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	power_n	sit_v	3,978	5	7.3782	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A53067	The answer of His Excellency the Earle of Newcastle, to a late declaration of the Lord Fairefax dated the 8. of June, 1643.	Newcastle, William Cavendish, Duke of, 1592-1676.	1643 (1643)	Wing N874A; ESTC R218650	8,641	26

THE ANSWER OF HIS EXCELLENCY The EARLE of NEW CASTLE To a late Declaration of the Lord FAIREFAX Dated the 8. of June 1643. Printed at York by Stephen Bulkley 1643. By speciall Command The Answer of his Excellency the Earle of New-Castle to a Declaration of the Lord Fairefax c. WHen I received notice lately of a Declaration Dated the eight of this Moneth made by the Lord Fairefax intitling himselfe untruely and contrary to his own Conscience Lord Generall for all the Northerne Forces for King and Parliament I could not choose but wonder either at the strength of his imagination to fancy such a Government to himselfe in His Majesties Dominions without His Royall Assent especially knowing himselfe to be Proclaimed a Rebell for such Trayterous courses or rather at his deep subtilty under the pleasant bait of His Majesties pretended Authority to hide the cursed hooke of Perjury and Rebellion and by the sight of this counterfeit Flagge to seduce His Majesties good Subjects contrary to their Oaths of Allegiance and late Protestation from their bounden Obedience to detestable Faction and Treason or howsoever presumptuously to profane His Royall name to the raising and fomenting an unnaturall Warre in the bowels of His owne Kingdome directly against His Sacred Person Crown and Dignity Without a Commission under His Majesties broad Seale he may be as he is indeed an Usurper and latruder into power for which he and all his Adherents are obnoxious to His Majesty and the Law in the high crime of Rebellion but cannot justly nor with any Colour of reason stile himselfe Generall to the King and Parliament The very counterfeiting of this power without the true owner leave and against his expresse Command doth evidently shew That he knows he can have no Military Power without His Majesty much lesse against His Majesty As it is the hearty desire and prayer of all true Englishmen that they may speedily see a blessed conjunction of King and Parliament so we cannot but take notice That they who joyne them together in their Titles and Pretenses are they and onely they that divide them and sever them in their actions and retard our hopes of an happy Union partly by thrusting us into reall mischiefs for fear of fictitious and imaginary dangers and partly by opposing a sound and satisfying Accommodation But perhaps it will be said Though he make bold with the King yet he derives a good Authority from the Parliament When the two Houses are legally Assembled in a place free from Tumults whither all the Members may repaire with safety and Vote freely without prejudice feare or faction then they are venerable Assemblies but at the best neither have nor ever had without His Majesties concurrence a power to raise Arms or create Generalls or order the Militia of the Kingdom England did never see such an Example such a President never heard of such a Challenge of Military Supremacy made by the two Houses without the King either in cases ordinary or extraordinary before the beginning of these pernicious distractions All the Orders of this Kingdome assembled in Parliament upon mature deliberation in a case extraordinary sitting the Parliament have disclaimed this power and plainly acknowledged That it is an essentiall and inseparable Flower of the Crown That it belongs solely to His Majesty To defend force of Armour at all times when it shall please him and to punish them that shall doe contrary and that the Prelates Earles Barons Commonalty are bound to aide him as their Soveraigne Lord at all seasons when need shall be Where the very Title is so apparently untrue supposititious what truth can be expected in the body of the writing The first subject of his Declaration are the Prisoners taken at Seacroft Surely he had great reason to have expressed himselfe more forward for the Redemption of those poore seduced Persons then hitherto he hath done who without any Authority on his part or Obligation on their part did hazard both their bodyes and Soules meerly to do him service He pleads for them that They had quarter promised them that contrary to the Rules of Christianity Charity the Laws of this Land and the Law of Arms they have been deteined in durance It is true they had Quarter given them not out of any favour to their Rebellious courses but out of Pitty to their Persons and their misled seduced simplicity in hope that when their eyes were opened they would returne to their former Loyalty but I never heard that they had any Quarter promised or that there was any Treaty held or any Covenants proposed or condiscended unto but a free and absolute submission of themselves So the sole and single ground of this invective Declamation hath no more truth in it then the Title We are now told of Christian Charity But where was the consideration of this Christian Charity when the accord made at Rothwell with his own consent was perfidiously broken the observation whereof had saved the effusion of so much Christian Blood and prevented so many Murthers Robberies Imprisonments of his Majesties Loyall Subjects onely for keeping their Faith and Allegiance unstained and their Oathes inviolated These men desire to be objects of Christian Charity not Subjects they would have this grace looke towards them but not from them or otherwise they would be ashamed to ruine so many thousands of their Neighbours and Fellow Subjects and yet talke of Christian Charity as if it were a Topicall Argument not a Theologicall virtue His next stalking horse is the Law of the Land I would gladly know where that Law is written which allowes any Liberty or Privilege to a Subject who is taken in actuall Rebellion against his Lawfull Soveraigne If he and his Adherents have no favour but what the Laws of this Land do afford them they must expect releife in another world upon their repentance Neither will the Law of Arms help him It is a confessed truth that there is no Law of Arms but onely between such as have a power of Arms lawfully invested in them The Law of Nations doth except a Subject from pleading the Law of Arms against his Prince or against any Authority derived from his Prince But he saith further They have been deteined in such durance and under such Tyranny as there is about an 100 of them dead and about 200 of them made so sick and weake as they are not likely to recover and to the rest of them all necessary refreshments are denyed with intention to reduce them also to the like wretched state and so in time to destroy them all This and the like expressions conteined in this Paper being so publickly cast upon the Officers of this Army under my command must of necessity reflect upon my selfe which hath increased my desire to understand the certainty of these particulars which being known may be a good caution to his Lordship hereafter to take heed how he builds his groundlesse confidence which

recovery God give him grace to amend his manners But that corollary which follows That all conveniences for their health are denied them was forged in the same shop with the rest of the Declaration For they have had both their Medicines and Apothecaries to attend them what and whom they desired and their Divine to give them Ghostly Counsaile and comfort and all other expediences which they did request If that truth which they cry for in Religion be of the same stampe with their morall truths God deliver all good Christians from it In the close of his Paper he intimates the like hard measure to our Prisoners taken at Wakefield who as he saith have hitherto been used with all humanity and civility I hope that to crowd them together into filthy and worse then Augean Stables is no part of this civility I hope that to choke them with the fumes of their own ordure and to bury them alive in subterraneous Cellars is no part of this humanity where they cannot behold the light of Heaven but through a little grate of two spans breadth and this onely because they remember their Duties Oaths Obligations to His Majesty better then themselves But I delight not in recriminations By this we may conjecture in part what is the true scope of this Declaration to cast an aspersion upon His Majesties Officers to lead the Friends of the sick Prisoners into a fooles Paradise in expectation of some miraculous deliverance to remove from himselfe the blame and envy of their long durance as if he desired an exchange but we stopped it and lastly to excuse the hard and unhumane usage of our Prisoners in his Army But to unmaske him I do heereby declare to all the world that I ever have been and still am ready to entertein a faire Treaty about the Prisoners And now at last his Lordship may doe well to keep an audit with his own Conscience and understanding to take notice of that deluge of mischiefes and miseries which he hath brought upon this County and made his native Country a field or stage of blood as if the Liberty of the Subject did consist in a Liberty or rather licentiousnesse for them to doe what they list and to compell all others that are not of their Faction to suffer what they list He may doe well to consider That these men whom he imprisons are free men born and fellow Subjects with himselfe and with them from whom he pretends to derive his Authority That God and their King will expect a severe account of it That the empty name spurious title of Generall of the Northern Forces for King and Parliament contrary to the light of reason contrary to the plain Law of the Land much more irregular and exorbitant then the most pernicious Presidents of the worst times which ever England groaned under will be no satisfactory plea for so many lifes and so many Soules as have perished and are like to perish in this unnaturall Rebellion That when his guilt is elevated to the highest the Catastraphe without timely prevention will be the utter ruine of him and his Adherents And his seduced Followers may doe well also to open their eyes and consider at how dear a rate hitherto they have purchased nothing but Repentance with the ruine of so many Estates the effusion of so much blood the perill of so many Soules taken away in actuall Rebellion without knowing either what they desire or what they fear without one Text of Scripture or one particle of Law to warrant their actions being meerly led by the perswasions of the Lord Fairfax and their seditious Preachers so much as in them is to overthrow what they desire to build up the Protestant Religion the Law of the Land the Liberty of the Subject That a timely submission is their only remedy That if they still continue their desperate courses His Majesty and His Servants are guiltlesse and they may blame themselves for all those Mischiefes which fall upon their own Heads FINIS