Selected quad for the lemma: parliament_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
parliament_n	assent_n	king_n	royal_a	3,228	5	8.0365	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79846	A full ansvver to an infamous and trayterous pamphlet, entituled, A declaration of the Commons of England in Parliament assembled, expressing their reasons and grounds of passing the late resolutions touching no further addresse or application to be made to the King.	Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.	1648 (1648)	Wing C4423; Thomason E455_5; ESTC R205012	109,150	177

or Congregation of men can have to traduce Him with them Before any discourse be applied to the monstrous Conclusions which are made and for the support and maintenance whereof that Declaration is framed and contrived or to the unreasonable glosses upon His Majesties Propositions and prosecution of his desires of peace and Treaty it will be the best method to weigh and consider those particulars upon which they would be thought to found their desperate Conclusions and in which they say there is a continued tract of breach of trust in the three Kingdomes since His Majesty wore the Crowne 1. The first Charge is that His Majesty in publique Speeches and Declarations hath laid a fit foundation for all Tyranny by this most destructive Maxime or Principle which he saith he must avow That He oweth an account of His Actions to none but God alone and that the Houses of Parliament joynt or separate have no power either to make or declare any Law That which all learned Christians in all ages have taught and all learned Lawyers of this Kingdome have alwaies held and acknowledged is not like to be a destructive principle and a fit foundation for Tyranny and surely this assertion of His Majesties hath no lesse authority For the first the incomparable Grotius upon whom all learned men look with singular reverence saies that even Samuel jus Regum describens satis ostendit adversùs Regis injurias nullam in populo relictam potestatem which saies he rectè colligunt veteres ex illo Psalmi Tibi soli peccavi Because being all ejusàem ordinis the people owe the same obedience to these as they did to those though the absolute power and jurisdiction the Kings of Israel had be no rule for other Princes to claime by And Grotius there cites Saint Ambrose his note upon the same Text Neque ullis ad poenam vocantur legibus tuti imperii potestate homini ergo non peccavit cui non tenebatur obnoxius The wise and learned Lord Chancellor Egerton in his Argument of the Postnati mentions some Texts in the Civill Law of the great and absolute power of Princes as Rex est lex loquens and Rex solus judicat de causa à jure non definita and saies he must not wrong the Judges of the Common Law of the Kingdome so much as to suffer an imputation to be cast upon them that they or the Common Law doe not attribute as great power and authority to their Soveraigns the Kings of England as the Canon Laws did to their Emperours and then cites out of Bracton the Chief Justice in the time of King Hen. 3. and an authentique Authour in the Law these words De Chartis Regiis factis Regum non debent nec possunt Justitiarii nec privatae personae disputare nec etiam si in illa dubitio oriatur possunt eam interpretari in dubiis obscuris vel si aliqua dictio duos contineat intellectus Domini Regis erit expectanda interpretatio voluntas and the same Bracton in another place saies of the King Omnis sub eo est ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo The ground of that excellent law of Premunire in the 16 year of King Rich 2. c. 5. and the very words of that Statute are That the Crown of England hath been so free at all times that it hath been in no earthly Subjection but immediately subject to God in all things touching the Regality of the same Crowne and to none other and upon that Maxime of the Law that good Statute against the Pope was founded If the King were bound to give an Account of his Actions to any person or power whatsoever God excepted he could not be the onely supream Governour of this Realme which he is declared and acknowledged to be by the Oath of Supremacy which every Member of the House of Commons hath taken or if he hath not he ought not to sit there or to be reputed a Member of Parliament by the Statute of 5 Eliz. c. 1. For the other part of this most destructive maxime or principle That the Houses of Parliament joynt or separate have no power either to make or declare any thing to be Law which hath not been formerly made to be so It hath been the judgment and language of the law it self in all Ages and the language of all Parliaments themselves It was the judgment of the Parliament in the 2 year of King Hen. 5. remembred and mentioned by the King in his Answer to the 19 Propositions That it is of the Kings regality to grant or deny such of their Petitions as pleaseth himself which was the forme then usuall to present those desires which by the Kings approbation and consent were enacted into Laws It was the language of the Law in the 36 year of K. H. 6. reported by my Lord Dyer that the King is the head and that the Lords are chief and principall Members and the Commons to wit the Knights Citizens and Burgesses the inferiour Members and that they all make the Body of Parliament and doubtlesse the Priviledge of Parliament was not in that time held so sacred a thing when an Action of Debt was brought against the Sheriffe of Cornwall for having discharged one Trewynnard a Burgesse of Parliament taken in Execution during the Session of Parliament upon a Writ of priviledge directed to the said Sheriffe and the Kings Bench where the Action was brought and the Sheriffe justified was in those daies the proper place to judge what was the priviledge of Parliament the Law being the most proper Judge of that priviledge as well as of all other rights It is the language of the Authour of Modus tenendi Parliamentum who lived before the time of William the Conquerour and it is the language of Sir Edw. Coke in the Chapter of the high Court of Parliament which was published by a speciall Order of the House of Commons since the beginning of this Parliament that there is no Act of Parliament but must have the consent of the Lords the Commons and the royall assent of the King and the same Sir Edward Coke saies in the 11. p. of that Chapter that Innovations and Novelties in Parliamentary proceedings are most dangerous and to be refused It is the language of the Parliament in the 1 year of King James when to the first Act that was past they desired His Majesties royall assent without which they say it can neither be compleat or perfect nor remaine to all posterity c. Lastly it is the language of this present Parliament and in a time in which they were not very modest in their pretences for in their Declaration of the 19 of May they acknowledge that by the constitution of this Kingdome the power is in His Majesty and Parliament together albeit they conclude in the same Declaration that if He refused to

to cancell and overthrow all the Lawes and Government of the Kingdome all which must be done before their cause or their manner of maintaining their cause can be justified and if that were not perversly blind to their owne interest they would know and discerne that such an act is as pernitious to themselves as to truth and reason their own security depending on nothing more then a provision that no others for the time to come shall do what they have done nor can they enjoy any thing but on the foundation of that Law they have endeavoured to overthrow The King hath often offered an Act of Oblivion which will cut down all Gallows and wipe out all opprobrious tearms and may make the very memory and mention of Treason and Traytors as penall as the crimes ought to have been they who desire more aske impossibilities and that which would prove their own destruction and who ever requires their cause to be justified can have no reason for doing it but because he knows it is not to be justified The end of the third Bill is to dishonour those of His own Party whom He hath thought fit to honour and to cancell those Acts of grace and favour He vouchsafed them which is against all reason and justice for if He had no power to confer those Honours there needs no Act of Parliament to declare or make them void if He had power there is no reason why they should be lesse Lords upon whom He conferred that honour the last year then those He shall create the next nor is this Proposition of the least imaginable moment to the peace of the Kingdome or security of a Treaty though it be of no lesse concernment to His Majesty then the parting with one of the brightest Flowers in His Crown The last Bill is to give the two Houses power to adjourn to what place and at what time they please which by the Act of continuance they cannot now do without the King's consent though there is no reason they should attribute more to His Person in that particular then they doe in other things to which His assent is necessary and if they do indeed believe that His Regall power is virtually in them they may as well do this Act without Him as all the rest they have done The King in His Message of the 12 of April 1643. rather intimated then propounded the Adjournment of the Parliament to any place twenty miles from London which the Houses should choose as the best expedient He could think of for His owne and their security from those tumultuous Assemblies which interrupted the freedome thereof to which though they returned no Answer to His Majesty yet in their Declaration after that Treaty at Oxford they declared the wonderfull inconvenience and unreasonablenesse of that proposition the inconveniences that would happen to such persons that should have occasion to attend the Parliament by removing it so far from the residency of the ordinary Courts of Justice and the places where the Records of the Kingdome remaine That it would give a tacite consent to that high and dangerous aspersion of awing the Members of this Parliament and it would give too much countenance to those unjust aspersions laid to the charge of the City of London whose unexampled zeale and fidelity to the true Protestant Religion and the Liberty of this Kingdome they said is never to be forgotten and that they were wel-assured that the loyalty of that City to His Majesty and their affections to the Parliament is such as doth equall if not exceed any other place or City in the Kingdome which reasons being as good now as they were then the King hath followed but their own opinion in not consenting to this Bill In a word All the world cannot reply to His Majesties owne Answer upon the delivery of these four Bils or justifie their proceeding That when His Majesty desires a Personall Treaty with them for the setling of a peace they in answer propose the very subject matter of the most essentiall part thereof to be first granted and therefore the King most prudently and magnanimously declares That neither the desire of being freed from this tedious and irksome condition of life He hath so long suffered nor the apprehension of what may befall Him shall make Him change His resolution of not consenting to any Act till the whole peace be concluded for in truth nothing is more evident then that if He passe these Bils He neither can be able to refuse any thing else they shall propose for He hath reserved no title to any power nor can have reason to do it for having resigned His choicest Regalities it would be great improvidence to differ with them upon more petty concessions and having made all honest men guilty He could not in justice deny to refer the punishment of them to those who could best proportion it to the crimes So that a Treaty could afterwards be to no other end then to finish His owne destruction with the greater pomp and solemnity whereas the end of a Treaty is and it can have no other upon debate to be satisfied That He may lawfully grant what is desired That it is for the benefit of His people that He should grant it how prejuditiall soever it may seem to Himself and that being granted Himself shall securely enjoy what is left how little soever it be and that His Kingdome shall by such His concessions be intirely possessed of peace and quiet the last of which cannot be at least His Majesty hath great reason to suspect it may not without the consent of the Scots who peremptorily protest against these Four Bils And say that it is expresly provided in the 8 Article That no Cessation nor any Pacification or Agreement for Peace whatsoever shall be made by either Kingdome or the Armies of either Kingdome without the mutuall advice and consent of both Kingdomes or their Committees in that behalf appointed which is neither Answered or avoided by saying that no impartiall man can read that Article of the Treaty but He must needs agree that it could be meant only whilst there was War and Armies on both sides in being and that it must of necessity end when the War is at an end for besides that war is not nor can be at an end till there be an Agreement and if it be why is there so great an Army kept up in the Kingdome by the same reason that Article was so understood as it is now urged by the Scots before their comming into the Kingdome it may be so understood after they are gone and that the Houses themselves did understand it so in the beginning of January 1643. before the Scots Army entred appears by a Declaration Mr. St. Johns made at that time in the name of the Houses and printed by Order to the City of London at Guild-hall upon the discovery of a cunning Plot as they said to

power yet they could not break through the Charge of the Army for invading infringing or endeavouring to overthrow the Rights and Liberties of the Subjects of this Nation in arbitrary violent and oppressing waies and for endeavouring by indirect and corrupt practises to delay and obstruct Justice to the great damage and prejudice of divers of the poor Commoners of England Though they were too mighty to be touched upon the Kings accusation of having endeavoured by many foule aspersions upon His Majesty and His Government to alienate the affections of His people and to make His Majesty odious to them yet they were not able to bear the burthen of an Accusation of having endeavoured by false informations mis-representations or scandalous suggestions against the Army to beget mis-understandings prejudices or jealousies in the Parliament against the Army and to put insufferable injuries abuses and provocations upon the Army whereby to provoke and put the Army into dis-temper Though they slighted the King's Charge of having trayterously invited and incouraged a forain power to invade His Majesties Kingdome of England yet they cannot throw off the Charge from the Army of having invited the Scots and other forain Forces to come into this Kingdome in a hostile manner to abet and assist them in the prosecution and effecting of their designes Lastly they may with their eyes hands and hearts lift up to Heaven remember how they contemned and despised the King when he charged them that they had endeavoured as far as in them lay by force and terrour to compell the Parliament to joyne with them in their trayterous designes and to that end had actually raised and countenanced Tumults against the King and Parliament And now their owne Army whereof very many then assisted them in those Tumults to drive away the King and the Members of both Houses accuses them of having invited incouraged abetted or countenanced divers Reformadoes and other Officers and Souldiers tumultuously and violently to gather together at Westminster to affright and assault the Members of Parliament in passing to and from the House to offer violence to the House it self and by such violence outrages and threats to awe and inforce the Parliament As the Charge allowed and countenanced now from their owne Army is upon the matter the same which was with so much noise and insolence rejected when it was presented from the King and is now objected against Him as a hainous crime so with reference to their Priviledges which like the Logitians line is divisibilis in semper divisibilia and serves their turne to inable them to aske any thing from the King they think fit to demand and to refuse any thing to Him He requires from them the progresse and proceedings thereupon hath been very different in stead of suspending and discountenancing them upon the King's accusation they are brought in triumph with an Army to the House the Army upon the bare exhibiting their generall Articles require that the persons impeached may be forthwith suspended from sitting in the House and will receive no deniall it must be consented to for they will not indure that the persons impeached by them shall continue in power and capacity to obstruct due proceedings against themselves and for their own escape from justice to threaten ruine to the whole Nation as by the Letter from the Army of the 21. of June appears The King was checked upon the matter of Priviledge and then imperiously required to send the evidence which He had against those He had accused to the House where they principally governed and could easily judge what was secure for themselves His Majesty desired that before His proofs were discovered against them and lest a new mistake should breed more delaies it might be resolved whether His Majesty were bound in respect of Priviledges to proceed against them by impeachment in Parliament or whether He were at liberty to prefer an Indictment against them at Common Law in the usuall way or had His choice to which they would give no other Answer then that they desired Him to give directions that the Parliament might be informed before Friday next what proof there was against them that accordingly they might be called to a legall triall it being the undoubted right and priviledge of Parliament that no Member of Parliament can be proceeded against without the consent of Parliament The Army tells them plainly by their Letter of the 25. of June That they wish the name of Priviledges may not lie in ballance with the Safety of a Kingdome and the reality of doing justice which as they had said too often they could not expect whilst the persons they had accused were the Kingdomes and their Judges And in the Remonstrance of the Army of the 23. of June that no priviledges ought to protect wicked men in doing wrong to particulars or mischief to the publick and that whoever most adores or tenders those priviledges will best expresse his Zeale towards them in taking care they be not abased or extended to private wrong and publique mischief for they say they clearly find and all wise men may see it that Parliament priviledges as well as Royall prerogative may be perverted abused to the destruction of those greater ends for whose protection and preservation they were admitted or intended viz. the Rights and Liberties of the people and safety of the whole and in case they be so the abuse evill or danger of them is no lesse to be contended against and a remedy thereof no lesse to be endeavoured then of the other And upon these grounds they conclude that they shall be inforced to take such courses extraordinary as God shall enable and direct them to unlesse by Thursday night next they receive assurance and security to themselves and the Kingdome for a more safe and hopefull proceeding in an ordinary way by having those things granted which before they insisted on These have been the proceedings of late in the point of accusing Members and in the case of Priviledge all which are so far justified by the Houses that the Army hath received publique thanks and approbation for all that they have done and their accusations have been received countenanced and promoted and their desires granted against the persons they accused so that as the King did nothing in the accusation of those Members but what was justifiable by the Law and former Presidents of Parliament so whatsoever He did is since justified by the later Presidents which themselves have consented to and approved And so we return to the place from whence this consideration carried us There is a mention of the Lord Digby's appearing in a War-like manner and afterwards his going beyond the Seas and from thence giving advice to the King to retire to some strong place c. which are all so well known have been so often answered and have so little reference to the King that time is not to

of Reading whilst the Earl of Essex continued still at or about Warwicke on the 2 of November they resolved to send an Overture to his Majesty concerning Peace and though it must not be said they were forced to that Addresse yet truly who ever reads that Petition which was brought to his Majesty to Colebrooke will be of opinion by the stile of it that they were fuller of fear or of duty then they were when they rejected his Majesties offer from Notingham or then they were ten daies after or ever since That Petition was answered with all imaginable candor by his Majesty and Windsor chosen if they would remove their Garrison out of it for the place of Treaty But when the Messengers were returned who made not the least mention of a Cessation it appeared by sure intelligence that the Earl of Essex who had the night before brought his Army to or neer London after those Messengers were dispatched to his Majesty had drawn a great part of his Forces and the London Traine bands towards his Majesty and sent others to Acton on the one side and Kingston on the other so that there being likewise a Garrison at Windsor if the King had staid at Colebrooke He had been insensibly hemmed in and surrounded by the Enemy whereupon He took a sudden resolution to advance to Brainceford thereby to compell them to draw their Body together so making His way through that Towne with the defeat of a Regiment or two which made resistance there and thereby causing those at Kingston to remove the King went to His own House at Hampton Court and having there in vaine expected the Commissioners from the Houses to Treat retired to Reading where He staid till He found they had given over all thought of Treaty and they sent Him a new scornfull Petition to returne to His Parliament with His Royall not His Martiall attendance In January following the importunity of the City of London and generall clamour of the people forced them to pretend an inclination to peace and so they sent Propositions to his Majesty which though but 14 in number contained the whole matter of the former 19. with an addition of some Bils ready passed the two Houses to which His royall assent was demanded one of which was for the extirpation and eradication of the whole frame of Church-government and another for the confirming an Assembly of such Divines as they had chosen to devise a new Government which they were so much the fitter to be trusted with because in the whole number which consisted of above one hundred and might be increased as they thought fit there were not above a dozen who were not already declared Enemies to the old to the which notwithstanding there were few of them who had not subscribed and a promise required from his Majesty that He would give His assent to all such Bils which the two Houses should hereafter present to Him upon consultation with that Assembly How extravagant soever these Propositions were the King so much subdued and suppressed His Princely indignation that He drew them to a Treaty even upon those Propositions expecting as He expressed in His Answer when He proposed the Treaty that such of them as appeared derogatory from and destructive to His just Power and Prerogative should be waved and many other things that were darke and doubtfull in them might be cleared and explained upon debate and concluding that if they would consent to a Treaty they would likewise give such authority and power of reasoning to those whom they should trust that they might either give or take satisfaction upon those principles of piety honour and justice as both sides avowed their being governed by How that Treaty was managed how their Commissioners were limited and bound up by their Instructions that they had no power to recede from the least materiall tittle of the Propositions upon which they treated how they were not suffered to stay one houre beyond the time first assigned to them albeit his Majesty earnestly desired the Treaty might be continued till He had received an Answer to Propositions of His owne which He had sent to the Houses because the Committee had no power to answer them and how the same day their Commissioners left Oxford the Earl of Essex marched with his whole Army to besiege Reading is known to all men who may conclude thereupon that they never intended that Treaty should produce a peace On the other side the King proposed only That His Ships might be restored to Him and His Castles and Revenue which by the confession of all had been violently taken from Him and that His Majesty and the Members of both Houses who had been driven from Westminster might either return thither upon such a provision as might secure them against Tumults for the future or that the Parliament might be adjourned to some safe place and so all Armies presently to be disbanded To which Proposition from his Majesty they never vouchsafed to return Answer and the King after He had above a Month in vain expected it from them and in that time received a good supply of Ammunition which He was before thought to want sent another Message by Mr. Alexander Hambden on the 19 of May 1643. in which He told them That when He considered that the scene of all the calamity was in the bowels of His own Kingdome that all the bloud which was spilt was of His owne Subjects and that what victory it should please God to give Him must be over those who ought not to have lifted up their hands against Him when He considered that those desperate civill dissentions might encourage and invite a forain Enemy to make a prey of the whole Nation That Ireland was in present danger to be lost That the heavy judgments of God Plague Pestilence and Famine would be the inevitable attendants of this unnaturall contention and that in a short time there would be so generall a habit of uncharitablenesse and cruelty contracted throughout the Kingdome that even peace itself would not restore His people to their old temper and security His Majesty could not suffer Himself to be discouraged though He had received no Answer to His former Message but by this did again with much earnestnesse desire them to consider what He had before offred which gave so fair a rise to end those unnaturall distractions This most gracious Message from the King met with so much worse entertainment and successe then the former as it was not only ever Answer'd but the Messenger likewise being a Gentleman of quality and singular integrity though he was civilly received by the House of Lords to whom he was directed was by the House of Commons apprehended and imprisoned and never after freed from his restraint till he ended his life after a long and consuming sicknesse This is the Messenger they mean who to excuse their inhumanity and cruelty towards him they say at the