Selected quad for the lemma: parliament_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
parliament_n	king_n	lord_n	speaker_n	4,386	5	10.8920	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A50369	The observator, upon the successe of former Parliaments: being by way of parralell compared with this present Parliament. Published to un-deceive the people.; Discourse concerning the successe of former Parliaments.	May, Thomas, 1595-1650.	1643 (1643)	Wing M1411B; ESTC R202948	5,260	8

People as unkind to them then themselves as faulty and so the more hardly drawn to repent their Actions or meet heartily with a Parliament 2. The People looke with honour upon the Prince and when they find but few personall vices in him will hardly be brought to think though themselves feel and suffer for it that he is faulty and therefore sometimes which would hardly be believed if experience had not shewed it the People have bin so rash as that to maintain for the King an unjust Prerogative which themselves understand not they have to their own ruin and the Kings too as it hath after proved disserted that great Councell whom themselves have chosen add by whom only they could be preserved in their just rights untill too late they have seen and repented their folly Such a dissertion was too sadly seen at the breaking up of that Parliament of Edward the second where his Favourites the two Spencers were banished and the tragical effects that followed when the King found so great a party of the Clergy and Layity as enabled him to call home his banished Favourites and proved fatall to so many Parliamentary Lords as the like execution of Nobility had never before been seen in England over whose graves the People afterwards wept when it was too late and proceeded further in their revenge then became the duty and allegiance of Subjects It is therefore a great mis-fortune to England and almost a certain calamity when the distempers of government have been let grow so long as that for their cure they must need a long Parliament For there are no wayes how just how moderate soever they be which that great Councell can take if they go far enough to make the cure but will provoke either by the meanes or the length of them the Prince his impatience or the Peoples inconstancy For the first the Delinquents must needs be many and great and those employed and perchance highly favoured by him besides the reflexion which is made upon his judgement by their sufferings and that will be one reason of his impatience Another is that many prerogatives which were not indeed inherent in the Crown but so thought by the Prince and by him and his bad Councell long abused to the prejudice of the People with some seeming advantage to him though well weighed they brought none are then after a long sufferance called in question For the People are used to entrust kind Princes with many of their own priviledges and rights and never call for them again till they have been extreamly abused But at such a time to make all cleare after so long a reckoning and those long reckonings in State being commonly fatall for Parliaments have seldome been disconntinued but by such Princes whose government in the Interim have been very illegall they usually question so much as that the Prince thinkes himselfe hardly dealt withall such a Prince as we spoke of who not bad in himselfe but long misled by wicked counsell was not enough sensible of the injuries he had done The second obstacle that such Parliaments may find is the Peoples inconstancy and what age is not full of such examples which before we name let us consider whether there be any reason for it This perchance may be one that the People naturally are lovers of novelty Long discontinued and reforming Parliaments seemes to carry the face of a change of government and those things may then happen which do in the shift of Princes that some people may for a while flatter themselves with new and strange hopes that prove frustrate or else with quicker redresses of inconvenience then the great concurrence of so many weighty businesses can possibly admit how industrious soever that great Councell be distracted with so great a variety and the People after some time spent grow weary again of what they before had so long wished to see Besides the People are more and more poisoned dayly by the discourses of the kindred friends and retainers to so many Delinquents as must needs be at such a Parliament who though they be no considerable party in respect of the whole Common-wealth yet ply their particular interests with more eagernesse than most do the publike They subtilly perswade the People that what ever the Parliament does against those Delinquents is a ymed at the Kings honour and that he is wounded through their sides And this opinion is somewhat furthred when the People see how many prerogatives of the Prince as wee said before are after long enjoying called in question So that by this meanes their inconstancy seemes to be grounded upon loyalty to the King and they perchance with honest but deceived hearts grow wearie of the great Councell of the Land Another reason may be that the Prince himselfe averse from such a Parliament for the reasons aforesaid can find power enough to retard their proceedings and keepe off the cure of State so long till the People tired with expectation of it have by degrees forgot the sharpnesse of those diseases which before required it By this meanes at last accidentally a miracle hath been wrought after along Parliament which is that the People have taken part with the great Delinquents against the Parliament for no other reason than because those Delinquents had done them more wrong then the Parliament could sudenly redress And so the multitude of those great Delinquents crimes have turned to their own advantage But in such reforming Parliaments upon whom so much businesse lyes not only the inconstancy of the People hath been seen in History but the unstedfastnesse of the Representative Body it selfe and the distractions of that Assembly whilst they forsake each other under so great a burden have let that burden fall dishonourably to the ground The most unhappy instance in this case was that Parliament of Richard the second begun at Westminster and adjourned to Shrewsbury in the nineteenth year of his reigne a Parliament that difcharged their trust the worst of any that I read of where there was as much need of constancy and magnanimity as ever was to redresse those great distempers which were then grown upon the State and as much mischiefe ensued by their default both upon Prince and People which might have been well prevented and his happinesse wrought together with their own in the judgement of best writers if they had timely and constantly joyned together in maintaining the true rights of Parliament and resisting the ilegall desires of their seduced King But being fatally distracted the major part of Lords and Bishops wrought upon by the King and the House of Commons being too far prevailed with by Bushy the Speaker and his Instruments they utterly disserted the Common-wealth and looking only upon the Kings present desire assented to such things as made the Prerogative a thing boundlesse that he himselfe as the Story reports was heard glorying to say there was no true Monarch in Europe but himselfe Vpon which the same bad councell which before had brought him out of love with Parliaments brought him to as great an abuse of that power which he had now gotten over a Parliament And then followed the blank-Charters and other horrid extortions besides the suffering of some Lords whom the people most loved and shortly after by a sad consequence his own ruin Nor do we read that any of those Lords who under the colour of Loyalty and Love as they called it to his person had trodden down the power and priviledge of a Parliament under his feet had afterwards so much Loyalty to him as to defend his Crown and person against an Vsurper who without any resistance or Contradiction unjustly ascended the Royall Throne the sad occasion of that miserable and civill war which in the following Ages so long afflicted the Kingdome of England This was the worst example of any Parliament but in other times they have proved better physicke then any other earthly meanes could be yet their greatest vertue and excellency is seen when they have been used as a diet by honourable and just Princes such as this Nation hath been sometimes blest with and such who have thought it no disparagement or depression of their dignity to be ruled by the sway of that great and honourable Councell then a wise guider of a Ship would thinke it to follow his Compasse or any Mathematician to be directed by his necessary rules and instruments FINIS

THE OBSERVATOR UPON The Successe of former Parliaments BEING By way of Parralell compared with this present PARLIAMENT Published to un-deceive the People LONDN Printed for I. H. and H. VVhite 1643. The Observator VPON The successe of former Parliaments THe constitution of our English Monarchy is by wise men esteemed one of the best in Europe as well for the strength and honour of the Prince as the security and freedome of the Peopl and the Basis on which both are founded is the conveniencie of that great Councell the Parliament Without which neither can the Prince enjoy that honour and felicity that Phillip de Commines a forrainer so much admires where he delivers what advantages the Kings of England have by that representative Body of their People by whose assistance in any action they can neither want means or loose reputation Nor on the other side can the People have any possibility of pleading their own rights and liberties for in the interim between Parliaments the People are too scattered and confused a body to appeare in vindication of their proper interests and by too long absence of such Assemblies they would loose all For as Iunius observes Populus authoritatem suam tacitè non utendo amittit sic plerumque accidit ut quod omnes curare tenentur curat nemo quod omnibus commissum est nemo sibi commendatum putet The People insensibly loose their power for want of using it for so it happens that what all should looke after no man does what is committed to all no man thinks his own charge And in that interim it happens that those Optimates Regni who under the Prince are entrusted with government meaning Councellours Judges and other great Magistrates either through fear flatterie or private corruption doe often betray the Peoples rights to the Prince The state of government standing thus If distempered times happen to be as our Chronicles have shewed some where by dissention between Prince and People the Kingdomes ruin hath been endangered it doth not so much prove that the English Government is not the best as that the best Government may be abused For in every Monarchy how limited soever the Prince his person is invested with so much Majesty that it would seem a mockery in Sate if there were no considerable power entrusted into his hands yea so much as that if he be bad or weak he may endanger the ruin of the Kingdome so necessary is it for all humane ordinances how wise so ever to leave somewhat to Chance and to have alwaies need of recourse to God for his assisting or curing providence And though the Kingdome of England by vertue of the government thereof will be as hardly brought into confusion as any in Europe yet there is no warrant against the possibility of it For it was ever heretofore seen that our Parliaments were rather a strength and advantage to an honourable wife Prince than a remedy against a bad or weak one or if we change the expression they were rather an excellent diet to preserve a good raign in strength than Physick to cure a bad one and therefore have bin as much loved by sound and healthy Princes as loathed by them that were out of temper the latter having thought them a depression of their Dignity as the former have esteemed them an advantage to their strength So that in such times only the true convenience of that great Counsell hath been perceived by England and admir'd by forrain Authors in the other times it was that those witty complaints have bin in fashion as Sir Robert Cotton speaks of a bad time that Princes in Parliaments are lesse then they should be and Subjects greater But on the contrary that they have been an advantage unto Kings the constant Series of our History will shew 1. By those great atchievments which they have enabled our wise Kings to make who were most constant in calling them and consenting to them 2. That no one Prince was ever yet happy without the use of them It may therefore seem a Paradox that any Prince should disaffect that which is so high an advantage to him and a great wonder that some Kings of England not vicious in their dispositions nor very shallow in their understandings have so much kicked against Parliaments And that such have been before we shew what reasons may be of it see the characters of some Princes whose successe and fortunes are known ●o all that read the Histories as they are delivered by Polidore Virgil who in his sixteenth booke speaks thus of Henry the third Fuit ingenio miti animo magis nobili quam magno cultor religionis adversus inopes liberalis He was of a gentle nature a mind rather noble then great a lover of Religion and liberall to the poor In his eighteenth Book thus of Edward the second Fuit illi natura bona ingenium mite quem primò juvenili errore actum in leviora vitia incidentem tandem in graviora malorum consuetudines consilia traxerunt Non deerant illi animi vires si repudiatis malis suasoribus ille justè exercuisset He was of a good nature and mild disposition who first by the errours and rashnesse of Youth falling into small faults was afterwards drawn into greater by the society and counsels of wicked men there was not wanting in him a strength of mind if avoiding evill counsell he could have made a just use of it And in his twentieth Book thus of Richard the second Fuit in illo spiritus non vilis quem consociorum improbitas insulsitas extinxit He was of a spirit not low or base but such as was quite destroyed by the wickednesse and folly of unhappy Consociates A reason of this accident may be that their soules though not vicions have not been so large nor their affections so publike as their great calling hath required but being too much mancipated to private fancies and unhappy Favourites and long flattered in those affections under the specious name of firmnesse in Friendship not being told that the adaequate object of a Prince his love should be the whole people and that they who receive publike honour should return a generall love and care they have too much neglected the Kingdome grow afraid to looke their faces in so true a glasse as a Parliament and flying the remedy encrease the disease till it come to that unhappy height that rather then acknowledge any unjust action they strive for an unjust power to give it countenance and so by along consepuence become hardly reconcilable to a Parliamentary way Such Princes have beene a greater affliction to this Kingdom than those who haye been most wicked and more incureable for these reasons 1. They have not been so conscious to themselves of great crimes and therefore not so apt to be sensible of what they have bin made to do by evill Councell And therefore they are more prone to suspect the