Whether the Parliament be not in Law dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange And how the Subjects ought and are to behave themselves in relation to those Papers emitted since by the Stile and Title of Acts With a brief Account of the Government of England In a Letter to a Country Gentleman as an Answer to his second Question THough you have exceedingly mistook your Man in demanding my Opinion about a Case that lies so much out of my Province and Circle that it hath hardly come within the Boundaries of my Conversation either with Books or Men. Yet not being altogether a Stranger to the Nature of the Government and the Rules of the Constitution under which I live nor wholy unacquainted with the ancient and modern Transactions of my Country neither utterly ignorant of the Practices of Ages as they remain registred in Histories I will rather both venture my own Reputation and run the Risque of being censured for straying beyond the Limits of my proper Studies than not obey your Command in what you were pleased to require of me and thereby give you fresh and repeated Evidence both of the Authority you have over me and of the Deference I pay to your Merit as well as to your Quality And though I will not pretend to say the hundredth part of what might or ought to be said on this Subject yet by what I shall be able to lay before you in relation to it you will easily guess what might have been done or what yet may by a better and more proper hand Nor can I now without a Forfeiture of my Credit and a Departure from Truth refuse to give you my Thoughts in this Matter having in my Answer to your first Question stated and pledged my Honour and Faith that I would also reply to your second and having also told you that I had brought under the compass of my thoughts and in effect digested whatsoever was needful towards a clear though brief Resolution of it And I do lay claim to no such Privilege as the breaking of my Word but am willing to leave the Credit or Infamy of that to the Authors and Publishers of Hague Delarations Now I am so far from quarrelling at Parliaments or detracting from the Esteem they ought to be in or from the Respect that is commonly paid them that I preserve for them all the Honour and Veneration imaginable while they confine themselves to the Uses and Ends unto which they were primitively ordained and govern themselves by the Measures chalked out for them in the Constitution They are of that early Original and ancient Standing that for any Thing I know they are in some sense and degree though under difference variety and distinction of Names coeval with or very little subsequent and posterior to our Government Their Antiquity is such though not always under the same Appellation and by the same Stile nor with the same Allowances of Power and Authority that Caput inter nubila condunt their beginning is immemorial So I will not dispute and much less controul the Testimonies which we have in the Commentarios upon Littleton fol. 100. namely That before the Conquest and from thence downward till the end of Hen. 3. there had been no fewer than Two hundred and eighty Sessions of Parliament which doth much exceed the Number during the Reigns of Eighteen Sovereign Kings and Queens that have ruled over this Kingdom since But were their Institution as modern as some Men will have it and were they at first illegitimately obtained and wrenched from the Crown by Insurrections Tumults and Wars yet having once acquired an Establishment by Law confirmed by Custom and ratified by Charters and sworn unto by our Kings our Title to the having of Parliaments for the Ends and Uses whereunto they were appointed is not now precarious but in right belongeth unto us For unquestionably many Things were at first vested in the Crown which it having afterwards alienated and parted with either for the ease and safety of the Monarchy or for the good and advantage of the People it were unjust as well as unwise for any King to reassume them Whatsoever comes once to be Legally established by a plenary and lawful Power is not reversable at the Prince's Will nor doth it lie under his Authority to annul it at his Pleasure And therefore all who have written with any Judgment of Governments Laws and Politicks do unanimously tell us That amplitudo restrictio-potestatis Regum circa ea quae per se mala injusta non sunt pendet ex arbitrio hominum ex conventione vel pacto inter Reges Regnum that the extent and restriction of Royal Power in and about such Things as are not intrinsically evil and unjust do result and proceed from Agreements Stipulations and Compacts between Kings and those Communities over which they rule See Suarez de Legib. lib. 1. cap. 17. And indeed our Magna Charta and other Charters as likewise many of our Statutes are no other than enacted and declared Limitations and Restrictions of the Sovereign and Royal Power nor can our Kings lawfully depart from or exceed the Confinements and Boundaries of the English Monarchy which are therein stipulated fixed and settled The Books of the 24 Ed. 3 65. Stamford's Prerogative of the Crown fol. 10. and Coke's Institutes fol. 73. tell us That the first Kings of this Realm had all the Lands of it in their own hands and were the sole Proprietors of the whole Ground but it being now alienated and transferred from them either as Recompences for Services or as Gifts on the score of Friendship and Bounty or by way of Sale for a valuable equivalent in Money they that are become Possessors cannot be disseized of them without a Violation of Law Honour and Justice So that Parliaments howsoever and whensoever they came to be instituted they are now incorporated into the Constitution of England as Apelles Picture woven into Minerva's Shield and cannot cease to have an Ingrediency into the Government without a dissolution of the whole Frame of it Nor will it ever be the Interest of a King of England to lay aside Parliaments were it within the reach of his Power to do it and as a good and wise King will never attempt it so a tyrannous and arbitrary one will not be able to effect it were he never so inclinable provided they behave themselves so as not to forfeit their Credit in the Nation The only danger we can fall into of having Parliaments abolished is the Peoples growing weary of them and their being provoked to hate them and this they both may and will have cause for when Parliaments become not only useless but hurtful When instead of preserving the Gravity of a Legislative Assembly and maintaining the Character of the Representative Body of a great and wise People they turn more Mobbish than a Dover Court and more rude and tumultuous than
will the Constitution allow they should by which the King may either be barred of the Allegiance Fealty and Obedience of his Subjects or be deprived and divested of the Counterpart of it inseparaby appendent unto and resident in himself namely of Trust and Power to rule and defend his People And should either a Parliament be so passionate and encroaching as to present and demand these Things in Bills or a King so weak or indiscreet as to raise them unto the Title of Laws by giving the Royal Assent to them yet they never would be good and legal Acts nor have the force and virtue of Laws though they carried the Name but they would ipso facto be void in themselves as being directly repugnant unto and perfectly subversive of the Constitution So that how large extensive and unlimitted soever the Power of a King and Parliament acting in conjunction may be yet there are some Essentials and Fundamentals of the English Government whereof a few relate to Privileges incident to the People of England as they are a free Nation and divers are intrinsical to the Royal Authority and inseparable from the Person and Dignity of the King that the very Constitution makes them Sacredly unchangeable and sets them out of the reach of King and Parliament to meddle with And should they ever attempt it they would thereby immediately destroy themselves and become divested of all the Power and Authority they have or claim because deriving all their Jurisdictions from the Constitution and having no other Title to them but what that gives whensoever that is overturned and subverted all other Powers sink and fall with it Nor is there any Thing more common in our Books than that notwithstanding the Almightiness of Parliaments yet there are some Things that cannot be taken away by them As no Attainder by Parliament lies against a King rightfully gotten into the Possession of the Crown but he stands ipso facto Guiltless and Innocent in the esteem and account of the Law Nor is it in the Power of a Parliament to take away or dispose of the Right of a Kingdom as the Case has it 1 Hen. 7. Neither can a Parliament barr a King of the Right of his Regality as that no Lands shall hold of him and therefore when there was an endeavour carrying on in the beginning of the Reign of King James the First to have taken away all Tenures by Act of Parliament it was resolved by all the Judges That such a Stature had it been enacted would have been a void Statute This might be enlarged in many other Instances but these are enough to illustrate and confirm what I have mentioned only before I dismiss this Head give me leave to make those Reflexions upon the two Revolutional Parliaments and their pretended Parliamentary Proceedings as will serve to set it in a Meridian Light That they have not only exceeded the Bounds prescribed in and by the Nature Frame and Quality of the Constitution but they have altered changed subverted and overthrown the very Constitution itself and thereby destroyed the Ancient Legal Government of England and have acted Traiterously towards their Country as well as Treasonably and Rebelliously against the King And to begin with some Instances in matter of Fact wherein they have departed from and have acted in opposition unto all those main Essentials of the Constitution which relate to the Community whose Trustees they were originally intended to be for the preserving the Constitution entire and inviolated to them and to their Posterity For Parliaments are so far from being by their primitive Institution appointed to be the Representatives of the People to destroy that which was and rightfully still is the English Government that the great end of their Ordination and of their being successively chosen trusted and empowered by the People is that they may assert maintain and uphold it Nor can Five or Six hundred Men though they were both elected by Six hundred thousand which I am sure is a far greater Number than all the allowed Electors of Members to Parliaments amounts unto and though they should receive Credentials and Authorities from those Electors to alter the Government stand empowered by those means to do it but they should and ought previously to the attempting of it to have either an antecedent Signification of the Will and Pleasure of the many Millions of the Community and the Nation besides those or to receive a Substitution by and from them by which they are made their Representatives and Plenepotentiaries to act for them in that matter as they in their Wisdom shall find to be most for the Safety Good and Interest of the whole Society or of the universal Body of the People But instead of this neither was the Community in the least consulted with either as to the knowing their Mind and Sense in that Affair or as to the obtaining from them a Deputation to act and do in their Names and Room whatsoever they in the Place and Quality of Deputies should judge to be necessary and most useful Nor yet came these Parliaments together authorised and empowered for any such matter by those few upon whom the Right of electing Members of Parliament is devolved for the transacting Affairs in subordination unto consistency with and subserviency to the maintenance of the Constitution Neither indeed could these Electors conveigh any such Right Authority or Power unto them seeing all that they stood in a Capacity to chuse them for was that they might be their Representatives for the preserving of the Constitution and for the upholding of the Government on the Basis and Foundation upon which it was originally established and did then stand And yet these Parliaments have in defiance of all the Rules and Measures of the Constitution and in a treacherous Violation of all the Trust and Confidence reposed in them by their Country changed the whole Essential and Fundamental Frame of the Government of England and from an Hereditary Monarchy have made it an Elective For abstracting from the barbarous and treasonable Injustice they have done the King till hereafter they have broken the Chain of the Lineal Succession and by dissolving that Link in the Instrument and Machine of our Government they have destroyed it as to what it was and what it still ought to be according both to the Fundamentals of our first Establishment into a Polity and the Common and Statute Laws of the Kingdom And this they are become guilty of before God and accountable for in their Lives and Fortunes to their Country not only by barring the Right of the Prince of Wales who is lineal lawful and immediate Heir to the King his Father and by their vesting the Regal Administration in the Prince of Orange previously unto the Claim and Title of the late Princess of Orange but by postponing and justling out of its natural lineal and due Place the Right of the Princess of Denmark And herein our unthinking
quod injuriam suam corrigat emendet cum superiorem non habeat nisi Deum satis erit ei ad paenam quod Dominum expectet ultorem None can correct the King in that he hath no Superior but God and that will be sufficient Punishment that he expect the Lord for his Avenger Indeed the Constitution both instructs Princes for what end we pitched upon this Species and Kind of Regal Government and directs them to rule for the Safety Interest and Prosperity of their Subjects but there is no Original Contract nor Stipulatory Agreement by which it is provided That if Princes do not as they should they do either forfeit their Sovereign Authority or that we may lawfully rebel against and dethrone them Nor do any Presidents or Examples of that kind as those of deposing Edward the Second and Richard the Second shew that it was lawful or a Thing that either the Constitution or subsequent Laws did authorise and countenance but they only declared what a provoked People will sometimes do though it be never so much against their Allegiance and Duty to their King and most highly offensive to God However vivendum est legibus non exemplis we are to live according to the Laws and not according to a few occasional ill Practices and Examples And via facti is not always via juris Nor will the Repetition of evil Things change the Nature of them and render them Justifiable For as Civilians say Multitudo criminum peccantium non parit crimini patrocinium What can be more inconsistent with the Legality of the Abdication than the King 's being vested by the Constitution with such Incidents to Government as lie in a direct Contradiction to our being allowed either a legal or moral Capacity of doing it namely That no act of Parliament can barr the King of his Regality and thereupon that the Allegiance and Fealty of his Subjects to him are indefeasable and that they can neither be lawfully withheld nor transferred from him That the Power and Right of Peace and War are wholy solely and unalienably in the King and that all the Subjects of England cannot make and denounce War Indicere bellum without him as Coke tells us in his 7 Rep. 25. Nor need we go farther for understanding the Nature of our Institution in this matter and for knowing what was involv'd and implied in it relative to the particular before us than to those many Statutes that are Declarative and Explanatory of the meaning of it As that 13 Car. 2. act 6. wherein it is enacted That the Sole Supreme Government Command and Disposition of the Militia and all Forces by Sea and Land c. is and by the Laws of England ever was the undoubted Right of the Kings and Queens of England And that both or either Houses of Parliament cannot nor ought not to pretend to the same nor can or lawfully may raise or levy any War offensive or defensive against his Majesty his Heirs and lawful Successors And that other Act 13 Car. 2. wherein it is ordained That whosoever shall hold that both Houses of Parliament or either House of Parliament have or hath a Legislative Power without the King shall incur the danger and penalty of a Premunire according to the Statute of the 16 Rich. 2. And that other of the same Year of Car. 2. Which made it Treason during his Life to compass imagine invent devise or intend to deprive and depose him from the Stile Honour or Kingly Name of the Imperial Crown of this Realm The President whereof we had 23 Eliz. namely That whosoever shall wish or desire the Death or Deprivation of the Queen that every such Offence shall be adjudged Felony To which I would only subjoyn that known Statute which makes it Treason to take up Arms against the King upon any Pretence whatsoever And to shew the Impudence that always attendeth Disloyalty notwithstanding all that these Parliaments have perpetrated they have suffered all these Laws to remain still unrepealed to remain Monuments of their Treasonable Guilt and to abide Warnings to all Kings that shall come after how little Safe they are under the Fence Covering and Protection of Laws when they have false and treacherous Men to deal with And that which heightens the Crime and enhaunceth the Guilt of those Parliaments is that they have usurped and exerted a Power inconsistent with and subversive of the Constitution in the abdicating and driving away a Prince who was the least chargeable with Miscarriages and Excesses in his Government of any that ever fat upon the Throne For as his greatest pretended Faults were rather Mistakes he was led into by others than Injuries he chose to do of himself so most of them proceeded from an excess of Love to his People and from an Ardour of making them happier than they were willing to be and not from Disaffection to them or a Design to render them miserable Nor did those flight Grievances of which his People so clamourously complained flow from his being a bad King but from the having bad and treacherous Friends about him For though no Prince did ever by Condescention Bounty and Confidence deserve to have had better Ministers and Friends yet with respect to too many about him few Princes ever less had them So that what Tacitus says of one may with a great deal of Truth be applied to his Majesty though not so much to his Dishonour as to the Infamy of those whom he employed and trusted namely That Amicos meruit magis quam habuit He was worthy of faithful Friends rather than had them I would not be thought to intend what I have said of all that had the Honour to be esteemed his Friends Ministers and Servants it being only designed to affect a few of them but they were such as had frequentest and nearest Access to him and greatest Interest in and Influence upon his Councils whom he trusted too much to be well served by them and put himself too much in their Power to have them remain Faithful For that of Tacitus will always hold true Nec unquam satis fida potentia ubi nimia est In a word never did a People run head-long into Rebellion and War upon so few and small Faults in Government and so easy to have been borne with or obviated in modest and legal ways So that had the means which we fled unto for Relief been Lawful whereas they were Criminal and Treasonable in the highest degree yet it was the height of Folly and Madness to use them upon such flight Occasions where the Remedy hath been a Thousand times worse than ever the Disease could have been Common Prudence had we renounced Loyalty should have taught us That Force is never to be practised where Laws and humble Applications would have served and that violent means should not have been used where gentle would have done Non utendum Imperio says Tacitus and I will add
multo minus bello ubi legibus agi possit And the mildest Character I can fasten upon our two Revolutional Parliaments abstracting from their Disloyalty and Treason is that they have been graviores remediis quam delicta erant they have almost ruined and destroyed the Nation on pretence of redressing Trifles Nor indeed was it any Thing he either had done or designed to do that threw us into that brutal and disloyal Rage but he was a Catholick and the Demagogues and Indendiaries had taught the weak and bigotted part of Protestants to hate him for his Religion invisâ— semel Principe seu bene seu male facta premunt When a Prince is once wormed out of the Love of his People whatsoever he then doth though it be never so much for the Benefit of his Subjects it will be misinterpreted as done to their hurt Nor will it ever cease to be an Aggravation of the Guilt of our Rebellion that we feared his Majesty's redressing what we had gotten represented unto and believed by the Nation to have been illegal grievous and arbitrary For most Men do now know That if the Submission which they of Magdalen College sent up to my Lord S to be laid before the King had come to his hands it would immediately have stopt all Proceedings against them and have restored them fully to his Favour and Grace But that Submission was concealed from his Majesty not only out of Treachery to him but out of Design to serve the Prince of Orange in keeping on foot one of the great Designs of his Invasion And although the King gave large and uncontroulable Proofs of having Royal Inclinations beyond what any King ever had that sat upon the Throne of this Kingdom of retracting and redressing all those Things which he came to be convinced of to have been done amiss and illegally yet that would not allay the Furious and Rebellious heats of those who had a mind to enrich themselves with the Spoils of the Crown and Kingdom And therefore when all Things were restored to the State and Condition which his most peevish Enemies would have wished or desired to have had them yet the traiterous Ferment was kept up still in the former height Nor doth any Thing better demonstrate how imprudently as well as wickedly we abdicated the King than that Four parts of Five of the Kingdom would be glad to have him here again upon the Terms he offered before we drove him away and very many would think themselves happy and account it a good Bargain to have him here upon any How little does the King's employing a few Catholicks in Civil and Military Trusts weigh and amount unto when laid in one Scale against all the Blood that has been spilt and all the Losses that have been sustained and all the Treasure that hath been consumed for supporting of this Rebellion when they are laid in the other Scale And the Exchange we have made so infinitely for the worse sheweth both our Folly and is a just Punishment of our Sin in making of it Nor wanted there Truth or good Sense in the Reply which a plain Country Farmer made to his Neighbour who was complaining of the grievous insupportable Taxes and of the many other Losses Pressures and Oppressions under which the Nation groaneth viz. That these were the Blessings and Advantages which we had gotten and obtained by swopping of Kings For this Man 's little Finger is much heavier than the King's Loins were His Majesty loved his People and would have been contented to have made them happy at the Expence of his own Prerogative and with some diminution of his Sovereign Rights But this Intruder into the Throne hates both Country and People and only useth us in the Service of his own ambitious Ends and to gratify the Rapacity and Covetousness of his beloved Dutch And in the same manner that Solomon distinguished the true Mother from the false namely by the compassionate tender yearning Bowels of the one and the inhuman barbarous Cruelty of the other may we distinguish our Rightful King from the Usurper and learn which of them we are in Duty to chuse and obey I might add as a further Aggravation of the Folly of those two Parliaments in what they have done That by their violating the Constitution to the Injury of the King they have set a Pattern as well as given Provocation to some brave and daring Prince that may hereafter sit upon the Throne to do the like in prejudice of the Subject For it is the same Injustice abstracting from Treason in the People to rob the King of his Crown and Royal Dignity as it would be in a King to invade the Liberties and Properties of his People Nor is it more unlawful for the one to overthrow the Constitution and change the Government than it is for the other to do it Not that such a Thing is to be feared though we have deserved it For though some Subjects may grow Rich by spoiling the Crown yet no King of England can ever become Great or Opulent by breaking in upon the Privileges of the People And therefore he will forbear it out of Interest if he should not out of Duty And he will keep to the Terms of the Constitution upon Motives of Wisdom should he not be inclined to do it upon Inducements of Justice For whensoever a King of Great Brittain insults over his People he immediately sinks himself into a Condition of being contemned and despised by all the World I might also Sir lay before you how that Parliaments are not only in the Exercises of their Parliamentary Power under the Direction and Confinement of the Essential and Fundamental Rules and Measures of the Constitution but how they are under the Regulations Limitations and Restrictions both of our Common and Statute Laws For as their being is a legal Being their Capacities under which they sit and act legal Capacities their Business and Employment a legal Employment and the Ends they come together for legal Ends So they are in all these and in all the Concernments they assemble consult or act about under the Influences Direction Conduct and Restriction of the Laws Though there be a Provision made in the Constitution that at Times and Seasons and upon necessary Exigencies and Occasions and for needful and indisputable Ends there should be Parliaments and that it is the Right and Due of the People of England to have them yet they do receive their actual Existence and come into Being by the Fiat of Sovereign Authority and by the King's Writs that raise and assemble them And they would according to the Common Law be a riotous and tumultuous Rout and not a Parliament or a legal Assembly should they meet without being called and raised into their Existence by the creative Writs of the King And suppose that those Laws of Ed. 3. were yet in force for our having Parliaments once a Year or oftner if there be
some Judges eluded and we have not had the speedy and full Benefit of them but there was never a Law before these unhappy and disloyal Parliaments made one by which we were to be robbed of our Liberties without a Forfeiture of them and be made Prisoners without cause For by those Repeated Acts by which they suspended the Habeas Corpus Law they turned every English Man out of his Birth-right and stript him of the most valuable Blessing and Privilege of which he stood vested and possessed by the Fundamental Laws of the Government And by the Authority which they took upon them to conveigh to the Usurper a Power of imprisoning some and detaining them in Custody without either shewing Cause or allowing the Injured those Reliefs reserved for us in the Constitution he and his Ministers might have imprisoned One hundred thousand if they had pleased to say they suspected so many And that more were not thrust into Goals than there were was not from a narrowness of Power given to the Prince of Orange to whom they never gave any Thing confined within the bounds of Discretion and Modesty no more than of Justice but from a Scarcity of honest Men at that time in the Nation to merit his Jealousy And it doth deserve your Observation That by their suspending the Habeas Corpus Act they not only also suspended Magna Charta and the Petition of Right but they shut us out both from the Benefit of the whole Common Law so far as it related to Liberty and from all the Succours and Advantages to which we stood entitled by the Essentials of the Constitution upon which the Common Law is only a Comentary For by all these we had a Right either to sue out a Habeas Corpus or to betake our selves to some of the other Methods as those de homine repleviendo de odio atia c. which the Laws had provided for the Vindication and Recovery of our Freedom But by one Blow we were barred the relief and help of all the Laws of England and were not only brought into a State of Bondage and Villainage but were put into a worse Condition than Bondsmen and Villains are Seeing the Lord of a Villain could not command another to imprison his Villain without cause as appears in the two Book Cases of the 7 Ed. 3. fol. 50. and 32 Ed. 3. fo 253. But the Prince of Orange had a Power given him to require his Secretaries or the Members of his Privy Council to imprison whomsoever he or they pleased without the assigning of his Cause for it save that they thought fit to suspect them And whereas Villains when thrown into Prison by their Lords were not barred the suing out of a Habeas Corpus or of using some other legal means for the Recovery of their Liberty many of the Peers Gentry and Free-men of England have by two several Acts of these Revolutional Parliaments been precluded from all ways and means of regaining their Freedom in a course of Law and thereby were reduced during the time of the force and operation of those Statutes into a worse State than that of Slaves and Bondmen And it would seem they had a mind by those Acts to establish and confirm the Usurper's Conquest over the Kingdom and to make us as much his Vassals as the Lloyds and Burnets have endeavoured to render us and to the disgrace of the Nation have hitherto escaped the being impeached for it And as these Parliaments have in their Actings towards the People trangressed all the Bounds to which they were circumscribed and confined by the form and quality of the Constitution so they have departed more extravagantly from all the Fundamental Rules of our Government in those Things which they have acted traiterously and rebelliously against the King Nor is there so much as one step that they have taken in their Behaviour and Proceedings towards him but what is directly repugnant unto and utterly subversive of the Constitution It is true that by the Nature Kind and Quality of our Government every King of England ought to rule over us as over Free-men and according to those Laws which should at any time be enacted by our Sovereigns by and with the consent of their great Council but it was withall provided and taken care for in the very Mould and Frame of our Constitution that the Person of the King his Crown and Royal Dignity should be always sacred and inviolable I do not say that it was made Lawful for a King to oppress us or to treat us in what manner he pleased but instead of that he was taught by the very Form of our Government that he was to rule over us for our Safety and Good and to govern by such Laws as we should chuse Nor can any King do otherwise without becoming guilty before God both of great Injustice and of Infidelity in the Trust that was reposed in him But in case that through any intellectual and moral Defects in himself or through the Influence and Advice of evil Men about him he should be misled and carried to do otherwise all that is then allowed us is to address God by Prayers and him by Petitions and after our refusing to be our selves the Instruments in executing his Arbitrary and Illegal will both to complain of those that are and to persue all the Methods of Law for getting them punished We always may and ought to pray that our Kings may be good but we are to bear with and patiently to suffer under them if they be bad Bonos voto expetere qualescunque tolerare as Tacitus expresses it And he must be a very weak and unwise King that will not study to carry so as that his People may not wish another in his room But should they either be such bad Men themselves as be inclined in their own Natures to oppress their People or should they be so weak as to be the meer Properties of bad Men admitted into their Confidence like him of whom Tacitus says Cui non Iudicium non odium â—rat nisi indita Iussa who did nothing on his own Judgment and Choice but every thing at the Pleasure and Instigation of his Minions Yet we are to endure it and only to refer the revenging of our Condition to God who can make those Kings that are hurtful to their People either a terrour to themselves through inward Vexation and Horrour while they are here or take them hence and call them to a severe Account at his own impartial and righteous Tribunal Accordingly it hath always been the Opinion of our Lawyers save in Rebellious Times That though the King be under the Directive Power of the Laws yet he is not under the Coercive And suffer me to cite a Passage of Bracton's to this purpose where speaking of the King of England as he is and ought to be by the Constitution he says Nec potest ei necessitatem aliquis imponere
need or suppose there were or be any other existent standing Law adjusting and defining the Times and Seasons within the Compass and Circle of which we ought and are to have them Yet it is not only from the Regal Authority in granting those Laws that it comes to be our Claim to have them within the Bounds of such Periods of time but the performing and putting in Execution what such Laws enact and direct is still so lodged in the King that unless he pleaseth to call them by his Royal Writs they have no Power to meet notwithstanding those Laws And should a King omit the issuing out his Writs whereby to call them at and within those Seasons it would possibly be a Failure in his Administration and in the executive Part of his Government but our Remedies in that Case were only Patience and humble Applications to the King by decent and modest Petitions for his vouchsafing to give us the Benefit of those Laws For after all the Laws that can be made for adjusting and determining the Times for the meeting of Parliaments yet the Power to call them remains still so inseparably inherent in the King that they cannot assemble nor rise and spring up into Being but in the Virtue and by the constitutive Power of his Writs Nor when assembled can they continue a Moment longer in their Existence than he thinketh fit to allow but they are dissolvable and become actually dissolved when he pleaseth to pronounce them to be so And were there a Pretence of Claim resulting to Parliaments when once called and assembled that they should continue to sit till all the important Petitions of the Subjects were answered as is said to have been the Practice during the Reigns of Hen. 4. Hen 5. and some part of the Reign of Hen. 6. yet this would not disable the King from dissolving them in the Interim and antecedently to their making Answers to such Petitions though possibly his doing so may be stiled Irregular And as Parliaments both come into Existence and fall into Dissolution by the Will and Pleasure of the King exerted in the known Methods of Regal Administration So while they are permitted to sit they can neither make nor repeal a Law without the Royal Assent giving the legislative and enacting Efficacy to their Bills which in the Language of former Ages was called the giving Answers to their Petitions Nay should Parliaments prepare Bills containing in them no new Demands or Provisions of Safety and Advantage to the People but only claiming a declarative Confirmation of what already belongeth to the Subjects by Antient Laws yet even a Bill of that Nature which hath the quality of a Petition of Right cannot grow up and commence into a Law but by the King's Soit Droit fait comme il est desire Let Right be done as is desired I might add how Parliaments are under the Direction of the Laws both with Reference to all the several Capacities in which they sit and with Respect to all the principal Matters they are to meddle with For Example whereas the House of Commons being once legally met doth sit in a fourfold Capacity namely as the great Representative of the Community for relieving the King's Wants and enabling him both to defend the Kingdom and to live in a Port answerable to his Royal Dignity And as the grand Inquest of the Nation for inquiring into Grievances and prosecuting Offenders And as a part of the King 's great Council to give him Advice in the quibusdam Arduis about which he calls them And as part of the Legislative Body of the Kingdom to prepare or concur to such Bills as are to be offered to the King for the Royal Assent Now in all these several Capacities they are to act under the Regulations and Restrictions of the Law Nor are they in any of them to act Arbitrarily but to behave themselves in every one of them according to the Laws and Customs of the Land the Rules and Methods of Parliament and the Paterns and Examples of foregoing Ages Now it were easy to shew beyond all possibility of being rationally contradicted how the two late Assemblies abusively stiled Parliaments have in all those Capacities departed from exceeded and transgressed against the known Laws of the Kingdom and the Rules of Parliaments and the Examples and Presidents of former Ages For as the present Assembly of Men at Westminster which passeth under that Name met and have sat upon the Writs of an Usurper who hath no more legal Power to call and summon a Parliament than a Jack Kade or a Perkin Warbeck have So that Company stiled a Convention came together upon the Invitation of a Person who at that time even upon their own Principles had not a Shadow or Umbrage of Right for calling them but what a Masianello or a fortunate Robber may at any time claim And their meeting under the Notion and in the Quality of a Convention which is a Term that hath no Existence in our Law clearly demonstrates That the Thing so denominated must by consequence be altogether and wholy illegal Nor had they any more Right for their coming together and acting upon the Prince of Orange's Invitation than a Rout and an Assembly of Rioters have to dispose of other Mens Properties and to transfer their Estates And it is without President in any Age save in Times of acknowledged Usurpation and Rebellion That a Company of Men pretending to no other Stile save that of a Convention should change and transform themselves into a Parliament and be the Creators of themselves into a Creature which they were not before Nor are any of the Metamorphosations in Oivd though all meerly Poetical and Fabulous so ridiculous and extravagant as that of the Conventions translating it self into a Parliament For all those of that ingenious and witty Poet save where the feigned and imagined Gods themselves put on and assumed new Shapes were the Effects and Operations of pretended Deities upon inferior and different Beings But that Parliament made of a Convention was a Production and Generation of it self into a Creature specifically distinct from it self and that by no higher or other Power than its own And were it not for the woful and ruinous Effects which they have caused and produced the reasonable Part of Mankind would have lookt upon that Transformation as a Piece of Legerdemaine and a Trick of Mountebanks whereby to divert the Idle and make sport to the Kingdom And it is hard to forbear being pleasant upon it and the exposing it with all the keeness and piquancy of a just and deserved Railery but that the many Mischiefs which they did the Nation and the Poverty Slavery and Bondage which they have derived upon us will not allow but do forbid the being merry and jocose I might subjoin how both the Parliaments since the Revolution have shamefully exceeded the Bounds which Laws and Presidents should have restrained them unto and
First they had a legal Right to continue to sit until both themselves should consent that they might be dissolved and until an Act were past for their dissolution I do confess that the Statute 1640. which I have mentioned was one of the greatest Encroachments upon the Regal Power that ever was and therefore in my Opinion was void in it self because of the direct repugnancy in which it lies to the Essential Rights of the Sovereign and of its Irreconcilableness to those Incidents which are inseparable from Royal Power And as it proved by the Event The day that King Charles gave the Royal Assent to that Bill he put the Scepter out of his own hand and the Sword into the hands of his Enemies Which made the Earl of Dorset salute the King the next Morning after his passing the Bill by the Stile of Fellow Subject because he had by that Act transferred Crown Sword and Scepter to the Parliament And Archy the King's Fool being asked whether the King had done well in passing that Bill Answered That he knew not whether the King was the greater Fool to pass it or they the greater Knaves to ask it And I have been told that the greatest Lawyers at that time in the Kingdom said That it was void in it self And indeed the Law presupposeth that all the Grants and Concessions of the King are to be construed to be made with this Proviso That they are granted salvo jure Coronae But to proceed in what I have undertaken to lay open and demonstrate namely That supposing the King to have been legally and justly Abdicated and Deposed and that his Son the Prince of Wales was rightfully and lawfully Barred and Precluded upon the Score and Foot of Supposititiousness from succeeding immediately to his Father though all that was done Traiterously and Rebelliously yet this Parliament ceased to exist and became dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange For these very Gentlemen will not deny neither can they upon their own Principles that upon the Abdication of the King and the Exclusion of the Prince of Wales the Princess of Orange became immediately vested in the Sovereignty as having therein an Estate Tayle unless she had been shut out by some Act or Statute expresly made to exclude and barr her though indeed such a Statute would have been in it self void and treasonable For according to the standing known and acknowledged Laws of this Kingdom the Crown of England upon every Voidance of the Throne is to descend to the next lineal and immediate Heir Female as well as Male and the said Heir according to their own disloyal Hypotheses unless barred by some Act of Parliament becomes actually vested in all the Rights of the Sovereignty Accordingly we have not only a Law in force at present by which it is declared that the Law of the Realm is and ever hath been and ought to be understood that the Kingly and Regal Office of this Realm and all Dignities and Prerogatives Royal c. being invested either in Male or Female are be and ought to be as fully wholy absolutely and entirely deemed judged accepted invested and taken in the one as in the other c. 2 Par. 1 Mar. cap. 1. but we have also another Statute in actual being stiled an Act of Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James viz. the First his Progeny and Posterity which containeth the Words following That we being bound thereunto by the Laws of God and Man do recognize and acknowledge that immediately upon the Dissolution and Decease of Queen Elizabeth the late Queen of England the Imperial Crown of the Realm of England and of all the Dominions and Rights belonging to the same did by inherent Birth-right and lawful and undoubted Succession descend and come to your most Excellent Majesty as being Lineally Iustly and Lawfully next Heir of the Blood-Royal of this Realm c. So that nothing can be more demonstratively Evident than that upon whatsoever Hypotheses or Principles the Conventionists and those who have succeeded them in this Parliament have acted yet that immediately upon the Voidance of the Throne by the abdication of the King and the barring the Prince of Wales to succeed the whole Royal Power became vested in the Princess of Orange And though the exercise and execution of that Power came to be lodged in the Prince her Husband yet that it was in the Administration of the Power of Sovereignty which by the Laws appertained unto and was essentially stated in her which they neither did nor pretended to take from her but the whole which they assumed and took upon them a Right to do was to make a Donation Communication and Conveyance of the same Royal Dignity with all its Powers Prerogatives and Jurisdictions unto him And whereas therefore the Regal Power was owned and acknowledged to reside likewise in the Princess thence it was that her Name was used in the whole executive Part of the Government and that not in Compliment and meerly to testify Respect and Deference but as indispensably Necessary on the foot of the Sovereignty Regal Authority and Power whereof she stood indefeasably seised possessed and vested So that unless her Name had been mentioned in all the executive Acts of Government all those Acts would have been in themselves void illegal and null through the want of the Stamp and Impression upon them of a Person that stood cloathed with the Sovereignty And as to that separating in the late Princess of Orange the exercise of the Regal Power from the Royal Dignity and from the Jurisdictions and Authorities belonging to the same it not only looks like unto and indeed is a plain and manifest Contradiction but it was done in revival of that old Republican and Traiterous Proposition and Notion of distinguishing and severing between the King's Person and his Authority and was intended by the crafty Suggestors of it for the Service of a Commonwealth Design when an Opportunity and a convenient Season do offer For if one Parliament can take the entire and full Exercise of the Royal Power and Government from and out of the hands of a Queen whom themselves acknowledge to have been vested in the Royal Dignities with all the Honours Stiles Titles Regalities Prerogatives to the same belonging another Parliament may by the same Right and with the like Justice take the whole executive Power and the entire Administration of the Government from any King or Queen whatsoever and may place it in both or in either of the Houses or in whom else they please So that a King of England may come in time and by this President if allowed cannot avoid it to be a meer Pageant a King having a glorious and guilded Title but made wholy useless to all the great Ends and Purposes of one and who will serve only to be gazed upon to have the Knee bowed to him and to be made a publick Mockery and
Derision in all the Regal Acts of the Government by having his Name mentioned while others have the Exercise and are in the Exertion of the whole and entire Sovereign Power Nor was the late Princess of Orange upon the Abdication of the King and the Exclusion of the Prince of Wales meerly seised and possessed of the Sovereign and Royal Dignity over this Realm as she was next lineal and immediate Heir to his Majesty but she had also the legal Authority and Power granted and conveyed unto her by the Gift and Donation of the Convention which the present Parliament instead of controuling retracting and annulling did recognize own and confirm Nor had she meerly the bare and naked Name of Queen given and conveyed unto her but she was declared to be vested with the whole and entire Royal and Sovereign Power save that the Exercise of it was limitted and confined to the Prince of Orange Now you must not think that I am so thoughtless and weak as to endeavour to prove her being possessed of the Sovereignty and her being cloathed with the Royal Jurisdiction because Treason might have been committed against her yea and against her natural Person seeing it was not only made High Treason by the Statute of the 2 Parl. in the first Year of Queen Mary to compass the Death of King Philip or to deprive him of the Stile or Kingly Honour of this Realm but because it had also anciently been made Treason by the Statute of the 25 Ed. 3. to compass the Death of the King 's eldest Son and Heir to violate the King's Companion or the King 's eldest Daughter unmarried or the Wife of the King 's eldest Son and Heir or to slay the Chancellor Treasurer or the King's Iustices of the one Bench or the other Iustices in Eyre or Iustices of Assise and all other Iustices assigned to hear and determine being in their Places and doing their Offices But I will do it by laying before you so much of the late Act of Parliament as relates to my purpose which that I may give the greater light strength and vigour unto I shall likewise represent to you the Act of the 2 Parl. of Queen Mary which was held in the first Year of her Reign that by your Observation thereupon in what different Terms and enlarging Expressions of Power the Princess of Orange was made declared and enacted Queen from those by which Philip was precluded and shut out from the having or exercising the Regal Power even when he was honoured with the Regal Stile and Dignity you may easily and fully know that the whole Sovereignty and Regal Power and Jurisdiction were in the late Princess whereas no part of them was allowed to Philip For at the same time and by the same Statute when and by which Philip had the Royal Stile Title and Honour given and imparted unto him and was constituted and pronounced King elevated above the Quality of a Subject which a King or Queen Consort are not it was ordained and enacted That the Queen might and should solely and as sole Queen use have and enjoy the Crown and Sovereignty of and over all these Realms Dominions and Subjects with all the Preeminencies Prerogatives Dignities Authorities Iurisdictions and Honours thereunto belonging c. And that no Right or Claim of Sovereignty should be given come or grown unto the said Philip over these Realms and Dominions But now the Act of Settlement in and by which a Donation is made of the Crown and Royal Dignity to the Prince and Princess of Orange runneth in a much other and far different Stile For after that Assembly had assumed and usurped to it self a Right and Authority of disposing and bestowing the Crown of this Kingdom and after they had in their signal Goodness Condescention and Bounty made a Donation of it and of the Sovereign and Royal Dignity to the Prince and Princess of Orange declaring that thereby they did become our Sovereign Liege Lord and Lady King and Queen of England c. they then further add to those Princely Persons the Royal Estate Crown and Dignity of these Realms with all Honours Stiles Titles Regalities Prerogatives Iurisdictions and Authorities to the same belonging are most Fully Rightfully and Entirely invested incorporated united and annexed So that we may by comparing the Communication of the Royal Name Stile and Dignity made by the former Act with the Conveyance of the same with the subjoined and annexed Jurisdiction c. made by the later Act come to understand that the whole Sovereign Royal Power and Authority over these Realms became vested in the Princess as well as the Prince of Orange which they were not in Philip but only in Queen Mary But to all that which I have already advanced I go on further to add That even on the Principles of the Gentlemen of the two Revolutional Parliaments the whole Sovereignty was not only as wholy and as entirely in the Princess of Orange as it was in the Prince but that it was one and the same Individual Sovereignty though lodged in two different and distinct Persons and I must withall say That though they were Two in genere Physico in the Predicament of Substances yet they were but One in conspectu Legis in the esteem and account of the Law The Royalty and Legal Authority was not divided between them one Share falling to the Lot of the Prince and another becoming the Portion of the Princess but it was the same entire undivided numerical Sovereignty in them both For this the Act of Settlement doth as plainly declare as Words can express it namely That the Prince and Princess of Orange being become our King and Queen that therefore in and to their Persons are the Regal Estate Crown c. fully entirely invested incorporated united and annexed And therefore all Commissions Grants and the many other Exercises of Sovereignty were ordained to be and have accordingly been in both their Names Nor did that Union and Conjunction of their Names in all Cases wherein the Royal Authority did or could exert it self proceed from a Contribution of Regal and Sovereign Efficacy and Authority which each of them gave to every Act of Jurisdiction both clubbing those distinct Shares and Parts of Regal Power which they possessed separately and by Moyeties but it had its Foundation in and flowed from that numerical Unity of Regal Power Authority and Jurisdiction which they stood vested with as one legal Sovereign though two physical Persons In a Word though William and Mary were two several and distinct individual Persons of the human Species they were but un Roi one singular King in their Politick Station And to place iâ— beyond being contradicted by any reasonable and discreet Man that the Sovereignty was as fully in her as in him and that it was but one and the same Sovereignty lodged in both not only all the Acts flowing from the executive Part of the Government do run
in both their Names but all the Acts of the legislative Part do so also Nor do the several Acts of Parliament which have passed during the Usurpation bear only the Stile of the Acts of William and Mary but the Royal Assent as it hath been miscalled was given in the Name of the Princess during her Life as well as in the Name of the Prince And to add that upon which the great Weight and Stress of this Point doth lie namely That the Writs by which this Parliament was called and had its Being in Law given unto it were issued out in both their Names and were the Writs of the Princess as well as of the Prince of Orange Nor is it necessary that I should insert here a Copy of the Writ any farther than that it runs Guilielmus Maria c. Angliae c. Rex Regina And as I have said before her Name was not used in it meerly from an honorary Esteem had of her but as indispensable and intrinsically Necessary to give the Writ its legal Power and Validity and without whose Name it had been void of all operative Virtue for the Constitution and Erection of such a Number of Men into a Parliament or for the giving Existence to a legal Court of that Denomination And had her Name been wanting in the Writ all those several Congregations of People in the Counties Cities and Burroughs for the electing their several and respective Quota's and Number of Members to represent them in the high Court of the Kingdom had been so many riotous and tumultuous Meetings and those chosen and elected by them to be to be their Substitutes and Deputies had been the illegal Creatures of a Riot and could not have acted in the Names and Stead of those that sent them without being highly Criminal in the Sight and Account of the Law Nor did the Writ only run in both their Names and flow and proceed from them and become impregnated with a creative and constitutive Power of giving Being to a Parliament in the Virtue of that individual and entire Sovereignty lodged in the Princess as well as in the Prince as in the one Politick Head of the Government but those who in persuance and execution of that Writ were chosen to be Members of this Parliament came together assembled and sat to confer and consult with and to give advice and aid to Mary as well as to William and the Power and Trust which they received from their several and respective Electors was to represent what came to be representable to the Prince and Princess joyntly and to act and concur in and to consent unto such Things as Mary as well as William were to have Colloquium Tractatum Conference and Transaction with them about For upon the execution of the Writ for the Choice of those who were returned the Members of the present Parliament the Trust that came to be conveyed transferred consigned and committed unto them was not to act singly and separately with William but with Mary also So that this being now become impossible by the Death of the late Princess the Trust that was lodged in those Gentlemen by their respective Counties Cities and Burroughs is fully determined and expired with reference to all the Ends and Purposes for which it was consigned and committed to them And had the People in order to the saving themselves repeated Trouble and renewed Expence been willing to have chosen those that were to constitute and make up the Assembly at Westminster to have been their Representatives for an Age and had accordingly authorised and empowered them to do and act in their Names during so long a time it was more than the Electors were in a legal Capacity or had a Right and Power to do in that all the Authority they had for their Choice Deputation and Authorization of their Representatives accruing and resulting unto them from the Writ of William and Mary and from the Nature and Quality of it as regulated and prescribed by the Law they could not extend or enlarge either the Measure or the Duration of the Trust they were to convey to their Representatives beyond the Limits and Boundaries set them in the Writ and that was to consult with give advice unto and to do and act in their Names with Mary as well as with William and consequently this Assembly became dissolved and disabled in Law from sitting and acting as a Parliament immediately upon the Death of the forementioned Princess Seeing then and thereby both the End they were called for and the Trust committed to them by the People for the complying with and answering of that End did not only cease and expire but in that it became physically as well as legally Impracticable to persue the End or to execute the Trust any longer I might farther add That for the Assembly at Westminster to have continued to sit and act as a Parliament after the Death of the late Princess of Orange is both inconsistent with the Rules and Practices of all Parliaments and directly repugnant to a known and standing Maxim in Law For it hath ever been received as a Rule in Law and the Course of Parliaments have been always correspondent thereunto namely That the Acts of every Parliament must relate unto and receive their Denomination from the first Day of their Session and by consequence it being impossible that the Acts made under the pretended Reign of William alone should be adjusted to the first Day of the Session that was in the supposed Reign of William and Mary it immediately follows That the Parliament which sat then under both cannot have a Right to sit now under one Nor can the Acts made under the Reign of William alone any more relate to the first Day of the Sessions which was in the Reign of William and Mary than they do to the Sessions of Parliaments under King Stephen or King John But this and most other Things needful to the setting this Subject in its proper Light having been briefly and yet fully done by the Author of a Letter to a Friend in the Country I shall wave the adding of any more either upon this Head or in confirmation that the Parliament was by Law dissolved by the Death of the late Princess of Orange And the rather in that what I have farther to say will be more pertinently offered in answering the Objections brought by the Partizans of that Assembly Only as I desire to mix my Thanks with those of all true English Men to that Author for the seasonable and useful Service he has done his Country so I do pay him my own particular Acknowledgments for the favour of having carried the Lantern before me and helpt me by the means and benefit of his Light the better to discern my own way and to avoid stumbling in these Paths that have not been much trodden There are but two Objections can be advanced in favour of this Assemblies continuing to
therefore proved this Parliament to be in Law dissolved beyond the possibility as well as suspition of having any just and reasonable Answer made and returned to what I have said I cannot in duty to my Country and Posterity forbear adding something of and concerning the Criminalness of those Persons in both Houses who since the Death of the late Princess have coninued to sit and act under the Name and Sâ—ile and with the pretended Power and Authority of a Parliament and to imprison the Persons and to dispose of the Properties of the Subject and Free-born People of England And I am not ignorant how that besides the Hazards I shall thereby expose my self unto unless I get to the other side of the great Ditch I shall likewise be esteemed guilty of Rudeness as well as of ill Breeding in bestowing upon them the Titles and Appellations and in treating them in the manner that they deserve And therefore whatsoever Names of Epithets I may unavoidably be obliged to dignify them with as they claim and challenge the being a Parliament and thereupon usurp an Authority of invading and breaking in upon the Liberties and of alienating transferring and giving away the Estates of the People and that to a degree and measure unpresidented in all former Ages and which no lawful Parliament ever ventured upon or thought consistent with the Duty that they owed to those whom they represented and by whom they were entrusted to act for their Safety and Advantage and not for their Impoverishment Enslavement and Ruin yet neither will I forget what becomes my own Character nor what is due to them answerable to their several and respective Conditions and Qualities abstracting only from their being a Parliament and much less will I borrow any of that undecent unclean and ribaldry Language to give them which was not without demerit thrown upon the Rump when the lampooning of it was for a great while made the Sport and Divertisement of the Kingdom For the wost terms I will allow my self to use shall be to call a Spade a Spade and to fasten upon them the Characters and Titles which Law and Reason instruct and authorise me to give them and which our English Dialect enables me to do and which I am sure ought in Justice to be so far from being held and accounted Scandalous that it falls below being piquant and keeps within the Limits and Precincts of modesty The first Thing then which they are hereby become guilty of is their having rendered the continuance of the Session of all Parliaments for the future uncertain and arbitrary For by their destroying all the legal Security we have of defining and determining the period of a Parliaments Right of remaining to sit and act they have done what they can to make the Session of any Parliament perpetual at least arbitrary unless it come to be turned out of the House by Violence and armed Force as Oliver 1653. drove away the Rump For the tenor of the Writ by which a Parliament is called being all the legal Security we have both for the Declaration of the use and end it is called for and for the giving Power Strength and Authority for its whole legal Existence it undeniably follows That whensoever it goes beyond the Boundaries and Confinements of that Writ that from thence forward the time of their sitting is made arbitrary and put out of the Power of the Law to determine And a Parliament being equally if not more dissolved by a Demise in the Sovereign by whose Regal Power it was raised than it is by any King 's pronouncing it dissolved in the Virtue of his Sovereign executive Power it naturally follows That this Assembly may not only as well but better refuse to dissolve upon William's pronouncing and declaring them dissolved than it hath withstood the being dissolved by the Death and Demise of Mary So that by the President of these Mens continuing to sit it is put out of the Power of the Prince unless backed by force as well as out of the Power of the Law to dissolve a Parliament And it is but for Five hundred People to get in the customary and usual way into St. Stephen's Chapel and they are then as safe as in an enchanted Castle and may there sit act and reign as long as they please and that with a Despoticalness becoming the Grand Seigniors of the Republick And having superceded the Law and manumitted themselves from the Authority of it it is but for them to bribe the Mob or wheedle the soft-headed People of the City to come down to Westminster to be their Guard and then they will sit encircled and fenced against the military Power of the King as well as against his Sovereign Regal and Executive Authority And seeing the present Assembly has thought fit to continue and act as a Parliament in contempt and defiance of the Law and in a direct transgression of all the Limits and Boundaries that it had set them and have put themselves out of the reach and power of coming ever to be dissolved by Law I have only this Advice to give them That they would gain Capt. Tom and his Legions to befriend and protect them and then the great Hero of the Age will find it more hazardous though in the Head of his invincible Dutch to attack them or to interrupt disturb and determine their sitting than ever Don Quixot found it to combat the Wind-mills But waving being further pleasant upon so melancholy a Theme and Subject as this is I will only add that by the Example which the present Juncto which stiles it self a Parliament has made for all those that shall be assembled hereafter both the whole Constitution and all the Laws of England that relate to the calling regulating and determining the Sittings of Parliaments are plainly subverted and overthrown which may be of that fatal consequence to Posterity as no Words can serve fully to express The next Crime therefore whereof they were accusable for continuing to sit and act as a Parliament since and notwithstanding the Death of the late Princess is That they have thereby broken and falsified all that Trust which was placed and reposed in them by their Country Now a Trust is or at least should be one of the most sacred Things of the World because not only much of all the Intercourse that is among Men depends upon it but because it is the Bafis of every Society and the Foundation of the Fabrick of all Governments be the Kind and Species of them what it will And by how much the Trust is the more extensive and great by so much it is in Justice as well as Honour to be the more punctually observed and persued and the breach of a Trust does not only imply and include Falsehood and Infidelity in him that violateth it but it imports and involves the blackest Treachery towards those that had reposed their Confidence in them Now the Members of the
House of Commons are not only to represent those that elect them and Millions more but they become constituted and formal Deputiei with whom the whole People of England deposite and lodge all their Concerns For at first and during a long time all the Free-men of England had a Right in their respective Shires Cities and Burroughs of chusing those that were to represent them in Parliament till in the time of Hen. 6. it came to be ordained That because the Election of Knights had been with great Outrages and excessive Number of People of which most were of no Value and yet pretended a Voice equivalent to worthy Knights and Esquires whereby many Riots and Manslaughters were and were likely to be that therefore from thence forward the Knights of Shires should be chosen by People dwelling in the Counties every one having Lands or Tenements of 40 s. Value per Annum But though only those of that yearly Value are now allowed to be capable of chusing Knights of Shires yet the Concerns of all others as well as those are put into their hands Nor are they the small and trifling Concerns of the Kingdom that come to be consigned unto and trusted with the Members of the House of Commons but they are those mighty and momentuous ones which may affect their Liberties and Lives as they always will and do their Fortunes and their Estates Which most of the Electors in England in all likelihood do little think of as appeareth by the moral and intellectual Qualities of many of those whom they elect and return Nor do most of those that chuse Members to Parliament act so much under the Conduct Influence and Sway of their own true Interest as upon the Motives either of Party Faction and Bigottry or of Entertainments Treats and petty Recompences Nevertheless whosoever they are that come to be chosen they are immediately constituted the Trustees of the People and accordingly have their Names inserted in Indentures annexed to the Writ importing the Power given unto and the Trust reposed in them by the Free-holders or Burgesses persuant and answerable to the tenor of the Writ which both gave Authority for making the Election and expressed the Duty and Power of those that should be elected Now how treacherously as well as dishonourably have the Members of this Meeting which continue to sit and act as a Parliament departed from and openly violated all that Confidence and Trust which were reposed in them by those that chose them For whereas the People only intrusted and impowered them to represent unto and to do with William and Mary and meerly to consent to such Things as should be agreed upon and ordained in the Parliament of William and Mary and to no other they by a most reproachful Breach both of their own Faith to the People and of the Trust which the People devolved upon and reposed in them have continued to consent with William alone And though by the Death of the late Princess all the Power Authority and Trust conveyed unto and lodged with them by the People did fully and wholy cease and expire yet they with an unparalelled Infidelity go on to sit and act in the Names and as the Assignees of the People of England as if the Authority committed to them by the Assigners were still good and authentick and in its full vigour and force And I am loath to say how much many of them have hereby disabled and incapacitated themselves from being trusted again or what Opinion the thinking part of Mankind will have of the Free holders and Burgesses of England if after they have been so grosly and in a matter of this weight and moment deceived by these Men once they shall be so ridiculously and contemptibly weak as ever to place Confidence Trust and Power in the hands of many of them again There are two other Crimes vastly more heinous than those I have mentioned whereof they are become notoriously and scandalously Guilty in their continuing to sit and act as a Parliament since and after they became in Law dissolved by the Death of the Princess of Orange But they being of so high a Nature as may affect their Estates Honours Lives and their Posterity unless the Nation has more Mercy and forgiveness than they have had Wisdom I shall therefore do little more than Name them least should I proceed to speak of them in a Language either suitable to the Nature of the Offences or in proportion to my own and every honest Man's Resentment and Indignation I might not be able to keep within the Bounds of temper and moderation and those Measures of deference to them as they are Gentlemen which I will always confine my self unto The Crimes I mean are the Exercises of an usurped Power both in disposing away and alienating the Properties and Estates of the Subjects and in preparing and concurring unto Bills relating to many other Things as well as Money which is the executing the whole Power that belongs to a legal Parliament in the order and degree which appertains to the House of Commons in the matter of Legislation And were another to give the Character of those Transgressions Robbery and Treason would be the modestest terms he would express and describe them in And undoubtedly he would endeavour to raise and inhance the guilt of them by shewing how this Assembly doth both Plunder us and arbitrarily impose Laws upon us by virtue of a pretended Warrant under our own hands whereas the Indenture by which we vested them with a Power over our Persons and Fortunes is out of date and expired and become cancelled and null in Law since the 28th of December last But so much lying aâ— hand with every Man of common and ordinary Sense to be said on these Heads I will say no more upon them but will only add That what I have already laid before you on this Subject though spoken de Parliamento of the Parliament yet it is not intended by me nor ought to be interpreted by others as if it were meant de singulis Membris Parliamenti of every Member of the Parliament For I do both believe and know That there are a great many as worthy and deserving Gentlemen within those Walls as any in the Kingdom are and that they continue not to sit there from the Belief that this is a Parliament but that they may prevent your Whartons Montagues Smiths c. from ruining the Nation who would be sure to remain to sit and act in the Quality of a Parliament should others withdraw A President whereof we had heretofore in that Rump which continued to sit as a Parliament after they had drove away Four parts of Five of their Members And these honourable and worthy Gentlemen whose Names I am obliged to conceal have not only sufficiently attoned for their Fault in sitting and acting since the Death of the late Princess but they have merited the Thanks of the Nation by their
opposing and defeating the Design of an Universal Excise which your Montagues Smiths and many others had projected and resolved to impose upon the Kingdom which could they have effected as they had promised the Gentleman at Kensington to do we should in a little time have been made greater Slaves than the Turks are and William had been put into a Condition of ruling as despotically as the Grand Seignior does But how strangely are English Men degenerated since they got a Dutch King that there should be so many Advocates for that now that our Subjection to it could not have been avoided without much Art Industry and Courage in a few generous Patriots which but to have mentioned within these Walls some Reigns ago would have drawn both a Punishment and Disgrace upon him that did it For when Sir Dudley Carleton who was then Secretary of State did but once Name it in that House though to no ill Intent he was not only called to the Bar but hardly escaped being sent Prisoner to the Tower But since Members have learned to sell their Honours and Consciences as well as their Votes and thereby their Country for Places and Pensions let no man marvail That what was heretofore the Bugbear of all in a House of Commons should now become the Idol of too many there All that doth remain to be represented to you in relation to the present Subject is in what Esteem and Account the Acts of this pretended Parliament ought to be with the People And suffer me upon this Occasion to tell you That no Man alive has a greater Respect for a legal Parliament called by the Authority of a Rightful and Lawful King and answering the Ends for which they were originally instituted than I have But for every Assembly that hath called it self a Parliament and which in some unhappy times have been generally owned as such I do confess to you that I have not the same Veneration For when I do read how many Parliaments have preferred Usurpers before the Rightful Heirs and that never any Person invaded the Throne though never so traiterously and unjustly but that he always found a Parliament to recognise and support him I cannot have that Esteem for every Convocation of Men that goes by that honourable Name as some have who will Worship the Tree on which their Father was hanged if it be put shaped into the Image and get the Title of a Madona Richard the Third and Oliver Cromwel had Parliaments who as much adored them and as readily gave Subsidies and Taxes for answering the Occasions of these Usurpers as ever Queen Elizabeth or Edward the Sixth had Nor can I so far conquer my Understanding or get the Victory over my Conscience as to have a reverend Opinion of those Parliaments in Henry the Eighth's time Whereof one enacted That Proclainations should be equivalent to Laws and another ordained That he might by his last Will and Testament appoint whom he pleased to be his Successor How many Parliaments might be named that have been the Tools of a haughty Prince's Tyranny and the Panders of a lascivious King's Lusts who have been of a Complexion to worship the Devil that he might do them no hurt with the same readiness that they do God Almighty who bestowed upon them all that is good Nor am I willing to omit mentioning how those few Men whom Oliver Cromwel called together by his private Letters without any previous Choice of them by the Nation had not only the Impudence to call themselves a Parliament but that even a great many People who laid claim to more of Religion than they had right to do to good Sense were ready to fall down and worship them as such And permit me here to tell you one Thing in reference to that Assembly which hath been commonly stiled Oliver's little Parliament which though it may seem a Digression from the present Subject yet it will not be unseasonable for me to relate nor unfit for you to know Namely That whereas Oliver pretended to call them together towards settling the Nation upon the Motive and Merit of their Piety yet the true Reason of it was the Jealousy he had least they should supplant him in the Power he had assumed which they stood the better qualified for effecting by means both of the Reputation they had among the Partizans against Kingship and of the Interest they had in many of his own Army And therefore Oliver knowing the Temper and Bigottry of the Men and that if they came together and were allowed to meddle with Affairs of State and the general Concerns of the Kingdom how they would by their wild and extravagant Proceedings not only lose all the Esteem they had acquired in their private Stations but render themselves the Scorn and Contempt of Mankind and thereby lose all Capacity of undermining him in his Seat or of doing him afterwards any hurt upon these Motives he called them together and upon no other whatsoever he pretended All which not only came to pass as he had projected and foresaw but even while they were together they were through the Folly and Frantickness of their Actions the Derision of the few wise Men that were among themselves Of which I shall recount one pleasant Instance viz. That being endeavouring with great Zeal and Earnestness to engross and monopolize all Power and Places into their own hands and into the hands of those they stiled Saints in that such only had right to govern the Earth all Dominion being founded in Grace they were baffled and bantered out of their Design by a cunning Man's standing up in the House and telling them that it was true the Saints deserved all Things but that publick Employment was so great a Drudgery in it self and so strong a temptation to Sin that it would be unjust to condemn the Godly to it and that the best Service they could do for the Common-wealth was in a pious Retirement to intercede for it at the Throne of Grace But to return to what I am upon no Man that is not a perfect Stranger to England can be ignorant of the three Essential Properties belonging to a Parliament namely Fairness of Elections Fulness of Members and Freedom of Speech and that several Parliaments have laboured under Deficiencies of one or another of them And there are Instances where one Parliament hath declared a former Parliament void and null in it self because of some Irregularity either in their being chosen or in their fitting though called by a Lawful and Rightful Prince Thus the Parliament of the first of Hen. 4. declared that of the 21. Rich. 2. to have been a void Parliament Roll. 21. 22. Nay Sir Edward Cook whom all must acknowledge to have been a Champion for Parliaments especially for a House of Commons yet he declareth that Parliaments have been often utterly misled and deceived and that in Cases of the greatest moment And had we not overthrown the legal
ruin him for they do reckon by what they have robbed and plundered the Nation of under him they shall be able both to purchase their Pardons and to live plentifully upon the next Revolution Nor are most of the Addresses with which our Gazettes are Weekly stufft to be otherwise accounted of then as the Arts and Tricks of Knaves to banter and deceive Fools And they do only act that over again upon the Prince of Orange which was long ago practised upon Manlius Valence of whom Tacitus says Quo incautius deciperetur palam laudatus they court him to his Face that they may the better cut his Throat behind his Back For there are none so weak or unthoughtfull but they must from their own woful Experience allow that to be true which Mr. Pryn observeth in his Preface to Sir Robert Cotton's Records namely That Kings created and set up meerly by Parliaments without any hereditary Title have seldom answered the Lords and Commons Expectations in the Preservation of their just Liberties and answers to their Petitions But if People want bravour to push the Defence of their Liberties and Estates thus far though legally they may let them at least calmly refuse to pay and warn the Officers that if they take any Thing it is at their peril And I shall account those Collectors and Constables both very unwise and very bold who will be so hardy as to break into Mens Houses and to make destraints For let them be assured That whosoever ventureth upon it will ere long be called to a reckoning and besides other Punishments they will be brought to undergo they will feel what it is to fall under Reprizals But should any Frantick Williamite be so far transported as that amounteth unto it becomes every true English Man in that Case to make a Replevin and we shall then see how the Gentlemen in Scarlet will decide the Question Whether this Parliament be a legal Parliament Nor are they ignorant of the Laws as most others are which will make their Crime the more unpardonable as well as the greater if they shall subvert and trample upon them And seeing they know what was the Fate of Wayland Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Edward the First 's time and of Thorpe Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Edward the Third's time and of Tresilian and Belknap and four Judges more in the time of Richard the Second it is to be supposed that they who fill the Benches now will not be ambitious of the like Destiny Nor will it be amiss for them to remember also the Reign of King Alfred who caused hang 44 Justices or Judges in one Year for corrupt and false Iudgments see Mirrour of Iust. Cap. 5. Sect. 6. And being acquainted with Foreign Histories both Ancient and Modern it cannot have escaped them in their Reading with what beautiful Hangings a certain Emperour caused adorn a Court of Jedicature namely with the Skins of corrupt Judges stuff with Straw and hung over the Bunch where they had prevaricated from Equity Justice and Law But if they be loath to look so far back let them only recollect the Proceeding of the Parliament in the Year 1640. against those Judges who in the matter of Ship-money had given Judgment against Mr. Humbden And if that Gentleman being only assessed â—o 〈◊〉 yet rather than pay it when he thought not himself obliged to it by Law chose to undergo great Trouble and to be at vast Charges in order to bring the Validity of the Ship Writs to a legal Tryal What will Posterity say of us if in a Matter of more weight in it self and where all the Law of England is on our side we have not the Fortitude and Generousness through the refusing to pay Taxes to force the Case of this Parliaments being dissolved by the Death of the late Princess into Westminster Hall And I will only say to all true English Men what Germanicus when dying said to his Friends viz. Erit vobis locus querendi apud Senatum invocandi leges That this is the Time if ere there was one of appealing to the Westminster Hall Courts and for calling for the Relief and Benefit of the Laws of the Kingdom And thus Sir I have returned you the best Answer I can to your second Query as I had given you one about a Week ago to your first Nor will I prefume to trouble you any farther at present save meerly to add That as you do still retain an Authority over me and are at Liberty to command me in whatsoever you Judge to be for the Service of my King and Country So I do assure you that I will never in any Thing decline to obey you the highest Ambition I have being to appprove my self SIR Your most humble and most obedient Servant April 24. 1694. ERRATA Page 2. line 4. for 〈◊〉 read 〈◊〉 p. 4. l. 14. before also r. is p. 5. l. 6. r. insensius ibid. l. 25 before Man r. the ibid. l. 35. before unlikely r. not p. 10. l. 13. for a r. the p. 12. l. 16. for hand r. head p. 15. l. 36. dele his p. 39. l. 23. r. Exercise p. 42. l. 3. and p. 41. l. 24. r. Hypothesis