Selected quad for the lemma: parliament_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A58257
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England's petition to the two houses assembled in Parliament, or, An Humble petition of the distressed and almost destroyed subjects of England to the two houses, containing (in the judgment of the wise) the very sense of all the truehearted of the kingdom ... / N.R.
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N. R.
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1643
(1643)
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Wing R54; ESTC R33935
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6,941
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10
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ENGLANDS PETITION TO THE TWO HOVSES Assembled in PARLIAMENT OR An humble Petition of the distressed and almost destroyed Subjects of England To the TWO HOVSES Containing in the Iudgement of the wise the very sense of all the true hearted of the Kingdom but because the way to their Highnesse eare is stopt it was sent to OXFORD and there Printed and afterwards presented to the HOVSES By N. R. Know yee not yet that our Canaan is destroyed Exod. 10.7 Printed at London and Reprinted at Oxford M.DC.XLIII TO THE TWO HOVSES ASSEMBLED IN PARLIAMENT The humble Petition of the distressed and almost destroyed Subjects of the Kingdome of England RIGHT HONOVRABLE IT is a double griefe to our soules that we should be contrained to beg for our lives at Your our fellow Subjects hands who are bound by the Law of God and nature and by the Oathes Protestations that you have taken to preserve them and that we should be forced to intreat you to spare our estates which you have nothing to doe withall Liberties and blood whose honour and strength depends so much on these our enjoyments But extremity prevaileth and drives us to You the grand Court of England and casteth us here prostrate at your feet and let not your Greatnesse be offended if we speake more plainely then usually becommeth us for necessity hath no Law It is for our lives and more and therefore blame us not to speake our Friends our Wives our Children our wants our dangers our Country our blood doe all pierce our eares and hearts with their daily and dolefull cries O that our requests could finde as quicke accesse to yours Surely it is impossible that you being so many should All be ignorant of the dolefull condition His Majesties two Kingdomes are in Doe ye not know that our houses are plundered and the fruit of our long labour taken from us That men who have heretofore relieved hundreds of the poore have not left them a Bed to lye on food to sustaine them or a house except it be a Gaole to put their heads in And the poore they were wont to relieve are become Souldiers and rob us even at noone day by Your authority Know you not how many thousand distressed soules cry to God day and night in their anguish and misery while they see you who have undertaken to relieve them having no compassion on them Oh where are now those Heroick and renowned Spirits that have formerly sate in your Seat They were wont to beat downe Heresie and Schisme to relieve the oppressed to settle Peace to suppresse Vice and to endeavour a generall Reformation both in Church and State but now you foster Hereticks and Schismaticks in your bosome You send Knaves to oppresse us and rob us of all we have and then imprison our bodies where many thousand able and Religious men are ready to starve for want of sustenance You breake the Peace and beget Rebellion and Confusion in all places You countenance Vice and Sinne how ever you would make the gul'd people believe that you are mighty religious whilest you zealously pull downe Crossâ—s and Pharisaically debarre men from workes of charity yea necessity upon the Lords day which is to straine at Gnats and swallow Camells You have brought in a generall Deformation over the whole Kingdome They were wont to take order for the reliefe of poore oppressed Prisoners at home and Galley-slaves abroad but now the loathsome Prisons of London Lambeth Cambridge Norwiâ—h Ipswich Yarmouth Colchester and other places are filled with their miserable starved diseased bodies who some of them would thinke themselves halfe free-men were they Turkish Gally-slaves such is their cruell usage Know you not how our Lands lye untilled whilest your Souldiers take away our Horses and tolerate our servants to runne from us And what can follow this but extreame Famine Know you not how much precious blood is spilt and the dead bodies of the Kings Subjects yea many of his Nobles scattered as dung upon the face of the earth Have not many of your eyes seene it and your eares heard the groanes of the wounded gasping for life Is all this nothing in your eyes To whom should we goe but unto You who have taken upon you to relieve us in our distresses You have disabled His Majesty from relieving of Himselfe You have bewitched or by force kept back his Subjects every where from comming to His helpe we have tryed all other knowne meanes and professe in the sight of God we know none but you that can deliver us without more blood and desolation and the World knowes you may doe it if you will and doe it easily and doe it with increase of your Honour of your Loyalty of your Honesty of your and the whole Kingdomes safety and happinesse What if it were to part with some thing of your owne wills and quietly to yeeld up the bodyes of some few Delinquents and knowne Traytors to His Majesty and enemies to the Peace to save all the rest of the Kingdome Dread Senators We beseech you consider what hath His Sacred Majesty done that deserves this from you Is it because He hath relieved you from oppressing Courts a Grace beyond president and biting Taxations Is it because He hath condescended to the calling of a Trienniall Parliament a thing never heard of in former ages and granted His Royall Assent to the continuance of this as long as you please Ought wee not all of us for these singular and unheard of Acts of Grace to lay downe our lives at His feet Is it because He hath ever yeelded to the punishment of those that are called Delinquents though it may be his best friends and supposed enemies to the Kingdome If you were a Court of Iustice as you are the Highest Court you would doe the like to those among you that have deserved it But can those be friends to you and worth the defending that are enemies to the King and Kingdome And for His Forts and Navy which you have taken from him were they not most of them bought with His owne money And yet were they not alwayes imployed for the Kingdomes good And are not you the Kingdome Representative yet not so as if there were but two Wise men in a County and all the rest Fooles And will you wrong that Trust that we have reposed in you 'T is true His Majesty cannot possibly manage all in His own Person but by His Ministers and those chosen by Councell and it hath been alwayes judged that none have beene more able impartiall and faithfull to advise Him then His Parliament but what shall we call you a Parliament when your Head and most of your best Members have deserted you He offered not to stirre from you till absolute necessity constrained Him till He saw Ireland in Rebellion the Rebels threatning England the same Spirits as malignant and active at home White-Hall even at His owne house where His owne life wee
tremble to thinke of it was in present apparent jeopardy and your consent since His constrained departure from you to all His most gracious Messages denyed We cannot but see the same Counsels among you setting you on against His Majesty now which have caused His so long discontinuance from you that they in the meane time might work their own ends that caused the Ship-mony and other illegall though not so known to His Majesty Taxations which caused the late innovations in Church and State which caused the warre with Scotland which broke up the last Parliament and have caused so many invective Declarations against His Majesty in the very language of the present times We cannot possibly conceive what His Majesty can doe now to remedy any of these miseries We patiently abide your long sitting in vaine the offenders among you Legally proceeded against are defended from His Majesty yea those that your selves if you durst for feare of one another speak your mindes doe know to be such that is denied His Majesty which is yeelded to every Subject in every lowest Court of Iustice viz to have a faire triall We perswade our selves by those many promises and deep Protestations His Majesty hath made that He desireth nothing more if it might be done with His safety then to be present with you and concurre with you and if your mindes had not beene so haughty and your thoughts so soaring as we finde they are there would not have beene so long a distance Neither is there any visible means left but either give up our States Liberties Lives and Religion to the dispose of your too long tried secret Counsels and Close Commitees and make your meere Will the onely Law as you have done ever since the King left you and so prove disloyall to our Soveraigne betray our Country and the Trust committed to you which God forbid of else defend our selves as you doe by the Sword And for us the Kings Leige people what have we done that we are made a common spoile Would you have us perfidiously to betray His Majesty into your Lauds Would you have us prove disloyall unto Him who hath alwayes beene so faith full unto us to endanger Him whom God hath appointed to save us Should we be such unnaturall members as to offer violence to our Head Then should we be the disgrace of the English Nation the reproach of posterity the very shame of nature and should presently expect some strange judgment of God according to the strangnesse of our offence It 's true we are forced and it is high time too to look about us and if we can to save our throats from the violence of some desperate persons among you but we beseech you call not this a bearing Armes against the Parliament it is against our wils God knowes as it is against His Majesties But if any of your party be so respective of His Majesties Royall authority established by Law so truely tender of His Person and Honour so heartily desirous of a happy Reformation as we then let not God prosper our proceedings but cause us to fall before you and give us up into your hands We are fallen upon by the cruell and because we will not give the Nineteenth according to His Majesties Presage with the Twentieth part of our estates and breake our Oath of Allegiance and goe contrary to our Protestation and turne Rebels to His Majesty and so damne our soules we are counted Traitors to the State and Enemies to the Common-wealth We beseech you consider in the presence of God if you have not forgot that there is a God if any one of the Lords should run upon any of you of the Commons with his drawn sword whether would you suffer death without resistance or take the sword pro tempore out of his hand and yet neither be averse to his honour and person if you can possibly think any of them more Honourable then your selves or his propriety in his weapon And may not the King much more seck to defend Himselfe against you His Subjects that have taken up Arms against Him Doth not nature teach us the preservation of our selves will not the eye wink without deliberation and the smallest worme turne backe if you tread upon it Yet the argument is stronger for He is not a meere man one of your fellows but a King the Lords Anointed against whom there is no rising up Pro. 30.31 Be He never so ill conditioned as we are sure you cannot say ours is it is damnation to resist Him being offended by him Rom. 13.2 But against these Precepts some are wont to bring examples of Rebellion and so argue a facto ad jus and say in effect that it is lawfull for the Subject to rise up against their Soveraigne because they find some have so done Pray marke it We are peremptorily commanded in holy Scripture not to Touch the Lords Anointed or to resist Him being offended by Him we find that some Rebels have transgressed these commands and have unnaturally risen up against their Soveraigne therefore we will doe so too which conclusion I leave to your understandings to judge how fair it is for you are wise But you war not you 'l say against His Majesty you Honour and love His Person and labour to make Him Great your only aim is against His wicked Counsellors and cursed Cavaliers Truly let them be what they will be but if you should come to one of us and protest so much that you love us deerly and wish us well and in the meane time Plunder our house drive away our wife keepe our children from us imprison our servants and undoe all that take our part Wee thinke so well of our selves as to thinke that there are very few of us except some fooles that will let you cut their throats if you please that durst beleeve you But if all this were nothing what an unmatched Act of Grace was it in His Matie to call a Parliament first then to assent to the continuance of it during your pleasure yet not so as if He then resigned all his Power into your hands giving you leave to do what you will for He is still your Head hath his negative voice and can affirm or deny whatsoever is voted by you and will you be so unnaturally so unmannerly ungratefull et si ingratum dixeris omnia dices as to restraine His Power who hath given unto you yours He hath given you one end of the staffe into your hand will you now pluck the other out of His He hath made you Men will you make no body now of Him You could doe nothing without Him before and will you doe all things without him now Pudeat haec opprobria vobis Et dici potuisse non potuisse refelli But it 's confest on all sides that the Major part hath the authority of the whole if so pray tell us hath not the Head the King the