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A57599 Loyalty and peace, or, Two seasonable discourses from I Sam. 24, 5 viz., David's heart smote him because he cut off Saul's skirt : the first of conscience and its smitings, the second of the prodigious impiety of murthering King Charles I, intended to promote sincere devotion and humiliation upon each anniversary fast for the Late King's death / by Samuel Rolls. Rolle, Samuel, fl. 1657-1678. 1678 (1678) Wing R1880; ESTC R25524 110,484 255

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making of any more Laws which might be judged necessary for the good of the Nation For without the King no Law can be made His Royal Assent Sanction and Fiat makes every Law to be a Law Therefore the Parliament did never presume to call any things by the name of a Law which they made without the King but by the name not of Acts but of Ordinances of Parliament Secondly there was stop put to the execution of those good and wholsome Laws which were before in being Execution say they is the life of Laws and who but the King is the great Executioner of Laws or the life of their Execution When Judges and other great men in the Law went off by death who but a King could legally substitute others in their room If any Justice be done by Officers not legally called and constituted we must be beholden to usurpation for it Laws are things full of life and spirit if they be such for the constitution and execution of them as they ought to be and upon the life of good Laws depend all our Lives Liberties good Names Estates Properties It is as it were the breath of their Nostrils If the true Soul of the Law go out of it which is the King they must either be restored by some Vsurper or usurping spirit or fall to the ground They who destroy our Laws or the due execution of them had as good in effect burn up all our Ships break down all our Forts and Fences yea they had as good almost cut down all our Banks and Buttresses upon the Sea-shore and let in the Sea upon us as do what they do He that destroys one good Law or the effect and progress of it may do the world more mischief than if he had destroy'd twenty men yea a hundred such as they might be I had almost said If a man could stop the motion of the Sun Moon and Stars and all their Influences upon the earth their light and height c. for ought I know would not be more missed than the free course or progress of Laws would be What Death then could be greater than their demerits who kill'd not only the Law-maker but the Laws themselves which are all in all in all that we have to shew or plead for any thing that we call ours in this world Seventhly Alas alas that I should yet have more wherewith to accuse those poor unhappy men who put the late King to death I say it was Homicidium barbarum a barbarous Murther in reference to the circumstances of it Who knows not that cruelty may be shew'd even towards a noxious Brute which ought to be put to death as towards a wild Boar or the like namely by making its necessary death more painful or more lingring than it need to be but if the same thing be done to a harmless Animal as to a tame Dove or such like the cruelty and barbarousness is yet greater upon that account If the severity be applied to a reasonable Creature man or woman it is counted ten times so barbarous but when barbarous usage shall be applied to a Prince a King our own King a virtuous King and one that had been a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs for many years together not to grant him as handsome an Exit out of the world as could consist with an untimely death was such a transcendant instance of inhumane barbarity as I think no age can parallel Reader If thy heart can bear the mention of them which I assure thee mine hardly can and if thou art content to weep a while for the following Lines are scarcely to be writ or read with dry eyes I shall quote a few instances of the barbarous usage which our dear and dread Sovereign that then was met with as I find them recorded in Dr. Perrinshief's excellent History of the Life and Death of King Charles I. To say nothing of the King-killing Party in Parliament and Army their over-ruling all the vigorous endeavours which were used from time to time by the whole House of Lords together with the major part of the House of Commons to compromise all matters with his Majesty having courageously Voted though the Army was drawn up to London to over-awe them That the King's Concessions were a sufficient ground for Peace Dr. P. p. 174. But to come immediately to such passages as do refer to his Death Some would have the King saith Dr. Perrinshief pag. 185. first formally degraded and divested of all his Royal Habiliments and Ensigns of Majesty and then as a private person exposed to Justice Others designing a Tyrannical Oligarchy whereby they might have a share in the Government would have the King proceeded against as King that by so shedding his Blood they might extinguish Majesty and so m●rther Monarchy For several of them did confess that indeed he was guilty of no Crime more than that he was their King and because the excellency of his parts and the rights of his birth would not suffer him to be a private person pag. 186. In their second debate about the matters of Accusation all embraced the advice of Harrison to blacken him c. Ibidem Accordingly they impeached him as a Tyrant Traitor Murtherer and an implacable common Enemy because he had levied war against the Parliament Upon which the Author afterward descants thus excellently pag. 187. Those who had none but the light of nature to make them generous never reproached their conquered Enemies with their Victory but these men would murther their Prince against whom they had nothing else to object but the unhappy issues of a war which leaves the Conquered the only Criminal while the name of Justice and Goodness are the spoils of Conquerors Most barbarous was their cruelty because most inexorable For saith he pag. 187. while they were thus ingaged to perpetrate their intended mischiefs all Parties declare against it The Presbyterian Ministers almost all those of London and very many out of the several Countries and some though few of the Independents The Scots also by their Commissioners declare and protest against it The States of Holland also by their Embassadors did intercede and deprecate it as most destructive to the Protestant Interest Some of the most eminent of the Nobility as the Earl of Southampton the Duke of Richmond the Marquess of Hertford and the Earl of Lindsey and others neglact no ways either by Prayers or Reasons to save the King yea they offered themselves as Hostages for him and if the Conspirators must needs be fed with blood to suffer in his stead pag. 189. The Prince of Orange did daily send as Arents the Kindred and Allies of the Conspirators with full Power and to propose any Conditions make any Promises and use all threatnings to divert them from their intended cruelty But all was in vain For no conditions of Peace could please them whose Ambition had swallowed the hopes of Empire therefore they would