn. Marlae Act 75. Plato p. 240. Plato 242. 1642. Vid. Rings Answer to the 19. propositions Rex est principlum caput Finis Parl. Vld. Modus renend Parl. 4. Inst. fol. 3. Vid. Reliquiae Wotton â—oscarino's case Kingly Government has been the usage of the Land beyon'd History it self the Common Law is but Common usage Plowd Comment p. 195 Le Commen Ley n'est que Commen use 2. part of the Inst. fol. 496. Kings Praerogative is part of the Law of England Merc. Pol. Num. 107. Merc. Pol. Jun. 17. 52. Plato Gildas B. who was born Anno 493. These were Nennius a Monk of Bangor who liv'd An. 620. Bede a Saxon who wrot in their Heptarchy dy'd in the 733. Asserius Menev. who writ the Acts of King Alfred Colemannus Ang. who liv'd in the time of the Danes and Harold the first Vortiger the British King on his own Head call'd in the Sax on without his Subjects consent Egbert an absolute Monarch of the Saxons over all the Isle Canutus as absolute among the Danes call'd only his Convention of Nobles at Oxford about 1017. 1. Inst. §. 164. p. 110. Magn. Chart. Chart. Forrest Stat. of Ireland made H. 3. the 1. Laws we had from their very words seem all made by the sole power of the King No Commons mentioned in Stat. Merton 20. H. 3. only discreet men mention'd in Stat. of Marlbrigd 52. H. 3. But all the Commonalty is said summon'd in the praeamb to Stat. West 1.3 E. 1. In Stat. Bigamy 4. Ed. 1. Stat. Mortemain 7. E. 1. Art sup Chart. 28. E. 1. Stat Escheat 29. E. 3. not summon'd 34. E. no Law to be made without Kt. and Burg. Vid. also Dr. B. Answer to P. 〈◊〉 10. But still left to the King how many of those he wou'd call And per Stat. 7. H. 4. the 〈◊〉 was first fram'd directing 2 to be chosen for each County Burrough Of Antient time both Houses sate together first sever'd a. H. 4.4 Inst p. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 95. Jani 〈◊〉 c. Argument Anti Norman Miscel. Parl. Postscript 〈◊〉 sup A Priest of 〈◊〉 Vid. Baker Vid. Eadmerus a Monk who writ the Life of William 2d lived in his Time Vid. Baker p. 34. 〈◊〉 William 2d So also Florence of Worst Baker p. 49. The words of a Priest lately tryed and convicted of High Treason 3 Car. 1.
patriae est D. 1. 4. 1. Atrocius est Patriae parentem quam 〈◊〉 occi dere Cicero in Philip 2d * I 've said yee are Gods Psalms ‖ Hunt allows that himself posts p. 95. †Postquam populus Romanus Lege Regiâ in principem omne suum Imperium potestatem solum Contulit ex illâ non sub diti sed etiam Magistratus ipsi subiiciuntur Zouch Elem. p. 101. * Edward the 3d. ‖ Magn. Chart. cap. 29. No Freeman will we Imprison or Condemn but by Lawful Judgment of his Peers Per parium juorum Legale Judicium And my Lord Coke tells us they are to be understood of Peers of the Realm only when a Peer is to be try'd Comment upon the very words 2. Inst. which he more fully explains in 's Comment on the 14. Chap. of Char. where he says pares is by his Peers or Equals for as the Nobles are understood by that word to be all equal so are all the Commons too ib. p. 29. Where note the form of this very Charter runs all in the sole 〈◊〉 of the King 24. H. 8. c. 12. †Vid. 1. Ed. 5. fol. 2. Si Le Roy moy dissei sit pur ceo que Le Roy en le ley ne poit moy disseisir il né serrá appell disseisor mes jeo sue mis a petition à Roy. 4. Ed. 4. 25. 13. * Coke Comon West 1. 2. Inst. p. 158. ‖ Stat. to pursue suggestious 37. E. 3. c. 18. 38. Ed. 3. c. 9. Parl. Glocester 2. Ric. 2. Brief History of Succession p. 7. †Plato Rediviv p. 116. 234. †Plato Rediviv p. 116. 234. March Needham Merc. Polit n. 65. Sept 4. 1651. Hollinshed 3d. Vol. Chron. F. 508. N. 50. How 's Annals p. 277. Vid. Trussel in vit R. 2. Parl. Glocest His deposers within the 25 of Ed. Coke Treason * Mag. Chart. 9. H. 3. c. 29. Cap. 14. ‖ 2 Inst. pag. 49. †The writ of Conviction was the same with an Attaint and that was by Common Law too Coke 2. Inst. p. 130. Vid. 3. Inst. p. 222. 1. Inst. pag. 294. 13. and tho this Judgment is given by no stat yet there are several Stat. that 〈◊〉 penalty and that even in trespass where damages but 40. sh. 5. E. 3. Chap. 7. Vid. also 〈◊〉 E. 3. c. 8. 〈◊〉 E. 3. c. 4. 13. R. 2. and several other Stat. in H. 4 5 6 7 8th times about it * Vid. Lilburn's Tryal 24. Oct. 1649. Printed the 28. of November 1649. Page 3. Ib. p. 121. Ibid. pag. 122 113. That contradicts directly out of their own Mouth the Doctrine of William Pryn of his Parliaments Right to it Littleton Sect. 368. Coke Com. ibid. Prideaux Liburn's Tryal page 17. Ibid. page 123 †13. R. 2. †It is the most Honorable Court the Parliam excepted that is in the Christian World of Honorable Proceeding just Jurisdiction A Court that kept all England in quiet Coke 4 Inst. p. 65. and so it did till abolish'd by the Tumults of a Parliam An. 1641. page ‖ Coke 4. Inst. C. 5. †3. H. 7. c. 1. ‖ Cambden Britt 130. Coke 4. Inst. p. 65. 63. ne dignitas hujus Curiae vilesceret Verney's Case 34. H. 6. Rot. 37. ‖ 'T is that which gives them Life as I have shown before and makes them any thing besides waste Paper And the Judicious Hooker in his politicks seems to be of the same opinion when he says Laws take their force not from those that devise them but from the power that gives them the strength of Laws †The seven Kingdoms of the Saxons had all their Laws made by their 7. several Soveraigns of which confuss'd number the Confessor cull'd out the best and call'd them after his own name St. Edward so did also the other Saxon and Danes Kings their own after theirs as you see in Lambert's Book of Laws ‖ Omne malum ab aquilone * pag. 21. ‖ Tryal p. 23. §. 2. †Magn. Chart. 9. H. 3. know ye that we of our mere will have given c. Chart. Forest. 9. H. 3. begins also with a we will Stat. Hiber 14. H. 3. only a mere Order of the King to the Son of Maurice his Judge there the words we command you Witness my self Note that was even concerning Free-hold and a Case of Co-parcenary The Stat. Bisex 21. H. 3. tho concerning pleading and Common Law but an Order of the King to his Judges for the words are we ordain and Command you Stat. Assiza 51. H. 3. The King to whom all these shall come greeting de scacc the King Commandeth †31. Hen. 8. c. 8. Stat. Mert. 6. The King our Lord providing hath made these Acts 2d Inst. p. 101. Westm. 1. 3. Ed. 1. 1. The King willeth and commandeth Stat. Gavelet even of altering the writ which they say can't be done but in Parliament Enacted by the King and his Justices 10. E. 2. Stat. E. 3. several say we will we ordain so also several R. 2. H. 8 * Coke 4. Inst. c. 1. Parl. †34. H. 8. c. 25. ‖ 1. Ed. 4. c. 12. Plato Rediv That the form 1. H. 4. H. 5. H. 6. Ed. 4. 〈◊〉 3. Then begins the other 1. H. 7. H. 8. Ed. 6. Q. Mar. Q. El. Jac. 1. Wil. 〈◊〉 Power of Parliam Exact Abridgem Fol. 117. p. 1. H. 3. Keeble Stat. 1. El. C. 3. and does not their own Oracle tell them so L. Coke 4 Inst. C. 1. Parliam H. 6. 4. Inst. Stat. de Bigamis concordatum per Justiciarios 2. Inst ibid. Stat. West 2. 13. Ed. 1. Dominus Rex in Parlia mento suo Statuta edidit 2. Inst. 331. Stat. 〈◊〉 agatis 13. Ed. 1. begius Rex talibus Judicibus Salutem and tho some would not have it an Act of Parliament my Lord Coke says 't is prov'd so by the Books and 〈◊〉 Acts 2. Iust. page 487. 〈◊〉 Jac. 1. C. 〈◊〉 6. Car. p. 1. C. 19. 12. Car. 2. C. 25. 〈◊〉 2. 13. Car. 〈◊〉 13 14. Car. 2. C. 10. 19. Car. 2. 8. 25. Car. 2. C. 1. 25. Car. C. 9. Buchanan and his Disciples in Scotland maintain'd the same Doctrine of the King 's Co-ordinacy and therefore their Acts in the Rebellion too ran in the Name of the three States But when the King was returned to his 〈◊〉 and they to their Obedience the old form was retrieved The King with advice and consent of Car. 2d Speech to the late Oxford Parliam Petyt's Right of the Commons asserted from his Cleri populi 〈◊〉 4. Inst. Tryal pag. 24. A Sophism Logician call the Petitio principi Page * Vid. Paper at his Execution He has too that Old Seditious Aphorism us'd by Junius Brutus all the rest of the Republicans Singulis 〈◊〉 Tryal p. 23. tho in the next paragraph he is no more than any of his Subjects ‖ This Gentleman seems only to have translated that Authors own words non
several Kings and particular Princes The Druids as may be gathered out of Caesars Commentaries had in those Ignorant days all the Learning and the Law But too little alass to let us know whether their Princes were absolute Monarchs or limited Hereditary or Elective though 't is to be suspected they were both unconfined in their power as well as succeeded by their blood those poor Embryo's of Knowledg the very primitive Priests of Barbarous Heathens that in their highest felicity were no happier than the first asserters of the Gospel under Misery and Persecution their reverend Hermitages but the Woods the Dens and Caves of the Earth were far sure from disputing the right of Sovereignty when only capacitated to obey far from transmitting to us the frame of their Monarchy unless they had known the Egyptian learning of writing on the Barks of Trees and made their Libraries of the Groves in which they dwelt The Princes and Monarchs of their Times were wont to frequent those pious places for Worship and Adoration and had a Veneration too without doubt for those reverend Bards that sacrificed but were far I believe from subjecting their Regal Authority to that Divinely Pagan tho' then the sacred Jurisdiction tho' 't is reported that upon Caesar's invading them the very power of Life and Death and the Punishment for all manner of offences was in their sacred Breast and such as would not stand to their award were forbidden their Sacrifices which Interdiction then was the same I believe in effect with the modern power of our Church to Excommunicate but besides another reason and the best too why we have nothing delivered from those sacred Oracles of Religion and Law why the History of those times is still uncertain and was never transmitted is because they were expressly forbidden to transfer any thing to Posterity or to commit it to Books and Letters tho somewhat of that sort of Communicating must be supposed by that Inhibition to have been Imparted to them from the Egyptians Greeks Romans those Eastern Climes through which Learning and Letters had their first Progress But whether their Ignorance or such a prohibition were the Causes why nothing descends to us of the Government of our old Britains 't is granted by all and by this Author himself that it was Monarchical that Kings Reigned here ab origine if not Jure divino Though I look on their Antiquity no small Argument of their Divine Right and for the probability of their Haereditary Succession which I insinuated above can I confess since we are so much in the dark be only guessed by the light of Reason and that I shall make to warrant the Conclusion from the present Practise and Constitution of all barbarous Nations where the next of blood still mounts the Throne unless interrupted by Rebellion and that 's but the best Argument of our Author for the Power of his Parliaments and if only for this certain Reason we have more Authority to conclude it was then Haereditary then he only from the uncertainty of the Story has to conclude it otherwise In the next place I see no reason why his Sentiments should determine other Peoples thoughts and why we should not think that the following Heptarchy of the Saxons tho they had their seven Kings yet still might agree in one rule of Succession nay tho their Laws were so different too as he would insinuate which is not absolutely necessary to suspect neither for they being all one Nation and then but just called from their home by our British King Vortiger for his assistance may probably be supposed to have retained for the Main the general Rules and Laws of their own Countrey tho when divided into those seven Kingdoms they might also make a sort of private by-Laws according to the different Emergences of particular affairs that occurred in their several Governments Can he prove that the Succession of the Saxons in their own Countrey was not Hereditary when they inhabited in their small Dukedom of Holstein and that consequently they retained the same sort of Election in their new acquired Government here that they left in their own at home this he does not undertake to suggest because not able to prove there having been a probable Monarchy all along Hereditary if Paternal Right was wont to descend so for that is proved by most learned Pens and these Saxons are believed to have been the relict of the race of Cimbrians that inhabited that Chersonese so called from its Inhabitants of whom Gomer the Son of Japhet was the Original Father or Prince But what ever was their Government before he allows them to have set up seven Monarchies here only can't think they agreed in one Rule of Succession because governed by different Laws which tho granted is so ridiculous an Infinuation that greater Differences atpresent between greater Kingdoms and Nations far more remote in Place far more different in Religion contradicts the Suggestion who for the most part now over the whole World agree in an Hereditary Succession to the Crown and the Argument would have been as strong and as apparently foolish if he design'd it for a Specimen of his folly that since France and Spain Sweeden and Denmark are govern'd by different Laws we can't imagin them to have one sort of Succession Which very Rebound of his own Pen wounds his Cause more than any direct stroak of his Adversaries for since we see those more different more distant Nations agree in one Rule 't is sure a Logical Inference a Majori that those that were less different might And for the Changes and Consusions of those Times which he urges as an Argument of their uncertain Succession that is in effect his very Alpha and Omega and his praefatory Suggestion only proved through his whole History that in times of Confusions and Rebellions Succession is uncertain and so is all Property and Common Right all meum and tuum all that the Law of God or Man can make his own But as obscure as he makes our Succession before the Romans came 't is not so dark and unintelligible but that we may gather light enough from it to have been Hereditary We won't rely on the Fable of Brute and the Catalogue of near 68 Kings that are said to have Reigned Successively here before the coming of the Romans yet allowing it an entire Fable we may draw from it this Moral at least that a Fabulous Tradition sometimes has somewhat of reality for its ground as the patching up a Centaure a Chymera with a thought results from several Objects that are simply real abstracting from the compounded Fiction And tho we might not have 68 Kings successive before the Roman Conquest yet that there were several appears and he owns and I conclude Hereditary from the common rule in all Barbarous Nations when ever discovered in which the further back we run in the History of the Old World the more we are confirmed
Countenance this Usurpation for he was soon made sensible that a Crown seldom sits easie on that Head where it has so little Right to sit and indeed before it could be well setled his Lords conspired against him at Westminster set up Maudlin the Counterfeit send to the King of France for assistance Glendour stirrs up the Welsh to rebel the Nobility fell from him drew up the following Articles against himself viz. for having Articl'd himself against his Sovereign for having falsified his Oath in medling with the Kingdom and the Crown for taking Arms against his King Imprisoning Murdering Him that he unjustly kept the Crown from the Earl of March to whom of Right it belonged and vowed the Restoration of Him and His Destruction and our Author now shall know these too are Articles as well deserving to be read and one thing more that deserves as much Observation that this his good Peoples Election was the prime Principal Cause of losing of Millions of Lives and an Ocean of Blood here entred that Line of Lancaster that had almost left the Nation Childless the Nobility and Gentry that escap'd the Sword were still by the prevailing Party chopt off or gibbited and in the space of about thirty year and somewhat upwards they dreined more Blood in England then e're was spent in the Conquest of France or would have been spilt had it been again attempted and that too never have been lost by their Henry the Sixth had it not been for an altered Succession and an injured Heir and the Bloody Consequences of a debarr'd Right And now at last he is forc't to allow an instance of a Prince that succeeded without the least shadow of Election and that in Henry the Fifth to whom himself owns they swore Allegiance without staying for his being declared we are obliged to him for this fair Concession but this Kindness is only because he finds it as clear as a Postulatum in the Mathematicks beyond his own Impudence to contradict but however he must malitiously observe that it was a thing strange and without President and why so because his Polidore tells him such an extraordinary Kindness was never shown to any King before t is strange that his Italian should understand more of our own Government than all our own English Authors 't is no wonder sure if he that was a Stranger to our Affairs should Write as strangely of it and make our Mighty Monarchs of Britain no more then some petty Prince of his own Italy and as Elective as their Duke of Venice But this perverse Gentleman shall know it was not without President and that by several Instances And first Richard the First presently on his Fathers Death without staying for their suffrages seised on his Father's Treasure was girt with the Sword of the Dutchy of Normandy took fealty both of Clergy and Lay and exercised all the Authority that Sovereign power cou'd allow before he came to be recogniz'd by their Suffrages or to his Coronation 2. Hoveden's Account that he gives of King John's coming to the Crown which as some Writers say is the extant says they swore Fealty to him when he was out of England without mentioning any thing of Preceding Election and he had his better Title his Brothers Army then in the field by which he cou'd have made himself soon their King had they not been so ready to receive him 3. Upon the Death of Henry the 3d. the States Assembled at the New-Temple and proclaimed his Son Edward King when they knew not whether he was living or dead swear Fealty to him and cause a New-Seal to be made Here sure are some presidents of Allegiance before their Election unless he 'll make Declaring or Proclaiming to be so and then in Gods Name in that sense let them as he contends for be Elected for I think all will allow they are proclaim'd But suppose on the death of a Predecessor there was no convention of any of the Nobility or Commonalty for Parliaments they then can have no Existence when the Breath is gone that gave them Being as all other Communitys are de facto dissolv'd If I say there were none met to Declare or Proclaim his Succes must the common Maxim be contradicted and the King dye too for want of their Popular Breath to give him Life or do our Laws admit that this interval between his Predecessors expiration and the proclaiming or crowning his Successor shall be call'd an Interregnum they know the Constitutions of our Government admit no more of this than an Exclusion They know that immediately by Descent King James was declar'd to be completely and absolutely King and that by all the Judges of the Kingdom I know the Kings Successor is always immediately proclaim'd upon his death and that perhaps is more for the proceedings of judicial Processes and that Writs may presently run in his name But were such a Proclamation obstructed I am satisfi'd he commenc'd an absolute King upon the very Minute of his Predecessors Expiration and if the Law Maxim won't allow an Haeres viventis there can be no Heir at all if he begin not to be so presently upon his Predecessors Death and for an Evidence of Fact as well as Reason this very King of whom we now treat catcht at the Crown while his Father was catching at his last breath seised it as his own as being his Right assoon as the gasping Monarch did but seem dead who only reviv'd to let him know how little that Right was by which he claim'd and so sealed the wrong he had done with his last breath the Successor declaring his own Sword should maintain what his Fathers had got Immediately upon this Henry the Fifths Death his Son Henry the Sixth succeeded This Author himself can talk of nothing of Election here neither but that he succeeded as his Fathers Heir but to make the power of Parliament prevail in this Kings Reign he is forc't to fly to a President that prevents any other Confutation of his whole History for whereas he has contended all alone for a Parliamentary priviledge for altering the Succession here he has brought upon the Stage one that condemns it self for doing so here we find a Duke of York too by the power as this Gentleman would have it of a Parliament but rather a perfect Vsurpation upon the Crown for a long time excluded from his Birthright and to make way for one of their Usurpers that was a Monmouth too That Exclusion was begun but with a Rebellion and it ended in as much Blood is our having been wretchedly miserable an Argument for our tempting the Almighty to make us once more so shall we Plot against Heaven for our Destruction and defie Fate to make us happy 't is matter of Astonishment to find the very Presidents of our Nations ruin to be preferr'd as expedients for its Preservation unless they think a Prince whose Just
the Question is what was Law since H. 7. time and he Labours to Confute it with what was said some three years before and to Bassle the Resolution of all the Judges of the Kingdom with the Suffrages of the Parliament that even of their own Laws have no right to Judge much less by any Preceding determinations of their house to Bind all the Succeeding Judges of the Realm let him first prove a even Vsurper's Parliaments opinion Law and then proceed to refute the resolutions of the Judges of a Lawful King In short nothing can be Law there but what is Enacted if Clarence his Attainder did not take away the Discent the resolution of the Judges since is certainly the more just if it did then yet still their opinion never the less Justifiable now for the opinion of that Parliament neither was or could be made Law for if they would have made it an Act it must have been done before Richard was in the Throne and then void for want of Royal Assent if after they had Crown'd their Usurper then sure too late to be enacted unless they would have made the Tyrant his own Judge And himself to have Attainted the second Pair of Nephews as well as he Butcher'd the First But as fearless as he says the Monster was from the pretensions of the D. of Clarence his Children whose Minority might well make the poor Infants not very formidable yet he did not think the Duke himself so Barr'd with his Attainder but that he might still have been a Bar against his Horrid Usurpation that truly sent the poor Prince to the Tower and got the Brother of the Monstrous Assassin to be suffocated in the Malmsey Butt The discent to Henry the 8 was both by Blood and Entail and so beyond contradiction and with their own concession Hereditary but where that objection to the Birth-right fails them there to be sure some subsequent Act of that Kings Reign shall be sifted and made to Countenance their suggested falsehoods tho the Succession of the Prince himself contradicts it who had all the Consolidated Titles in him that had been so long disputed all that his Mothers Blood and his Fathers Arms and the Law could Invest him with but because his Exorbitant proceedings his Arbitrary power and predominancy which themselves condemn'd him for over Parliaments awd them into an altering the Succession as often as he was pleas'd to Change his bed or chop off a Wife therefore must we conclude Parliaments to have a Power to do that by Right which against all right perhaps they were compell'd to do why does he not prove it a president for Polygamy and Murder because that furious Prince still sacrificed Women to his Lust and Men to his Anger But yet allowing them such a Power of medling with the Succession which certainly does not follow from their having some time Vsurp't it or been put upon that Usurpation by their very Prince for 't is against reason to make that a right only because they can plead Prescription for doing a wrong but here those several alterations were all caus'd to be made for the securing of a Lineal Legitimate and lawful Succesior to the Throne for as a Reverend Author says the King Lamented that he should leave the Kingdom toa Woman whose Birth was questionable and he willing to settle the Kingdom on his LAWFUL Issue and for this reason he got the 25th to pass against his Daughter Mary And the very Preamble of the Act tells us that it was for the Surety of Title and Succession and Lawful Inheritance Three years are scarce past till the 28 of his Reign repeals almost all that the 25 had Enacted their Protestant Queen Elizabeth made as well as the Popish Mary plain Bastard and tho our prejudic'd Author may make the same matter right and wrong as he stands affected he must think this his powerful Parliament dealt a little hard with the latter whose Mother was never divorc't but from her Life and she pact off for a spurious Off-Spring only upon the pretended suggestions of Anne Boleyn's unknown impediments confess 't sine to Canterbury But whatever they were the Canons of the Church tho born before Marriage and since after the very Laws of the Land did make her Legitimate But however this greater piece of Injustice to this good Protestant Queen which they 'l say now proceeded from the Kings putting the Parliament upon too much Power was palliated all along with the pretence of providing a Legitimate Lawful Successor and so the clear Reverse and Contradiction of the proceedings of our late Patriots to whose Privileges those sort of presidents were apply'd for those Parliamentary Powers secluded but Bastards to make room for Heirs Lawful and Legitimate with us an Issue truly Legitimate should have been EXCLUDED for the setting up of a SPURIOUS ONE But then at last comes the 35th of his Reign and that like a Gunpowder Plot in the Cellars blows up all the former foundations of the whole House both the two former Stat. for Disabling Illegitimating are null voy'd repeal'd the LADY MARY Sister Elizabeth in those seven years suffered my Lord Bacons transmutation of Bodys and were turned all into new matter and what was Spurious Illegitimate and in Capable with the single Charm of be it enacted was become truly Lawful Lineal Heir of the Crown and Capacitated to succeed in an HEREDITARY DISCENT and so far from Invading the Prerogative so full of giving were the bountiful Parliaments of those times that they Impower their too Powerful Prince to dispose of his Crown by Letters Pattents or an Arbitrary Testamentary disposition an Oblation I think his present Majesty might esteem too great to be accepted who knows his Successor to be the Crown 's Heir scarce his own much less the PARLIAMENTS Edward the Sixth upon his Fathers death succeeded an Heir Lineal Legal and Testamentary yet the first thing this Author observes upon him is the greatest falsehood viz. That he took upon him a power what surely no King ever had to dispose of his Crown by Will When in the very Preceeding president his own Father by his Will manifested he had the Power and left it him by his last But his he 'll say was a Power given him by Parliament But that is not so plain neither both from the Preamble and the purport of both the dissonant Acts of 28 and 35 for the designs of both were only for the settling the Succession and then upon supposition of the failure of issue from those upon whom it was setled they fairly leave it to his last Will or his Letters Pattents but supposing this Liberty had not been allow'd can he imagin that a King that had got them to alter the succession at his pleasure in his Life time would not upon the failure of the Limited Heirs have dispos'd of it by Will at his death but that none but this Edward of
our Kings took this power upon him is utterly false from these several instances First the very first King of his name in the Saxon succession left it so to his Son to succeed And Athelstan whom above this Gentleman recommended to the City of London for a Mon. and Illegitimate against the sense and silence of all Historians was declar'd King by the Command and last Will of his Father Edward the elder in the Reign of the Danes Canutus did the same bequeath'd Norway to Swain his eldest and England to his youngest Son and for the Norman Succession the very first King and who had the most right to do so from the Sword left to Rufus the right but of an Heir Testamentary tho followed by his Son Henry the first And Richard that had less reason so to do for his Daughter Maud by the Law of the Land would have been his Heir without the Legacy and so would to the latter his Nephew Arthur and tho both were by Rebellion rejected yet still sure their right remain'd But for this Edward the 6th disposing it by Will it was not only against the Customary Discent of the Realm in a right blood but of an Express Entail in several Acts of Parliaments I am so far of this Authors opinion that I believe it was no way warrantable but never the sooner for his Parliaments settlement had it not been at last upon the right Heirs for tho those Princes of ours heretofore took upon them to leave Successors by Will they still nominated those that by Blood were to succeed without such a Nomination so that the bequest was more matter of Form then Adoption only to let the Subjects know whom they look't upon to have the right of Succession rather than to superadd any thing of more right and that 's the reason or ought to be that we properly call the next in Blood the Kings Successor but the Crowns Heir 'T is a little prodigious Paradox to me that it must be such a receiv'd Maxim that a Parliament can do no wrong and that in plain Terms they tell us it can do any thing mollifying it only with an Exception that they can't make a Man a Woman yet that they bid pretty fair for too in these Presidents of Harry the 8th when they made Bastard Females of those that were Legitimate and then Legitimis'd again the same Bastards and 't is as mighty a Miracle to men unprejudic'd that our Parliament Patriots should contend for the disordering the Succession of the Crown who still labour for the Lineal Discent of their own Common Inheritance 〈◊〉 I will appeal to the breast of the most 〈◊〉 contender for this Power whether an Act made for the disabling one of their own Sons or design'd Successors would not by themselves be look't on as 〈◊〉 if not utterly defeasible and then 〈◊〉 sure prodigiously strange where so many Learned Heads tell us of a sort of 〈◊〉 from a power Divine where the 〈◊〉 Custom of the Kingdom has 〈◊〉 a constant course of Lineal Discent 〈◊〉 as has been shown a perfect 〈◊〉 interven'd And where themselves 〈◊〉 this sort of Succession has 〈◊〉 sometimes by Statute entail'd yet 〈◊〉 they should think that but Justice 〈◊〉 their Kings Successor which they 〈◊〉 resent as an Injury to their own 〈◊〉 they may vouch for it the common 〈◊〉 of Recoveries from a right Heir with too Cunning sort of vouching and 〈◊〉 too much practis'd but I am sure no way agrees with the Laws of Forraign Nations and has been a little 〈◊〉 by some learned Heads in our own 〈◊〉 some that have brought it into 〈◊〉 seem to have rais'd a Devil not soon to be put down in their Dialogue but however this Objection is 〈◊〉 analagous nothing of a Parallel 〈◊〉 for here is a Complication of both 〈◊〉 Concern'd and concluded upon 〈◊〉 both their Consents and where shall 〈◊〉 find the perfect Proprietor of 〈◊〉 and Scepters and when God has told us 〈◊〉 that by him they Reign that bear 〈◊〉 and they 'l hardly vouch the 〈◊〉 for a piece of Injustice But allowing for once a meer Human Constitution 〈◊〉 in their bandied Authority of Saint 〈◊〉 an Ordinance of Man and the 〈◊〉 Consent with his Parliaments to 〈◊〉 the Point yet still the great 〈◊〉 would call for a little longer 〈◊〉 than a Common Recovery 〈◊〉 not presently to cut off the right of Heir to three Kingdoms only 〈◊〉 commonly done at Westminster of 〈◊〉 to so many Cottages and besides 〈◊〉 that has been practis'd so long and 〈◊〉 the test of Time and this their 〈◊〉 would have been the first President And at last what has silenc'd their Advocates for ever the non-concurrence of the King and his Lords whose consent was by themselves suppos'd to be necessary because requir'd and will like those recognitions of some of our former Parliaments for an Hereditary Succession perpetuate that right in spight of the Laws of others that were made for altering it and should the Commons ever get such a Bill to pass 't is enough to say 't was once rejected by the Peers unless they can prove that the Question was put again Whether the lower House should take advice of the Lords in the Legislative power and that 't was Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be abolish't and Order'd that an Act be brought in for that purpose Queen Mary succeeds her Brother Edward with all the Right of Blood with all the Law of God and Man too on her side for whatever the Parliament pretended they could never 〈◊〉 that which was begotten in Matrimony celebrated according to the Laws of the Church and the Realm for whatsoever defect there was found subsequent to the Consummation of the Marriage in common reason and equity ought not to have extended to the making that Issue spurious which had all the requisites to the making it truly Legitimate 〈◊〉 perhaps the subsequent discoveries 〈◊〉 be sufficient to cause a Divorce and in the too Common Case of Adultery 't would be severe far from Equity to make Bastards of all that were born before the Conviction of the Fact but it may be reply`d to this That these were such Impediments as related to the Contract ab Juitio and where that 's 〈◊〉 there the Children begotten after 〈◊〉 be suppos'd Lawful Heirs when the Contract it self is against Law but tho 〈◊〉 I shall look upon that as a rigorous resolution when I think Innocents and Infants ought to be more favour'd especially when there is a Maxim in the Law even in the like Cases that the fact may be valid tho the doing of it can't be justifi'd and besides there being a Rule that obtains amongst Civilians That Marriage contracted without any preconceiv'd Impediment tho it after 〈◊〉 to be dissolv'd as unlawful yet 〈◊〉 begotten in such a state are reputed truly Legitimate and tho Appeals
to 〈◊〉 were then Punishable with a Premunire yet the Civil Law then obtain'd much more than it does now that Stat. being very young as well as the Reformation and by the Laws of the Church long before it they were such Latitudinarians in this point that the subsequent Marriage would Legitimate those that were born before the Contract but that I confess was rejected here in 20 Harry the 3d's time because contrary to the common Laws of the Realm which the Parliament resolutely declar'd they would not change But what ever power they had of Nullifying this and making Mary spurious 't is certain another and latter Act made her as much Legitimate by making her Hereditary insomuch that what ever Edward her Brother was prevail'd upon a young Prince and a dying one whose forward Understanding might be well disorder'd with an approaching Death and an untimely end and which might be easily prevail'd upon in such Circumstances by the Cruel sollicitations of the defigning Northumberland whose Son had but just Married Suffolk's Daughter the designed Queen yet 〈◊〉 then 〈◊〉 the truly Loyal Bishop and as true a Protestant of which his 〈◊〉 to the right of the Crown was the best testimony tho now 't is made but a preposterous Emphatical expression of that Religion to invade it that worthy Prelate tho he suffer'd in the Succeeding flames of a real Persecution when demanded by these State Projectors his sense of the setting up of this Testamentary Queen declar'd it was no way agreeable to Equity to disinherit the two Sisters and that the Succession could not be Lawfully alter'd upon any pretence tho Religion then too was the very thing pretended the Bishop of Hereford that was as good a Protestant observes upon the Suffolk men siding with Queen Mary tho they knew she was for setting up of Popery says that our English are in their respects to their Prince so Loyally Constant that no regard no pretext of Religion can extenuate their Affections to their Prince and Lawful Soveraign And he writ it in a Time when the most malitious can't object it was to flatter a suspected Successor and when most of the Prelates themselves were so far from Rome that there was scarce an Arminian Upon the death of her Sister Doctor Health Arch-Bishop of Canterbury presently declar'd Queen Elizabeth's right to the Parliament then sitting who did not put it to the Vote as our Republican would insinuate they use to do but however did as much as was usual acknowledg'd that she was right Lawful Inheritor and presently she was proclaimed in Westminster-hall and in the next vote they do declare moreover in full Assembly Lords and Commons That this their Queen Elizabeth is their Lawful Soveraign by the Laws of God and so not only in relation to 35 H. 8. by the Statutes of the Realm and the Blood-Royal and in this open and generous Recognition they must Implicitly disclaim all power of Election or give themselves the Lye and so must our Impostor put upon them a falsehood if here his Parliamentary Choice must pass for a Truth but where matter fails them before and he can't prove his Election antecedent to the Monarchs right then as in some other places and here at present he can make the Prince tho own'd Hereditary by some subsequent Act of his own to make himself Elective and for this he cites you the 13 of this Queen the purport of which is to disable any one even after her Death to inherit the Crown that shall pretend to it during her Life But does not every one know that this was Enacted as all the fore-mention'd irregular Acts of her Father with her own seeking and desire and the bringing this for a president for a Parliamentary Power is just as pertinent as that of palliating the Treason of their late Covenant with the Title and Pretence of an Association made in her Time too with her own Consent and for the same purpose that this Act was past both being contriv'd in opposition to the pretences of the Queen of Scots and must the only thing that has Blacken'd her clear Integrity with Injustice and Blemish't her Virgin Innocency with Blood be brought upon the Stage for an Imitation to our State and because the Grand-mother suffer'd with a Bill of EXCLVSION and an AXE and the Father with the same Fate must the Son too that has experienc'd exile dangers and all but death from this power of Parliament Succeed only in their Misfortune and his Blood be made Hereditary only in being Split All that he says of King James is but what makes against him and what he might have said of all the rest that they made a Recognition of his right upon his coming to the Crown and truly such an one as must silenc'd all such 〈◊〉 for they acknowledg him Lineal Lawful Liege Lord by the Laws of God and Man this may suffice for my sense of his History and all honest hearts will concur with my Sentiments his subsequent observations are but the same with the Principles of his ASSOCIATES that follow where I shall reflect upon them together as they are combin'd And here only give him an omitted Instance as pertinent as the Presidents he has propos'd to bring down his Narrative to the Times Charles the first notwithstanding his proximity of Blood his possession of the Crown and his pretended right from God 〈◊〉 the Parliament imprison'd him MVRDERED him and put the Power in the People And now what can any Rational Soul living infer even from this Authors own Observations but that those Parliaments which he brings us here for Presidents both for disallowing the Discent of the Crown to purge the Defects of the Prince upon whom it descends as also those that concern'd themselves in altering the Lineal Discent it self are so far from warranting the same Practises and proceedings that they stand upon Record are Chronicl'd in History register'd in their own Journals declar'd by Special Acts REBELS and TRAYTORS and then no wonder if the poor People are encourag'd to Rebel when the very Presidents of TREASON shall be publish't as a Parliamentary Practise the deluded filly Souls don't so soon consider that if every Seditious Senate's determination shall decide too the Descent of the Crown that this consequence which even themselves may blush to own must as inevitably follow that from the Vnion of the Seven under Egbert to our present Soveraign the first Born Heir to our Three Vnited Kingdoms there never was or could ever be a REBELLION or ever one USURPER in the whole Catalogue of Kings Henry of Bullingbrook by this unreasonable sort of supposition had as much right to the Crown as that Unfortunate Richard from whom it was rent and torn Edward the Third but a Son Intitl'd to the wearing it before his Father had done with it himself and that Butcher of his Brothers Babes and the
State to which after so long and preliminary Impertinence that half the piece is made a Preface the Courteous Traveller is at last arriv'd And first he begins with their old Factious assertion that the Soveraign power of England is in King Lords and Commons making his Majesty but one of their three States we all know when this pernicious principle was first set a foot what it terminated in BLOOD and that in the Destruction of the best of Governments with the best of Kings we quickly saw when once they had made their Prince Co-ordinate they soon set up their own Supremacy and then assoon made him none at all Did this prophetick Daemon foresee from his Astrological Judgments that his House of Commons were drawing another Scheam of Rebellion and that they had prepar'd a draught of a second Covenant not only for making our King Co-ordinate but Leveling the Monarchy with the Ground yet'twas convincing enough to me before that the broaching of the very same principles did as really design the same subversion of the State this Plot might as well have been seen in 80. when this Author and as great Incendiaries appear'd in publick and so popular and well might a late House of Commons animadvert on our Judges for suppressing such Seditious Libels which were so Zealously kind and impudently bold as to set up their Supremacy it had been ingratitude not to stand by those Villains that for their sakes had forfeited their Necks This very same Principle of the Subjects Soveraignty was Printed and publish't in 43. preparatory for the Covenant which the Commons had then call'd for out of Scotland and up rises this Ghost again in 81. as if even then it had heard for Spirits are very Intelligent of an Association talk't off in Parliament but I 'll tell him in short why the Soveraign Power of England is not in King Lords and Commons because King Lords and Commons are not all Soveraigns may not our Monarchy be call'd Mixt in Opposition to its being Absolute and Tyrannical without making it a meer Hotch-potch that if our King will have any thing of his right of a Soveraign power he must put it in Medley with that of his Subject as our Sisters are oblig'd in Co-parcenary But tho he take his Treasonable Maxim for Reason and Truth without shewing the least Law or Reason I shall shew him from all of them that it is both Irrational Illegal and a Lye First 'T is against Reason to Imagin there can be three such Powers Co-ordinate to make up one Soveraignty and that our King can at the same time pass for a Monarch for Soveraignty is inseparable from a King and that 's the Reason without doubt we promiscuously call him our King or Soveraign and if our Lords and Commons will assume it they may ee'n take the Crown too we saw how the participation of a Soveraign power tho it was but in a shadow and that by him that had a better pretence for the Soveraignty then all the Common Subjects can have by being the Crowns Heir was like to have unhinged the very Monarchy it self in the Reign of Henry the Second and rais'd such Commotions in the State till it was almost overturn'd And I am sure we have found and felt that this Co-ordinacy of their three States terminated at last like the participation of that Co-parcenary Prince into an insolent demanding of the whole and what they had made but half the Kings they soon made all the People's until the Government was quite run of the hooks and the Nation engaged in an unhappy War and a down-right Rebellion Does not the very Etymon of Monarchy it self express the sole Soveraignty of that Government they would make so preposterously Mixt and even Archon alone which was the next Titular Appellation the Loyal Athenians gave to the Son and Successor of their Matchless Codrus only because they thought that no Succeeding Prince could deserve the Title of Tyrannus which they made to terminate with him only because they presum'd his goodness 〈◊〉 imitation Tyrant then was not apply'd as some of our Inveterate Traytors have done it since in it's Corrupted sense tho to the most merciful King for a Tarquin or Caligula yet even this word Archon without addition of Sole that Moròs that has since succeeded to make it Monarch was then an Absolute Government of one amongst the Athenians and continued so in the same Family for a long Season till at last by popular encroachments it was made Annual and this Contender for this Co-ordinate power of the People has expos'd his Damnable designs so plainly to his Disputants that his own Conscience and Soul up-brai'd him for the Villany and makes his Venetian interrupt him for making an English Monarch but a Duke of Venice tho the Doctor the Pontaeus of the people that sucks up all the Poyson of Rebellion like that of Toads only for the Tryal of his Skill and then thinks to cheat the Devil with an Antidote He politickly opines however that he has made him too Absolute if ever there were a medley of more Malitious Villains 〈◊〉 to Libel a Government I 'll forfeit my Neck too it as well as they Heaven and Hell must be reconcil'd which without a Recantation will be so for their Confusion before these their Contradictory defamations can be made consistent But in this the Politick Rebels agree to secure an Odium upon our Monarchy in both extreams and making the most opposite Objections serve for one and the same purpose it 's absoluteness and Tyranny must make it all Bug-bear formidable frightful at the same time that their holding the Reins shall render it all Hobby-Horse Ridiculous and Contemptible Secondly I 'll shew that this their confounded principle of perfect Confusion is not only against the Fundamental Law of the Land but against the sense of every Law that ever was made in it Every preamble of an Act and that ofevery Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty by and with the CONSENT of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in the present Parliament Assembled And then let any sober person Judge where lies the Soveraignty would it be suffer'd to be thus exprest were they not satisfy'd they were not all Soveraigns or if they were ought it not according to this Rebel and Republican run We the King Lords and Commons Enact but I 'll let him know how and what the Libertine would again have that Enacting part of an Act of Parliament to be tho the Politick Knave fear'd it was too soon yet to declare plainly for an Usurpation viz. Be it Enacted and ordained by his Highness the Lord Protector Or the Parliament of England having had good Experience of the Affection of the people to this present Government by their ready Assistance in the defence thereof against Charles Stewart Son of the Lale Tyrant and
they think fit And also not to dissolve them till all their Petitions were answered that is till they are willing to be gone But then will I defie the Gentleman to shew me the difference between this their desired Parliament and a Perpetual sitting do not these industrious Endeavours for such a perpetuity of them plainly tell us 't is that 's the only thing they want and that they are taught experimentally that that alone run the three Kingdoms into absolute Rebellion and ruined the best of Kings and can as certainly compass the Destruction of the present But I 'll tell the lump of Contradiction first the words of our greatest Lawyer and then his own Cooke says none can begin continue or dissolve a Parliament but by the Kings Authority Himself says that which is undoubtedly the Kings Right is to call and dissolve Parliaments 'T is impertinent to labour to contradict that which he here so plainly confutes himself the Statesman being so big with his Treasonable Notions so full of his Faction that his Memory fails him makes him forget his own Maxims and makes his subsequent Pages wrangle with the Concessions of those that went before His next Observation is a perfect Comment upon his Text that had in it implicit Treason before he tells us in Justification of the Barons Wars which all our Historians represent as a perfect Rebellion That the Peers were fain to use their Power and can he tell me by what Law Subjects are impowred to Rebel He calls it arming of their Vassals for the defence of the Government That Bill by which they would have associated of late that I confess had it past into Act would have made Rebellion Statutable And they themselves must indeed have had the Sovereign power when they had gotten their Sovereign to suffer himself to be sworn out of his Supremacy they might well have armed their Vassals then when they had got his Majesties leave to commence Rebels and Traytors for the Protection of his Person and the Preservation of his Crown and Dignity But these humble Boons were no more 〈◊〉 that Bill must have begged and these kind Concessions no more than was expected from the Grant of a King so Gracious a Petition that might well have been answered like that of Bathsheba's by bidding them ask the Kingdom also The Barons standing in open defiance to the Laws tho they stood up too so much for them He calls the Peers keeping their Greatness and this is the Sovereign Power the Rebel would have them again set up for to be great in their Arms as well as Quality and demand with the Sword again the Prerogative of their Kings and the grant of the Regalia which in their preposterous Appellations was abused with the pretence of priviledge and right and which the force of the Field can soon make of the greatest 〈◊〉 and wrong But in the very next Page 't is expounded clearly what has may and must be done in such Conjunctions that is to your Arms. He tells us after they had obtained the framing of their Charters and I think they were as much as the most condescending Monarchs could grant or the most mutinous malecontents require Then arose another grievance 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 for This was the Intermission of Parliaments which could not be called but by the Prince and he not doing it they ceast for some years to be Assembled if this had not been speedily remedied The provoking Rebel for certainly he is as much so that Animates a Rebellion as he that is actually engaged in it and is by Law so declared tells us the Barons must have put on their Armour again and the brisk Assertors of their Rights not have acquiesc'd in this Omission that ruined the Foundations of the Government After all the kind Concessions of the Prince the putting him upon that which was the taking away of the very remains of Royalty puts me in mind of one of our late Expressions of a popular Representative that could declare in open Assembly as attested by some of the very Members of it that tho this their Bill of Exclusion were past which was more we see than the most mildest Monarch could grant or even our House of Peers sure the better part of our Nation could in Modesty require yet still there was more work to be done and a Reformation to be made in the Church as well as the State The Patriot was prepared to lanch out in such kind of Extravagancies and told the truth of the Plot before his time had not calmer Heads interposed and cool'd his hot one into common Sense several of the Speeches spoken in Parliament for which its Publisher deserves to be Pillor'd if not Authentic and True and brought before them on his Knees at least for his Presumption if they are It being here as Criminal to Print Truths at all times without an Imprimatur as 't is to tell it without leave even inseveral of those Speeches Publisht in that Paper I reflected on in the beginning where the Pedantick Author has exposed me in the Tail of his History that lookt like the Narrative of a Rump There are as bold Expressions of as dangerous Designs for at the end of one of their Harangues the beginning of which is only marked with R.M. and its Author may be loth to let any more Letters of his Name to be known you have these following Lines If at the same time we endeavour to secure our selves against Popery we do not also do something to prevent Arbitrary Power it will be to little purpose I think nothing can prevent that better than frequent Parliaments and therefore I humbly move that a Bill for securing frequent Parliaments be taken into Consideration can any thing be more Expressive than that the Bill so much clamour'd for was only the burden of the Song and that the Ballad it self must have been all to the Tune of 41. when Arbitrary Power never ceased its Cry till the Parliament was made Frequent its Frequency never sufficient till standing and perpetual which proyed too as dangerous as a standing Army never restless till it had really raised one too and the Kings Head from his Shoulders and can these worst of Criminals make it a Crime to make the Nation fearful of Parliaments when there are such Speech-Makers in it I shall to such Accusers Faces defend them to be formidable not out of any Apprehension of fear for my self for whenever such a Seditious Senate their Commons become dangerous again to good Subjects the safety of the Government must be but in as bad Condition But it may well terrify even a Crown'd Head and frighten him from their Frequency when some of their most popular Members have been since found in an actual Conspiracy for pâ—lling the Crown 〈…〉 〈…〉 suffered publickly for Traytors Sir G. H. I do agree a Bill for Banishing Papists may do well But
was done accordingly the Conspiracy of the Witness was soon afterward detected his Innocency declar'd and the poor Gentleman for want of a due process at Law plainly Murder'd and all the Conviction I wish to such unjust reproachers of the Constitution of any of our Courts of Judicature that they may never have the benefit of those Laws they Condemn and only have the Fate to Fall by that Justice of the Republick they so much extol The Villains that sign'd the Warrant for our late Kings Execution did not more Sacrifice his Person than this Impious Wretch has Murder'd him again in Effigie with a redoubl'd Cruelty to blast that unblemishable reputation which if Dearer than Life must be the greater Treason He tells us the Parliament never made War upon him because by Law says the Sycophant He can do no wrong but this shall not be allow'd for a Maxim with such Malecontents when it makes for the Monarch But what if a Parliament of Rebels put out in their Declaration that He has wrong'd the Law and vote that he Levies War to destroy the Fundamental Liberty of the People to set up Arbitrary Government send down a Traytor to keep him out of his own Garrisons when their Guards could not secure his Life from the rage of the London Rable instigated too by that Villanous Assembly that made his Repairing to Hull for the Preservation of himself an Insurrection of their King for the Destruction of the People And can such a senseless piece of Sedition imagin that undistinguishing Bullet they brought into the Field could be commanded to take off none but Evil Councellors and Seducers or that ARMS which soon silence all LAWS especially when lifted against their Soveraign would favourable consider his Right and a Maxim of our own that he could do no wrong He tells us the King was displeas'd for parting with his Power to dissolve Parliaments and took unheard of ways to demand Members with Arms Most Inhumane Wretch even to the Pious Memory of so good a Prince to give him the Lye in his Grave does not himself tell us as if his Prophetick Soul had foreseen the suggestion of such a Rebel in his making it his deepest plaint The Injury of all Injuries is that some will Falsely divulge that I repining at the Establishment of the Parliament endeavour'd by force and open Hostility to undo what by Royal assent I had done While at the same time the Contradictory Wretches would asperse him for a resolv'd and a wilful occasioner of his ruin but for the demand of the Members so far from Irregularity That this Malicious Accuser is a double Traytor to his Memory by being an Abetter of those that were truly so and representing it False the King was advis'd in Scotland of those Conspirators having Invited that Nation to come into ours Arm'd And shall not bringing in a Foreign Power an Actual Levying War be allow'd Treason He had his Witnesses ready for the proving every Article his Attorny had drawn up all their Impeachments and could not their King have the benefit of those Laws he gives Life too Could not their King Impeach a Commoner when they themselves can any Lord. He order'd Him to inform the House of Peers with the Matter of the Charge and a Serjeant at Arms to accuse them to the Commons did they or could they call this an unheard of way or Irrogular Proceeding and will the protection of their House extend to an Inditement for High-Treason as well as an Execution upon Debt certainly this President won't be found among all the Miscellanies of Parliament tho that Industrious Author might have cited too his Majestys Murder out of their Journal But let them blush at their late Arbitrary Proceedings against their Fellow Subjects and Remember what they deny'd their King Here was an obstruction of Justice that was already a Rebellion against the Executive Power of the Law such an one as only their next Ordinance for seizing the Militia could make it more so the Serjeant that was sent to Arrest their Persons is countermanded and if again attempted 't is Order'd and Resolved they 'll stand upon their Desence and make Resistance how should the Mildest Father of the most Merciful Son Mollifie so many Tygers Tugging for the Praerogative with the pretence of Privileges Why he tells us himself went attended with some Gentlemen his followers much short of his Ordinary Guard to desire he might proceed against Traytors only in a free and Legal Tryal that he had furnisht himself with proof and wanted nothing for that Evidence which he could have produced But what I am sure they were resolv'd to deny their Soveraign even what they made the Rabble clamor for against himself JUSTICE the Chronicle tells us none of his Followers mov'd farther than the Stairs but only he himself with the Palsgrave enter'd the House demanded whom before he had Accus'd and the Villains themselves so Conscious of his Equitable demand and their own Guilt that they fear'd their very delivery from their Friends and that Death I doubt they had so justly deserv'd the Criminals were fled he renews his Charge and so satisfy'd returns but so were not those whom nothing could Content at last but his Life they load it with all the Obloquies and Exasperations imaginable such Protectors of Liberties could only think Treason against him worthier of Protection then their injur'd King an Execution of Law is Voted a Breach of Priviledge the demanding the Benefit of it by him that gives it it's being they made MURDER the City Guards are set up in several places the Train-Bands are Commanded down to Westminster a greater Army sure then only the Kings Retinue to protect Impeacht Traytors and with the late Hosanna's of our Old-Baily they lead in Triumph that Primitive Council of Six accus'd for High-Treason and what Security had this present King that the like Cabal should not have been as well Secur'd from his Justice had they been but detected in some of their late Sessions they were all Members too the Difference between our King and Commons in as high a ferment the Charge that then was given to the Lords the Articles that were offer'd to the Commons appear upon Record but the Counterpart of this Kings Declaration only there they had not come so far as to contrive his Murder their Accusation was for aspersing of his Majesties Government and altering the affections of his People Countenancing Tumults against him inviting a Foreign Nation the Scots as too this Actually did and Conspiring to Levy War as these did to Raise an Insurrection And might not any Jealous Soul fear such Parliaments that protected such Traytors and might not such Traytors been again protected by such Parliaments when the City too was their own again the Guards set the Watches plac'd the Streets Chain'd and that when they could accuse no King for Breach of Priviledge or Coming to their House with
Optimacy is made up of so many more And where then into what form to whom shall we run for the best maintaining of this popular Darling this dangerous Violation that has been clamoured for rebelled and fought for the Peoples RIGHT but to that Soveraignty which our very Laws say can do no wrong to a Monarchy where Mechanicks can never meddle with Affairs of State to make them truckle to their own or the Nobility so powerful as to be all Soveraigns and under what Prince can we better acquiesce for this enjoyment than the present that has so often declared for its Protection And shall the Speech of some Noble Peer be better assurance promise more than the word of a King All Subjects under him have either Riches or Honor for their private Aim to make them act more partially for the publick and which the Laws presume therefore they may injure and have therefore made the greatest punishable But him exempted from all Statutes that are Penal And these sort of Arguments I can assure them their King himself has used to prove the publick Interest his own and that he alone of all the Kingdom can be presumed most impartially concerned for the good of the publick A Reason worthy of so good a King and which the worst the most Seditious Subjects cannot Answer Did not the Parliament in Richard the Third's Time give even that Vsurper an Arbitrary Power greater than any they can dread now from their most Lawful Soveraign Did not they declare him their Lawful King by Inheritance tho they knew they made him Inherit against all Law Did not they declare it to be grounded upon the Laws of God and Nature and the Customs of the Realm whereas we now can oppose this Divine Right from the panick fear of making our true Legal King too powerful and the Succession of a Right Heir must be questioned by our Parliaments now when their Predecessors declared it unalterable even in a wrong Did they not to him but an Usurper a Tyrant own themselves Three Estates without including himself and say that by them is meant the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons and shall the Press be pestered under our undoubted Soveraign and the mildest Prince to make him Co-ordinate with the People Did they not make particular Provision in Parliament for the preservation of His Person that was the very Merderer and Destroyer of His Subjects And shall our 〈◊〉 ones Associate for the Destruction of the mildest Monarch whose greatest Care is their Protection Was this Monster ever questioned or censured for the Murder of several of His Subjects as well as the more Barbarous Butchery the spilling almost of his own Blood in his Nephews and must our most gracious one stand the mark of Malice and Reproach and that only for desending that of his Brothers who Reigned more Arbitrary and managed all Affairs more Monstrously than this very Monster of Mankind And must a Parliament be now the Manager of the mildest Monarch and think him dangerous if not governed by themselves The two Succeeding Henries had their Power as much confirmed Henry the 7th had his Negative Voice the thing those Seditious discontented Grumblers so much repine at maintained asserted for his undoubted Prerogative It is at present by the Law of his Time no 〈◊〉 if the King assent not A Prince beloved and favoured only because he was their King who tho he had as many subsidies granted more than any before him His Subjects you see never thought it a Grievance then to contribute to their 〈◊〉 being Great but acknowledged his Supremacy even under their greatest pressure His 〈◊〉 upon penal Statutes Historians call and the Law the most 〈◊〉 way for raising of Money that was ever used yet still had he the Hearts of his People as well as their Purses They thought Rebellion then could not be justifyed with clamor of Oppression as since by Ship-money and Lone tho levyed by a King whom themselves had Opprest The simplicity of those times made them suffer like good Subjects and better Christians when the refined Politicks of such Authors and a 〈◊〉 age can tell them now to be Wise is to Rebel I need not tell him who managed Affairs in Henry the Eighth's Time when Parliaments seemed to be frightned into Compliance with a Prown and Bills preferr'd more for the pleasure of the Prince than the profit of the People Their Memberships then so far from medling with the measures of the State that they seemed to take them for their sole Measures so far was then an Order of the House from controuling that of the Board And I can't see that the Peoples Petition of Right has since 〈◊〉 away too the King's Prerogative yet it was affirmed for Law in this King's Time that he had full power in all Causes to do Justice to all Men. If the Parliament or their Council shall manage Affairs let them tell me what will become of this Power and Law His Son Edward succeeded him and tho a Minor a Prince whose Youth might have given the People an opportunity for an Encroachment upon his Power and the Subject commonly will take advantage of the Supremacy and that sometimes too much when the Soveraign knows but little what it is to be a King I am sure they were so Seditiously Wise in that Infancy of Henry the Third and yet he had Protectors too as well as this But notwithstanding such an Opportunity for the robbing the Rights of the Crown you shall see then they took the first occasion for the asserting them In the very First year of his Reign it was resolved that all Authoritie and Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived from the King but this Republican has found out another Resolution of resolving it into the power of the Parliament And in this very Reign too it was provided as the common Policy and Duty of all Loving Subjects to restrain the Publishing all manner of Shameful Slanders against their King c. upon whom dependeth the whole Unity and Universal weal of the Realm what Sentence then would the Parliaments of those times have past upon Appeals to the City vox patriae's and a Plato Redivivus upon a Libel that would prove the Kings Executive power of War forfeitable and that the Prerogative which is in the Crown hinders the Execution of the Laws tho I am sure those very Laws are the best Asserters of the Prerogative there next resolve would have been to have ordered such an Author to the 〈◊〉 by the Hands of the Hangman instead of that Honorable Vote the thanks of the House In Queen Mary's Time too the Law left all to her Majesty tells her all Jurisdiction does and of Right ought to belong to her In Queen Elizabeth's Time what was Law before they were obliged even to Swear to be so Every Member of the House before qualified
to sit in it forc'd to acknowledg his Soveraign SVPREAM in all Causes over all Persons And were their Memberships to be modelled according to the Common-wealth of this Plato their Oath must be repealed or they perjur'd Their very Constitution would be Inconfistant with his Supremacy they must manage and Command at the same time they Swear to submit and obey Was there ever a more full acknowledgment of Power and Prerogative than was made to King James upon his first coming to the Crown And tho I confess they took upon them to manage Affairs in his Son and Successors time yet this was not until they had openly bid him defyance to his Face and actually declared War against His Person then they might well set up their Votes for Law when they had violated the Fundamental ones of the Land yet themselves even in that Licentious and tumultuous time could own that such Bills as His Majesty was bound even in Conscience and Justice to pass were no Laws without his Assent What then did they think of those Ordinances of Blood and Rebellion with which themselves past such Bills afterward so unconscionable so 〈◊〉 Here it was I confess these Commons of this pernicious Projector took upon them the management of the State their Councils their Committees set up for regulating the Kings Then their Pillor'd Advocate that lost his ears as this with his Treasonable Positions should his Head Publisht the very same Proposal in his pestering Prints the very Vomit of the Press to which the dangerous Dog did in the Literal Sense return to lick it up still discharing again the same choler he had brought up before in a Nauseous Crambe A Wretch that seemed to Write for the Haberdashers and Trunk-makers instead of the Company of Stationers that Elaborate Lining the Copious Library for Hat-cases and Close-stools that Will with a whisp whose fuming Brains were at last illuminated for the leading Men into Boggs and Ditches Rebellion and Sedition The Confusion of others only for the confounding of himself for a King for the Parliament for the Presbyters for every thing for nothing but that ONE thing Scribble Compare the power of his Parliaments and his Vnparliamentary Juncto the meer Lumps of distorted Law or Legal Contradiction with the 25th of Edward He first deposes his King and even there then finds his Deposition Treason Their Divine Baxter never baffled himself more with the Bible and the Gospel than this Elaborate Legislator with the Statute and the Law William Writ against Pryn too in one Page proves his King Supream in the other his Parliaments Supremacy the most Mutinous Member would needs be Loyal when it was to late and the most Malitious Miscreant at the Pen Publisht his Memento when his Money with his Membership was sequestred from his own Home as well as his self from the Parliaments House and then palliated it with a piece against his Majesties Murder I the more Liberally enlarge upon this because his party the Presbyter would appropriate to themselves from some 〈◊〉 Papers the Vindication of their King but what I am sure in sincerity was their own Revenge They the Scot and the Todpole Spawn of both that Independant made use of unanimously the Defence of their Prince for the Destruction of his Person and then the differing Daemagogues with the very same Pretences strove to put upon each other that is both alike full of the same falshood both alike fancyed their own Integrity they seemed to Labor for the two sublimated Vices Hypocrisie and self-conceit whereof the one made them twice Villains the other double Fools And this Confounder of Paper as well as the People Publisht then ‖ the very same Principles this starch't Republican has proposed now for new Politicks of State Pryn and Plato differ only in this one Labour'd to make Law speak Treason the other Sense Lastly were not the Parliament very tender of this last this present Princes Power and Prerogative when they enacted a new Oath to be taken by all in Office for the Renouncing the Trayterous Position of resisting his 〈◊〉 with his own Authority And this Rebellious Proposal of our Republican is to make even the Parliament it self to make use of his Authority even for an Usurpation upon his Prerogative and when once they come to Manage that they may be sure they 'll be his Masters too and I hope 't is now in some Measure proy'd even in the several particulars I undertook should be so that our Monarchs had heretofore an absolute Management of Affairs without an Interfering of Parliaments which then had not so much as Being and which were since they had it never called as their very Writs express it but to consult that they never offer'd to set a Council over their King much less themselves as this popular Pedant calls it to Manage his Militia and demonstrated this as was designed from Prescription even beyond Chronicle from the Laws of every Reign and my little Light of Reason All the following Propositions are as much against Reason and Law for the third is that the Judges be nominated by Parliament which as it would divest the King of part of his Supremacy so it would make themselves in effect both Judges and party for those then their own Creatures would have the Exposition of those Laws which themselves had made The Law allows all the Four Courts at Westminster to be all Courts by Prescription and then let them tell me to whom belongs the power of Electing those that are to preside in it to the Kings of England that can prescribe to their Government even from the very Britains before Caesar ever set Foot in it neer 1700 Years agon and with whom their Courts of Judicature were ever Coeval or the Constitution of a Parliament that first within this four hundred years could be said to have a Being and so that which themselves would now controul had a Priority even in time to their Existence for near 1300 Years It is called the Court of Kings Bench Let them name the Judges it must be no longer His but the Parliaments 'T is Rehellion in them to assume it for they must at the same time too take the Soveraignty the Supremacy and 't is that such Seditious Proposals must aim at and truly do for 't is expresly declared for Law that the Justices of the Kings Bench have Supream Authority the King himself sits there in them as the Law intends if the Parliament can chuse their Kings Representatives they can their King too and make the most Hereditary Kingdom Elective before the Reign even of Edward the First the Chief Justice of this Court was created by Letters Patent 't is out ever was and will be out of the Parliaments power to create per Patents even a petty Constable 't is the King alone that by these his Letters can constitute Courts
hundred years for so long our Monarchs can be Chronicl'd can in every Reign the Clergies being concerned in Parliament be proved upon Record and may they with the Monarchy last that with its Christianity commenc'd They seemed always to sympathize in their very sufferings never to cease but by consent and Bishops were never excluded from their Votes but when their King himself had never a voice The Sixth pernicious Principle they propose is for Marriages Alliances Treatises for War and Peace to be put in the power of the two Houses And shall the meanest Subjects be Mightier than their Soveraign Not allow'd the Marrying his Issue when where and to whom he pleases That the Parliament has presumed to intermeddle with this undoubted Prerogative of the Soveraign since the Birth-Right of the poorest Subject can no more be denyed then that the two Houses have also actually Rebell'd too but they never pretended to make Matches for their Monarch but when they were as ready to make War too There was somewhat of that Mutinous Ferment got among the Members in the latter end of King * James's his Reign who tho they mightily soothed their Soveraign with some Inconsiderable subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate so small that notwithstanding the Preparation for War the poor Prince was forc'd to pursue Peace and to tell the Men at Westminster so much too that he intended to compass the Palatinate with an Allyance with Spain which he was not like to obtain from the smallness of their Subsidy and Aid But tho the Commons did not care much for the maintaining the War they were as much startled with this seeming tendance to Peace they knew their Prince poor and therefore thought that the time to show the Subject bold and so began the Puritan-Party to represent in a Remonstrance Popery Power Prerogative and their Averseness forsooth to the Spanish-Match The pious Prince tho none of the boldest to resist an invading People yet took the Courage to tell them they took too much upon themselves very warmly forbad them farther to meddle with his Government and deep Affairs of State and particularly with the Match of his Son with the Daughter of Spain And this account they 'll surely Credit since it comes from an Author a partial and popular Advocate for this power of Parliament And did not the Commons intermeddling with an other Spanish Match of Queen Mary's send their Memberships into the Country to mind their own Business and were presently Dissolv'd for meddling so much with their Soveraign's And this I hope will be as Authentick since it comes from an Author that has had the Thanks of the House But this Disposal of the Kings of his own Children and the Marrying them to what Princes he pleases has such an absolute Relation to the making Leagues and Allyances that the Laws which have declared the latter to be solely in the Soveraign are as Declaratory that the other is so too and this power of the Prince of making War and Peace Leagues and Allyances is so settled in him by the Laws of the Land that till they are subverted it can never be taken out In Henry the Fifth's Time a Prince under whose Courage and Conduct the Nation I think was as Flourishing at Home as it was formidable Abroad A Prince that kept a good Sway over his Subjects and wanted nothing to the making him a good Monarch but a better Title though his Expensive War in France cost his People a great deal of Money as well as Blood yet they were far from being animated into an Invading this part of Prerogative but declared as appears by the Law of his Time that to their King belonged only to make Leagues with Foreign Princes and so fully does this Fundamental Law of the Land place this power in the Prince that it absolutely excludes all the Pretences of the People for it tells us expressly that if all the Subjects of England should break a League made with a Foreign Prince if without the King's Consent it shall still hold and not be broken And must the Laws of our own as well as those of all Nations be subverted for the setting up a Supremacy of the People which both declare is absolutely in the King The Seventh Proposal about the Militia is the most Impudent because it has been the most confuted of any by Reason and baffled above all parts of the Prerogative Establisht by 〈◊〉 History tells us ever since Chronicle can Compute and that is for almost Fifteen Hundred Years that the Power of the Sword was ever in him that sway'd the Scepter and Statute tells us even the very First that was ever reckoned among Acts of Parliament That if the King lead or send his Subject to do him Service in his Wars that he shall be freed from such other Services as Castle-guard and the like so that you see that extorted Instrument the result of a REBELLION reserved this piece of Prerogative of the Soveraigns Sole Right That the Members of the two Houses should have the Management of the Militia was undertaken to be proved too by that Plague of the Press Pryn himself who proceeds upon his own false Principle and Premises which he beggs and then may well draw from them a Conclusion of an absolute Lye for he takes it for granted that by the Kingdoms Suffrages they made their King and them he could not as he says have this Military power without the Peoples consent but why may it not be with less Presumption supposed That a Parliament by special Act declared Traytors pitcht upon Him for their Pen-Man against the Prerogative and then it may be more easily concluded that Pryn was the most prejudic'd partial Person that ever put Pen to Paper for in spight of his Factious Heart he must be forc'd to confess that not only this very Charter of Liberties settled this Militia but that it was confirmed to the King almost in every Reign by Act of Parliament since the Time the very FIRST was made To the very Son and Successor of Henry that Great Confirmer of the great Grant they declare that to the King belongs to defend Force of Armour c. All that held by Knights Service the King could distrain them for the taking up Arms. By the Laws of the very next Reign And in his Son and Successors that Usurpt upon his Father's Right before it could be call'd his own they declare the manner of his Mustering and Arraying the Subject and this they did too to Henry the Fourth A Prince that had truly no other Title to the Swords of his Subjects than what he had gotten by the Conquest of his own yet so necessary was this inseparable power of the Prince thought then to be solely in him by the People that they Acknowledg'd it to be absolutely even in him that could hardly pretend to the Crown so
so were never yet known to be concerned in the making Lords The King whom only our Law declares to have no Peer is sure the only Person that can make Peers has not this Power been unquestionably in the Prince ever since these Realms had one to Rule was not the Title of Baron in Edward the First 's Time confined expresly to such only as by the Kings Writ were sommoned to sit in Parliament And even when there was an Innovation in this Point In Richard the Second's Tumultuous Time this Power was then not taken from the King till they took away his Crown did not he take upon him to confer the Peerage and as the first President per his Letters Patents And Beauchamp Baron of Kederminster the First of that Creation did the Parliament ever pretend to make Peers but when the Body had rebelled against the Head and rejected their Prince But the Creation of Honors might well then be inverted when the State it self was turned Topsie It was then I confess they denyed their King too not only the conferring of Honors for the future but passed an Act for Voiding all Titles Dignities and Precedencies already given by him But this was done to extinguish the very Remains of Royalty that there might not be left behind him the meer marks the Gracious Dispensations of the very Favor of a King the inveterate Villains labouring with their Monarch to Murder his very Memory And sure none of the Nobility have great Reason to relie upon Parliaments for the maintaining of their Old Honor or creating New for the Privilege of their Peerage or the making Peers when the very First thing that they did when they had got the Power was an Ordered and Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be Abolisht And all the Kindness their Lordships could be allowed was to be capable of being elected into the Lower House and what an Honourable House of Lords was afterward Establisht even by those that had purged away the Peerage may be seen in the Persons of those that Usurper put up afterward for Peers But under the Name the Notion of that other House when they granted that power of their Nomination to that Arch Rebel which they but so lately denyed their Lawful King why we had there then Lords of no quality no worth little Land and less Learning Mr. Hewsons Lordship that Honest Cobler Sir Thomas Pride's Lordship Knight and Dray-man My Lord James Berry Black-Smith My Lord Barksted the Bodkin-Seller and the Cant of their Counterfeit Cromwell their Creator might well tell them from the Text not many Nobl's not many wise were called but a Creation according to the very Notion of the Schools An House like that of the World too out of nothing framed by Him that had Himself Sworn to be true to the Government without founded in the Perjury of him that made them Peers and of Persons that would have disgrac'd a Pillory Persons prefer'd for their little Honesty little Quality little Sense Persons whose Lands and Possessions could only qualifie them to be Noble by being purchased with the Blood of our best Nobility Lastly Persons that were only famed for their Villanies Mighty but in Mischief making it an House indeed not of Peers but Correction which the very Law tells us must be made up of Beggars and Malefactors This Gentlemen was the Peerage produced by a Parliament's Rebellion to make Peers of which it was too the most natural Result for that very Act upon a Just Judgment would have Tainted all their Blood but they provided here for the purpose Persons that defied superseded the Work of an Attaindure Persons whose Blood even Treason could not more Corrupt This Gentlemen was the product of that most preposterous Inversion when the Commons could make Lords and their Kings House of Peers with their very Titles and Honors Abolisht by an House of Commons they seemed to be ashamed of that very Bastard Honor of which they were brought to Bed and could not tell how to Christen the base Bantling they had begot till at last some simpering Gossips stept up and Named it an other House i. e. an House without a Name Distracted Dolts the Compounds of Madness and Folly did you for this destroy your Kings Nobility created by Law to dignifie the meanest Men the Vilest Villains against the Statutes of the Land did not you confess that of the Kings Lords to be a Lawful Government and the best by recalling it tho compounded of Wretches the very worst poor Prodigals whose Repentance only rendered you more Miserable and reverst the Fate of him that fed on Husks who returned to Herd with Swine Have we not had heretofore Peers by particular †Act degraded for being a disgrace to their Peerage Lords whom the Kings Law made Honorable only their Lands could not maintain their Lordships Honors and that tho Blood and Descent had entitled them to it whereas many of these their Parliament Peers had neither Law Land Blood or Money to make them so Did not the Parliament that very Parliament that Abolisht afterward our English Peers Petition the King against Scots and Irish Titles and told him to this purpose that it was Novelty without president that persons should possess Honor where they possess nothing else and have a Vote for the making Laws where they have not a Foot of Land had their own Objection been afterward applyed to some of their own Country and that pitiful Peerage of their own chusing they must have Blusht upon the Reflection of their own Thoughts when they remember'd with what they upbraided their King The possessions of their Noble Peers being Just none at all or what was worse than nothing the purchase of their Villanies It is recorded I remember in the Conqueror's Time that Hugh Lupus Earl of Chester upon special Favor of his Prince being the Son of his own Mother by a Second Husband Arlott having Marryed Harlowin a Noble-Man of Normandy that his Earldom was granted him by William the First with as ample Jurisdiction as himself held the Crown A power I think beyond any of our present Palatinates upon which he presumed to make three or four Barons but Historians observe it was such an Honorable Concession as never any Subject before or since enjoyed and how they can presume to pretend to it now I cannot Apprehend It was alway a particular piece of Providence amongst all Nations not to render that pitiful and Contemptible to the People which they resolved should be Reverenced and Esteemed and unless we can imagine our Idolaters of the Peoples Peers would like some Infidels adore their Wooden Deities only for beeing Ugly and Deform'd or like the Israelites Worship Calves of their own Rearing I am sure that empty Title with which their Honors of that other House were only full could draw no other Reverence and Respect than that
Ass in the Apologue from an Image that it carried This I remember was the result of the Petition of the Portugals to Philip the Second of Spain and he I think obtained that Kingdom too as our Republicans did once and would again ours with the Subversion of its Laws and the Force of Arms it was their request that he would not make their Nobility of which they are not a little proud pitiful and contemptible by preferring such to that Degree whose Quality could not deserve it what Peers we had when pickt by the Council of State What Lords when cullyed out by the Commons let those remember who are so ready to forget it Seditious Sots have not the Laws of all Nations as well as our own provided that this power be the peculiar prerogative of the Prince and must these Politicks would Be 's be wifer now than the wide World Do not the Digests declare those Civil Sanctions whose Authority obtain with all Civiliz'd Subjects i. e. with almost all besides our own and whose Reason can't be refuted by the best of the Rebellious Republicans that so little regard those that their so much admired Legislators their Solon or Licurgus never saw the like Laws that must be allowed the most Rational by being so generally received those tell us and the World that the conferring of Dignities depends upon the Sole care of the Soveraign that the Subjects ought not to dispute it and such a Religious Observance of this settled Soveraignty do those sacred Sanctions recommend that they Censure it for a Crime as great as Sacrilege it self to suspect his insufficiency whom the Prince should prefer some of those Laws were the Constitutions of Heathens as well as other of those that afterward learnt Christ and had not the Doctrine of his Disciples declared Kings even an Ordinance of God the pious Pagans always esteemed their Princes Sacred and such a source of Honor was in their Soveraign Emperors that even against their very Laws they could allow them to continue those Noble whom the Marriage with a Plebeian had degraded from their Nobility as Antonius Augustus did for his Neece Julia. 'T is Nonsense I confess to talk of the Laws of all Nations to those that cannot obey their own or the Decrees of Emperors for the Preservation of their Majesty to those that will break Statutes to Libel their King yet still it serves to shew that even in this very point the Laws so long before ours allowed this power to be the peculiar prerogative of the Prince and tho we are bound only to submit to the Singular Laws and Customs of our little Land yet still if in our Senses we must be Subject to such Laws as are founded upon an Universal Reason and for these Republicks that have revolted from that Regal Government from whence they must derive their Honors we find the best of their Nobility to be but Burghers And the very Nobleman of Venice this Courteous Author so much Caresses and Admires one that must make himself so and at best but equivalent if such great things according to the Latin Aphorism may be compared with small to a Gentleman of England who wears only a shorter Coat while the other a longer Gown 'T is a solecism in Sense to imagin that Plebeians can concur in conferring that on others which themselves have not the least Tincture of A Title of Honor Or that any thing besides somewhat that is Soveraign can really communicate it to a Subject And we have seen when it was Usurpt what a sort of singular good Lordships and precious Peers were put upon us The Thebans would not so much as admit a Merchant into their Government till they deserted their calling for ten Years while the meanest Mechanicks were made Members of our House and a Tinker of the Army's just taken from his Tool The Bishop of Ely was accused only in Richard the First 's Time for putting in pitiful Officers into publick places of Trust and 't is but a little since a Parliament intrusted our Lives and Fortunes in the vilest Hands And lastly this very Libel Lashes one of our Kings for the preferring Worthless Persons and makes it even a forfeiture of the power of the Sword at the same time that he contends for the People in this point who were never yet known to prefer any other An Italian State as Tumultuous as our own took upon them once to create a new Nobility but assoon as the popular Faction or if you please the Convention of the People had set themselves for the Preservation of their Liberties to make Lords why truly the Election was like to be of such senseless Scoundrels you may suppose a Barksted or an Hewson some mender of Shooes or a maker of Bodkins But so sensible were those Seditious Souls that they were like to set up their Servants that they wisely resolved to retain their old Masters And I think were not some of us so wicked we should all be so wise too since we saw our own distracted Nation was never at rest Till our Rulers were restored to us as at the FIRST and our Councellors as at the BEGINNING And last of all only let me take the Liberty in this last and dismal scene of Sedition to represent but a bloody prospect of that Harmonious concurrence there is between all sorts of Rebellious Principles tho projected by Persons of different Persuasions Persons that differ in Manners and Customes of their Countries Rebels remote from one another in Time Rebels as remotely allyed in the Lands wherein they live As if the Sea it self could not separate such Seditious Subjects In their Principles and Practices that had defiled their Land with such a mutual Conspiration in the Murdering of their Soveraigns and let in an Inundation of Blood upon the Subjects and this Bloody Correspondency between the practice of primitive Rebels as well as modern between the Proceedings of Foreign Rebellions as well as our Domestick must result from the Reasons any sort of Subjects have to resist their Soveraign which we shall see were at all times with all sorts still the same that is just none at all and that appears in that People of such several sorts were all forc'd to pitch upon the same Pretences for the Justifying their Treasons And to make use of the same Cavil and Calumny against their Princes when they saw they could never ground any real Accusation And lastly to promote the same Projects and Propositions almost in a Literal Transcript for the levelling the raising the Foundations of their several Monarchies and making themselves the Masters of the Crown or rather this Seditious Harmony of all Rebels proceeds from their having ever been animated and instructed by the self same Agent of Hell the primitive Prince of Faction the Devil and this parity of pernicious Principles Practices and Propositions will appear in the perfect parallel that there is between the
that must absolutely determine the Jurisdiction of the Prince He tells us when a matter is moved in Parliament by the King the Commons consent last and are therefore the Commons Co-ordinate with their King Or does that only signifie the Candid Custom of the Proceedings in Parliament The King is presumed upon his own Proposal of any matter the Party and they being consulted is only for their Advice as the very Words of the Writ expresly have it by which they are called and the very Etymology of their very Name the great Council expresses Controversies in such Cases will be Eternal until the Disputants agree in the same Notion of the Thing they so much dispute For otherways it is but making of Words instead of Arguments if they mean by the Legislative of the two Houses a power of Concurrence with their King in the making Laws and that their Consent is to be required they labor to prove just nothing or what they may have without so much pains and to so little purpose If they will insist upon the Natural Etymology of the very Word they will find the Derivative Legislative to be deduced as above from the Latinism Legem ferre and then in God's Name let the two Houses enjoy even of that an Arbitrary power and bring in what Bills they please so long as they will not again force upon us an Ordinance or Vote for Law and the Statute of the Land but if their Sense of this Legislative power must signifie That their Commons have as much of it as their King and That 't is that which makes their King Co-ordinate with his Commons as is sufficiently clear from their Writings that it is then I affirm 't is against Law against Reason and a Lye For the King by the very Law it self hath power to dispence with Statutes his Proclamation is a Law and an Edict and as much as any of the Decrees of the Roman Emperor's with the Advice of his Judges he will dispence with the rigor of the Laws if too severe and resolve their meaning if Ambiguous Have their two Houses whom they would have these mighty Law makers the power of repealing or so much as altering those very Laws they make without their Kings consent And tho this Laborious Lawyer observes That neither their King can pass any thing he proposes without theirs yet this his power and that when they have not so much as a Being Evinces the Prince at least supream in the Legislative The Learned in other Laws besides our own tell us a Legislative power may partly be delegated to other Persons tho Subjects and yet remain in the Prince even entirely notwithstanding such a Communication I confess the Opinion of Canonists and Civilians may not be so Authentick with some that abhor their very Names yet Grotius himself is of that Opinion and he a Person that our Republicans can cite even on their own Side but our own Laws allow it or else I think our Judges too might make themselves Co-ordinate because their King's Commission communicates to them all the power of destributive Justice that is in the King We are told the King has committed all his power Judicial some in one Court some in another and therefore the Judgements run Consideratum est per Curiam c. and 'T is resolved That if one should render himself to the King 's own Judgement it would be of none effect yet for all this it would be false to affirm That he does not do justice because he has delegated it to others to be done The King does not put in Members of Parliament as he does Judges yet Peers he makes and calls them to Sit and Commons cannot come without his Writs for Election but certain it is that our Kings once had a more absolute Legislative for they all know their Lower House commenced but so late and heretofore their Nobles and Bishops but such as the King should be pleased to call And I cannot imagine that when our Princes admitted the Commonalty to be concerned in the making Laws they then designed he should lay aside his own Legislative or put it in Common as they do their Land in Coparcenary or in their great Coke's the learned Lawyers Language make an Hotchpotch a Pudding of his Prerogative If every Politick Body that has but a share in this Legislative must also be presum'd to participate as much of it as the King I can prove to them every petty Corporation Co-ordinate with their great Convention of States and even a poor Parish as great Legislators as an House of Parliament for by the Laws of the Land even those can make their By-Laws without Custom or Prescription if they be but for the good of the Publick and if they can but prescribe to it may pass any private Acts for their own The Civilians make their Law to be the Will and pleasure of their Prince But tho our Antient Lawyers would not expound that absolutely for our own yet they seem to make it but little less only say it must not be meant with us of his unadvised Will but such an one as is determined upon the Deliberation and Advice of His Council Pryn that preposterous Assertor of this their Legislative has furnished them sufficiently with as contradictory Arguments as absurd as irrational Inferrences for its defence He tells us in his Treatise that Kingdoms were before Kings and then the People must needs make Laws that I confess setting aside the very Contradiction that there is in Terms For certainly the Word Kingdom was never heard of till there were Kings to Govern He might as well have told us of a Derivative that was a long time before the Primitive but bating this Solecism in Sense and Speech well meaning Will designed it perhaps for the Word Country that was I believe as well as he antecedent to the King but must it be inferred because the Land was once without Kings therefore now no Kings must govern the Land For the Conclusion is as absurd to say That therefore the People have the Legislative and their Prince no Negative they do not consider the result of such rash Inferences which return upon themselves more stronger in the rebound and that even upon their tenderest places which they can hardly suffer to be touched Kings and Lords did a long time meet in Parliament before Commons in that Convention were so much as thought of and therefore must none now be convened The Papists proudly tell us their Religion was long before Luther and must we not now profess our Protestant Religion Another of the same Nature and as much Nonsense is this They infer from the possibility of the King 's dying without Heir and the Government returning to the People who then would be the Sole Legislators That therefore they must have much now of the present Legislative and be at least Co-ordinate that have a
or bad Is it not Resolved and that upon Record in the King's Exchequer where the Words run with some Signification That the King keep the Laws and Customes which the Lords and Commons HAVE chosen c But grant them their own Sense that is Silliness That Oath these Malignants of our Monarchy object was made first for an absolute Usurper that came to the Crown by the Suffrages of such a Seditious Senate not much Inferior in Villainy to the late long Parliament that labored so much in this business of the Legislative or rather less Villains only in deposing a King whom the latter Murdered and why a Lawful King should be bound by that Oath did the Laws oblige him to take it which was first offered to an Vsurper I cannot apprehend That aspiring Prince swore too in his Coronation that he held his Crown by the Sole Consent of the People shall our present Soveraign do the same whom the Statutes acknowledge to hold from none but God But do not in that very Oath the Words they so much labor in confute them also in my poor Reason beyond reply is not Leges the Word Laws expresly used that it is Laws that the King swears to Confirm Corroborate Maintain and Protect And were the Commons ever allowed or presumed without a Rebellion to Elect LAWS There is not the least of a Bill mentioned in that Oath and sure they 'll offer to elect no more and in Gods Name let them chuse to send up as many of those as they please And sure then these Leges here must relate to those that are really so and have had the Royal Sanction already so that they must be reduced to this Dilemna If they 'll apply their Vulgus elegerit to the Lower House 't is certain they can make no Laws if to that of the Lords 't is as certain they can't be called Vulgus Lastly Laborious Drudges of Sedition let but these Laws ye long to subvert while you 'd seem to defend decide betwixt you and your King Is it not established by Statute it self that the King hath absolute power to Dissent to any Bill though agreed upon by both Houses But yet in spight of all this Reason and Law they tell us that the King cannot deny to pass any Bills for the publick good and which perhaps never can a good King for his Refusal of his Royal Sanction determines their Goodness and they cease to be necessary when the King thinks there is no need of them for if upon this their presumptive Goodness and the Prince as it is his undoubted Prerogative to do denying his Assent the People should presume they could with their Legislative because their King is refractory as they would call it pass some Bills into Law from their Assurance of their being good that power wou'd enable them to make bad ones too and allow their two Houses to Judge when to make but one Law they are as good Judges to make one thousand or as many as they please and no end of such a distracted Usurpation and that we saw when they began with that Ordinance for the Militia which was the first thing they presumed to make Law from their Kings as their Seditious absurd Phraseology would word it Refractory refusing i. e. that courageously maintaining his just Right when they had thus once broke the Damm no wonder if the deluge of an absolute Rebellion overwhelmed for upon the same ground the Lords might have Excluded both King and Commons for not concurring with them in what Bills and Acts they thought good and the Commons as indeed they did both King and Lords for being obstinate to such BILLS as themselves had offered But yet notwithstanding the Kings Refractoriness as our Republican Phrases it is now trumpt up again for the warranting the Peoples assuming as they would have it a sort of necessitated Power and that of calling themselves to Parliament for this the Lawyer in his Postscript Labors with his Innuendo's For this Plato tells us the Barons did well to put on their Armour that it is an Omission that ruins the very Foundations of Government and Hunt will not have them so much as discontinued for it renders such Conventions illusory Seditious Sycophants Your selves know this power of their Discontinuance and Dissolution is the best security the Crown has for its support Was it not miserably rent and torn from the Head but of our own Soveraign's Father and that only because he could not Dissolve them but had in effect signed his Destiny with their Bill of Sitting during the Pleasure of the two Houses Base Hypocrites 't is not a Parliaments Sitting you contend for but the Sitting of such a Parliament that good honest Parliament the late long and 〈◊〉 one which their virulent Villains Libelled for Popish Pensionary perhaps because it would not take the Peoples pay long enough might that have been discontinued or Prorogued wen ever heard then of the Statutes of Edwards and the Triennial Acts but their Pens were employed then to prove even that 〈◊〉 that discontents them now so much 'T is not above Eight years since their Pamphlets would demonstrate a Parliament dissolved for being but for Fiveteen Months Prorogued and were we but assured of having such another the Press had never been pestered for the calling one with their impertinnent prints nor any Petitions prefer'd for their Frequency Would you perswade the World your purses are so 〈◊〉 so free too that you long for a Subsidy to fill up the Kings Dissembling Souls the Parliament they clamour for can proceed from nothing else but a presumption of one to be their Patrons to patronize all their Irregularities and Refractoryness to the State to countenance all those gross abuses they put upon the Government they told us this to our faces and Menaced men to make them fear them Is this the way to have them Convencd to make them formidable For Gods sake can you credit that honorable Assembly with making them the pretended Abettors of all your Scandalous Actions The only felicity we have in such a Senate's sitting is That the King must summon them to sit they are Rebels by a Law if they convene without they must meet and Associate and the Kings happiness consists in his being able to Dissolve and Discontinue And this furious and indefatigable Scribler might have omitted the mentioning of those Statutes they have beaten so bare been baffled in so much and may now blush to bring upon the Stage but he shall have his answer here to this too That nothing of Mr. Hunt's like his managed Mungrel Julian may be call'd Vnanswerable For the First it is the 4th of this Edward And I confess in as few words That a Parliament be holden once every year and more often if NEED BE. It is all the Letter of the Law and every Line of it But they might as well tell us
ruin of that from which they can reap somewhat of Advantage by its Preservation why then should we fancy Human beings and the best of Mankind Monarchs themselves whom th' Almighty has made Gods too to be guilty of so much Madness and Inhumanity Where do we find the worst of Fools designedly to destroy their Patrimony though many times through Ignorance they may waste them and that tho there were no Laws to terrifie them from turning Bankrupts or punishing them for Beggers when they have embezell'd their Substance Away then Malicious Miscreants with such sordid Insinuation such silly Suggestions against your own Soveraigns which your selves no more believe them likely to be guilty of than that they would set Fire to all their Palaces and Sacrifice themselves and Successors in the Flames But to Return to our Argument they 'll tell us perhaps What signify the Sanctions of the Imperial Laws and the Constitutions of an Absolute Empire to a Common-wealth or a Council of three States that are Co-ordinate or at most but a Monarchy Limded and mixt and where whatever power the Supream Magistrate has must have been first Confer'd upon him by the People where the Parliaments have a great part of the Legislative and their Soveraign in some sense but a Precarious Prerogative what signifies the Authority of a Britton or a Bracton whose very works by this time are superannuated who wrote perhaps when we had no Parliaments at all at least none such as now Constituted I won't insist upon in answer to all this to show the Excellency of the Civil Institutions that obtain o're all Nations that are but Civiliz'd I wont prove to them because already done That we don't Consist of three States Co-ordinate in the Legislative or that our Monarchy is Absolute and not mixt as I shortly may But yet I 'll observe to them here That the Romans themselves tho by what they call'd their Royal Law they look't upon the power of the Prince to be conferr'd upon them by the people yet after it was once so transferr'd they apprehended all their right of Judging and Punishing was past too And for their vilifying these Antient Authors and Sages of Law who did they Favour these Demagoges would be with them of great Authority and as mightyly searcht into and sifted Should I grant them they were utterly obsolete and fit only for Hat-cases and Close-stools that they both writ before the Commons came in play for their further satisfaction I 'll cite the same from latter Laws not two hundred years old and that our selves will say was since their Burgesses began And therefore to please if possible these Implacable Republicans I 'll demonstrate what I 've undertaken to defend from the several Modern Declarations of our Law For in Edward the Third's it was resolv'd that the King could not be Judged And why because he has no Peer in his Land and 't is provided by the very first Sanctions of our Establisht Laws by the great Charter it self their Act of Liberty they so much Labour in that not the meanest Subject can be Try'd or Judg'd unless it be by his Peers Equals much less so mighty a 〈◊〉 that has none and a Fortiori then with lesser Reason by those that are his own Subjects so far from being his Peers or Equals that they are together his Inferiors which has made me think many times these preposterous Asserters of so much Nonsense these Seditious Defenders of those Liberties they never understood did apprehend by the word Pares in the Law not the common Acceptation of it in the Latin but only the abused Application of it of our own English only to our House of Lords And conclude the King might be Judg'd by those we commonly call PEERS because they sit in that Honorable House and at the same to be Judg'd according to Magna Charta that all Judgements be per pares But does not each Dunce and every Dolt understand that the very Letter of the Law looks after this only that every Person be tryed at the least by those that are of his own Condition and that in the Legal Acceptation of the Word every Commoner of the Lower House nay every one of their Electors is as much a Peer as the greatest Person of the House of Lords In short they must put some such silly Seditious Exposition upon the plainest Letter when they pretend to Judge their King or else from the very Law of their own Liberty they labor in allow that their King has no Judges In that Act against Appeals that was enacted in the time of Henry the 8th the very Parliament upon whom the People and even these Republicans so much depend tells us even in the very Letter of that Law That it is Manifest from Authentick History and Chronicle That the Realm of England is an Empire That its Crown is an Imperial one That therefore their King is furnish'd by the goodness of Almighty God with an intire Power and Prerogative to render and yield Justice to all manner of Folk in all Causes and Contentions This by solemn Act is declared of their King this Excludes the People from Judging of themselves much more their Soveraigns This the Resolution of a popular Parliament they would make even the Supream and this by them resolved even in Opposition to that Popery these Panick Fools so much and so vainly fear Do not the Books the best Declarations of the Law let us understand that which they against the Resolutions of all the Law it self would so foolishly maintain that it was resolved in Edward the 4th's time That the King cannot be said to do any wrong and then surely can't be Judg'd by his very People for doing it when impossible to be done and was not this the Sense of all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of the Law in Edward the 4th's time that because the Soveraign could not be said to injure any Subject therefore the Law never looks upon him as a disseisor a disposesser of any Man 's Right and all the remedy it will allow you is only Plaint and Petition Does not my Lord Coke himself that in several places is none of the greatest Assertor of the Right of the Soveraign fairly tell us least it should be vainly fear'd they should reflect upon the King 's own Misgovernment all the fault should rest upon the Officers and Ministers of his Justice Does it not appear from the Statutes of Edward the third that notwithstanding the strict Provision of the Charter for the Tryal by Peers that the King was still look'd upon as a Judge with his Council and Officers to receive Plaints and decide Suggestions and tho that and the subsequent of the next year provide against false ones yet it confirms still the power of the King to hear and determine
Theorems not to be disputed these determin our Reason even in Philosophy and the Mathematicks and why should not the Laws then in Politicks too and where they are positive sure 't is Impudence as well as Capital perhaps to oppose And yet we see these Gentlemen of so little Law to Labour so much in a dispute that is only to be decided by it what Authority is the singular assertion of a Republican or a Plato Redivivus that the House of Commons is the only part of the old Constitution of Parliament that is left us or the single sense of Mr. Sidney that the Senate of England is above its Soveraign against the form of the very first Act of State that remains upon Record the very Charter these Democraticks adore against the form of the following one of the Forest and Consult but the Style of the Statute Book and all the Antient Acts down to Richard the Second and you 'll find not so much as one but what expressly points out in its Enacting part the sole power of the Soveraign by which it was Enacted all in these repeated Expressions of Absolute Majesty We the Kings of England of our free will have given and granted it is our Royal Will and Pleasure the King Commands the Kings Wills our Lord the King has establisht the Lord the King hath ordain'd And most of them made in the manner of Edicts or Proclamations as in the Margin will appear and tho 't is thought now such a piece of Illegality to be concluded by an Order of Council and even his Majesties late command for the Continuance of the Tunnage and the Resolution of the Judges about that part of the Excise which expir'd has by some of our murmurers been repin'd at tho by all Loyal ones it was as chearfully assented to and as punctually paid yet they shall see that the People heretofore paid such a deference even to an Edict of the Prince that they nearly rely'd as much upon it as the Romans did upon their Imperial Institutions who as I before shew'd lookt upon it as a crime like to Sacrilege but to disobey And this will appear from an Act of Parliament in Henry the Eighth's time which provided that the Princes Proclamations should not be contemned by such obstinate Persons and oppos'd by the willfullness of froward Subjects that don't consider what a King by his Royal Power may do and all that disobey'd were to be punisht according to the Penalty exprest in the Proclamation and if any should depart the Realm to decline answering for his Contumacy and Contempt he was to be adjudg'd a Traytor and tho the Statute limited it to such as did not extend to the Prejudice of Inheritance Liberties or Life yet the King was left the Judge Whether they were Prejudicial or not and these Kings Edicts by this very Act were by particular Clause made as binding as if they had been all Acts of Parliaments and that it may not be said to be an Inconsiderate and Vnadvised deed of the Parliament to give the King such a Power tho 't is hard to say so of a Senate whom the writ that convokes them says they are call'd to deliberate To avoid that imputation I must tell them it was very Solemnly a Second time Confirm'd again within three years after and by that Power given to nine of the Kings Council to give Judgment against 〈◊〉 Offenders of the former and 〈◊〉 this was repeal'd in the following 〈◊〉 of King Edward a Minor and almost a Child A time wherein not withstanding there is such a woe denounc'd against a People that have such a King the Subjects seldom fail of Invading something of the Prerogative yet still we see tho the Law be not now in 〈◊〉 plain matter of Fact that there was 〈◊〉 such a Law that our Kings 〈◊〉 were once by express words of the Statute made as valid as the very Act of State it self that made them so that the Judicial Power of the Prince was 〈◊〉 less limited and that 〈◊〉 Libels lye as well as their 〈◊〉 Tongues when they tell us and would have us believe That 〈◊〉 but our late King as well as the present 〈◊〉 pretended to so much of Prerogative or had more allow'd them by the Laws And let any one but leisurably examine as I have particularly the several Acts of each King's Reign and he 'll find that from this Richard the Second to whose time the Stile of the Statutes as you see was in a manner absolutely Majestick down to King Charles the Martyr even all those are 〈◊〉 in such Words as will 〈◊〉 the Commons 〈◊〉 being 〈◊〉 and so much concerned in the Legislative as these popular 〈◊〉 have 〈◊〉 to persuade us their People are for even they all run either in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The * King with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his Lords Spiritual and 〈◊〉 at the special Instance and 〈◊〉 of the Commons or The 〈◊〉 by and with the Assent of his Lords Spiritual 〈◊〉 and Commons and as if the past Parliaments 〈◊〉 would have provided against the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of a 〈◊〉 Age which they could hardly be thought to 〈◊〉 since it savors so much of almost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Sedition as if 〈◊〉 Anoestors had feared least some of their prostigate posterity seduced with the Corruptions of a Rebellious Age should impose upon the Prerogative of the Crown with any such Subtil 〈◊〉 of their King 's making but one of the three States and by Consequence conclude as they actually did that the two being greater than him 〈◊〉 could be his Judges and their own Soveraign's Superiors why to prevent these very Rebels and Republicans in such Factious Inferences did they for two hundred years agon in the first of Richard the Third Resolve what was signified by the three Estates of the Realm For say they That is to say the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons and even long fince that much more lately but in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in that Act of Recognition of her Right where they endeavor to advance her Royalty as much as possible they can and to make the Crown of this Realm as much Imperial there they tell her 'T is WEE your Majesties most faithful and Obedient Subjects that represent the THREE ESTATES of your Realm of England and therefore in King James and Charles the First 's time when the Commons began to be mutinous and encroach upon the Crown then they having with the help of their numerous Lawyers which were once by particular Act excluded the House and if less had Sate in it perhaps it might have been once less Rebellious too those Gentlemen knowing too well the weight of Words and what Construction and Sense Sedition and Sophistry can deduct from a single Syllable I am confident it was they contriv'd the Matter and Mcthod so as to foist in the Factious form of
this Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons for that is the General Stile of the Enactive part of most of the Statutes of those Times and this was most agreeable with their mighty Notion of his Majesties making but up one of the THREE that so they might the better conclude from the very Letter of their own Laws That the TWO States which the Law it self implyed now to be Co-ordinate must be mightier and have a Power over their King whom the same Laws confest to be but ONE and the Reason why the forms of their Bill and the draught of the Lawyers and the Lower-House might be past into Act without any Alteration or Amendments of this Clause was I believe from a want of Apprehension that there ever could be such designing Knaves as to put it in to that Intention or such Factious Fools as to have inferred from it the Commons Co-ordinacy For the Nobility and Loyal Gentry that 〈◊〉 commonly the more Honesty for having the less Law cannot be presumed so soon to comprehend what Construction can be drawn from the Letter of it by the laborious cavil of a Litigious Lawyer or a cunning Knave and therefore we find that those Acts are the least controverted that have the fewest Words and that among all the multiplicity of Expressions that at present is provided by themselves that have commonly the drawing of our Statutes themselves also still discover as many Objections against it to furnish them with an Argument for the Merits of any Cause and the Defence of the Right of their Clyent at the same time they are satisfied he is in the wrong And for those Enacting forms of our Statutes whatsoever Sense some may think these Suggestions of mine may want That some Seditious Persons got most of them to run in so low so popular a Stile in the latter end of King James and Charles the first 's time such as Enacted only by the Authority of the Parliament by the Kings Majesty Lords and Commons yet upon the Restauration of Charles the Second the Words With the consent of the Lords and Commons were again reviv'd and afterward they bring it into this old agen With the Advice and Assent of Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons according to the form of Richard the 3d. and Queen Elizabeth that resolv'd them to be the THREE STATES and this runs on through all the Acts of his Reign and even in several of them the Commons humbly beseech the King that it may be so enacted I thought it necessary to bring home to our present tho most profligate time as much Acknowledgement as possible I could of my Kings Prerogative from the Laws of our Land and the very Statutes themselves because that some great Advocates for the power of the People some times pretend to plead for them too from Acts of Parliaments tho I think in this last lewd and Libellous Contest against the Crown that lasted for about five year in that Lustrum of Treason there was but one that was so laboriously Seditious so eminently popular as to endeavour to prove the Peoples Supremacy from Rolls and Records and Acts of State and for that recommend me to the good Author of the Right of the Commons Asserted tho I should rather approve of such an undertaking when endeavored to be done from the tracing the dark and obscure tracts of Antiquity and the Authority of a Selden than the single Assertion of a Sidney and the mere Maxims of some Modern Democraticks that have no other Foundation for their Establishments than the new Notions of their Rebellious Authors and that ipse dixit of such Seditious Dogmatists But I am satisfied too that this Gentleman who has laboured so much in vindicating the Commons Antiquity and their constituting an essential part of our Saxon Parliaments did design in it much more an Opposition of our Antient Monarchy and the Prerogative of the Crown than a mere clearing the dark foot-steps of our Old Chronicle and a real defence of Matter of Fact and the Truth And this is too clearly to be prov'd from the pestilent Pen-man's P-tyts own Papers that were publish'd at such a time when there was no great need of such an Asserting the Commons Right when themselves were more likely to have Usurp'd upon the Crown and as Mr. Sidney and his Associates would have it made themselves and the People Judges of their own wrong For to see such a task undertaken at a time when we are since satisfied such dangerous designs were a-foot looks only like a particular part of that general Plot and Conspiracy that has been since discovered and that all sorts of Pens were imployed as well as all Heads Hearts and Hands at work for the carrying on Mr. Sidney's OLD CAVSE as indeed all this Gentlemans Works tended to for which the Almighty was supposed so often to have declared and signaliz'd himself and illustrates only this That there was not any Person qualified for undermining of our Monarchy either from his Wit or Parts Boldness or Courage from his Virulency in Satyr or his Knowledge in History from his skill in any Science or Profession but what some or other of the most eminent was made Serviceable to this Faction and contributed his Talent to the carrying on the Design according to the gift and graces that they had in their several Abilities to promote it neither can this Gentleman think himself libell'd in this Accusation unless he would give his own works the Lye for who but him that had such a Design for the subverting our Monarchy would at a season when the Succession of our Crown was struck at in the Commons Vote a Succession that several Laws of our Land have declared to be Hereditary even by that of God who but one so Seditious would not only have encouraged such unwarrantable Proceedings which was the late Kings own Words for 't in such an Assertion of the Commons Right but in that too brought upon the Stage several Arguments from our History several Presidents of our Soveraign's being here Elected by their Subjects when they might as well too tell us That our present Soveraign was so chosen because the Question was put to the People upon his Coronation but yet this elective Kingdom of ours did this Laborious drudg of Sedition drive at too Does he not tell us William Rufus and several others were Elected that is Henry the First King Stephen King John tho I am satisfied that consent of the Clergy and People they so much rely upon was nothing more than the Convention of those Persons that appeared upon the solemn Coronation or at least the Proclaiming of the King Themselves are satisfied all our old Statutes clearly confirm'd the sole Legislative Power of the Prince and therefore they won't when they are objected to them allow them to be Statutes at all because made I suppose only by their King but so my Lord Coke
says they said of the Statute of Edward the First which notwithstanding he calls an Act of Parliament but yet however we see that the Style of all other Acts of Parliament put all the enacting part in the power of the King so that Mr. Sidney's making his People and Parliament the Supream Judges of their Kings violating the Laws is only a Position that opposes every Act in the Statute Book from the Great CHARTER to the last grant of our late King CHARLES But our Author Triumph'd as he thought over his Adversaries in forcing back their own Argument upon his Foes for says Mr. Sidney if no man must be Judge because he is party then neither the King and then no man can be try'd for an Offence against him or the Law I confess with such a sort of disputants as are resolv'd to beg the Question and take their Premisses for principles of eternal truth you cannot avoid the Conclusion tho it be the greatest Paradox and an absolute Lye for he presumes the Parity of Reason and then concludes they are both alike Reasonable he takes it for granted the People may judge the King tho party as well as the King the People who must be suppos'd as much partial and that is truly just as if he had said when we believe as they do and what then Why then we shall be of their mind i.e. that it would follow the King or his Judges could not hang a Fellow for Fellony or this Author himself for a Traytor to the State Nay more as the Gentleman has manag'd the matter it is made an Argument à Fortiori for he supposes the Absurdity to be such that if the King in his own Case must Judge the People and not the People the King in theirs that this Contradictory Consequence would be as much conclusive That the Servant entertain'd by the Master must Judge him but the Master by no means must the Servant or in the Metaphor of his own more Blasphemous Sedition The Creature is no way bound to its Creator but the Creator it self to the thing it has Created and now all is out and all the large Volume all his mighty Treatise not to be finisht in many years is founded upon that first Principle of all Republicans The Peoples Supremacy or as Mr. Sidney says the Soveraign being but a Servant to his Subjects a Creature to these God Almightys of the People the Creators of their King truly this they are resolv'd we shall grant or as resolutely suppose we cannot Contradict and so put upon us their presumptive absurdities for our own and make them the Consequence of those Concessions that were never yeilded who taught this Gentleman who granted him that the Magistrate was the Peoples Creature but a Brutus in his Vindiciae or that as a bominable a Book De jure Magistratuum and for this must it follow that Filmer is so absurd only because he does not suppose the very pernicious principles of those very Rebels and Republicans he endeavours to refute It is an easy sort of a Conquest and you may soon prove your Foes to be Fools too if you 'll oblige them to maintain their own positions from the Contradictory Maxims of their Enemies they oppose and this Collonel that once was a Souldier and in Arms for his Common-wealth as well as a Polemical pen man against the Monarchy would soon have remain'd sole Master of the Field had the Measures of his Foe been forc't to be taken from the Rules and Maxims of the Enemy which he fought and many would think the Man a little mad that could imagine two Armies that faced in their Fronts to meet so as to stand upon the same ground It can't be well effected without a penetration of body neither can Mr. Sidney conclude us in that absurdity unless he would make us mingle Principles a thing perhaps as repugnant to our Nature as that praeternatural Coition of Matter for have we not all the Laws of our Land on our side and that besides Sense and Reason to whose determin'd sanctions even those themselves must submit for I look upon our Argumentative reasoning in such matters to be somewhat like Belief which all our Learned in the Metaphysicks will allow to determine it self upon demonstration and Commences knowledg'd and a science and so must our Positions at last in the Politicks no longer pass for indifferent Notions or disputable Opinions when they come once to be ratified by some supream Establishment or unquestionable Authority for as the result of demonstration is some Theorem or Postulate that requires our assent so are the Sanctions of the Supream power some Statutes or Laws that Command our Obedience as the one is prov'd so the other Enacted and let any one Judge from the several we have cited or any single Act themselves can cite whether all and every one do not expressly assert or absolutely imply the Soveraign so far from being the Servant of the Subject or the Peoples Creature that they many times maintain him to be under none but God and in all places acknowledge him above all the People and is not the absurdity on their side and a Contradiction even in Terms when they contend for the contrary And as that Author of the Right of the Magistrate and the like writings of the most Eminent Republicans led on and seduc'd Mr. S. in some Points so has also so his predecessor or Co-eval for I think they liv'd in an Age W. Pryn imposed upon him in others and I am sorry to see Mr. S. that valu'd himself upon his parts to rely upon that which that pest of the press plac'd so much confidence in and that are the words of Bracton where he says as Mr. S. would have it God the Law and the Parliament are the Kings three Superiors But even Pryn himself the perverter of all that was not for his purpose does not deal so disingeniously as this Gentleman in the Case for he recites it more Exactly as it is in Bracton which is the Kings Court instead of the Parliament which in the time that Antient Author writ very probably consisted only of his prelates and Lords so that if granted them Pryn's Commons and Mr. S. his People of England are not comprehended in the words of that old writer and then besides it is the opinion of some that those words the Laws and the Kings Courts were not originally in the writings of that Loyal Lawyer who in several other places of his works carries up the Divine Right of his King and that absolute Power of his Prince as high as any of the most Modern whom Mr. Hunt has represented and libell'd as first introducers of this new Notion this dangerous and damnable Doctrine for that grave Judge for above 4 or 5 hundred years agon told us our King was under none but God that he had none above him
but God and that he had God alone for his Avenger and it seems somewhat Improbable a person of his Loyalty and Judgment should not only detract from the Supremacy of his Soveraign which he seems so much to maintain but also in direct opposition to what himself had asserted and besides were they the sense as well as the words of that Author they are only true as I have before shown when they are taken collectively in a complicated Sentence and so seems a sort of Sophistry which the Logical heads call a fallacy in Composition But yet from that does Mr. S. conclude That the power is Originally in the People and so by Consequence in the Parliament only as they are their Representatives For my part I cannot Imagine this Gentleman's large Treatise to be any thing else but a Voluminous Collection of all the Rebellious Arguments that were publisht in our late War for as in this little fiftieth part of it as he professes it to be there is not one new Notion but what is to a Syllable the same with the Papers of Pryn and the Merc. Politicus out of the Author of the Treatise of Monarchy has he made a shift to borrow or else by chance very harmoniously to agree 〈◊〉 the pernicious Position That our Monarchy is not only Limited and Mixt for that wont content them alone but that this Limitation has oblig'd the Soveraign to be Subject to the Judgment and Determination of Parliament for says that more Antient Antimonarchist this Limitation being from some body else and the power confer'd by the publick Society in the Original Constitution of the Government and then he bethinks himself that Kings too may Limit themselves afterward by their own Grants and Concessions which he is pleased to call a Secondary Original Constitution i. e. if my little Sense will let me Comprehend the saying of a Politician that has none at all somewhat like a Figure in Speech the Country-man calls his Bull us'd when the Speaker can't express himself Intelligibly A Secondary Original sounds not much unlike the Nonsense of an Original Copy or a second first yet from this senseless Sophistry it must be concluded that the Soveraign being limited by this Original Constitution or as they call it After Condiscent and Secondary Original what then therefore every Mans Conscience must acquit or Condemn the Acts of his Governour and every man has a Power of Judging the Illegal deeds of his Monarch And so Mr. S. in almost the same Language As a man he is Subject to the People that made him a King That he receiv'd the Crown upon condition and That performance is to be exacted and the Parliament Judges of the Particular Cases arising thereupon I cannot but observe to this Gentleman upon this who was always such a great admirer of the Romans Common-wealth what I hinted before was the Sense of the very Romans when according to their own Notion of Original Monarchy the People of that Common-wealth first conferr'd their Power of Government upon a single Soveraign why their very Laws tell us That notwithstanding those Contracts and Limitations of which there were very likely some exprest even in that their very Celebrated and Glorious Law that first made that Government Imperial yet when once it 〈◊〉 so Conferr'd by that very Act all Magistracy i.e. all power of Judging that the Subject had before was past over too And were our own Monarch by the Compact and condiscent of his first Ancestors such a precarious Prince as they would make him have not our own Statutes I have cited long since resolv'd his Crown to be Independant and himself accountable to none but God And then abstracting from that Advantage we have of the Resolution of the Law Reason it self against which our Republicans rebell too that also will refute the absurdity of such a Position For first where for God's sake would they fix this their preposterous power of Judicial Process if in some single Persons then the Concession of their own renowned Aphorism will fly in their Face for that allows the Soveraign to be much superior to any Selected number of his Subjects and they won't be such Senseless Sots sure as to say That those whom themselves acknowledge to be altogether inferior should be invested with that Judicial Power which is the highest token and 〈◊〉 of Supremacy if they 'll place it as Mr. Sidney forsooth does in the Original power of the People delegated unto Parliament then should that be granted them when ever this Parliament is dissolv'd if their King be never so great a Delinquent for I think they may assoon make their King so as they did foolishly those that followed him in the late Wars when the word implies a Deserting and the Law only calls them so that adhere to the King's Enemies then I say if their Soveraign be never so much a Criminal to the State upon such a Dissolution they devest themselves by their own Maxims of this power of Judicature and so put it in the power of the Monarch or the Prince at any time to blast all his Judges in a moment and dissipate them all with the Breath of his Mouth and therefore Mr. Sidney was so wittily Seditious as to foresee such a Consequence and for that Reason very resolutely does deny what some of our more moderate Republicans will allow That the King has a power of Assembling and Dissolving a Parliament But this piece of pernicious Paradox a Position so false that some of them themselves are asham'd to own has been already refuted and prov'd from the very Laws of the Land to be an absolute Lye but our Author having plac'd himself and his People above the Law tho it was his hard fate to fall under it and made the Subject Superior to those Sanctions to which themselves acknowledge none to be so but the Soveraign from whom they proceed all the Satisfaction such a Person can receive from the Statutes must be from something of Reason that is the result of them and 't is such an one as relates to their own Positions For they say therefore the Soveraign is obliged to submit to the Laws of the Land because he accepted the Crown upon such an Obligation and shall it not Seditious Souls be as good a Conclusion To say the People have passed away the power of Assembling themselves when they have passed their own Act for being by their King Assembled Then in the next place if this Original power of this People be delegated to this Parliament it would have been much to the purpose for some of them to have shown us from whence this People had this Original Power Certainly if any it must be deriv'd from God Nature or somewhat that 's Soveraign But for the Almighty In all the sacred Texts there 's not a syllable of such a Legacy left them but abundance of the bequest of it
the Pest and Plague of the People are priz'd with our Republicans as the Philosophers and the Schools do their propositions of Eternal truths they imbibe the Poyson and exalt improve it too they sublimate the very Mercury of Mr. Hobs and whereas he equals us only in a state of Nature our Levellers will lay us all Common under the Inclosures of a Society and the several restrictions of so many Civil Laws But to what tends this their turning all the Power of a Parent into Tyranny as if a Father could not have an Authority over his Child unless he be bound to make it his Slave as if the Chastisement of a Father could not Evidence his Supremacy over his Son unless like the Saturn of the Easterlings he Sacrifice him to the Fire and torment it in the Flame But this paternal Right of the Father must suffer by these Factious Fools from the same sort of Inferrences they bring against the Divine Right of their King which may only serve with some Loyal Hearts to confirm the great sympathy there is between them for as by the Law of Nature a Father can't be said to injure his Son so neither by those of the Land can our Soveraign wrong his Subjects For say these Seditious ones your Divinest Monarchs by that Doctrine can Hang Burn Drown all their Subjects they should put in Damn too for once since they may as well infer from it his sending them to the Devil but cannot common Sense obtain amidst these transports of Passion can they not apprehend a Father to have any paternal Authority over his Family unless he be able to Murder every Man of it The Civil Laws the municipal ones of his Land if a Member of a Society supersede such a feverity and if a Patriarchal Prince must be supposed as were several of old after the 〈◊〉 then the Affection of a Father And the Laws of Nature were sufficient to fecure the Son or 〈◊〉 the Servant from any 〈◊〉 but what some proportionable 〈…〉 so also did this Divine Right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Soveraign as entirely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great Turk yet the 〈◊〉 part of those Civil Sanctions to which the Divinest of them all would be 〈◊〉 or at least the precepts of the Divinity their God under 〈◊〉 they 〈◊〉 that will oblig'd them both 〈◊〉 Justice and Mercy the two great Attributes of him whom they represent But since they would make this Empire of a paternal Power so 〈◊〉 in Reason let us see how it has all along 〈◊〉 in the Letter of the Law and if it has there 〈◊〉 been 〈◊〉 upon as a Notion so 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 The most illuminated Reason of our eminent 〈◊〉 must submit to be much in the dark The Romans from the result of their Imperial Sanctions look'd upon themselves to have such an absolute Power and Authority over their Sons and Daughters that they tell us expressly it was a peculiar Prerogative and privileg'd of the Citizens of Rome and that there was no other Nation that could Exercise such a Jurisdiction they could 〈◊〉 for ever by this Power of the Parent any thing that was acquired by the Son and give it to any whom they pleas'd whereas it might have been an Argument enough of a paternal Power had they been but only usufructuaries and the Dominion remained in the Child and such a Sense of Soveraignty do the Civilians express to reside in the Father of a Family that they gave him the same Appellation with that of a King and tell us by the name of a Family the Prince of it is also understood and tho Mr. Hunt tells us a Story out of the Cabala of the Jews Laws and the Tract of Maimonides that they lookt upon their Children 〈◊〉 of Course when they came to Thirteen and that then they could claim it as their right to be free I must tell him from the Constitutions of the Imperial that must be of more force among us unless we resolve still that even Christians shall Judaize that no Sons were ever emancipated or emitted out of the power of the Parent unless they could prevail upon him for his own consent that by no meanshe could be compell'd to it and they had no freedom de Jure till their Fathers were de facto dead And tho 〈◊〉 in his Comment on that part of the Institution says They became sui Juris at 25 from their Manner and Custome yet concludes the Law of Nature oblig'd them still to their Parent which no civil one could disanull The Duty that their Digests say was due to this Paternal power which they 〈◊〉 almost as Sacred was exprest by the word piety and a learn'd Civilian of our own laments that there is no more provisions 〈◊〉 in our English Laws for the Duty of the Child and the protection of the Parent and with them so great was the crime of parricide that they could not a long time invent an adequate punishment for such an unproportionable Guilt tho they had one for Treason against the Prince And tho our own Laws do not make the Paternal power savour so much of Soveraignty yet we shall see they sufficiently evince that the Parent has a power very Analogous too it whereas Mr. Hunt will not allow it to have the least Relation which remisness of our Civil Institutions might well proceed from a presumption of our knowledge of the express command in the Decalogue of which the Romans were ignorant tho we have no formal Emancipation now in use which does imply a power of Government yet our old Lawyer tells us still that Children are in the power of their Parents till they have extrafamiliated them by giving them some portion or Inheritances and the Custody of them while minors which 〈◊〉 went to the King upon the presumption I suppose of his only ability to be a second Father that was settled in the Parent both by common-Common-Law and Statute for there lay a good action against any one for seducing a Mans Son as well as Servant out of his power which does imply that there is a power out of which he may be seduced and thus I have endeavor'd to shew the first Foundation of power to have been in the Fathers of Families And it signifies nothing whither every Father of it Reigns in it as a King now and therefore Mr. Hunt his impertinence is inconclusive and part of his Assertion a plainly when he would infer from the continuance of the Parents Authority over their Children together with the Soveraign power distinct that therefore there was never any Foundation of a Patriarchal power for he might as well tell us That because we have no Parents now but what are Subject to the Municipal Laws of the Land therefore there was never any Patriarch in the Bible never an Abraham an Isaac or a Jacob that had an absolute Dominion over their own Families or none now amongst some
Barbarous Nations that have no other jurisdiction but what is Paternal the question is not what jurisdiction those Parents have that are Subjected to the Laws of a Civil Society but what they have by those of nature and 't is as absolute a lye when he says 't is not abated by the Soveraign power for were it not the Parent had a power over the life of his off-spring as the Patriarchs had of old and some Barbarous Nations that are at present unciviliz'd And for the Statute of the 25 which Mr. Hunt brings as an Argument against it because 〈◊〉 is not made by that petit Treason is as pertinent perhaps as ifhe had told us that every Father of a Family was not included in that of Edward the first that settles the Militia in the King for sure 't is not possible to suspect how they can be considered asso many Soveraigns in the very Civil Sanctions that establish a much more 〈◊〉 Soveraignity whose Supremacy in their several Families is founded on the Law of Nature tho we have seen that they are confirm'd too by the general Laws of Nations and the Hypothesis favour'd from our own But as it is impertinently applyd to this purpose so is it as falfely infer'd from that Statute for tho Parricide be omitted and the Judges by that act restrained to interpret its extent from the paty of reason or à Fortiori yet no Man in hissenses can imagin that it was therefore omitted because there was no Relation of Subjection or Soveraignty between the Father and the Son when a Master and a Servant are exprest in the very Letter of the Law when a Prelate and a Priest a Husband and a Wife And is it not against Sense to imagin a Man has not as much Soveraignty over his Son as over his Wife that sits always with him as his Equal and to whom our Courtesie of England gives the Precedence and the Laws of the Land make but one as well as those of God and if the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Impetus of Love and Affection will supersede the Servitude and Subjection I think that by Mr. Hunt's leave is more abundantly exprest to the Wife especially in that point upon which he himself puts it the work of Generation And can it be imagin'd that even a regular or secular Priest whose Subjection to his Primate or Rector is only the result of the Statutes of the Society or the resolution of the Common Law can denote more Soveraignty then the Filial Obedience required by the Laws of God Nature and Nations the citing this Statute of Edward for having omitted the making Parricide Petty-Treason because it argues they had no opinion of the Soveraignty of the Father is the greatest Argument that they had for since they have suppos'd a Soveraign Power which from the suggestiing of such an Argument here themselves do seem to allow and tacitly to Confess in those Authorities the Destroying of which is made Treason by this Act they 〈◊〉 conclude a greater So veraignty to reside in him that has really a GREATER POWER then those that in that Act are exprest for were it 〈◊〉 any impartial Person living Whether a Man has not a greater Power over his Son then his Wife or Servant it would soon be resolv'd that he has he being impower'd only from some civil Constitutions to govern the latter but the former from the Laws of Nature and Nations both so that in Common Reason and Common Equity Parricide must be concluded in the Chapter of Treason according to the receiv'd Rule of Natural as well as Artificial Logick that every greater Crime must be Punishable by that Law that punishes a less of the like Nature and the true Reason why in this very Case the Judges do not make the like Conclusion from the Similitude or Aggravation of the sin is as my Lord Coke Insinuates because the words of the Act it self declare that nothing but what is their 〈◊〉 and exprest shall be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but even that very Act foreseeing they might have 〈◊〉 several things that by the same parity of Reason might be included does provide with a sort of reserve that at any time the Parliament might make it more Inclusive and I dare Swear had it it been propos'd to any Session that has sat since the Statute was first Enacted whether by Parity 〈◊〉 was not fit to be made Petty-Treason not a man of Sense in the Senate but would have consented And this Construction of a Parliament is what Mr. Sidney himself forsooth so much rely'd upon who if they will but put upon this branch of the Statute according to his own words a construction agreeable to Reason or Common Sense must conclude that he certainly is as much a Traytor that Murders his own Father as the Servant that kills his Soveraign Master or a Priest that makes away with his Lord the Prelate But besides if this Letter of our Law does not include the 〈◊〉 of the Parent in Petty-Treason yet the 〈◊〉 of my Lord Coke upon this Case will go near to conclude it for he says 't is out of the Statute 〈◊〉 the Son serve the Father for Wages Meat or Drink or Apparel and I cannot see how any Son till he is Emancipated by 〈◊〉 or Marriage or the like can be said to be any other then his Fathers Servant and that for all four for as the Father requires of him filial Obedience so he can and they Commonly do Command their Sons in the Offices of Servants and that Arbitrarily in whatsoever he pleases and find him accordingly the fore-mention'd necessarys to the performance of his duty and above all this it is the opinion of a good Historian recorded by my Lord Coke that before this Statute Parricide was Petty-Treason by the Common Law and then what will become of Mr. H. Triumphant Appeal to the Laws as well as his impertinent applycation to Reason and before this Statute too such a signal sign of Soveraignty was supposed to reside in the Father of a Family That it was Petty Treason too to 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 or Signet of the Lord of the Family wherein he liv'd a Signature of Royalty indeed and almosta mark of Majesty it self and the Reason my Lord Coke resolves it into their own omission of this Reasonable part of the Statute is so far from the Postscript impertinency of the Parliaments opinion against the paternal Power that he says those Law makers could never imagin that any Child could be guilty of such a sort of Barbarity and seems to insinuate the pretermission to have been the result of such a probable piece of presumption and that I remember was the very reason among the Romans that there was no punishment for such a sin as superseded a Sentence They had a Law supposed to be made in 〈◊〉 Caesar the Dictators time against those that attempted
Majesty and a severe one too besides its being Capital to have his Goods confiscated his Children 〈◊〉 and his very Memory damn'd and one would think it might have serv'd for Parricide too but they 〈◊〉 upon that Treason so gross such a Traytor so great that for a 〈◊〉 time he superseded even the Invention of a Torment from his Insuperable quiet Mr. Hunt would do well and like himself that is to 〈◊〉 very Foolishly even from this too that the Romans had once no Regard no respect for this paternal Right because the Punishment of Parracide was once left out of their Laws and yet at last that it might be no longer unpunishable only upon the same presumption that there could not be found such Criminals one Cnej. Pompeius is said to have been the Author and Inventor of a Natural Punishment if possible for a Crime so unnatural that is as he had Rebell'd against the Laws of Nature in this his Crime so he should be depriv'd while living of the benefit of all her Elements and neither her Heaven or Earth receive him after Death but to be Buried alive with wild Beast in a Bag and set a floating in the midst of the Sea whereas if they kill'd any other Kindred or Relation like Common Felons they were only punisht by the Cornelian Law And now by this time I hope I may with modesty maintain whatever our mighty 〈◊〉 do say to disprove 〈◊〉 that I 've shown the Paternal Power in the begining of the World to have been patriarchal and Absolute And in all succeeding Ages to have been sub ordinately Soveraign in the respective Families and several Households in which the Parent does preside and that asserted from the very Civil 〈…〉 that establish a Supream 〈◊〉 Paramount and some Measure demonstrated this from the very Word of God the course of Nature Light of Reason Laws of Nations and the Statutes of the Land And as I 've done with this paternal Right in Fathers so I shall consider now in the next place the Divine of my King a Right that none but Republicans dispute none but Rebels will really oppose and they deal with this Divine Doctrine not so kindly as some Indians are said to do with the Devil who paint him most ugly and 〈◊〉 only that he 〈◊〉 be the more ador'd whereas these dress up somewhat of Divinity it self in the most frightful form to make it 〈◊〉 and Contemn'd they tell us 't is Monstrous Trayterous Papal Divelish and this is the 〈◊〉 Varnish these Villains 〈◊〉 over it when all the while the Colours are only of their own 〈◊〉 This is their Trojan Horse that must 〈◊〉 Popery and Arbitrary Power and carries Fire and Sword in its Belly but in these their aspersions as they 〈◊〉 the Bible and 〈◊〉 the very Book of Life that in several places 〈◊〉 to us the very Divinity of Kings so they Libel the works of that Learned Person they so much oppose in a misrepresentation of his very principles and positions about it and then 't is no difficult matter to render an Hypothesis puzzel'd senseless and absur'd when with their own Pens they put upon it the Nonsense and absurdity for thus they deal injuriously even with the dead and disingenuously detract from the Learned dust of that Loyal Subject Sir Robert Filmer Thus Sidney says and endeavours to deduce from his Doctrine what was never lain down that all mankind was born by the Laws of God and the 〈◊〉 of Nature to submit to an absolute Kingly Government not restrainable by Law or Oath Thus the Postscript will draw from it that it 〈◊〉 such a Government to be Establisht by God and Nature for all mankind that it proves a Charter to Kings Granted by God Almighty But such 〈◊〉 were barr'd from being so much as Evidence by the Civil Law they were forc't to subscribe their accusations and be 〈◊〉 if their Falsehoods were detected with a retaliation and our own Statutes of King Edward provided once against such false suggesters with an incurring the like Punishment they would have brought others to suffer and 〈◊〉 pity but those 〈◊〉 ones or the like should be revived for the prevention of Perjury it would be no discouragement to good Evidence tho deterring to the bad and these detractors and false Accusers of a person in his principles deserve in a Moral Sense as much Animadversion as those Perjur'd ones in the Civil why did not Mr. 〈◊〉 or the 〈◊〉 their subscription too Why were they not so fair as to cite the 〈◊〉 out of Filmer wherein these puzzel'd Senseless positions were asserted The Substance the whole design of that Loyal and 〈◊〉 piece is only to expose the Natural Liberty of the People or as they would make 〈◊〉 the Subjects Divine 〈◊〉 to 〈◊〉 us the Royal Authority of the 〈◊〉 before the Flood that Fathers were first Kings of Families that the People were not concern'd as far as can be learnt from the Scriptures in the chusing of Kings That Monarchy has been always found more excellent 〈◊〉 Democracy and popular Government more Bloody 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That People cannot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or punish their Kings That neither those of Israel or Judah were bound by their Law but were always 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that our own have always been so too This is the Substance that by all the acquaintance I have had with his works I could ever collect out of them and as I remember from some particular passages he tells us That he does not quarrel at the Privileges and Immunities of the People but only question whither they have them from a Natural Liberty or the Bounty of the Prince He tells us tho Kings be not bound by the Laws yet will they rule by them and that they degenerate into Tyrants when they do otherwise where then is this Bugbear Arbitrary Slavery Misery the result of a Doctrine full of an easie Government Freedom and Felicity the most that can be gathered from him is That Monarchys as well as other Estates do and ought to descend from some supream Father and common Ancestor and that there is some paternal Right by which the several Kingdoms of the Earth are Govern'd although by the Secret Will of God the long series of time the several Successions are altered and Usurp'd And then what must be meant by this Divine Right but what is consistent with the safety of the Subject and the Will and Intimation of the Almighty That God has made it part of the Decalogue That Moses had it delivered to him in his Tables on the Mount that it is a positive Divine Precept that all the wide World should be govern'd by nothing else but a Succession of absolute Kings and as they would make every Monarch by a Divine Entailment of perpetual Tyrants these are only the Conclusions of rage and transports of those that are 〈◊〉 and prejudic'd against such a Notion
most prodigious piece of Paradox to see some of our Seditious Republicans to rail at Ministers of State and Mr. Sidney of all Men had the least reason to have reflected for his Sufferings upon those that sate on the Bench with the rest of the Rabble of his Democraticks who of late in these tumultuous times have talkt of nothing less than the punishing of those that held the Sword of Justice threatned them with the Fates of Tresilians Fulthorps Belknaps with the Gallows Fines and Imprisonments whereas these two were only punisht in the Reign of a King wherein they actually rebell'd and deposed their Prince but were they the worst of Men that officiated in Publick Administration under their King such Republicans have the least reason to find fault when always in their Usurpations the greatest Fools aswel as Knaves have been commonly preferr'd What more Illiterate Blockheads did ever blemish a Bench than some of those that sate upon it in our Rebellion and for that consult the Tryal of Lilburn they Arraigned where you 'l find a clamorous Souldier silence and baffle them with his Books and invert the Latin Aphorism in a litteral sense by making the Gown yield to the Sword And for their Villany let Bradshaw alone And for that only be the best of Presidents The very Beggars and Bankrupts of the Times that bawl'd most for Property when they had hardly any to a penny or a pin were set up to dispose of the peoples Fortunes and Estates Princes as they are above all Men so generally make those their Ministers that excel others in Desert or Vertue because their persons are to be represented by them And they may aswel imagine a King would croud his Courts with Clowns to shew his Magnificence as fill his Judicatories with Fools or Knaves to distribute his Justice 'T is enough for an Oceana an Oliver or a Common-wealth to set up such ridiculous Officers Brutes beneath the Ass in the Apologue that will not so much as be reverenced for the Image they bear but even the best of Common Men whenthey are rais'd to some supreme Government prove like Beggars on Horse-back unable to hold the Reins or riding off their necks the wisest in their own ordinary administrations prove but foolish Phaetons when they are got into the Chariot set all in combustion and confusion The not being born to Govern or educated under the Administrations of a state makes them either meanly submissive in the midst of their Grandeur or insolently proud of their Office which renders them as ridiculously Great whereas Princes from an Hereditary VERTUE that consists alway in a MEAN or their nobler Education that instructs them in the Mode preserves them too from running into the sordid absurdities of such Extremes Many of such like preferable Conveniences might be reckoned up that make a Commonwealth less Eligible but for Confirmation of it it is better to have recourse to matter of Fact When did their Rome ever flourish more than under the Government of their Kings by that it was Founded by that it was most Victorious and with that it alway fell Romulus himself first gave them their Religion and their God as well as the Government and with the assistance of his Numa brought them to observe some Ceremonies which the Trojans had taught them under whom did their City Triumph more both in fame riches tranquility and ease than under the Empire of Augustus And one would think that when the Controversie upon his coming to the Crown was then in Debate it should have been decided by the two famous Wits of their time in their Dialogue Maecenas and Agrippa It was submitted to their determinations and we see what was the result A MONARCHY And that preferency of this most excellent Institution themselves most evidenced when upon all Exigencies and Difficulties they were forc'd to have recourse to a Dictator whom all Writers agree to have differ'd only from a King in the sound of his Name and the duration of his Office the very Definition of his Name implying that all were bound to obey his Edicts he had his Magister Equitum an Officer in effect the same with the Praefectus Vrbis which under their King was his Mayor And after that rash Rebellion of theirs against Royal Government after so many Revolutions of Tribunes Triumvirs Quaestors AEdils Praefects Praetors and Consuls were never at rest or quiet 'till they were setled again in their Caesars Themselves know best what the Sedition of Sylla and Marius cost them how many lives of Consuls and Senators besides the blood of the Commons Let them consult Plutarch and see the bloody Scene of Butchery and Murder Pray tell me mighty Murmurers in which was your Rome most bless'd or suffer'd least with the bloody War between Caesar and Pompey or the settlement of it in Julius himself Did it not bleed and languish as much with the Civil Wars of Augustus Antony and Lepidus as it flourish'd when reduc'd to the only Government of Octavius And would it not have been much better had those succeeding Emperors been all Hereditary when we find that for the most the Multitude and Soldiers were the makers and setters up of the bad and the destroyers and murderers of the best 'T is too much to tell you the story of our own Chronicles as well as their Annals how happy our Land was for a long time in a Lineal Descent of Hereditary Kings how miserably curst in the Commonwealth of England what blood it cost to establish it what Misery and Confusion it brought us when unhappily establish'd And as an Argument that the Romans flourish'd most under those Emperors see with what Veneration their Imperial Sanctions speak of their power they make it Sacriledg to disobey it they made the very memory of those that committed Treason against them to be rooted out the very Thought of it they punish'd with as much severity as the Commission all his Children Servants and whole Family were punish'd though unknowing of the Crime They punish'd those with the same severity that Conspired against any Minister of State because relating to the Imperial Body and that if they did but think of destroying them and even those that were found but the movers of Sedition were Gibbeted or Condemned to their Beasts And as those Laws made all the Sanctions of all Princes Sacred and Divine so do our own declare the King capable of all Spiritual Jurisdiction in being Anointed with Sacred Oyl by which they give him all power in Ecclesiasticals too to render his Person the more Venerable and call the Lands of the King like the Patrimony of the Church Sacred Prince and Priest were of old terms Synonimous and signified the same thing The Jews and Egyptians had no Kings but what exercised the Offices for a long time of the Priesthood too with which they then alone made the
War upon him for fear he should make War upon them that 's the English trick of it And I can tell it them in a Spanish one too so Gondamor got Raleigh's Head he told them not for the mischief he had done them but for that which he might do But had not the Laws provided so particularly for the King this would be madness and cruel injustice even among common Subjects reduce us both into Hobs's his state of nature and his fear to kill every one we meet for fear of being kill'd or set our Neighbours House a fire for fear it should catch of it self and consume our own And now be witness even the worst and the most warm Assertor of a Common-wealth in this case be for once what you so much affect Judge between you and your King The King had his Court of Starchamber constituted by Common Law and confirmed by special Act of Parliament The Commons they send up a Vote and Bill for suppressing it The High Commission was establisht by the Statute of the Queen the Commons come and would put it down with a Vote The Court of Wards and Livery the tenures of which were even before the Conquest and drew Ward and Marriage after it was establisht by particular Act the Commons clamour to have it supprest which to please them is done The King had several priviledges that belong to the Clerk of his Market confirm'd by ancient Custom and several Statutes abolisht by the Parliament in the Year 1641. The King had the Courts of his Forests his Judge in it constituted of old by Writ then by Letters Pattents This was a grievance which was never before and therefore must and was supprest with the rest The Law required no person was to be Imprisoned or put out of his Lands but by due course and custom None to be adjudged to Death but by the Law establisht they confined several of the Kings Subjects send the Bishops by order of the House to the Tower and by special Bill attaint Strafford and Behead Laud with an Ordinance Resolved by all the Judges in Queen Elizabeths time that to levy War to remove evil Counsellors is High Treason against the King they past a Vote that the King was seduc'd by evil Counsellors against whom they levied War to remove There is a special Statute that says expresly that the Subjects that aid the King shall not be molested or questioned They publisht their Declaration That it was against the Laws and Liberty of the Kingdom to assist the King that the Sherriff of the County ought to suppress them The Law makes those Delinquents that adhere to the King's Enemies they Vote those that serve him in such Wars Traitors by a Fundamental Law The Statute provides that the Parliaments should assemble peaceably they by particular order bring Horse and Foot into the Palace Yard In short The Parliament first seizes the Militia against an express Act that setl'd it solely on the King The King sent out after his Comission of Array for which he was impower'd by Act of Parliament The Parliament order the raising an Army against the K. declared Treason by special Act The King then Summons his Subjects to his assistance at York and comes and sets up his Standard at Nottingham for that was warranted by the Laws of the Land and several Statutes of the Realm I have taken this pains both to prove that bloody War that general Revolt to be a plain Rebellion and that the War it self was begun by those that were the only Rebels the Parliament because you see that both those positions have been laid down among our Republicans either of which should it gain credit is enough to run us again all into Blood And both together as false as Hell and can be the Doctrine of none but what 's the Author of all Sedition the Devil These were the Plots which they practis'd upon that poor Prince whose Sincerity was always such that he could not suspect in Nature such a sort of designing Villains nor humane Wit well imagine such ingrateful Monsters that for their King 's continual Concessions to better the Conditions of his Subjects should still Plot upon him to render his own the worse Here we saw what all these Positions Principles Practises all their Preaching Praying Printing did tend to and terminate in the People enslav'd the Monarch murder'd the Government undermin'd But as these Maxims of our Democratick's were destructive to our Monarchy and produc'd as you have seen those Plots and conspiracies that subverted it so shall we see by subsequent Events and be inform'd from as much Matter of Fact what I have heretofore insinuated only from the force of Reason that the same Principles after they had set up their Commonwealth made them Plot too upon one another When the Parliament had imprison'd their King whom they bought for a Slave confin'd him with a merciless Cruelty at Holdenby-house then a Castle and Garrison and by that Act made him no more a Monarch but a Prisoner of War themselves no more his Subjects but his Masters and Sovereigns the Parliament having had so far the End of their Plot upon the King now the Army take their Turn to Plot upon the Parliament who when they had made their Monarch accountable to their Memberships might as well sure expect by their Servants to be call'd to account The Parliament when they had wrested the Sword out of the King's Hand knew themselves the Supream Power and were as certain they could as soon send him packing with his Supream Right The Soldiers now are sensible that the Members of the Army have that Sword in their Hand which the Parliament took out of the King 's and see no reason why they may not make themselves the Supream Parliament for this their Original Right of the People over the Magistrate will always I warrant you be appropriated to that part of it that has an Actual Power and that they found for Cromwel conspires with his Adjutators who like provok'd Beasts begin to be warm'd into a perception of their own Strength which even when a Horse comes to know to be sure he 'll throw his Rider For this he fools his Fellow-Senators with a Suggestion of his readiness to suppress any Soldiers Insurrection at the same time that he set them on to rise The Parliament had plotted by Subscription and Petitioning to advance their Power upon the King their humble Servants the Soldiers now subscribe petition that the Parliament would be pleas'd to submit to their Power send to the Good Houses at Westminster the Representation of their Army that they forsooth were the Delinquents now and that they be speedily purg'd of such Members as for Delinquency were not to sit there They make eleven of them Traytors impeach them of High-Treason to
populus 〈◊〉 Magistratus sed Magistratus prop 〈◊〉 po ulum fuisse creatos De Jure Magist. Quaest. 5. p. 10. Edit Francf ‖ 16. R. 2. c. 5. * Deum Legem Parliamentum ‖ Postscript †Hen. the 3d's time Bracton lib. 4. cap. 24. § 5. Rex sub nullo nisi tantum Deo and l. 5. tract 3. non habet superiorem nisi Deum satis habet ad paenam quod Deū expectat ultorem Paper at his Execution Treatise of Monarchy p. 12. p. 17 18. Imperium etsilatissime ex lege Regia propter August latum pateret certis tamen limitibus desinitum de jure magist p. 29. ‖ So the Roman Senate when Augustus was not so much as present freed him from all obligations * The Lex Regia princeps legibus solutus est l. princ de legibus Major singulis Junius Brutus Vindic. de Jur. Mag. Will. Pryn Parliam Right Buchanan Sidney Tryal p. 23. Coke Littleton 291. Tryal page 26. Tryal pag. 22. De jure Magistrat Brutus * Case of 〈◊〉 Coke 〈◊〉 344. B. The Prerogative of the King is given by the Common Law and is part of the Laws of the Realm 3. Instit. p. 〈◊〉 Stamf. pl. Cr. 62. a Prerog 5. 〈◊〉 an 〈◊〉 Town 〈◊〉 of the King Coke 〈◊〉 164. 〈◊〉 ‖ Ibid. Our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Scotland had Parliaments not above 700. years agon and even their Republicans will allow they had Kings long before that call'd only the Preceres as a worthy Author of theirs observes Sir G. M. Jus. Reg. That their old Laws run just like ours here the Kings only Acts and that their 〈◊〉 did not begin till about 300. year agon Which makes it more likely that our own was not summon'd much long before for tho they were different Kingdoms yet Neighbouring Nations and might nearly follow our Innovations when 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that must be lik'd by all Subjects ‖ posts p. 92. * Quia qui mandatam Jurisdictionem suscepit proprium nil habet sed ejus qui mandavit Jurisdictione utitur Zouch Elem. pars 5. § 4. ‖ Quamvis more majorum Jurisdictio transfertur merū Imperium quod Lege datur non transit D. 1. 21. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * Coke 4. Inst. c. 7. p. 71. Tryal p. 23. It began Novem. 3d. 40. 21. June 1647. Perf. Diurn page 16. 12. Hollis Hollis Hothants Loves and Carys 〈◊〉 Hist. Indep page 49 50.53 Sir John Maynard 〈◊〉 os the People Pers. Journal 1699. Dugdale 260. Barebones Parliam Tryal page 33. 〈◊〉 * H. posts p. 68. ‖ Sidney's Tryal p. 〈◊〉 His Majesties Speech 22. May 85. p. 5. ‖ Ibid p. 4. * Rex Legia ‖ Certis 〈◊〉 Limitibus nec sine Exceptione probata jure Magist Quest. 6. ‖ Jure 〈◊〉 qd nimis Multas dignitates 〈◊〉 ibid. p. 38. * Plebs statim a funere ad domum Bruti Cassii tetendit Cinnam Per 〈◊〉 nominis occidet caputque prefixum hastae circumtulit columnā parenti patriae statuit in scripsit 〈◊〉 care per 〈◊〉 jurare perseveravit in deonumerum relatum percussorū nullus ficca morte obiit 〈◊〉 p. 51 52. ‖ As 〈◊〉 Claudius Galba Vitelsius Otho Vid. Sueton. * Unde Apparet ipsos etiam Caesares Juridice damnari coerceri potuisse de jure Magistrat p. 38. The King's Prerogative part of the com Law D. 45. 1. 38. Alteri stipulari nemo potest nemo promitendo alienum factum obligatur Zouch Element pars 3. §. 8. Vid. Inst. lib. 3. c. 19. D. 50. 12. 3. D. 50. 12. 1. Vide perfect Diurnal Hist. of Independency Deliberaturi de arduis Regni 4. Inst. C. 1. Parl. †De jure Magistrat Quest. 6. ‖ Dig. 50. 12. 2. D. 50. 12. 1. Zouch El. p. 101. * 1. Gen. v. 28. 4. Gen. v. 7. ‖ Vid. Paper at Execut ‖ 25. Gen. v. 34. * C. 27. ‖ And we are expressly told the first born must not be disinherited no not for Private Affection 〈◊〉 21. v. 15. If a man have two Wives the one hated the other lov'd and the first born be of her that was hated he may not make the Son of the belov'd first born before the Son of the hated that is indeed the first born but must give him a double Portion because the beginning of his strenght and the Right of the first-born is his vers 15 16 17. †First Period contain'd An. 1656. 2d 1518. Secundū Intervallum a Varrone Mythicum appellatur * So Jehoram succeeded his Father Jehoshaphat tho he had several younger brothers Chro. 21. v. 2. And after him Ahaziab his young Son because says the text all the Elder were slain Ibid. Chap. 22. v. 1. Which implies that they had succeeded if alive by Birth and Primogeniture ‖ Numb 27. v. 9. Posts p. 71. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist. de Rep. l. 1. c. 2. For every house says he was Govern'd as the Greek imply's after the manner of a King by the Eldest in it †Heredis institutio nihil aliud est quam ultima voluntas testatoris Pacius Anal Inst. p. 26. de hered Inst. Tit. 14. * Tit. Digest de verb. signif l. 130. Quandiu possitvalere testamentum tamdiu legitimus non admittitur Tit. Dig. de divers Regis jur l. 89. Yet even those their 12 tables and the Pretors Laws allow'd a Lineal and Legitimate Succession ‖ Doct. Stud. l. 1. c. 7. he E'dest as badg of his birth-right shall bear his Fathers arms without differrence because more worthy of blood Cok. Litt. p. 140. Non hominem sed Deum heredes facere asserunt Cowels Instit. de Hered Tit. 14. p. 120. Brct. l. 2. c. 33. Britt 118. 119. Paper at Execut. page 32. Brief p. 15. Postsc pag. 118. 1 Kings C. 7. 〈…〉 〈◊〉 p. 32. Gen. c. 14. verse 2. Gen. C. 26. Page 32. ‖ One of their Republicans much countenances the Notion of Kings being but Fathers or Fathers Kings Prisci Reges vocabantur Abimilech quod Hibraice sonat Pater meus Rex Jun. Brut-Vindiciae Quest. 3. pag. 25 26. Postscr p. 100. He that but curseth his Father shall dye Levit. C. 20. V. 9. Deut. 2. verse 18. Plato himself not the 〈◊〉 allows those that 〈◊〉 to Rule over what they have 〈◊〉 Vis lex naturae semper in ditione parentum esse liberos 〈◊〉 Plin. Paneg 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. ‖ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de Rep. l. 1. c. 2. †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ethic. lib. 8. c. 12. ‖ Aristot. Polit. lib. 3. cap. 7. and then agen lib. 5. cap. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the same that he expresses in other places by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ‖ Pater is est quem nuptiae demonstrant D. 2. 4 5. Partus sequitur 〈◊〉 ‖ Quicquid acquirit filius acquirit pa. tri suo servus domino Inst. 2. 9. 1. Coke Littl. §. 172. Dr. Stud. l. 1. c. 8. ‖ Posts p. 113. Potestas patris
REMARKS Upon the most Eminent of our Antimonarchical Authors AND THEIR WRITINGS VIZ. 1. The brief History of Succession 2. Plato Redevivus 3. Mr. Hunt's Postscript 4. Mr. Johnson's Julian 5. Mr. Sidney's Papers 6. Vpon the Consequences of them Conspiracies and Rebellions Publish'd long since and what may serve for Answer to Mr. Sidney's late publication of Government c. Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster 1699. The Contents INtroductory Remarks Page 1 CHAP. I. Historical Remarks on the brief History of Succession 20 CHAP. II. Remarks upon their Plato Redevivus 145 CHAP. III. Remarks upon Mr. Hunt's Postscript 350 CHAP. IV. Remarks upon Mr. Johnson's Julian 445 CHAP. V. Remarks upon Mr. Sidney's Papers 449 CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracles 672 Introductory Remarks FEW Persons amongst the mighty numbers that have writ shall condemn more the Vanity of Writing tho' I hope as few have used it less in Vain The first Design of my putting Pen to Paper was only to correct the Licentiousness of Paper and Pen and to supply with a timely animadversion the Expiration of a temporary Act 't was Time sure 't was high Time for every Loyal Heart to use his Ink when they had almost scribled us all into Blood and to weeld his Pen in the defence of the Government when the Knife was at our Throats and their Swords drawn I know the weakness of the dint of Argument against the power of Steel And the Impertinence of persuasion where the Law can Compel but since the Pen has the power of provoking a Rebellion and that experienced 't is as warrantable an experiment to turn its Point and make the same Wand to lay the Devil that it raises and since the Laws were almost silenced only with their threatning Arms 'T was time to animate the dead Letter To make it know its force and exert its power and to strengthen a Government That seem'd but too weak for its self and unhappily distrusted its own security And that to this purpose the power of the Pen has not been ineffectual will appear from these subsequent Observations Which the comfortable success will better justify than their prosperous Rebellion could have been made again Just and which I 'le assure you now 't is some Comfort to observe Especially to those that were so bold as to be concerned that dared to stem the torrent of Schism and Sedition when 't was but a dangerous Duty and embarqu'd with the Government in a storm when the Waves rose and raged horribly and the gathering of the People was like the noise of many Waters It is observable that upon the first dissolution of the Westminster Parliament that which might be as well called the healing one whose sober debates had superseded the sullen unadvisedness of the subsequent closed the wounds of an Intestine War cemented the Government of Church and State Compact and firm for about twenty years beyond what the force of Rebellion could devide or Plot and Treachery undermine That Parliament which they Libelled Publisht for Pensionary only because it would not take pay of the People where perhaps they would have been truly paid That Parliament which with regret they call the long And all honest Hearts resent as too short whose unhappy dissolution rivall'd almost the fatality of the late perpetual sitting whose Prudent Progress gave some probability of sounding a Plot which others inconsiderate rashness hath left without a bottom if not beyond belief or Foundation by proceedings unwarantable and bold 'T is observable I say that then the Serpent of Sedition that like the Primitive one was curst in the Restoration forc't to creep on its Belly and crawle upon the Dust began first to raise its Venom'd head and with audacious Libels spit its Poyson in the very face of Majesty We know we had Plots before and that Oats his too not as a Discoverer but as prime Rebel and Conspirator not as an informer of Popish ones but a Ring-leader of a Republican we know we had then too our Tongues that were hanged for Treason as well as those that could since get Traytors Hang'd yet still midst all those unsuccessful attempts to Rebel Sedition never grew fo much and succeeded that blessed Interval of near twenty years quiet tho oft endeavoured to be interrupted never afforded so much Treason from the Press as for the last five years has been Publisht in their Prints Libels lookt as if they had been Licensed for a Lustrum and as if the temporary Printing Act had expired seasonably 't was never resolved amongst all their Orders to be revived 't was opposed even when moved unanimously that Treason too might be Publisht with a Nemine contradicente 't was presumed I suppose the better Pen-men were their own and I grant them the more pestilent that could spread their Contagion as fast as the Plague and to the Monarchy as mortal for almost five years the Distemper was Epidemick and the State Empericks had poysoned the body Politick almost beyond the Antidote of true Medicine and Art it Sympathis'd with Pestilence in the Natural almost incurable reigned most populously in Towns and Cities and turned every Corporation into a politick Pest-House Appeals vox Patriae Liberties of England Fundamental Rights were exposed in Capital Letters upon every Stall and that dedicated to Representatives and some Penn'd by them too for the Information of the People or in a less prepostorous Phrase for their Confusion Sedition seemed to be countenanced with suffrages and seconded as they thought with the supream power of the Nation They expected Treason should have been enacted for Law and Laws repealed that had declared High Treason 'T is almost preposterous and incredible tho' unhappily too true that more Sedition was fomented from the discovery of this Popish Plot than all the Jesuits in Hell could have raised while yet undiscovered we forged out one anothers ruin from the very deliverance and to fall with harder fate the less to be lamented by our selvs and just escapt the storm we strove to perish more miserably in the Port. Such was the state of affairs when some of our Loyal Hearts first ventured to stem the Tide the fierce influx of an Impetuous Rebellion that like a true torrent came rolling on with noise and clamor and threatned ruin from afar The first that opposed the Great Goliahs of their Cause that defyed too even the Armies of the living God and the strength of his Anointed was he who from his Youth had serv'd the Crown with his Pen as well as his Sword and before him too did their Dagon fall one whom they had designed formerly for a Victim when they sacrificed their Prince whom Providence reserved for their Scourge and for which since some of them have publickly curst its dispensation Libelled him in their Emblematical Representations in which I consess they neither spared their King breaking his Halter like a Dog and running for his Life and
believe the Legend for a Bible and his History for the Revelations But yet this Prince though by Conquest and Composition he got half the Kingdom and upon Edmunds Death the whole foresaw what Power the pleas of Right and Succession might have for animating an Interest in the defence of the poor injured Heirs and therefore took all the ways to ingratiate himself with his wavering People his young and unexperienced Subjects and all manner of means for preventing the Lawful Heirs for attempting for their Right sticking at neither Murder Malice and Treachery and in order to the first he made a shew of governing with more Justice then he conquered and took mildness for the best means of his Establishment and to let the Nation know he designed only to subdue them sends away his Mercenaries ships away his Navy and for a popular Specimen of an Heroick Kindness to the memory of the Saxons he succeeded as a Satisfaction to their injured Dust prefers Edricks perjured Head to the highest place on the City Gate and with that Expedient reconciled himself at once to his own promise deserved Justice and the Peoples favour and yet for securing himself from any danger from the Lawsul Heirs so politickly Cruel that all the Royal Blood felt of his Injustice sent the two Sons of his late Co-partner in the Kingdom to be murdered abroad and got his Brother to be butchered at home such an experienced truth is it that Powers usurpt Successions altered like the blackest Villanies can only be Justifyed and defended by committing more At his Death 't is true he disposed of his Crowns by Testamentary Bequest and well he might when there was so little known for Kingdoms of Feudatory Law and private Estates then far from being entailed yet in that very Legacy you can observe what Power the Consideration had with him of Right and Blood for he leaves his own Paternal Dominions Norway to his Eldest son Swayn and to his Youngest Hardicanute his conquered England considering his Mothers Blood which was Emma Wife to the late King Ethelred might as indeed it did give him some precedency to his middle Brother Harold the one having somewhat of Saxon in him the other all Dane especially if he was as some say Illegitimate tho' Baker calls him an Elder Brother by a former Wife so that upon the whole the Contest that rose about the Succession was but whether he had Right and when at last Harald was preferred 't was upon the Resolution of his being Legitimate so that here his own Inference contradicts the end for which 't was brought and instead of altering the discent shows they industriously contended to keep it in the right Channel and allowing they were mistaken in their Opinions of his Birth the Lords to make amends for their error streight on his Death fetch home Hardicanute who dying without Issue the Right of Blood prevailed again and the Saxon entred in Edward the Confessor Edmunds Son only being past by because his very being was unknown and so they can only be blamed for not seeking for the right Heir among the supposed Dead Yet when this Edward had found him out he designed both him and his Son Atheling for successive Monarchs whose very name imported Hereditary and next of kin as much as our Prince of Wales while the second Harold but usurpt upon him against the sense of the Clergy who even then lookt upon it as a Violation of the Right of the Heir and also of their Holy Rites and tho Harald suggested that Edward had appointed him to be Crown'd Historians say that it was only to make him during the Minority of this Edgar a Regent and not an absolute King and Mat. Paris speaking of Edgar Atheling in the very first Leafe of his History in these very words says that to him belonged the Right to the Kingdom of England and if Birth could then give a Right I don't see how then or now any Power can defraud a Prince justly of his Birth-right And now we 'l begin our Remarks on the Norman Line upon which the very first words of Baker are these There were six Dukes of Normandy in France in a direct Line succeeding from Father to Son and yet this Inquisitive Monarch-maker lays his mighty stress his weighty Consideration on the single Suggestion of Duke William's being a reputative Bastard be it so have we not here the Majority of six to one that succeeded 〈◊〉 Legitimately and is not these then like all the rest of their Objections against the Government rather industrious Cavil then real Argument or allowing it still is it not most impertinently applyed to his present purpose to tell us that William the Conqueror was himself Illegitimate and yet succeeded his Father in the Dutchy of Normandy And therefore must we have another Natural and Illegitimate Duke to wear the Crown of England or was the Suggestion only made because they had such a Duke in Readiness that had already run the Popular Gantlet of Ambition and been sooth'd into the Prospect of a Scepter with the false Tongues of Flatterers and Sycophants or else was the Nomination of the Normans to supersede the Fundamental Laws of our Nation And our England a Dependent a Tributary to that Crown before the Conquest these Paradoxes must be reconciled by Miracle before such a ridiculous Instance can pass for Reason or Common Sense or vindicate the false suggester from Folly and Impertinence But even here too his very Assertion fails him and this Pretender to Truth both abuses his Reader with false Application and telling a Lye For this Duke William tho' a Bastard Born was not illegitimated so as to be barred the Crown and incapacitated for Inheritance for it appears as Baker says by many Examples that Bastardy was then no Bar to Succession and by the Canon and the Law of the Church that then obtain'd the Children born before Wedlock were de facto truly legitimated if he afterward espoused his Concubine and this his Factious Assistant Hunt himself allows when the Wretch endeavoured to Bastardize the Progenitors of his Sovereign and this many Writers say was the very Case of our Duke William whose Father took his Mother Arlotte to Wife afterward The Donation to William Rufus was again clearly Testimentary which might be allowed sure to a Conqueror whose will only gave what his Sword had gotten but however as I observed above in the Legatory Disposition of Canutus the Dane where he gave his conquered Kingdom to his Youngest and Norway his Paternal Right to Swayn his Eldest to whom 't was most due so here this Third Conqueror of Old Britain observ'd the same sort of Bequest and left Normandy his Fathers Inheritance and his own to Robert to whom it appertain'd in Reason and Right both these Instances no small Demonstration shewing how the Precedency of Blood even in those days obtained and with those too whom our Factious Innovator would
made Lieutenant of the Realm and Protector of it during Richard his Minority certainly had his Competition come in Question they would have been but dangerous Trusts and against the Laws of all Nations and our own for the Civil takes sufficient Care for the removing of all suspected Tutors and our Common ordained upon the Lord 's loosing his ward for disparagement that the wardship of the Heir should never go to the nearest of kin but to the next to whom the Inheritance cannot descend Daniel says King Edward purposely to prevent the disorder and mischiefs that attend the disordering Succession setled the same in Parliament on Richard lest John of Lancaster should supplant him as Earl John had done his Nephew Arthur and this disingenuous Creature perverts the fear of Supplantation into a dispute of the Succession and Stow tells us of nothing but his being made Prince of Wales on his Brothers Death But this Uncle proved a better Keeper of the King in his Protectorate than this John or Richard the Third had but the Poor Princes Subjects kept their Faith too and not given 〈◊〉 perjured Author another Instance for the renouncing his Allegiance and a second president for the deposing of his King And here since this Historian has already cited two or three Popish Archbishops for the Countenancing of his Puritanism and the Doctrine of Bellarmin for the Counterpart of Buchanan conspiring in a perfect Harmony for the Deposition of their Kings and their Murder I 'le tell him of another Canterbury too that blew the Trumpet to the dethroning of the next King and the sacrificing of his Sovereign upon that Altar of his Lips For the first thing that the first Usurper attempted that aspiring Prince when he landed was the causing of Arundel then the Metropolitan to preach down King Richard the Prelate had ready a Bull procured from Rome promising Remission of Sins to all those that should aid the said Henry and after their death to be placed in Paradice which preaching as our Author says moved many to cleave to the Duke but this Popish Puritan knows our Bishops and Divines since the Reformation have taught him better Doctrine and he licks up the very Poyson of his deadly Foes only to spit the venom in the Face of the Government But with what face can he tell us of a Parliament here drawing up a Form of Resignation which was just as much a Parliament as their late Major part of Members that were to be obey'd in their Association An Invader Usurper and a banisht Subject takes upon him in the name of his Sovereing to Summon it and so did our late Rebels fight and fire at his Majesty but still with his own good Leave and Authority this Convok't that Parliament as Cromwel secluded his with an Army at his heels only those had secured their King in the Tower these in the Isle of Wight and shall these their Journals of Rebellion make up a Book of Presidents Is such a fellow fit to breath under a mild Government that calls for Blood where there is so much Mercy that Recommends to your reading an Impeachment of his King and refers you to the Charge and Articles that were drawn up for his Deposition as a worthy Subject and well deserving to be read Why did he not tells us too as well deserving to be imitated Jan. 20 48. The Sollicitor Cook presented the Charge against CHARLES STEWART Engrost ordered that it be returned to him to be exhibited Preposterous Lump of Law and Logick revers'd that prints himself the Contradiction to common Equity and Reason can such a Body Politick justly convene it self only to Rebel against its head and to take away that Breath from whence it needs must have its being and can those Laws be made to conspire his Death from whom themselves acknowledge they receive their Life But as to the matter of Fact it self you shall see what Sence some of the Times had of it The King of France was so sensible of this Injurious Proceeding that it ran him into a fit of Frenzy Richard being related to him by the Marriage of his Daughter he acquaints his Lords with his Resolution of Revenge and they shew'd themselves as ready to take it too but were prevented here in England by their taking away his Life which made them desist not able to serve him after his Death This is but an Evidence how the Villany was resented abroad and you may find they were as much upbraided with it at home and that to their very face when a Parliament was sitting and their Usurper on the Throne by the Loyal Prelate of Carlisle whose Memory may it live as long as Loyalty can flourish or our Annals last so solid and 〈◊〉 were the Suggestions so significant the Sense of this pious Soul that it silenc'd all the Senate that was sitting and nothing but the prospect of some private or publick Favor and Preferment hindred their Conviction their King was cool enough in prosecuting of his bold Truths being scarce warm in his own Government yet at last upon Debate and Consultation they confin'd the bold Bishop for a while for the Liberty that he took and could only condemn his bold Indiscretion for shewing them so much the badness of their Cause Hollinshed tells us this poor Prince was most unthankfully us'd of his Subjects In no Kings days were the Commons in greater Wealth or the Nobility more cherisht how near some of our pamper'd Jesuruns that are satten'd to rebel confirm the danger of too much Luxury and ease the present fears from their experienced Attempts can best attest But the fatality that befel that unhappy Prince affords us the best politicks for the prevention of the like Fate And now for his Henry the Fourth he is forc't to 〈◊〉 for his depending on the Parliaments choice when in that was his least Relyance for as little as he makes of his claim from Henry the Third it is apparent from some Rolls of Parliament that he challenged the Realm upon that account and the Lords were interrogated what they thought of that claim upon which without delay they consented he should Reign and as another Evidence of his Right to Rule shewed them the Seal of King Richard as a Signification of his Will that he should fucceed him but that which for ought I see he lay his greatest weight upon was but what all Usurpers must most relie on the Sword and he himself assures them just after the Sermon was ended at the time they consented to be his Subjects that he would take no advantage against any Man's Estate as coming in by Conquest and Conquest is one of the first claims he puts in at his Coronation and as Haward relates it in his Life not the least mention of his being elected is there mingled with his Claim But neither did the success of a prosperous Wickedness
us yet I cannot see why a Prince shou'd be deny'd the priviledge of a private Person And the Brother of our King the claiming his Right in Equity what is allow'd the meanest Subject when forecluded by the Law The next immediate Succession of the Crown descends as immediately to the next of Blood and as for the most part it has done since the time of the Saxons from Father to Son the Fifth Edward as hopeful as unfortunate and the more in affording our Factious fellow another president for an Assembly of Rebels that prefer'd the very Murderer of their Soveraign and a pretended Parliament that plac't the Butcher of his Brothers Children on the Throne And truly this Monster might be said to be Elected by the People whom no God or Nature design'd for the Crown and who was forc't to break the Laws of both to come at it and a sort of Election it was like those we had of late in the City with Rout and Ryot and that in the same place too at their Guild-hall where the Duke of Buckingham very solemnly convenes the Mayor and Aldermen and there propounds to them and the rabble their new King Richard and it was like to be a fine sort of National Choice that was to be decided by the Freemen of London But whatever Influence as this Gentleman observ'd they had on the Succession nothing of their consents could be gather'd but from their silence for suffrages they had none they being all surpriz'd with so strange a Proposition Their Buckingham Elector with his Aldermen and some of their Retinue cry up a Richard and so carry'd all with a House of Commons Nemine contradicente And now for his Bill in Parliament made rather by a pack't Convention of Buckinghams for the Bastardizing of his Soveraign's Issue that very Roll of Rebellion acknowledges his right by Lawful Inheritance grounded upon the Laws of Nature and Custom and God himself also this which was rather a Convocation of Rebels than a Convention of States acknowledgd what this inconsiderate Author cites them to Contradict the Lineal and Legal discent of the Crown by Proximity of Blood but in this acknowledging of an Usurper the good Bishop of Ely then oppos'd and for it was Committed to Buckingham's Custody and Stow calls it all a meer mock-Election And here enters all in blood that of the Blood Royal and Innocents the meer Monster of a man that beyond her intention seem'd to crawl into the World while nature lay asleep with a distorted Body the proper receptacle for as perverse a Soul and in him the third great Example that our Impious Author vouches for the Practicable Presidents of a Parliaments abetting the plain Usurpation of a Rebel to the Rebellious deposition of a King that Reign'd and consequently the subsequent Murders of those that had the right and those damnable Proceedings against Edw. 2d and Richard 2d and these poor Infants has he more Elaborately handled than all the rest of his abominable Treatise and the Contradictory Wretch calls the Murder of the Nephews Barbarous yet pleads for the power of a Parliament that Introduc'd the Tyrant for their Murder for they were as much dispatch't by their suffrages in the senate as by Tyrrel in the Tower they were the Ministers of Injustice that sentenc'd them out of their Right and that other only an Executioner to dispatch them of their Life for the History of all Nations and too sadly that of our own verifies it for an experienc'd truth that the Destruction of those that have right certainly follows in all Monarchies the bloody Vsurpation or the popular Election of him that has none an Association will needs follow an Exclusion for whom they have expell'd they must destroy for such Murders as are grounded upon MAXIMS of State must as necessarily follow the Foundations upon which they are lay'd for whatever Usurpers undermine an old frame of Government their Interest obliges them to remove as rubbish all that shall obstruct the raising of the new and the dangers and fears from excluded deposed Princes or the poor injur'd Heirs soon makes it absolute necessity to cement the Walls with their Blood The best remarks that can be gathered from the following Reign of Harry the Seventh are to be found in the Lord Bacon's History the best account of that King and he tells us he had no less then three Titles to the Crown whatever that Italian States-man Commines could conceive to the contrary first his Title in 〈◊〉 of the Lady Elizabeth whom he was resolv'd to marry secondly that of the Line of Lancasters long disputed both by Plea and Arms thirdly the Conquest by his own But the Learned Historian observes the first was look't on the fairest and Yorks line been always lik't as the best Plea in the Crowns descent and for Confirmation of it the Learned Lord tells us that this Henry knew the Title of Lancaster Condemn'd by Act of Parliament and prejudic'd in the Common opinion of the Realm and that the root of all the Mischiefs that befel him was the discountenancing of the house of York whom the General body of the Kingdom still affected and whatever stress and reliance this Prince might place in the PARLIAMENT's power this able states-man observes there is still a great deal of difference 'twixt a King that holds by civil Act of State and him that holds Originally by the Law of NATURE and DISCENT of BLOOD so that we have here a Person vers'd in our own Laws an excellent and allowed Scholar by the whole World and not only Lauds and Bishops as our bigotted Author would have it allowing a Divine right by the Laws of Nature and who I am sure was so good a Naturalist as best understood her Laws and that Natural discent by blood to be much more preferable than any other Human title given by such Inferiour powers of a Parliament whom the most zealou's adorerssure won't acknowledg more Omnipotent then the God of Nature himself I shall observe another Historical Instance that a true lineal discent was then taken for the best title and even in those times had the greatest Influence which was the Lord Stanley's Case who tho the very Person that plac'd the Crown on this Princes head yet suffer'd the loss of his own only for saying somewhat that savoured of his kindness to the Succession and that if he was sure the Children of Edward were alive he would not bear Arms against them so mightily did the sense of the right blood prevail with him that he sacrified all his own for it and rather than recant what he so well resolv'd seem'd no way sollicitous for his Life But that which this Historian might have observ'd too in this Reign as a discouragement to the designs of some of their popular Patriots then afoot when he pen'd this his presumptuous piece was the ill success that two several impostures met with
I hope if you Banish the Men you 'll Banish some Women too consider how to prevent the Royal Family marrying Popish Women No man can doubt but the Protestant Interest has been much praejudiced by his Majesties marrying a Princess of that Religion Popish Instruments having 〈◊〉 themselves under her Protection The Country Gentleman wanted the Civilities of the Court being a declared Enemy to all Ladies but this shows plain their aims were beyond that of the Duke and that it was the Sense of some of the House the Queen was in the Plot as well as the Opinion and Asseveration of Oats his Oath against his exprest Testimony given before Sir E. H. Have we not ordered several good Bills to be brought in for the securing us against Arbitrary Power and shall we now lay aside all those and be content with the Exclusion Bill only which I think will be worth nothing unless you can get more and what some of those more are is explain ed in the next Oration to it W. G. I do admire no body does take notice of 〈◊〉 standing Army which if not 〈…〉 such a Number as may be but convenient for Guards and limited as they may not be encreased All your Laws signify nothing the words of that Hellish Association only differ thus when they swear more modestly only to endeavour entirely to disband all such Mercenary Forces as are kept up in and about the City of LONDON These are some of the very Words as our Author relates them as they were spoken in his House of Commons I do them only that Justice that this Historian has done to their Honours or they to themselves so if these accounts are Authentick tho I remember when dangerous to Question even the Authority of an unlicensed piece of Sedition then 〈◊〉 see that many of our late malecontents of the Commons as ' well as our Plato's Rebellious Barons were not like to be contented any more with our Kings granting them all the security themselves could ask for their Religion then these Imperious Lords were after all their Liberties were fortyfied with an extorted Charter and made as firm as Fate 〈◊〉 their foresight could provide But that nothing would satisfy unless both lopt off the best Limb of their Prerogative and allowed them to have Parliaments without Intermission or at least frequent enough for an Usurpation of all the Power that is Regal for as the Doctor of Sedition observes upon the Kings being allowed to Call and Dissolve them That our Liberties and Rights signify just nothing So might 〈◊〉 this politick Pis-pot have remarked That when once it comes to the Power of the People to summon themselves or sit so long a Season till their own Order shall determine the Session that truly their Venetian Doeg would be a Prince to the Monarch of Great Britain and we should soon have less left of a King in England than such implacable Republicans have of Loyalty for I am sure we must in reason have better Ground to dread those dangers and utter Subversion of the State from their too much sitting that has been experienced than they for that panick fear of Tyranny from their 〈◊〉 so often Dissolved which they never yet felt But to see the boldness of such Villains for encouraging an Insurrection The briskness of their Barons that rebelled for a Charter and frequent Parliaments was most providentially brought upon the Stage when they knew they had forfeited most of their own by their Faction and made their House of Commons from their obstinate proceedings not likely to be soon summoned when once Dissolved so that here was a plain downright Encouragement of a resolute Rebellion as Occasion should serve and letting the People know they must put on their Armour as well as the Barons and be as brisk upon Intermission of Parliaments How far this good Exhortation encouraged an Assassination of our Sovereign and the succeeding Plot may be gathered from their attempts to put it in Execution and for which both Author and Publisher Merit full as well the Fate of those that dyed for the practising those Principles that they the more primitive Traytors had instill'd In short to insist no longer on this black Topick of plain Treason With what Faith and 〈◊〉 with what Face and Countenance can he call that perfect Conspiracy of a parcel of Faithless Peers a Defence of the Government that for almost forty Years laid the Land all in Blood and with their Witchcraft their sorceries of Rebellion that briskness as he calls it of putting on their Armour made it imitate an AEgypts Plague and Anticipate the very Judgments of the Almighty by purpling her Rivers with the Slain can the Defence of a Kingdom consist with its Destruction or those be said to stand up for their Country that invited an Invader and swore Allegiance to Lewis a Frenchman against him that was their Liege Lord I am sure this was making over their Faith to a Foreigner and many may think it as much to bee condemned as that of their King his Crown to a Saracen especially when that by some Historians is doubted but their falsehood's confirmed by all Then was our England like to have been truly France which they now but so vainly Fear In the next place he is pleased to grant the Militia to be in his Majesty's Power But 't is only until such a sort of Rebels have strength enough to take it out for he tells us the Militia being given but for an Execution of the Law if it be mis-imployed by him to subvert it 't is a Violation of the Trust and making that power unlawful in the Execution And that which shall violate this Trust has he reduced to three of the most Villanous Instances that the most Excrable Rebel could invent or the most bloody Miscreant concelve the Murder of three Kings by their Barbarous and Rebellious Subjects And in all three their strength and Militia were first taken away and then their Lives first he tels us Edward the second forfeited his Executive Power of the Militia In misapplying his revenue to Courtiers and Sycophants Richard the Second for 〈◊〉 Worthless People to the greatest places And Charles the First in the Case of Ship Money can now the most virulent Democraticks hug such a piece without Horrour at its Inhumanity or the vilest of the Faction preserve it from the Flames can those popular Parliamentarians and the most mutinous of all our murmering Members of whom my self have known some that could Countenance this very Book can they here defend iusinuated Treason when Stanley dyed for a more Innocent Innuendo but if Faction has forc't from their Souls the poor remains of Reason will Humane Nature permit such precedents to prevail that terminated in the miserable Murder of as many Monarchs 'T is remarkable and 't is what I remember these very Papers were Publish'd near about one of their late Sessions
Gibbet the Heads of some of his best Friends till he had none left to dispose of but his own and that at the last must be brought to the Block And can such an impudent Daemon the very spawn of the Father of Lyes thus confidently now declare that obstinacy Denyal in the late King was his Ruin but his misery and misfortune has unhappily left tho for us happy could a Nation be said so under such a loss such Politicks written in his Blood that all those of such Rebels and Republicans can never undermine In the next place the State Empirick comes upon the Stage and that only to vilify our Court of Chancery which with all Persons that can but distinguish Equity from the Rigour of the Law must-be had in Estimation the greatest Objection his utmost Malice can asperse it with is only That it may be Corrupted and so may the best of things whose Corruption is the worst There may be Roguery in Clerks he thinks in entering Rules and so their may be more Dangerous Knaves among Doctors that can prescribe a dose of Sublimate for Mercurius dulcis and such a Villany in his Art is sure more fatal then the worst that can occur in their faculty that at the worst can but bereave you and that long first of your Estate This Ruffian in a Moment robs you of your Life and I should chuse to live a little in the World tho a Beggar than be sent out like a Rat. The Ridiculousness of his Objections can't be answer'd but with such Merry ones as I make But to let him know I can defend the Constitution of the Court in Good Earnest so far is it from Obstructing his right by the Common-Law as he Ignorantly Objects that it 's a 〈◊〉 Commonly never to relieve him here when he can have his Remedy there but always in Justice and Equity renders him that right which the Rigour of the rest many times forecludes him off where the Common can't Compel a man to an agreement this will enforce it Recoveries of Legacies Performance of Wills otherwise Irrevocable and not to be Compel'd shall be obtain'd here It enforces the Husband to give the Wife Alimony and perhaps the Doctor dislikes it for that and certainly this must be a greater Solaecism than he can suggest in contradiction to the Court that a Court of meer Equity to moderate the Rigour of the Common Law should Injure their Petition of Right or Invade the Liberty of Magna Charta But that which is more Ridiculous and False is his Foolish fear of Injustice from such a single Judge sitting in the Judicatory and his Impudent assertion that never any Country in the World had such a way of Judging For the first should we not consider the prudence and Integrity of that Honourable Person that presides in it at present whose Equitable determinations were sufficient to supersede and silence such a 〈◊〉 suggestion it is morally impossible there to meet with Injustice where nothing is decreed but upon a Fair and Full Examination of Witnesses and the Judges hearing what can be alleaged by Counsel on both sides All the Panick fear that Alarms him is that the Prince for such is the Malice of a Republican that nothing can be thought Wicked enough for a King may put in a Person that may Act against Right and Reason carried away by Passion and Prejudice and at best but a Tool for the State If the possibility of such vain suggestions shall prevail for an Extirpation of an Officer of Justice Co-oeval if not before the Conquest and still Recorded for his just Administration I will allow what can't well be granted this Emperick to pass for a Politician and the same Monumental Folly will serve for as Ridiculous Objections against all other Courts of Judicature where the King has the power of placeing in it whom he pleases and they all Subject to the Passions and Infirmity that any single person and in their Breast too lying all the Decisions of any Controverted Law But that such a single Judge sitting in Judicature such a Tribunal is scarce in any Country of the World is most absolutely FALSE the Civil the Law of Nations and that of almost all the Civiliz'd part of the World has no other Method in deciding Civil causes Their Libels are but Bills of Plaint as in this the Subpaena requires the Defendant's appearance at a certain day in Court by them a Day in Court is assign'd him to Answer their Replications Exceptions here are Answer and Demurrer They pronounce Contumax and Ex-communicate Here goes out Attachment and Commission of Rebellion through the whole process the same Practise observ'd the same Rules as in all Forreign Courts of Civil Judicature where the Decretum finale or Sententia Definitiva is in the sole Breast of a single Person as our Common Decres in Chancery But what is the Law of all Nations will be soon Rebelliously Condemn'd by those that can't bear with our own and are so truly Licentious that they would live without any But for that Justice of the Venetians which he extols so much in opposition to our own his Republican Soul would be loth to venture there it 's Human Body notwithstanding it's Equal Distributive Justice which he would make Arithmetical too by makeing it so exactly proportionable to the Crime should he be found there as great a Criminal against that State as his Publisht Treasons have here render'd him to our own he would hardly come to know his Fault there till he came to feel the punishment and would find a Banditi with them to make the best Executioner 't is there Sedition and the Defamation of the Government is punisht assoon as Information is receiv'd and that with nothing less than Death and commonly drowning no Tryal per Testes and Examinants but Ferry'd away in one of their Gondola's which must prove your Infernal Boat too and the first sight of your Sin is with that of a Confessor and a Hangman and thesesure must be most Malicious Inveterate Villains that can commend such Judicatures that are rather shambles for Butchery and Murder before those of their own Nation where a Penny property can't be taken away without a Tryal per pares and the Law much less their Life But if our Republican when he commends so much the Justice of that State means only what is distributed in their Decemviral Council which is the Supream let him for a Confirmation of his Error and Folly Consult only the Case of Antonio Foscarini one of their own Senate whom upon the bare Testimony of too profligate Russians that he held correspondence with the Spanish Embassador which with any forreign one for a Senator is their Death by the Law without any Collateral or Circumstantial Proof without seeing his Accusers was seiz'd mussl'd up clapt in a dark Dungeon and in a few days sentenc'd to be strangl'd and which
Subjects has given from the Crown and dispens'd with that power and right enjoy'd by their Royal Ancestors 'T is strange and unaccountable that those which stretch their Wit and Invention for this power of Parliament and run through all the Mazes of Musty Records for the proving it so Ancient yet will not allow that of their King so long a standing and which after all their fruitless Labour lost proves at last nothing but the Council of their King those Noble and Wise-men he would please to Assemble their Gemotes the name of that most Ancient Assembly implying nothing more as appears even from their own Cook himself and their Commons whom this Author would have now so great as to Govern his King far from having the least concern in publick Administrations there being in all Historical Accounts of 〈◊〉 Antient times no mention of them in those very Conventions whereas Nobles Bishops and Abbots are expresly nam'd The greatest Colour they have for ' its Conjecture is only from the word Wites or wise-men which Constituted their Witena and the Prefaces or preambles to all their Laws imply that they were with the assistance of the Wise-men made by their King but can any person of sence and Impartial conceive this Term the more applicable to the Common sort of People and meer Laymen than to the Nobles the Bishops the Lords and then as we may well believe the most Learned of the Land their Literature sure was then but little and then I am sure that of the meaner Layity must be less certainly the word Wites will import no more than an Expressive Character of those Qualifications such Nobles were suppos'd to have that are still expressly said to be summon'd and to say that by Wise-men were still understood the Commons such an Emphatical denomination could not be so well resented by their Lordships since it would seem in some sence to Exclude them from being so but as a Learned and Labourious Answer of this popular point has observ'd and what will nearly make it Vnanswerable that in thir Laws when the Senate was generally signified and the whole Constitution it self then Wise-men or Wites expressed it but where any sort of the Constituent Members are Particulariz'd there you 'll 〈◊〉 nothing but Nobles nam'd so that such an Assembly and that all of the Nobility depending upon the choice and Election of the 〈◊〉 was not much more than our present Privy Council But then they were able to make Laws and these now but Orders and Proclamations and Parliaments then were so far from Usurping upon their King that they were in a Literal sence but his own Counsellors But were it granted what the Faction so furiously contend for that Commoners were understood by the word Wisemen they were still far from 〈◊〉 such a Senate as 〈◊〉 wherein they now sit only some few 〈◊〉 joyntly with the Nobility call'd there by their Soveraigns sole Summons and Choice and this is granted by one of their most 〈◊〉 Advocates when he tells us the Dr. has only found out what no Historian is unacquainted with that our Parliaments were not always such as now Constituted if so why then all this Labor for the proving them such why so much of the Commons Antiquity Asserred why must the Press be pester'd with three or four Volums for the purpose Laborious Drudges of Sedition 't is not there Antiquity you so much contend for and so little able to defend the pains to prove them Antient is only in order to make them more Exorbitant M. P. must Print their Rights and that at a time when they were even ready to Rebel and with a superfluous piece of Sedition tell them of their Power when all good People thought they Usurpt too much Hunt must Harangue upon their Integrity to their Prince and State when some have since suffered been proved Principal Actors for the Destruction of both These like the Roman Velites were fain to Skirmish in the Front and entertain the good Government their Foe with a little light Charge of the Commons power and priviledge faithfulness and sincerity 't is a Plato they permit to bring up the Body to the Battle and assail it with the Subjects supremacy and making the Commons a standing Council for the management of Affairs of State and the better Government of their King poor prejudic'd Souls that to please a party contradict themselves give all History the Lye and then constrain themselves to believe they tell a Truth you say Parliaments were not always so powerful as now and won't you be satisfyed then they had once less power All our Chronicles tell us our Kings of old never allowed such Priviledges to the People and cannot this People be contented even with an Usurpation upon their Kings And as it will from those Authors cited before plainly appear that the old Britains the Saxons and Danish Princes were far more absolute than of late our succeeding Sovereigns so was the Conqueror the Norman too for several Successions Consult Alfredus that lived in his time aud writ down to it or Gulielm Pictaviens that writ a Treatise of his Life who tho an absolute Prince by Conquest and Arms yet themselves will allow that he governed by Laws and that our English ones too yet those very Laws were then of such a Latitude that they allowed him what his Parliament of Lords would never have allowed had he been obliged to consult them he singly ordeined what of late has been so loudly clamoured for that no Prelates should have any Jurisdiction in Temporals and disarmed all the common People in general throughout the whole Kingdom the first themselves tho such Sollieitors and Petitioners for the compassing it would not now allow his Majesty alone to exclude from their Votes tho for their own Satisfaction without an Act of Parliament and for the latter they 'll hardly allow tho granted by the Law and tho it be only disarming and securing some Seditious Souls that disturb the Peace William the Second layd his own Taxes on the People a sufferance no Subject can sustein now but with his own consent and Permission he could forbid his People by Proclamation not to go out of the Kingdom not to be done now but with a ne Exeat a Writ and Process at Law confirmed as all others are by Act of Parliament Henry the First had as great a power and prerogative and exercised it too punishments before his time which were Mutilation of Members he made pecuniary provisions for his House which were paid in kind he made to be turned into Money an Alteration of Custom and Law not now to be compast but by particular Act Baker makes him first to have instituted the form of an High Court of Parliament and tells us that before only the Nobles and Prelates were called to consult about Affairs of State But he called the Commons too as
had not the Queen if such a thing could have been expected from a Sister of that Church so Zealous done much better had she refused the Bills of both Houses brought her for introducing the Pope's power and Supremacy your selves Seditious Souls reproach this Royal Assent with Reflections so scurrilous upon her Memory that the worst of Monarchs could never Merit and then only give but Loyal Ones leave to think that your Excluding Bill tho never so much the General Desires might have been as much cursed by posterity when it had entailed upon it Misery and Blood the common Consequences of a debar'd Right To come now after this Ecclesiastical point of the Church to that Civil one of the State that other thing this Lawyer Labors for the Descent of the Crown Shall the Peoples general Desires in this too terminate the Will of the Prince why then that Monster of Mankind as well as Monarchs did mighty well too to pass that Murdering Bill presented by both Houses of Parliament to make good his own Title to the Crown by the Butchering of those Babes in the Tower for no less could be expected when it was once taken up by the Tyrant than their Destruction for the Maintaining it so that this Peoples Desires dispatch'd them in the Senate before ever they were strangled by Tyrril in the Tower Had it not been a much greater Honor to the Prince to have refused such a Barbarous Bill than turned Usurper and a Butcher for it's acceptance Had it not left a less Blot in our English Chronicle as well as upon the Nation less Blood Did not both Houses exhibite a Bill even for the making Elizabeth the best of their Queens a Bastard And does Mr. Hunt say this desire of the People too did mighty well to prevail as it always ought upon the King Did not that Royal Assent so blacken his Person and brought the Nations repute so low that the very Protestant Princes left him out of their League whom they had designed for its Head and look'd upon our England as a lump of Inconsistancy whom such Vnanimous Leaguers could not Trust And was it not in his Reign That a Zealous Papist said It was the Parliaments Power to make a King or deprive him a fortiori then a Popish Principle to destroy or exclude his Successor But as bold as this Gentleman thinks himself when he dares to say Never any King denyed to pass those Bills which the People pitcht upon to present 'T is none of his own Politick asseveration tho it be but a piece of Sedition It is no more than what a Seditious Senate told their King long agon A Senate that sate brooding on the pure Elements of Treason and of which Pryn himself was a principal Member A Senate that sowed so much Sedition in one age that all the Succeeding will hardly eradicate A Senate that sate drawing out the Scheams and Platforms of a Common-wealth A Senate that assumed to themselves indeed the Legislative the Nomothetical Disposition of the Law but they proved such a Confounded sort of Architects in the State that they drew a perfect plan a confus'd Ichonography for Rebels to build upon their Babel Those told us in plain Terms what these more cautious Coxcombs insinuate with a silly Circumlocution That the King is bound by His Coronation Oath to grant them all those Bills their Parliament shall prefer And that they gather from their contradictory conclusion that bandy'd Banter they have Box'd about in both Reigns for almost these two Ages the VULGUS ELEGERIT I am sorry to find these Seditious Souls not only to want Sense but Grammar Lilly would have told them more of the Law and his Constrctuion and Concord made a better Resolution than their Coke upon the Case But as the People when they have got the Power will soon decide on their side the Supremacy so these Times did here assoon turn the Tenses and transfer the past Laws into the Future and 't is no wonder that those that did the Statutes of their Prince could dare to break the Head of a Priscian Is not the perfect Tense much more agreeable to Sense and Reason here than the Future The question is Whether it shall be meant of those Laws the People shall Chuse or have Chosen I won't object here Our Kings being absolute and compleat Monarchs without so much as taking such an Oath without so much as being Crowned which is the Time it is to be taken tho of that the Law has in several Cases satisfied the most Seditious and so resolved their silly Suggestion The resolution I shall give is the Strength of Reason and that must at least be as Strong as the Law Let it be but once allow'd That their King by this Clause is obliged to pass all Bills that shall be brought why truly then he Swears with an implicite Faith to Repeal all the Laws if the People please for the bare possibility in such a sort of Argumentation may be supposed and we as well imagine for my Lord Coke tells us we have had Mad Parliaments such a Senate may prefer Bills for the Repealing all the Old Laws as well as for the passing any single New and I am sure 't is no more than what has actually been done in one since that Learned Lawyer lived even to the Subversion of all the Statutes of the Land so that this positive Oath in their sense may Labour under an implicite contradiction for while he swears in the latter Clause to confirm all the Bills they shall bring It may be extended to cancel all Custom and Common-Law he is in the former sworn to defend Mr. Hunt's General Desire of the People may be for the Repealing the 35th of Edward as well as that of Elizabeth and leave no Law in the Land to punish Treason as well as Recusants only that they may commit it with impunity for one of those Bills has twice been brought into the House and both may be to save their Bacon And should the King with their Elegerit be obliged especially so mild an one with an anticipated Mercy to Pardon Villains 〈◊〉 the cutting of his Throat and leave no Law to punish perhaps a Rumbold or the Ruffians at the Rye certainly were his Right not in the least Divine this would contradict all Sense and Reason Suppose Richard the Second took this Oath as well as the rest of his Successors since and afterwards the general desire of his Parliament we all know was that he would depose himself Senseless Sots was that King sworn too even in his Coronation to confirm his own Deposition In short must not this senseless Suggestion put upon the Royal Authority the greatest absurdity against all Sense and Reason must it not make him swear to confirm those Laws that have not so much as BEING and that before he knows whether they will be good
for it that it is so dangerous the only danger such Seditious Souls can see in it is That it would oblige them to be truly Loyal and dread Rebellion like the Sin of Witchcraft And is it dangerous now to be kept from being damn'd or running to the Devil Where is this mighty Mischief that will ensue upon this Opinion But a Veneration for our Governors next to God by whom they Rule will not his having his Right from above the sooner preserve him from sustaining any wrong below are things the sooner to be violated only because they are the more sacred and will the Light of this illuminated Lawyer resolve us Sacrilege to be a lesser Sin than single Felony Had those Sects of Seditious Rebels that ruined the best of Kings and that only by debasing this his Right and setting up their own for Divine Had they or could they have been so sacrilegiously wicked under a Presumption That his Person was sacred or even a belief of their Bibles that their Lord 's Anointed was not to be Touch'd yes they could and if we believe this Impudent Imposture it was that only which made them so And if such Opinions had never been broacht the War had never ensued Mighty Madman whom discontent distracts I can Fathom his Foolish Innuendo's to be as false Divines did and as I think was then their Duty preach up this Doctrine but did not the two Houses threaten Destruction long before a Manwaring or a Sibthorp was so much as censured Had not Leighton Libell'd both King and Bishops long before And did the telling the People they were Jure Divino exasperate them the more against the Prelates and the pious Prince that governed whom these Devils must needs deal withal the worse only from their being told their Governors were sent them from their God Mr. Hunt certainly himself can't imagine it he has too great a Veneration for the Religious Dust the pious Memory of those Rebels and Regicid's to think they were arrived to that Acme of Transcendent Atheism to spit in the very Face of the Almighty's Image only because it represented a thing so Sacred No it was of that they could never be satisfied they were Religiously taught the Jus Divinum of the People that is to Rebel most Religiously Tell me Mighty Murmerer why must this Bugbear of Arbitrary this Monster of Absoluteness and Bloody War be the Consequences of this Doctrine of Peace Is your King bound to turn Cruel only because he Rules by a Right from the very God of Mercy and a King too de facto not long since almost merciful to a Crime If you talk only in Theory of what another may be then perhaps your Fears are as Panick as the Objection is nothing to the purpose For Usurpers commonly of the People's Choice as appears even in our own History have always been the greatest Tyrants too who were so far from having the Jus Divinum that they had no Right at all And tho Sidney suggests this Doctrine would attribute to any sort of Usurper the same Right I shall consider him in his proper place and this may suffice for Mr. Hunt whose larger Comment upon this Text I shall enlarge upon too when I come to that Gentleman's Papers with whom they so much agree and 't is pity but his Fate should do so too It may suffice I have here attempted his Bulwark and upon which they would build their Babel tho in the Burlesque of the best of Books as if neither the Bible had its Jus Divinum and will close with him since he is so pleased with St. Peter with a Neighbouring Text not so much turned and misapplyed Mr. Hunt has done his worst and I hope we with well doing may put to silence the Ignorance of such Foolish Men. The third Doctrinal Case of this Divine Lawyer or what is drawn from the other two is the Parliament's Power upon the Succession and that he has proved he presumes beyond Answer and Reply when the two Preliminary points The Parliaments Legislative and The Peoples Divinity by his mighty Performances are made unquestionable But when he has begged the other two he may expect to have this third for asking and the first Presumption that must so proposterously warrant even that most Vnwarrantable Proceeding is the Gorgon of the Party that for this forty year has frightned the Nation The fear of Popery And like that Monstrous Head of Medusa been represented gastly full of Venom and Viper only not to charm us into Stones and Stupidity but the setting all in Combustion and a Flame Therefore he tells us if this can be but kept out which the Lord knows has been I don't know how long coming in We ought to admit of any Law for the purpose And have we not Laws sufficient in force and that for the keeping out allthe powers of the Pope tho His Pilgrims landed here with a Legion Have we not Oaths Tests two several Acts of Parliaments against Priest proselytes and Recusants Have we not the best Bulwark the Bishops and the greatest assurance the word of a King But in short the danger was then a Successor and nothing could serve less than a new Law And what was that why for Excluding an Heir to a Crown for Fifteen Hundred years Hereditary That Parliaments have presumed to alter the discent of the Crown is as true as that the same Convention of States have Rebel'd against the Crown it self And scarce one Instant of the Presidents he has giv'n us but serve to prove my purpose as well as his own that they either actually Rebel'd when they medled with the Succession or else that it was for settling it on the Right Heirs after such a Rebellion It was Richard the Second's that was a Parliament indeed that did more than meddle with the Succession when they actually deposed their Sovereign That of Henry the Fourth so far from a Parliament that they had no King And that was told them to their faces by the Loyal Prelate of Carlisle Henry the Sixth the Successor of one that had no Right and to whose Heir then they could never do any wrong Edward the Fourth was for securing the Descent in the Right Line and declaring all that of the Lancasters Rebels and that in spight of all those Entails this Lawyer lies his mighty stress upon and which even in his Fathers claim tho he never lived to enjoy the benefit of his Right The Parliament of the Usurper himself did with blushes and shame acknowledge That his Title could not be defeated that those Entails were only made for want of a better Title and very fairly made their Vsurper a enant for Life and that to an Excluded Duke of York and further did they force their Loyalty when his Son their Lawful Soveraign came to the Crown they tell him in the first of his Reign as appears
blood before the jurisdiction of the Court was Resolved and to him in a Moral sense 't was as much Guilt as if that Authority had been Absolutely Legal and tho he tells us he does not descend to salse Arrests yet I thank him for his Condescension 't is to such a matter as is no way distinguishable from it for an Arrest without Authority is equivalent to a false and is as much Tortius and Force as what is done upon a Forged Warrant The Cases reported by those two Lawyers he cites one of them but a Protonothary that other our great Oracle in my Conscience were never designed for proofs against Passive Obedience By their Resistance here of the Law was never understood that which was forbidden in the Gospel besides it was but the Resolution of the Judges against the Power of that Court which to be sure they did not care to favour and those two Authorities he has cited none of the best in Matters of Allegiance and Loyalty that part of Coke is looked upon not very favourable to the Government and Brownlow first Printed when there was none But his Triumphant Distinction between his Religion Established by Law and that which has no Law for it's Establishment is not only far from creating a Difference here as I have shown before because the precepts of the Gospel which must be more immutable sure than a Persian decree are still the same and are now the Question but the Offering here of such a distinction is in Truth as impertinently applyed as it is really none at all for whenever he can imagin here which God will avert any Sufferance for the sake of his Religion it must be according to the Law of the Land or else he 'll never be brought to suffer I 'll secure his Carkass for a Farthing and be bound to supply it with my own for the stake if ever his be tyed to it without reviving of the 〈◊〉 de Comburendo All the Martyrdoms in Queen Mary's Reign were but so many Executions of the Law and that Writ de 〈◊〉 he 'll find in Fitz Herbert as well as a Common Capias so that himself must first without Charity which won't sure then begin at home Give his Body to be burnt with his Imply'd suffrage in an House of Commons 〈◊〉 I believe He is not likely to be a Bishop before fire and faggot can come upon him to singe his Hair or touch his Garment for the sake of his Religion and how likely we are ever to meet with such a Parliament to Sacrifice themselves again to the Flames himself best knows who I believe does not fear it so that here his Foundation of Law Establishment has nothing to support it and then all his Privileges of Saint Paul his own Magna Charta his Case of Commissions all fall to the Ground and his very supposition of his Religion being Establisht by Law and at the same time against all Law to suffer for it is more contradictory than his Horns or Addresses for it can't be supposed but that the Power that punishes him for an Heretick will have Repealed all those old Laws that would have protected him for being such and enacted new ones to make him suffer for his Perseverance and 't is always remarkable and a great Truth that the laying down one single false Position can never be defended but with as many Lyes And this forces him to maintain the Christians suffer'd contrary to Law in the time of Julian Certainly he knows but little of Justinian and the Codes however his Hunt help't him to so much of our Cases out of Cook The Constitutions of the Jmperial Law were but the Decrees of their Emperors as well as the Corpus the Collection of one of them all the civil Law that governed then is called Caesaria Imperatoria because their Caesars their Emperors where the Authors of it and how can he plead for them their Charters that had nothing else to trust to but the Will and Edict of their Prince The Testamentary Donation of Edward the Sixth he brings for an Argument for Excluding the Right Heir which makes but very little for his own and as much for the cause he contends against not so Insignificant neither as he suggests only because they could not well avoid an Act of Succession in Harry the Eight's time for whether that Act had been made or not Queen Mary must have Succeeded by Proximity of Blood as next Heir after her Brother And 't was that inherent and unalterable Right that made the Nation the more Zealous in her Cause tho there were enough too as Warm for her Religion he very well knows how that Will was extorted from a weak and dying Prince by the Powerful Importunities of Northumberland for the sake of Jane the Eldest of the House of Suffolk whom one of his younger Sons had Marry'd he knows nothing but self Interest and Ambition promoted it he may Read that both the Learned in the Law and as emiment of the Divines were against it Bishop Goodwin tells us of Cranmer himself present that he opposed it and that for the same Reasons all good Subjects do now because he thought no pretence of Religion could warrant an excluding the Right Heir This was the Sense of a Protestant so Zealous that he afterward suffer'd for it but the power of the great Northumberland prevailed with him at last for his Consent of which himself afterwards heartily repented to the Queen tells her he never liked it that nothing griev'd him more and that he wish't he could have hinder'd it And the ill success that Attempt had is alone sufficient one would think to discourage such another 'T is strange that the very thing that has once brought a Calamitous War upon the Kingdom that in this very Instance terminated in the Confusion of all the Attempters brought Northumberland to be Executed and to Penitence too for having offended and poor Lady Jane as her self said to suffer justly only for accepting of a Crown so unjustly offer'd 'T is Prodigious that such contradictory Mediums should be urged for countenanceing a thing to which they are so much repugnant Did not a Parliament here of Protestants declare for a Popish Successor and as Bishop Goodwin says the Suffolk men set her up tho they knew her a Papist Did not a Popish Parliament after her death declare for Queen Elizabeth tho they knew her a Protestant and were not in all these sudden Revolutions the Right Heirsstill preferr'd notwithstanding their Religion was not the same that was profess'd how then can men that offer at such a piece of Injustice touch upon those times for the Justifying so much wrong where they see that under the same Circumstances they still asserted their Princes Right The next pretty Notion of this Ecclesiastical novice in the Law that we shall now pass our Notes upon is a quaint conceit relating to our Oath
of Allegiance what it's form was of old and what he would have implyed in the word HEIR therein mentioned to whom we swear and here at the same time that he would deliver the poor people as he pretends from the sad delusions of Error and Sophistry does he put upon them the greatest Falsehood and fallacy and the quaintest Sophism a Quirk in Law viz. That the King's Heir in possibility cannot be meant in our Oath of Allegiance because 't is a Maxim forsooth in our Law that no Man can have an Heir while he is living And with this silly Solaecism a sort of Sense merely Sophisticated this Elaborate Gospeller in the Law lays himself out in the pains of two or three Pages to prove the prettiest Postulate which we would have granted but for an asking that in this our Oath we did not swear Actually Allegiance to the D. of Y. And truly I am much of his opinion too in that point and that he was not then our Soveraign tho he had a possibility to Succeed But can ever a more Senseless Inference be made by a pretender to Sense or a more Jesuitical Evasion by the most dexterous Manager of an Oath First I would ask him what he thinks was the Design of its first Imposition what was the Reason of Inserting including the Kings Heirs and Successors in those Oaths of SVPREMACY and ALLEGIANCE Was it to perpetuate or acknowledge an Hereditary Succession or to warrant an Exclusion of the Right Heirs Did the Parliament design in the framing them the Lineal Discent of the Crown when they Swear to defend the Authority of the Kings Lawful Successor as well as his own or did they then reserve to themselves a power of declaring who should be his Successors by Law But if the Divine Gentleman would have reason'd pertinently and to the purpose tho it would have been but an absurd sort of Reasoning this he must have inferr'd that because we there swear only to be faithful to the Kings Heirs when they come to Succeed therefore this Oath non Obstante we are left at Liberty to prevent any Heir from his Succession and then I would have this Political Casuist tell me What would be the Difference between this Evasion and a direct Perjury for we swear to be faithful to the King's Heir that shall Succeed him and truly in the mean while we make them our own suffer only whom we please or just noneat all to Succeed for by the same Law Equity and Reason that we interrupt the Succession of one we may that of one thousand too and still be true to our Oath if we abolisht the whole Line of Succession for then those Juglers with a turn of hand and a Presto will tell us very readily why truly we swore to obey his Majesties Heirs and Successors but must needs be absolved now since there are none that do succeed And such were the Casuistical Expositions of some of our Late Divine Assemblies even in this very point when they had Murdered their Prince and denounced Death to His Heirs and were urged with their Allegiance But is not this first Perjuring themselves to Commit a Crime and then justifieing its Commission by their being Perjur'd May we not as well Murder one that would be the Successor and then plead our Innocence we did not suffer him to Succeed or truly did they not design such an Impious and Execrable countenancing of the Villany when they Associated for his Destruction and swore to destroy him would not they then too have Absolved themselves thus in Johnson's Sense and the Jesuits from any obligation to this his Majesties Heir because the Law Maxim did not yet allow him to be so and they had helpt him now from being so for ever Will a Nice point of this his Law resolve does he think as tender a Case of Conscience This his Law makes it but Manslaughter where a person is kill'd without Malice Propense but will this be no shedding of Blood to be required at his hands by the Judge of Heaven because he had his Clergy allowed here upon Earth can he Prescribe with the Laws of the Land to impunity from the Decalogue and tell the Almighty some Killing is no Murder Here his God his Saviour is invoked in a Solemn and Sacred Oath upon the Gospel and one that should be a Divine Expositor of both consults upon it the Readings of Mr. Hunt and a Resolution of the Common Law here he Swears to the plain meaning of the Words without any Mental Reservation whatsoever and yet this Mungrel in Divinity means now to take it in his mind according to a ereiv'd Maxim in the Law And this Libeller of the Primitive Christians looks like an Apostate that was as Primitive who kept pointing to the papers he put upon his Breast while he was Swearing to others that he held in his hand But yet I dare Appeal even to his own Breast who without doubt had often taken these Oaths being graduated in an University and Ordain'd a Divine tho unworthy of both whether the Words Heirs and Successors were not understood by himself of such as were to Succeed by an Hereditary Right by Birth and Blood to the Crown and whether that he did then Reserve to himself only such as did Actually succeed by Consent of Parliament and whether he did not think that by them he was not only obliged to obey those Heirs when they came to the Crown but also to do all that in him lay to promote in the due time their coming to wear it certainly to confine their Sense only to those that shall de facto succeed is but Swearing an Implyed Allegiance to any Rebel or Vsurper and the word Lawful that still accompanys Successors will not mend the Matter with such men for all is presently Legal and just with them that has but the shadow of a Parliamentary power for it's pretence And I am well assured That those that would have thought such an Exclusion just and equal with their King 's passing it would have thought it as Legal could they havesate till they had made it pass without The good old King at first disputed his Militia as hard with them and who could have believed any sort of men could have thought it the Parliament's without his Consent But assoon as the Rebel House had made their Ordinance for the Seizing it which of those Miscreants did not think it as much Law And the more than probable project at Oxford shrewdly Insinuates they would have warranted an EXCLVSION without their Kings leave Legal had they been allo'w but a further progress in their Vnwarrantable Proceedings But as much as Mr. Johnson Triumph's with this his Maxim of the Law as if he were the first Divine that had discover'd this deceitful Evasion this Jesuitical interpretation of his Protestant Oath Tho he and his Hunt and all his Lawyers in the Hall
strictest municipal Laws of a mixt Monarchy and as the People themselves to the very Penal Statutes of the Land and therefore for that Reason the very same Civil Sanctions of their Imperial Law that allow such a Latitude to their boundless Prince abound too with this Restriction that still it becomes him to observe those very Laws to which he is not oblig'd And for the spilling of Blood or Robbing of Churches and the like unnatural enormities which they say by the Soveraigns being thus absolv'd might become Lawful did not the very Directive part of some of their Municipal Laws forbid them in it the precepts of God and Nature the Unresistable Impulse of Eternal Equity and Reason to which the Mightiest Monarch must ever submit and themselves did ever own a Subjection those will always tye the hands of the most Absolute from Committing such Crimes as well as the Common Lictors do the meanests people for being by them perpetrated and Committed and 't is a great Moral Truth grounded upon as much Reason and Experience That those dissolute Princes that did Indulge themselves in the Violating the Divine Laws of God and Nature could never have been constrain'd to the Observance of our Human Inventions the Municipal Acts of any Kingdom or Country And therefore I cannot but smile to see the Ridiculous Insinuations of some of our Republicans endeavouring to maintain that by such silly suggestions which they can't defend with Sense and Reason for rather than want an Objection they 'll put us too suppose some Kings endeavouring to destroy their Subjects and alienating of their Kingdoms and then put their Question Whether the People shall not Judge and Punish them for it but in this they deal in their Argumentation against their King as some Seditious Senates of late indeavoured to Impose upon him to pass Bills by tacking two together A popular encroachment with an Asserting the Prerogative Just such another business was bandied about by that baffler of himself that pretious piece of Contradiction Will. Prin. Who tells us out of Bracton That GOD the Law and the Kings Courts are above the King where if you take all the Connexion Copulatively 't is not to be contradicted because no King but will allow his God to be above him under whom he Rules yet even there it may be observ'd that the Lower House he so much Labour'd for is not so much as mention'd So do these Sophisters in the Politick's here proceed just like those Jugglers in the House they couple a supposititious piece of Premis'd Nonsense and then draw with it a pretty plausible Conclusion for what man can Imagin if he be but in his Wits that his Monarch unless he be quite out of them and Mad would destroy those over whom he is to Reign none but the Bosan in the Tempest with his Bottle of Brandy was so besotted as to think of Ruling alone and setting up for a Soveraign without so much as a single Subject so that should these peevish Ideots have their silly Supposition granted still they would be prevented from obtaining their end at which they aim for first if we must suppose all the Subjects to be destroy'd where would there be any left to judge this Author of their Destruction if they 'll suffer us only to suppose the Major part or some few certain Persons to besacrific'd to his Fury then still that Soveraign that would destroy the most part or some certain number of his Subjects without Sense or Reason must at the same time be suppos'd to be out of his Senses and then no Law of any Land will allow the People to punish a Lunatick But if a King must be call'd a Destroyer of his People only for letting the Laws pass upon such Seditious Subjects that would destroy him which is all the Ground they can have here for branding with it their present Princes and for which these exasperated rebels really suggest it then in Gods name let the Latin Aphorism take place too Then let such Justice for ever be done upon Earth and trust the Judgments of Heaven for their falling Then let them deprecate as a late Lady did the Vengance of the Almighty upon the Head of the Chief Minister of the Kings but let there be more such Hearts to administer as much Justice and the hands will hardly receive much harm for holding of the Scales And for that others silly supposition of these Seditious Simpletons of a Kings Alienating of his Kingdom they must suppose him at the same time as simple as themselves that suggest it and could they give us but a single Instance or force upon us any President all they would get by it is this That as their supposition was without sense so their Application would be nothing to the purpose for such a matter of Fact of their Kings would make him de Facto none at all I know they can tell us of one of our own that lies under that Imputation of making over his to the Moor And of others that in the time of the Popes Supremacy resign'd themselves with submission to the Holy See for the first the most Authentick Historians not so much as mention it and were it truly matter of Fact that King had really nothing to resign for the Republicans of those times were the good Barons that Rebel'd and had seated themselves in a sort of 〈◊〉 before in short if it were solemnly done it would look like the Act of a Lunatick if not at all as is much more likely their Historians Labour in a lye and for the other we never had a Soveraign that Submitted the Power of his Temporal Government of the state to the Pope's See but only as it related to the Spiritual Administration of the Affairs of the Church and the Religion of the Times These sort of Suppositions have so much Nonsense in them especially when apply'd to Human Creatures and more then when to Monarchs that have commonly from Birth and Education more Sense than common Mortals that there is not so much as a Natural Brute but will use what he can manage as his own with all imaginable Care and Discretion How tender and fond are the most stupid Animals how do they most affectionately express that paternal Love for the Preservation of their little Young how abundantly do they Evidence that Natural 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with which Mr. Hunt gives us such a deal of impertinent disturbance and why cannot the King of a Country whom the Civil and Imperial Sanctions represent as the Father of it too be supposed to retain as much a paternal Care for its Conservation we do not find even in that their Free-State of Nature or that Common-wealth of Wars the Republick of unruly Beasts where there is the least Relation or resemblance tho perhaps they have power and opportunity that they delight to devour and destroy and much less do they covet the
it be but of a Gift to the publick use much more then will it oblige him in his promised Faith and Allegiance But here in this Case there is not only a Stipulation between the Soveraign and every Subject but also between the several Subjects to one another for 't is a consent upon Condition among themselves that this Man transfers his Power to some single Soveraign because the rest have does or design to do it so that the Person upon whom the Supremacy is confer'd is secured upon a double Obligation both of that which is made among them all to themselves and that which to him is made by them all and therefore that Opinion of Mr. Sidney of the Power of the People being delegated to some particular Persons the Major part of which can act for the whole Kingdom is even unreasonable according to the Notion of their own Hypothesis For while he supposes it a Natural Liberty and Original Power that the People have at the same time he lays down a Position that destroys it For 't is Unnatural and against Nature if they consider it that the major part should determine it against the Minor and be taken for the consent and Approbation of the whole when it is to be turned by a single suffrage and one casting voice And this carrying it by a Majority is against the Nature of their Original Liberty for we see that even in all Seditious Assemblies and tumultuary Meetings every Man would have every thing carried his own way but the being concluded by the Major part has always been the result of some civil Institution in the Government that thought it reasonable things should be so carried for an avoiding of Confusion and Disorder so our Representatives in Parliament are chosen by the Majority of their Electors and they pass their Bills when elected by pluralities of Voices but this proceeds from President Regulation Institution Custom and Law and yet we see that many times notwithstanding these receiv'd Rules and tacit Agreements to which all have submitted they are loth in their Elections to stand to their own accord in such Cases and that those that have lost the day or the Cause by some few voices are restless tumultuary and their natural Liberty that is in herent in every individual so prevalent that what they have lost by Law they endeavour to compass by force or fraud and from that has proceeded those Riotous forcible Decisions of some of our Elections those clan destine and fraudulent ones of others from that proceeded in our late Confusions even in Parliamentary Affairs The Remonstrances of the Army Excluded Members the Impeachment and Imprisonment of the Eleven Members Prides Purge The Peoples Agreement Abolishing of Lords House and at last Olivers Dissolution for the Independant Faction prevailing in force would by no means be concluded by Law the Presbyterian suffrages were all along the most numerous in the Senate and by all their Presidents in Parliament must have carried every Vote by the Majority This the Independant that fill'd not above the third part of the House found to their grievance saw themselves still out-voted by Law and so be took themselves to their armed Suffrages and their Legislative Swords Now tho the plurality of Voices tho against their Natural Power of the People for they don't like it even in Parliaments now since things are not carried all to their liking may be allowed to determine the Debates in a great Senate conven'd by the Soveraign Power yet it cannot be imagined that the Majority here too shall carry it for an abolishing that very power that called them unless we can imagin the Supream Power had summoned them on purpose to be deposed and that this politick BODY was Assembled as once they were too sadly in the natural Sence to cut off its own HEAD the Writ that summons them in our Parliament is in order to deliberate about the difficult Affairs of the Kingdom and it would be a difficult Business indeed should it be by a casting voice extended to a debate whither they had a King And from these Reasonings and Suggestions which I submit to Men of more Sense and Reason I dare to draw this Conclusion that even from their own Principles Their Contract with their King or as Sidney says The Condition upon which he receives the Crown he can not possibly be punish'd or depos'd because 't is almost impossible that every one of his Subjects should concur in such an Act and the Major part must by no means determine it by their own Maxims of Natural Liberty even in affairs of lesser Moment 2. Because 't is no Consequence that because they have confer'd the Supremacy upon some single Person that therefore they may reassume it too tho it were forfeitable even on Condition which l 've shown the Romans themselves never pretended to tho their own Democraticks tell us their very Lex Regia was Conditional and their Laws which by all Nations are allowed the most equal resolve it that tho with them bare promises if made to private Persons were were not Obligatory yet when offer'd to the publick they oblige and that in a Monarchy is always the King and what then must it be when there 's Oath made Faith pawn'd and fealty sworn And those Laws resolve it too as reason must that when the Supream Power was confer'd on the Prince all Magistracy was past over too and in that lies all Judicial Power and who then shall Judge of those Conditions that forfeit a Crown but him that wares it and thenthey'll be but little the better for the Controversie when a King cannot be deposed unless like a Richard the Second by his own consent I have taken this Course as the best way for the Confutation of such Principles not that I can really grant them the Concessions I have made for I could assoon believe Mr. S. dy'd a Loyal Subject as be satisfy'd with the positions he has lain down but I therefore grant them their own Hypothesis that they may confute themselves that they may see their own Babel of Anarchy will not be built upon the very Basis and Foundation of those Foolish positions they maintain that the work never was or will be carried on far without terminating as that of their Fore-fathers in Confusion and by that they mean perhaps a Common-wealth and have I hope in some Measure manifested that even by their own wicked assertion of the Peoples Divine Natural and Original power they cannot really pretend toany Right of Judging Punishing or deposing their King what force can do we have both felt and fearfully to our Terror seen but in all Arguments of this Nature the Question is of the Reason and Right and not of any Fact that may be justify'd by wrong and the refuting them from their own Maxims must be more effectually convincing then the maintaining of ours for one opinion in Politicks is
great and their strength so formidable that they sought Kings and were 〈◊〉 by Princes And now let them prove that this paternal Power of these Patriarchal Kings was no more than that of a Burgher in the Town of Amsterdam or that the Cities that were several of them then erected and where the sacred writ expresly says Kings and Princes Reign'd that those were nothing else but as perfect Republicks as Venice Geneva or the united Provinces in the Netherlands And cannot our Seditious Souls be convinc'd that this their Patriarchal Power was Monarchical unless we can prove every patriarch a Crown'd King should we oblige them to make out their Common-wealths of those days after the same manner their Modern ones are now Establish'd they would be put to find out in those primitive times some general revolt of a Rebellious people from their Lawful prince For that was the first Foundation of their 〈◊〉 Republick in the Low-Countries as Mr. Sidney himself will allow tho against common Sense and Reason he cannot let it be called a Rebellion And also is it not one thing to say a paternal Right was once Monarchical but must it make all Monarchs to Rule by a paternal Right conquest of the Sword grounded upon a good pretence of Right is what a great many Kings claim by a long series of Successive Monarchs makes the Title of a great many more as much unquestionable and yet I cannot see why Monarchy may not still be said to have been first founded in a paternal Right tho the claims to Soveraign power since in such several Kingdoms and Nations where it is now Establish'd are 〈◊〉 as several sorts too as there are Subjects that have submitted to be govern'd by it It is a pleasant sort of Diversion to see Mr. Hunt Harangue out half of his Treatise in an impertinent pains to prove the Father of every Family at present not to be the King of it we would have granted it him quietly and the postulate should have been his own in peace without raising upon his War of Words and the thundering charge that he gives this Opinion of puzzl'd senseless vain unlearned paradox For once every parent shall not be a Crown'd Head and every City but a Common-wealth of Kings for that is all they must contend against and then what 's the Contention but just about nothing but that parents have nothing in them that is Analogous to a Monarchical power that they have no Right to govern those very Children they have begot as this Gentleman with his mighty performances thinks he has perfectly prov'd that I think will be found at last to be the greater paradox if not a perfect Lye For first the very Decalogue declares the contrary And the command we have to Honour our Father and Mother implies an Authority that they have that requires Obedience by the Levitical the Laws of the Jews the Rebellious Son was to be ston'd to Death and if the very Bible can call it Rebellion Certainly it must suppose some power against which he could Rebel And what does Mr. Hunt who himself admits of this say to the refuting the very Objection that he raises why he says this was an unnatural severity permitted the offended parent that is an unnatural severity commanded by the very God of Nature For all those their Laws were so many Divine precepts for the regulating his own Theocracy and the very Text tells us this exemplary punishment of Dissobedience to parents was shown that Israel might fear i.e. fear those parents in whom the Almighty's Law had lodged such a power and then if we consider it in the Abstract from any positive Law of God or Divine precept if we look upon it in a pure natural State as the result of Generation for all whatever the postscript impertinently suggests with his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and all the distracted noise that he makes with the procreation work being such an Act of Affection and mere impetus of Love I cannot see why by that darling work that delights Mr. Hunt so much the power of governing those very Children he has begot should be superseded The Gentleman among his many Melancholy moods had it seems some pleasant Fancies For in effect he tells us no more than this that Coition being an Act of Love to the Mother the Government over the Child that she bears him must by no means be call'd a power and if this be not indeed a puzzl'd senseless Opinion I submit to persons that abound with more sense and if it have the least shadow of a consequence I will forfeit all my Right to Reason might it not be as well infer'd too that every Father that chastises his froward Child is an absolute Tyrant because that sort of severity savors of Anger and fury but the Generation work obliged him never to exercise it because that was an Act of extream Love But besides that precept in the Decalogue Honouring our Parents is an Eternal Law of Nature engraven in our Hearts as well as it was in the two Tables of Stone and whereever there is a Natural Veneration there is at the same time an imply'd subjection for those we always reverence most to whom we are most Subjected I know there are inferior Objects upon which many times we place our affection and may in some sense be said to have for them an Esteem but that cannot be properly call'd Honour but is better exprest by the Name of Love and this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Friends have for one another tho they are Equals or Parents to their Children tho Subject to their power but if we consider the word Honouring it self which in all the Versions of the Decalouge is still render'd so as if it would remember us of the subjection we owe to those we are commanded to Honour that very word it self implys Power in the Person that is to be Honoured for if we abstract our selves from any prepossessions and Engagements of Love we still find we still Honor those most that are also most in power thus our Nobility are respected by us as Honourable because they are in great places of Power and Trust And our King more Honoured by us agen because the very Fountain of Power it self And lastly what strikes us more into a Venerable Horror of the Majesty of Heaven but that awful attribute of his being Almighty so that uncorrupted Nature it self from the Rules of Common gratitude obliges us to Honour our Parents as well as the express precept of the Divine will and then by Consequence subjects us to those whom we are requir'd to respect so much and esteem for Nature as it never according to the Maxim of the Naturalists in Philosophy is said to do any thing foolishly or in vain so neither will it require any thing that is so from others to be done and therefore there is no Natural Law that obliges us to
Honour our Servants and those that are subjected to our Power but the very Act it self would seem preposterous awkward and unnatural And this agrees even with the very notion of as Learned a Republican perhaps as ever publisht any thing in Politicks for Aristotle that liv'd under a Common-wealth tho he had less I believe of its principles than our Seditious Souls that are Born Subjects to a King and sworn to be true to an Establisht Monarchy he to Confirm his opinion of the paternal Right which in several parts of his Politicks that Antient Heathen that vast Body of the Primitive Philosophy is pleas'd to maintain when he tells us that Families and Houses were at first Govern'd after the manner of Kingdoms by the Eldest head in it that Cities were heretofore as most Nations now are under the Government of Kings and then in another place in his Ethicks more Expresly to this purpose plainly says directly contrary to the Sense of Mr. H. and some of our Democraticks that have ador'd some part of his Political Observations That an Empire or Monarchy or according to the Literal Greek a Kingdom will be a Paternal Government and one would think the Authority of such Antiquity should at least have prevail'd upon Mr. Hunt and his Historian not to have Libell'd the Hypothesis for Novel or new but agreeable to this his position does that wise Heathen define Honour in the same Sense as I have Suggested aboue i. e. that it does imply wherever it is paid a Power and Subjection in him that pays it for he makes all his Honour peculiarly properly in his Politicks to signify nothing else but Empire and Magistracy and in other places by those that are in HONOR he understands the same persons whom at other times he dignifies with the Title and appellation of those that are in POWER which has made me many times think that as the Romans receiv'd the first rudiments of their Learning from the Greeks so they might retain some roots of their Language and mixt them among their own as we see among our selves those Modern Nations do at present that Correspond and then we may imagin since their Sense and Etymology is not so wide and irreconcilable that the Latinisms Timor and Timeo were but borrow'd from the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for whom we fear we must Honour and whom we Honourwe fear I know that it is but a sorry sort of reverence that is the result of our being afraid but yet we oblige our selves to pay it tho it be but with reluctancy so that I can confirm the position I lay'd down and return to the very words of what was first asserted and that with none of the worst Syllogism in Logick a sort of Sorites or Gradual Climax i.e. Where ever there is any Natural Honor there always will be an awful fear and wherever there is any thing of awful fear it is of somewhat what that has an absolute Power And then in my poor Apprehension it is almost as natural an inference in the Rules of Logick from the proposition of A being the Father of B that therefore he is his Lord and Master too as it is in the Common Conclusion that is made among Logicians of B's being an Animal from the Proposition that he is a man for tho Dominion be not absolutely exprest in the definition of a Father yet it is so apparently Imply'd that it makes an essential part of him from the Closeness of the Connexion neither can Mr. H. overthrow the notion with his Fruitless Labours about the sublim'd Love that exerts it self in the work of Generation for it is not the bare procreation that Entitles the Father to this Dominion for then the Mother too would at least have as great a Power over the Production being as much contributory to its being produc'd and for some reason more Right and Jurisdiction over her Infant as being the Fruit of her own Womb as being she that determines it to such a Father as she that has commonly the sole care and concern of its Education till it is grown more Adult and fit for to be form'd into manners by the Management of the Father and therefore not only according to the Maxim and Sanction of the Imperial Law not only in a Civil and Political Sense the Birth is said to follow the 〈◊〉 but it holds good even in the State of 〈◊〉 and even in the literal 〈◊〉 visible among Beasts But that which gives the Father a double Title to the 〈◊〉 over the Child is not only his being as a Natural Agent the first Spring that gives it Life and Motion but also because the Civil Sanctions of all Kingdoms and Countries still 〈◊〉 the Fathers Heads of their Families and from the Conjugal Compact that is made in Matrimony subjected the Wife to the Jurisdiction of the Husband so that whatever Power and Right belongs to her over her Infant is like the acquest that accrews to a Servant or 〈◊〉 which the Civil Law and our own Common too resolve into the Power and Possession of the Master and Parent And then with what an Impertinent sury with what an insignificant Folly does the renowned Lawyer Labour and lay out his Lungs against Sir Rohert 〈◊〉 In making him a Monster and persuading Mankind to Sacrifice their Sons unto Moloch in depraving Human Nature worse than the Leviathan I confess the Furious fellow might as well fasten this upon that Loyal Persons position of a Paternal Right as they have several other propositions full of absurdity upon the Doctrine of the Divine which still have been nothing else but the durt and dust of their own raising but is it a Crime at last with some of our Rebellious Christians to become Loyal because the Leviathan whom themselves will make but an Infidel has lent them so many Lessons to learn them Obedience or is not a reproacht rather anough to make the boldest republican to blush that believes but a Deity to see a Monarchy so well maintain'd even by a Reputed Atheist if the Asserters of a paternal Right concur with him in such positions as render them good Subjects I am sure these opposers of it agree with him in every point from whence they can draw but the least countenance for Rebels These Venemous heads the Spiders of the publick that spin their Notions into Cobwebs into such fine nonsense that they cannot hang together have here also that other good Quality of that virulent Creature to suck up all the Venom and Poyson of Mr. Hobs and prey upon the very principles of his Corrupted Air and the Infectious depravations even of Human Nature his Origination of Society out of Fear his definition of Right to Consist in Power his Community in Nature his Equality in persons all the very Contradictions of himself reproaches of his Reason the Opprobriums of his Sense
or opinion the rants of our implacable Republicans that are pleas'd with nothing that recommends a Monarchy no tho it be the very Bible and the Book of the Almighty Cannot those silly Souls that are transported out of Sense conceive that there is a difference in Assertion to say That Monarchy is by Divine Right and that every Monarch Rules by the same Right Divine then indeed we should run into Sidney's Absurdities of making every Rebel that could but reach at a Crown a Cromwell or a Monmouth as much a Divinity Monarch as our best and Lawful Soveraign tho it must be granted that those Successions even of Lines that have for a long time descended lineally do intimate to us somewhat of the Divine Will that it shall so succeed and even the paternal Successions in this sort of Royal Government was given us for our Instruction that God approv'd of it from the time he gave the Children of Israel and Judah their first Kings who throughout all the History of the Bible succeeded from Father to Son but that which garbles and really grieves our Republicans is that even the Divine Right of Monarchy it self can be Asserted that we have so much as the Intimation of the Will of God any Reason to conclude from his Word that he has given the Approbation to the Kingly Government any preference to Monarchy it self they quarrel at the very Bible for mentioning so much as a King or Prince and they would make the version Libel the Original when it makes a Melchisideck the King of Salem or Hamor the Hivite Prince of the Country they would have their INDEX too and expunge a whole Chapter of Genesis for talking of ten Kings besides Abraham and make all the Old Testament an entire Apocripha that does but mention a Monarch And for this Plato tells us plainly that Moses made them all Commonwealths and that afterward over those they call'd Kings the Sanhedrim and Congregation of the People did preside tho the Text tells us Moses was King in Jesurun and so the King it seems made it a Common-wealth These Rebels to the Majesty of their King are as refractory to what the Divine Majesty has approved they damn the very History of the Creation and the Original composure and Constitution of Nature because it once made a Monarch in a single Man and has puzl'd them to find out any more of Adams Common wealth but among his Beasts they Curse the Dispensations of Providence for preserving a Monarchical Government throughout the Universe and has left them nothing but two or three Rebellious States they condemn the deluge for not destroying Noah too but left so much of Regal Authority to remain in the Ark this makes them when they are perplext with the pesterings of some Loyal Positions to put us upon deducing our Kings Pedigree from Adam or as Mr. Sidney says from the Eldest Son of Noah the Foolishness and unreasonabless of their Postulates the ridiculousness of those demands I cannot better answer to my Satisfaction or theirs then by sending them to St. John's Coll. in Oxford I 'll promise them there if they 'll be but pleafed there they shall see even the most everlasting Line drawn down from the Garden of Eden to White-Hall from the first Adam to their present Soveraign K. James and if they don't like the Heraldry let them dispute it with the Painter I cannot tell how to gratify the Impertinence of their demands but with as pleasant a message But if a Man can be serious among such Buffoons I must tell them 't is one thing to say that Noah and Adam Rul'd by a Right Paternal and another that every Monarch must have the same Paternal Right from Adam and Noah 'T is one thing to say that God approv'd of Princes to Govern and another that he appointed to every Prince the same Right of Government the form of Regal Government I hope from the Royal Authority of the Patriarchs may be Justified to be of Divine Institution tho the Succession of the whole series of Succeeding Soveraigns be not resolv'd all into the same Title I can tell them of not only an absurdity but a plainlye would be the Consequence of such a position for then there must have been no Battels Fought after the Flood no Ten Kings in one Chapter of the Testament none of that long Catalogue of Egyptian Princes and in truth at present but one Vniversal Monarch in the World tho that some Learned and Laborious Heads do too industriously sometimes attempt to deduce from Scripture by the Almighty to have been once design'd and Babel for the seat of such an Empire For it would be a great piece of Paradox indeed and a greater of Impertinence to persuade such Seditious Authors there was ever any thing of an Vniversal Empire design'd that won't allow there was ever a particular one Establish'd That tell us no general revolts of a Nation can be call'd Rebellion and then I am sure they must maintain that there is no particular Supremacy from which the generality of the Subjects can be said to Reble but Mr. Sidney borrow'd this pretty Position too from that pernicious piece that was publish'd about the Rights of Magistrates for that tells us too That the Danes imprisoning their King Christien to his dying day the Swedes rejecting their Sigismund for his persisting in the Romish Religion were no Rebels I confess their Monarchys admitting so much mixture of Democracy may make the people there to have a greater power in publick Administrations but certainly cannot well extend to impower them to subvert the very publick Weal it self which must be said to consist in the supream head of it the King and tho they will seperate his Person from that publick political Consideration and say they may maintain the Monarchy tho they depose such a particular King this will not mend the matter for those that have a power to reject ONE Prince are as much empowr'd to refuse to Elect another and then the result of it must be this that our Republicans will admit no more of a particular Empire then a Vniversal In short those that had but the least Inclinations to be Loyal and did but Love and like an Establisht Monarchy that were not resolutely resolv'd to Rebel against the Light of Nature as well as the Resolution of the Laws would soon see and be satisfy'd of the Solid Reasonableness the Innocent Truth of these three several Propositions I have so lately Labour'd in First that Primogeniture obtain'd by the Institution of the Almighty and his continued Approbation in the Bible both in Paternal discent and Regal ones and that the Laws and Practise of Nations have confirm'd it in both since and that home to our Doors Secondly that Paternal Right and Power by the same Authority of the Almighty has been prefer'd by the Laws of Nature Maintain'd and by the Civil Sanctions of
all Nations Confirm'd Thirdly that Monarchy or Kingly Government isso far of a Divine Institution as it has receiv'd from God himself an ‖ Express approbation as it has been Intimated to us from the Worlds Creation and its first Regulated Establishment as it is Constantly Visible from all the Phaenomenons of Vnalterable Nature and as it has been Continually transmitted to posterity by the special Appearances of providence for its preservation And Last of all let me but only subjoyn the Excellency of this truly ancient venerable and divine Form of Government a Monarchy and then the many Mischiefs that attend the popular one a Democracy and then let the most prejudic'd and partial person judge not only which of the two has been always reputed most Eligible but which of them he himself would most affect to Chuse Sir Walter Raleigh as Learned an Head-piece perhaps of the last Age as any that he hath left behind him in this a Person rather prejudic'd against Monarchy than bigotted for it no such Court-Favourite as the Mercury makes of Salmasius A Dirty Dissolute Parasite of Kings and Pander of Tyranny this Learned Historian lets us know That the first the most ancient the most general and most approved Government is that of one Ruling by just Laws call'd Monarchy and whatever wits our more modern Commonwealths-men pretend to be this Gentleman that was more sage than the wisest of them does not make paternal Right such a ridiculous thing as they would represent it but tells us that in the beginning the Fathers of Nations were then the Kings and the Eldest of Families the Princes and of such an Excellency is its Form that it is the clear result of unprejudic'd Reason and most agreeable to the sense and security of Mankind For as the natural Intellect it self by which I mean bare humane understanding when in the infancy of the World people were guided more by their own Fancies and the Paternal Power which then was all the Regal from the tenderness it might be suppos'd to have towards those that were their natural issues as well as their civil subjects had indulg'd vice and been less rigorous in Executing impartial Justice on Offenders whereby people were left more at Liberty I say Nature then and Necessity it self made them find the Inconvenience even of too much Toleration and made even the most foolish fellows apprehend as well as the wise that the Condition of reasonable men would be more miserable than that of brute beasts that an Inundation of Anarchy and Confusion would overwhelm them more than the first Flood Did they not by a general Consent submit to Government and obey those that were set over them to Govern For they found that when they were most mighty to oppress others might in time grow more so and do them as much mischief And those that were equal in their strength found themselves equally dangerous and mischievous one to another and that the most unbounded Licenciousness prov'd always to some or other the most miserable Bondage and Slavery And this natural Reason inclin'd them too to acquiesce under those Monarchical Forms that were then the Government of the Times and which the Israelites themselves desired in a more special manner tho' they were forwarn'd of its Absoluteness and told by Samuel that it would be Tyranny it self for the same necessity convenience reason and natural instinct that persuaded them to submit to Government in General did also suggest to them the Excellency of Monarchy in Particular For as by want of all Government their reason told them they could not long possess any right and that Liberty being only a License to do what they list and so left nothing to be wrong So the same reason suggested that these their Rights were best defended and soonest decided by some single Person that was Supreme than when a Multitude had the Supremacy for in that there being so many suffrages as there are men accordingly there might be so many several interests and factions which must both hinder any sudden determination as well as make the sentence liable to more partiality and injustice when it is determin'd This made the Senate of Rome so tedious always in its determinations and the people as uneasie and unsatisfied in their Decrees Their Praetores Quaesitores Judices Quaestionum selecti some of them having under them no * less than an hundred Commissioners might be said to confound Causes instead of determining them Their Agrarian Laws that were made for the Division of their Fields most of them having been given by Romulus and the rest of their Kings resolv'd their rights to them with Justice and satisfaction to the people while their Kings Reign'd that gave them and were the sole Judges of their own Laws But when they were confounded into a Commonwealth and the Senate set themselves to decide the divisions of their Commons and their Fields what Seditions Confusions and Unsettlement did they create So that the Reasonable presumption there is of a more Equitable and speedy distribution of Justice from a single Sovereign because suppos'd to be less prejudic'd and less unable to be prevail'd upon by favour or affection may very well be thought to have recommended at first a Monarchical Form afford us now asmuch reason for the retaining it In the next place A King being a perpetual Heir to the Crown insomuch that the Politick Laws suppose him never to dye and when in a natural sense he does the Crown still descends to his immediate Successor This will make him 〈◊〉 to preserve the Rights of it inviolate and perpetuate the same Prerogative to his Posterity Whereas the people in all their popular 〈◊〉 administer only for years or at most for Life and what should hinder them then from defrauding that Publick whose Administration they must either soon quit or at last leave to those to whom they no way relate I allow in most such Communities there is commonly special provisions made by their Laws that an abusing that power with which they are intrusted or a robbing the Common-wealth of part of its Revenue shall be punish'd with some grievous Fine or perhaps made Capital for which the Romans had their several rules and regulations for their Magistrates and men in Office But there being so many ways to be injurious to the Publick that can so easily by those that administer its affairs be kept private and conceal'd it must certainly be concluded that those that have an Hereditary Power of Publick Administration as all Kings and they alone have that their Interest obliges them to preserve its rights inviolate from an unwillingness that nature it self will implant in them to injure their own Sons Successors and Posterity Whereas the same Interest which certainly is the most powerful Promoter either of good or evil will incite Senators in a Commonwealth more industriously more seriously to endeavour to serve them selves It is the
Monarchy mixt and of this even Justin can tell us in one of his Books And for making their Monarchy more Divine did Romulus and Numa the Founder of their Religion as well as of Rome Officiate in it sometimes too So much did the Fathers of old prefer Monarchy to a Popular Government that Sir Walter Rawleigh tells us of the saying of St. Chrysostom that recommended even a Tyrant before no King at all and that is 〈◊〉 with a Sentence of Tacitus who tells us If the Prince be never so wicked yet still better than none And for that of a Commonwealth it was as bravely said by Agesilaus to a Citizen of Sparta discoursing about Government That such a one as a common Cobler would disdain in his House and Family was very unfit to Govern a Kingdom In short all the Presidents that Mr. Sidney has given us of the Romans driving out their Tarquins of the French rejecting the Race of Pharamond of the Revolt of the Low-Countries from Spain of the Scots killing James the Third and Deposing Queen Mary are all absolute Rebellions were ever Recorded so in History and will be Condemned for such by all Ages He should have mention'd for once too the murder of our Martyr'd Sovereign for to be sure he had the same sense of that upon which he was to have sate But if any thing can recommend their Commonwealth it must be only this That it cannot be so soon dispatch'd it being a Monster with many Heads to which Nero's Wish would not be so cruel That it had but one neck to be cut off at a blow The clamour this Republican made against Monarchs in general was whatever he suggests appli'd to our own in particular when he tells in the very same Page of the Power of the People of England and though he exclaims and all others do against this Arbitrary Power of Kings 't is certain themselves would make the People as Arbitrary The Question is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power but the Dispute is who shall have it there never was nor ever can be a People govern'd without a Power of making Laws and that Power so long as consonant to reason must be Arbitrary for to make Laws by Laws is Nonsense These Republicans by confession would fix it in many and the Multitude in Aristocracy 't is fix'd in a few and therefore in a Monarchy must be setl'd in ONE CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracies AND now that they may not think I have foully Libell'd them in a Mis-representation of the dangerous Principles of their Republicans I 'll be so fair as to prove upon them too the natural product of their own Notions and that is the Plots of the same Villains assoon as they have been pleas'd to set up for Rebels And these will appear from Chronicle and History the Records of Time and the best Tryers of Truth these will not be falsified with Reflection but be founded upon matter of Fact And of these this will fall in our way as the first About the Year 1559 there was promoted in France a Plot and Conspiracy against their King and that founded upon the same pretext so many of ours have been of late in England that is Religion but truly fomented by what has been always the spring the very fountain of Blood and Rebellion discontent and disgust toward the Government For upon the death of Henry the Second and the Succession of Francis his eldest Son to the Throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon thinking themselves neglected and despised thrust out of Office and Employment at Court and finding the Family of the Guises still prefer'd whom they always as mortally hated resolved to revenge themselves upon the Crown that is to turn Rebels Of these Vendosme and Conde were the principal Engagers and drew in the two Castillions the Admiral and his Brother who for the removal of the Duke De Montmorency their relation from that Court to which he had prefer'd them were as full also of resentment against the Crown as those that came to engage them with an invitation to invade it and after all their several seditious Assemblies after all the many Meetings they had made after all the Treasonable Consultations they had held no design was look'd upon by them more likely to prove effectual than the making themselves Head of the Hugenots And so hot were they upon this Project the pursuit of another kind of Holy War that among our modern Crusadoes has been nothing else but a Religious Rebellion that notwithstanding the coldness of the King of Navarr they drew in most of the Protesting part of France to be truly Rebels for the sake of their Seducers while they made them believe they had only engag'd themselves to fight for the Religion of those they had so wickedly seduc'd And so conducing then were the principles of a Republick to a Rebellions Plot that one 〈◊〉 that was forc'd to turn Renegado to his Country for Misdemeanors committed in it and fled to Geneva as a Sanctuary for Sedition after he had lurk'd there like a concealed Criminal abroad upon his Return sets up for an open Rebellion at Home after he had layn so long in the lake the sink of Democracy you may be sure was well instructed how to resist a Monarch He soon blows the coals that could easily keep up the Blood of the warm Princes that was already set so well a boyling Him they pitch upon as the fittest tool to work out their design and in my conscience coming from that Common-wealth the Statsemen judged not amiss when they took him for an able Artist With his help and their own it went so far that Moneys Men and Amunition was provided and a Petition drawn for a Toleration of Religion though indeed but a Treacherous vell to cover their Intended Treason which was to seize upon the Young King upon his denyal of what they knew he would not grant surprize the Queen that still opposed them and put the Guises to the Sword whom she favoured But the Court being advised of the Conspiracy had retired to the Castle of Amboise and so far did they prosecute their Plot that their Petitioners were admitted into it though their Arm'd Accomplices that were without were compelled to fight for their Lives which Renaudie with the rest of the Ring-leaders of them lost and the Rabble to save theirs was forc'd to fly This was the praeliminary Plot and an unhappy prelude to a long and bloody Civil War fomented first by the fury of a Faction that set up for Rebels only because not favoured as they thought sufficiently by the Court and then seconded even to an Assaulting of the Crown in the Siege of Paris and almost the Subversion of the Monarchy as some Learned Historians surmise from the secret Emissaries of the Republick of Geneva I need not touch on the particulars in which the
the Army when both Impeachers and Impeach'd had forfeited their Heads to the King They had Counterplotted this with an Ordinance of the House for the Disbanding the Army but the Army found they had a more fearful Ordnance for them in the Field they had under their Command the Militia of the Camp and so resolve to command that too of the City The Contrivance for this is first Fairfax his Remonstrance to which the Commons submit but for that the Apprentices that had served them before against their King come now in as tumultuous a manner and frightn'd them into a Flight to the Army that so their City might retain its Militia The Westminster-men that stay'd plot against the Men at Windsor that were fled call in the Members that their Army had impeach'd for this the Soldiers sign an Engagement send a Remonstrance and themselves as soon conspire to follow march toward the City draw up at Hownslow-heath send their General with a Party to make a new Parliament or patch up the old To prevent the Personal Treaty with the King they drew up their Agreement of the PEOPLE resolv'd on their Votes of Non-addressing which recall'd they again re-extorted rejected the Lords for refusing to Judge their King whom having dispatcht there remain'd the Rump that is the remnant of the Commons the Creatures or rather Created Council of an Army and all the late flourishing Democracy of the long Parliament and the two Houses turn'd into a perfect Oligarchy of Officers And all what those Devils had possest themselves of by Treason before torn from their hands by a Legion of worse with as much Treachery and Plot. And one would think that all Plotting that all conspiring should have been over now but you shall see that the same principles that prevail'd upon the Rebels to ruin the Monarchy and run it into a Republick that promoted the Army to destroy the then Democracy and so set up their own Oligarchy did also incite a single Usurper among those few to set up for himself and turn it into true Tyranny Their own positions first plac'd the Supremacy in the Parliament because the two States were greater than the King that made but one The Army places the supremacy in their Sword because it was greater in the Field than the two States in the House and then comes Cromwel and setl'd the supremacy on himself because the sole Commander of all the Army his success at Dunbar and the routing of the Scot did so much his business that there could remain but little opposition of a Rump and a Man that is made by a weaker power but once a General can soon make himself by his own strength the Generalissimo he had formerly been so prevalent as to procure Petitions Addresses Remonstrances for the establishment of that patch'd piece of Parliament and all our Metaphysicks will allow that what can create can as soon annihilate he found his Omnipotency in this point he knew he had set them up against all Right and therefore had the more to run them down without Wrong and that as he did design so he effected too It was indeed a Parliament of Soldiers and he serv'd them like a General only by signifying to them to Disband and they not daring to deny determin their sitting to be on the fifth of November following But he not willing to tarry so long a Servant to those he could command to obey those that would not so soon Disband he comes and Cashiers by April 1653. and with his Lambert and Harrison sends packing that everlasting Parliament And now here is the result of their principles in a second Plot upon themselves and a new model of Government for the former they had abolisht was but the Government of a few an absolute Oligarchy tho' they were pleas'd to call it the Common-wealth of England as if it had been but Democratical when not the tenth part of the People were represented by those Administrators but so they had the confidence to call them a Parliament too but their words had commonly as much sense in them as their actions had Loyalty But Oliver having Plotted them out of all had now no great need of any Politick Plot for himself It would puzzle now our Politicians to tell me where at this time was their Supream original power of the People their natural Liberty and that Delegatory right they are to communicate to Representatives There was no King no Parliament no Rump and as yet no Protector The Disciples of Mr. Sidney's Doctrine must say forsooth The Supream Power was then in the People but as the Devil would have it Cromwel had got the supream strength Strength and power I confess are mighty different and just distinguisht by the same Metaphysicks the Scots put upon the King at Newark when they would persuade him The Army was one thing and the Soldiers of it another but if this People had then the supream power why did they not assemble themselves into a Parliament since there was no Writ from above to call them to the Assembly But our History tells us Oliver call'd it and what for why say our Republicans That the People might confer upon him their supream original Power which he could not assume without their consent very good So Cromwel was willing this supream power should be settl'd upon him by Parliament therefore he calls the Parliament i.e. gives it the supream power they in common Civility could not avoid to give it him again But where but a grain of sense settle this Supremacy in him that call'd them to assemble or in those that were assembl'd at his call I confess if the cunning Canary Birds could but contrive as once they did design such a rare Parliament that like the Bird of Asia should rise from the ashes of it's Ancestors we might have one then not only long but everlasting But even this tho' then attempted to have been enacted would have been but Nonsense and absurd and sit only to have past in that Parliament which he call'd who made many Laws just as ridiculous for thosethat have a power to dissolve themselves by the same reason would have a power to summon another and then must is sue out their Writs either before their dissolution or after if after then it is without authority and by no part of the Government and if before then a new one must be summoning before the old is dissolv'd and if the Writs should be but of force from the time of dissolution the Country Electors must be said to be conven'd by the supream Authority that is dissolv'd Cromwel and his Conspirators foresaw they would be confounded with such absurdities and they found themselves plung'd into as much confusion and then pray what did they do with this Sidney's supream original power that they did not know what to make of or how to use tho' it lay upon their hands why they
of Lords and Commons about the Kings Coronation Oath Parl. 41. * Hunt and Pryn. ‖ 〈◊〉 justas legis esse tenendas c. Quas Vulgus elegerit Rot. Parl. H. 4. * Coke 7. 106. 11. Calvin's Case Watson Clarks 1. Jae Coke 7. fol. 30. ‖ Vid. 3. Inst. his Parliamentum insanum * Car. 1. An. Parl. 41. ‖ Vid. their 19. propositions †Regn. Car. 1. Car. 2. * 1. H. 4. * 1. Jacob. * 2. H. 5. 1. Jacob. 1. 1. Car. 1. c. 7. * Vid. Hist. Independeny pag. 115. 17. March 48. Scob. Coll. ptg. 7 8. * Postscr page 8. ‖ Plat. page 109 * Vide Considerations upon the Question London 1677. The dissolver The Letter of my Lord Shaftsbury ‖ 35. Ed. 3. †4. Ed. 3. c. 14. * Vid. Courantier 4. Volum Numb 30. ‖ 4. Ed. 3. c. 3. 14. †Mirror C. 1. Lib. 3. * Le common Ley est common Usage Plowdens Com. 195. ‖ Dr. and Stud. 2. c. 2. lib. * 2d part Inst. 496. tells us so in terminis By the Common Law it is the Kings Prerogative quod nullum Tempus occurret L. Coke Lit. p. 344. ‖ Stanfor l. 2. 101. * Speed 645. Inst. 27. 2. †2. Ed. 3. c. 2. of King's not pardoning Felons so Also 4. Ed. 3. c. 13. The 〈◊〉 of that other * 16. Cap. 2. c. 1. that repeals 16. Car. 1. c. 1. ‖ Vid. Preamble to 16. Car. 2. c. 1. ‖ Vid. Seasonable Question and an useful Answer Printed about 77. by a Bencher of the Temple * 16. Car. 2. * Venner and his Fifth Monarchy Men. * Vid. Brief Narrative of the Tryal of Tongue Stubs c. Lon. 1661. * 1. Jacob. Term. Hill Coke l. 7. * 16. Car. 2. * Cook himself says it is a Maxim in the Law of Parliament that later Laws Abrogate the former that are contrary to them 4. Inst C. 1. pag. 43. * Hunt postscript pag. 46. 48 49. ‖ Cardinal of Winchesters Case who came from Flanders to purge himself before Parliament of Treason as only the Roll of Henry the Sixth says but Consult the History it appears he had some of the King 's Jewe's gaged to him which the King stopt from going after him c. 4. Inst. 7. p. 42. * 36. Ed. 3. cap. 11. * Page 60. 69.70 86. 87 88 89. * His 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pet. 2. 13. †Fox Vol. 3. p. 515. ‖ Vid. Dissenters sayings Pryn's Parliament Right to elect Officers 〈◊〉 p. 239. * Galat. 6. vers 15. Pro humano genere Beza upon that very place * Verse 14. V. 17. * Posts p. 60. * Hunt p. 85. * Actually done too in Westminster-Hall by the instigation of Hugh Peters Vid. Dugdales view p. 370. * Posts p. 88. ‖ H. 4. 〈◊〉 3. * Vid. Paper at his Execution * Verse 15. Page 50. * Postscript p. 52. all the following Casesmost absurdly apply'd and all make against his own Cause ‖ 7. H. 4. c. 2. Hen. 4th entails declar'd void viz. upon the Claim of Richard Duke of York †Vid. B. Carlisles Speech H. 4. in Baker and Trussel H. 4ths Deposers Traytors within 25 Coke Treason * Vid. 1. Ed. 4. Rot. par 9. 10 11 12. ‖ Vid. Rot. par 39. H. 6. n. 11. * 1. Ed. 4. Rot. ut supra Rich. the 3d and deposers of Ed. 5. Traitors by Law within Stat. 25. Ed 3d Inst. c. 1. Treason ‖ 13. Eliz. †Hunt's Postscript page 51. * Cambd. vit Eliz. ‖ Besides had he Consulted other Books before he writ his own by what appears by Keeble Stat. that very Act is expir'd ofno Force and so he has made himself a Knave in Fact as well as Fool in Application * Postscript p. 71 72. ‖ 1. Ed. 4. 〈◊〉 p. n. 9 10 c. ‖ Exact Abridg. fol. 713. Rot. R. 3. * 1. Elz. c. 3. †1. Jac. c. 1. * Posts p. 87. ‖ Gervasius Doroberbensis Coll. 133. 30. †Bracton l. 4. c. 24. Sect. 5. * Dr. Burnet tells us H. 8. declared upon a dispute about Ecclesiastical 〈◊〉 very warmly that by the Ordinance of God he was King Hist. Reform l. 1. pt 1. fol. 17. Either the Dr. lyes or Harry the 8th or this Doctrine is not so new but 200. year old Pryn's Par ' right c. * Postscr pag. 〈◊〉 ‖ Postscr l. p. 72. Cowel Instit l. 2. Tit. 3. De Exhaeredatione * Coke 4. Inst. p. 19. 3. ‖ Consult these Daemagogue Darling Coke himself on the Case 4. Inst. c. 1. page 3. are his own words The more high and absolute the Jurisdiction of this Court is the more just and Honourable it ought to be in it's proceeding and give Example of Justice to the Inferior Court * Mortimers 2. Harry the 6. Cromwells 32. Hen. 8. ‖ Strafford 5. Car. 1. reverst 14. Car. 2. c. 29. Kerby and Algore's Case was of this nature but very hard upon the 25. of Ed. in 〈◊〉 2. time * Vid. Foxe's Martyrology pag. 1534. * An Esq in Divinity or the Divine Squire one Ramsey that writ himself so and B D. beside I remember Printed the first a pretty piece of popular Nonsense * Their Association * Godwin in vita Mariae * p. 7. * So they murder'd at Pomfret Rich 2d ‖ Vid. Baker p. 155. Stow says it was with a kind of death never heard of here p. 325. tho Walsingham would have it with Pining * p. 9. ‖ Erected 1. Eliz. p. Letters Pattents †One Johnson Simpson's Case at the Assizes of North. ampton * Coke R. 12. pt p. 49. Vid. also the same Case 4. Inst. Cap. 74. p. 333. But as quick as Mr. Johnson jumbles up the the business the 〈◊〉 defer'd their Judgment till the next Assize and then perhaps the emulation there is and always was between the two Courts made their Lordships at last a little Partial Brownlows 2d pt p. 15. 〈◊〉 Case 42. Eliz. * Vid. Pleas of the Crown Hales * Besides 't is observable the Judges at that time had a particular pique to the power of that Court which they thought invaded theirs and might be very ready to give Judgment against them in Criminal Matters as well as Plague y'm with their Prohibitions in Civil and as they were then great Foes so my Lord Coke in his discourse upon the Court is but little their Friend * So much were the people postest against the Power of that Court in King Charles the First 's time that 2000. Brownists broke into St. Pauls where it was sitting beat down all the Benches and Bawling No Bishops No Commission Vid. Dugd. view * In Q. Mary's Reign first the Parliament supplicated the Pope for pardon and promise a Return to Popery Vid both Baker and Burnet * Pacius In Instit. Prolegom p. 1. * Sir James Hales Judge Court Com. Pleas Sir John Baker Chancel Excheq Vid. 〈◊〉 pag. 311. ‖ Goodwin in Vitâ Mariae Julian p. 19 20.
in the Roll That this Henry the Fourth upon whom Mr. Hunt triumphs that an Entail was made was an Vsurper Traytor and Murderer of his Soveraign And for his next Instance of Richard the Third would any one besides a Butcher and as Barbarous a Beast as the Precedent he brings tell us of an Entail they made upon his Heirs which was only a Settlement of Blood so much and Treason upon them and their posterity Bless me that men of Sense should be so inconsiderately besotted so Foolishly wicked sure Mr. Hunt knows that that Bloody Senate could never have boggled to settle a Crown upon the posterity of a Tyrant that they themselves had advanced to the Throne in the Blood of his Nephews They might well settle the Crown on Henry the Seventh that came to it by three several pleas Blood Arms and the Law and is the Settling it upon a Lawful Soveraign a President for Excluding another against All Law and those Entailments were but so many Recognitions Officious affirmatory Kindnesses to the Crown whereas their Exclusion must have been an Invading it His Acts of Henry the Eighth were such as all the World blusht at and any English man may be ashamed to own Inconsistent contradictory Fruitless and illusory that made Protestants desert us that designed us for their Leaders in a League the shame of Europe and the Opprobrium of our Nation Did not his 25th on default of Male Entail the Crown on the Lady Elizabeth and made Mary Spurious Did not his 28th make the same Lady the Protestant Princess Illegitimate on whom it was Entailed before and with his 35th reinstated them both again and that both in Birth and Tail And lastly that of Queen Mary's Entail was by a biggoted House of Commons that brought in that very Popery they now so much and so vainly fear and were like to have Entailed their Religion and Laws to the Vassalage of Rome as well as the Crown to the Heirs of Spain And is this thy Loyalty Seditious Sycophant this thy Religion to bring us presidents for Rebellion from Acts of Parliament and the Statutes of Apostates for the Establishing Popery The 13. of Elizabeth is such an one too as none but a Defier of Sense could have design'd for Application It is apparent that it was a Design to Secure the Crown to Her the Right Heir and that tho by an Indirect means An Act which she doubted her self whether with all her Parliament she could pass but was assured all her Subjects would like it when it was done upon a double Design to Secure her Title against the Pope and the Pretensions of the Queen of Scots Cambden the best Account of her Life makes it a Trick of Leicester's but let them Lye for it for once and raze the Sacred Truth of History and Record which the Law makes Felony even in their own sense it was enacted for securing a Lineal Descent to those that they thought the Right Heir But theirs would have been a Difinheriting of one they knew to be so It is Prodigiously strange to me that those that contend so much for this Parliamentary Power over the Succession of the Crown that this Judge Advocate for the Parliament Hunt himself that tells us plainly 't is not establisht by any Divine Right but is governed according to the presumed Will of the People that these Sycophants do not consider they do the greatest Disservice to that Honorable Assembly put the greatest abuse upon that Ancient and truly venerable Constitution they give the Lye to several Acts of Parliament made in the best of times and make those Legislators the morst of Villains or the greatest Fools or in his own phraseology Wicked Impious Sacrilegious for have not they in several Reigns by Special Act recognized even a Divine Right as well as an Hereditary In the first of Edward did they not declare that their Soveraigns Title to the Crown was by Gods Law and the Law of Nature Did they not even to a Tyrant a Murderer one fit only to be the Peoples Creature whom no Nature or God did design for the Throne Did they not resolve his Right to be both by God and Nature Tell me was it thought so Divine so natural so Sacred THEN even in the worst of Men and must it be impious Sacriligious in the best of Princes Did not their best of Queens receive her Crown with a Recognition of it's Descent to be by the Laws of God And lastly look upon that of King James where with unspeakable Joy they acknowledge he Reign'd by the Laws of God And as new as he calls the Doctrine for five hundred year agon both by Divines and Lawyers it was allowed of and maintained Gervase the Monk tells us it is manifest the Kings of England are obliged to none but GOD and Bracton that lived and wrote in the same Reign of Henry tells us their King was then only under God and will neither Law nor Gospel History Ancient and Modern Rolls Acts and Acknowledgements of Parliaments themselves satisfy them that they have nothing to do with the SUCCESSION Never could any Person that had not Proclaimed open War with Reason and broke all Truce with Sense suggest as he does that the difference between the Descent of the Crown and that of a Private Estate are Reasons for altering the Succession which is one of the best Arguments for it's being Vnalterable Does not the Law provide that but one Daughter shall succeed to the Crown and that for the Preservation of the Monarchy which must be but of one and no Co-partners of a Kingdom And so also the Son of a Second Venter to prevent the want of Succession shall be admitted to the Throne when he shall be Excluded an Estate His fancy of the Royal Families being Extinct and that then the Majesty of the People commences was long since the pretty conceit of Will. Pryn too In which they tell us as I 've told them before just as much as an old Aphorism When the Sky falls and spoil another good Proverb that No man dyes without an Heir But suppose what can be may be Would not all this mighty Constitution of Parliament be gone too when there was no Successor of a King to Summon it His Majesty of the People might set up another Policy of Government they think if it pleased But would not their Majesty of the People find it more agreeable to Divine Institution to agree upon the same Government in another person in an Extremity for would it not be more agreable even to their own Interest to prefer that under which they had enjoyed so long such an Experienced Happiness since the Almighty does not Reveal himself as he did of old to Moses and the Prophets and bid them arise and Anoint him a King over his Israel But as Mr. Hunt's private Estates tho I