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
A79847	A letter from a true and lawfull member of Parliament, and one faithfully engaged with it, from the beginning of the war to the end. To one of the lords of his highness councell, upon occasion of the last declaration, shewing the reasons of their proceedings for securing the peace of the Commonwealth, published on the 31th of October 1655.	Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 1609-1674.	1656 (1656)	Wing C4424; Thomason E884_2; ESTC R207305	35,184	70

est Regem esse summons them into his presence with the highest and sharpest language reproaches them for disputing his Authority by whom they were called together requires them to renounce and disclaime that liberty before they proceeded to further consultation and to that purpose delivered an Instrument without subscribing to which the Band of Souldiers which guarded the door of the Parliament house would not suffer any man to enter whereupon a Major part of the Parliament departed to their houses and they only went in who submitted to the conditions which many afterwards did who in detestation of the violence at that time had forborne to subscribe Thus he who without the consent or privity of a dozen persons had assumed to himself the title and stile of Protector of three Kingdomes and therefore found a generall submission because he had bound himself within a short time to call a Parliament that might settle the Government when it was now met and possessed of the power it was to have because they came together upon his call would not suffer them to question any thing he had done or what he should do hereafter their submission as he said to his Authority of summoning them being a tacit acknowledgement of his power which he would not endure to be argued against without calling to minde besides the practice of these last ill years that by the express letter of the Law any restraint from altering or revoking an Ordinance or Act of Parliament it self is voyd being against the jurisdiction and power of Parliament When he had thus reformed his Parliament he gave them leave to sit together to consult how they might contribute to the support of that power they were not able to impair and to lay new burthens on the People the envy whereof they should rather bear than himself But as the Pope Paul the 4th complained in the Consistory of those who reported he could make but four Cardinals in regard of that which he had sworn in the Conclave and said That this was to binde the Popes Authority which is absolute That it is an Article of Faith that the Pope cannot be bound and much less can binde himself and that to say otherwise was a manifest Heresy So he took it very ill that they should believe upon any Articles in the Instrument of Government to which he had so solemnly sworn before he assumed the Title that they might lessen his Power or the Army by which it is supported and therefore when he saw they betook themselves to those Counsels which might lessen the insupportable burthen the People undergo for the maintenance of as numerous Forces and greater indeed than were ever on foot when the Common Enemy had Towns and Armies to oppose and that they presumed to speak of disbanding part of them he sent for them and after he had stylo Imperatorio reprehended their presumption and checked them in sharper language than ever King gave himself leave to use to his Subjects in Parliament contrary to his Oath and before the time was expired which was assigned for their sitting he dissolved them and takes upon himself Authority with the consent of such whom he pleases to make of his Councel to make and repeal Laws to lay Taxes and Impositions upon the People and which is the highest expression that can be made of his Tyrannie to publish this Declaration whereas it is notorious in the Law That to commit the power of Parliament to a few is against the dignity of Parliament and no such Commission can be granted even by the Parliament it self You know how strange soever it be that all this is true and you may then easily compute of what rank or kinde of men they must be who are delighted or in their hearts not opposite to your present Government how very few there are in your Councel or Army who were for King and Parliament and how those Principles have been asserted by you is known to all men what affection they have for you who with so much hazard and infamy served you in the extinguishing the Monarchy and what indignities they receive at your hands is likewise within your own view What is become of those two swelling names which for so long time filled our mouths and under the shelter of one of which all men took Sanctuary the Presbyterians and Independents Is there one man of either party who without renouncing the Principles of his party is in credit or trust with you and do they not both every day expect from you the exemplification of that memorable Judgement of Philip of Macedon who upon the hearing a difference that was fallen out between two men of very seditious and turbulent natures determined That the one of them should presently fly out of Macedon and the other should run after him as fast as he could You see then how very few there can be in the three Kingdomes except those who possess great Offices and Estates from you and even of those many think themselves disobliged by seeing others of less merit than they think themselves more obliged who are without malice and revenge in their heart and such a leaning and adhering to their several old interests that nothing is wanting for the discovery thereof but a fitting opportunity and you have declared that propension and disposition in them to be Crime enough to forfeit all that they have and you cannot wonder if upon so fair warning they prepare as well as they can and at least good resolutions for their own security Alas Sir we know how little confidence you have in any of your old Friends who you believe will never heartily submit to a Government they never intended to erect and who have not sacrificed their wealth their blood and their peace to suppress a Royal Family accustomed by a succession of so many hundred years to command and to be obeyed and to invest another inferiour to most of our selves in the same interest and power and so to use your own expression to entail the quarrel and prevent the means to reconcile Posterity You say you will not in express tearms lay to the charge of the Royal Party the swarming of those Jesuits which are now croaking amongst us turning themselves into all forms and shapes to deceive and seduce men from the Truth I wish we had not all too much reason to charge you in express tearms with what you will not and no doubt cannot charge them What liberty the Priests and Jesuits take how far they prevail upon the People what countenance they receive from this Government is apparent enough by not proceeding against them in Justice as if no Laws were in force for their punishment Your private Negotiations with the Pope and your promises that as soon as you can establish your own Greatness you will protect the Catholicks and the insinuations that you will countenance them much further are sufficiently known and understood And of

A LETTER FROM A TRUE AND LAWFULL MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT AND One faithfully engaged with it from the beginning of the War to the end To one of the Lords of his Highness Councell upon occasion of the last Declaration shewing the Reasons of their proceedings for securing the Peace of the Commonwealth published on the 31th of October 1655. Printed in the year 1656. A Letter from a True and Lawfull Member of Parliament and one faithfully engaged with it from the beginning of the War to the end SIR BEcause you accuse me so much of want of temper and say that I am angry with you when I cannot answer your arguments and so that insteed of finding a way to be of one minde we loose our selves in passion and love each other worse than when we came first together I have taken this uncholerique way of discoursing with you and to inform you since you enjoyne me to use the same freedome with you as if you were a private person why I am so farr from approving your Declaration of the 31th of October as an Act agreeable to any rules of Right and Justice or an Expedient to promote the Peace and Security of the Publique that I take it to be inconsistent with the Elements of Law Equity and Religion and even destructive to the private Interest of those for whose preservation it seemes to be intended And in the doing hereof I shall first answer your Argumenta ad hominem those Reasons by which you thought to have wrought upon my passions and infirmities and to have induced me not to have found fault with that which could do no harme to any body I care for and which I might in some degree be obliged to defend in order to the support of somewhat else which I my self have done and countenanced You tell me that none are concerned in this Declaration or in the most rigorous execution of it but the Cavaliers a people towards whose reduction to the low and wretched condition they are now in you say no man hath contributed more than my self and that I do confess my self to have been much deceived and to have deceived others to have been in the wrong nay to be guilty of all the innocent Blood that hath been spilt in this quarrell if I as well as you do not prosecute those people to the utmost upon whom we have layd all that guilt and who will shew little favour toward us if once they grow to have no need of ours I shall have so much occasion upon severall parts of your Declaration to speak of the Case of the Cavaliers and how necessary it is that Justice be observed even towards them and of the consequence and the concernment that all sorts of Men have in the administration of of that which is right and equitable and how unsafe it is for the Publique if the due Current of Law and Justice in respect of any persons be perverted that I shall in this place only put you in minde of the Inhibition given in the Parable of the Sowers to those over-good Husbands who would make such haste to free the Field from Weeds the Master said Nay least whilst you gather up the Tares you root up also the Wheat with them There is no man who reads your Declaration and considers it but discerns plainly that under pretence of gathering those Tares vexing the poor Cavaliers whom you do not finde to grow so fast as much to disturbe your Corne and which you intend at last but to gather according to your severall Appetites and Passions of loving and hating this or that man or as you covet their Estates not as they are dangerous to the publique Peace you root up the pretious Wheat all the Laws and foundations of Right which are the onely security of every honest and free-born Englishman and that in truth no person of the Royall party is more concerned in this arbitrary extravagant and unparalel'd Act of Tyranny than every man who hath served the Parliament with the most fidelity throughout that war against the late King if he do not submit to the present Power and endeavour to reforme and suppresse that which you cannot but believe involves a very considerable number of Men who have deserved as well of their Country and have been and are as great Assertors of the Liberty thereof as any person who consented to the publishing that Declaration and therefore it is no wonder if you finde me and I suppose many more who are not suspected to be over-inclined to the Cavaliers no less offended at your resolution and proceedings than they have good reason to be To your tendernes of my reputation least I suffer in my credit by differing now with you which you say is no less than to confess that I have been deceived heretofore and that I have deceived others who were engaged in the quarrell by my advise or my example though I will not answer you in the language of a much wiser man even the excellent Philip de Comines That a Prince or any other man who hath never been deceived can be but a Beast because he understands not the difference between good and evill yet I may tell you that whosoever hath not been deceived in the Current of these last fifteen years hath been preserved from being so by such an absence of friendship confidence and Charity in and to Mankinde by such a measure of distrust jealousie and villany in his Nature that I had rather be a Dog than that man For my self I am not ashamed to confesse before God and the world that I have been much deceived miserably and wretchedly deceived but not half so much nor so inexcusably as I shall be if ever I trust those again who have so much deceived me or if I believe that my ruine and destruction is not as much designed by this Declaration as any Cavaliers whatsoever And that I may not hereafter trouble you in this discourse concerning my self or with my own story I will very ingenuously confesse to you in this place my part in the warre that was carried on between the last King and Parliament and then you will see how like I am to be immoderately inclined to the Royall party and yet how unsecure I am from being buryed in the same ruine that is prepared to overwhelme them and consequently whether I have not reason to protest and prepare against those who threaten me with that ruine When I was returned by vertue of the Kings Writ to serve my Country in Parliament I brought with me all that affection to the Liberty and benefit of my Countrey as the condition of it required and all that Reverence and duty to the King that was agreeable to the Oaths I every man there took before we could sit in that Convention and truly I had no more desire to alter the fundamentall Government of Church and State than you have to restore it I will not deny

power how exerorbitant soever that we thought only related to them You know the wise answer given to him that asked what City he believed to be best governed Solon said That City where such as receive no wrong do as earnestly defend others to whom wrong is offered as if the wrong and injury had been offered to themselves And that Generall was worthily extolled qui aliquid esse crederet in hostem nefas Our too little circumspection and tenderness of that hath brought the Case to be our own If the Royall party will change their interest that is keepe their old Monarchicall Principles and apply them to the support of your interest they shall be received entertained and preferred by you you have manifested it enough to them by trusting none more than those who have done so They are onely in danger of whom you are afraid in respect of their conversation of their intentions towards the present Government and of their interest not to submit to that Government which you say is established and they believe or know to be but usurped And we shall the better finde who they are and make some discoverie of the number of them and consequently of the danger that is threatned from them if we take a short view of the Government by what degrees and by what Authority it is imposed upon us and how far the severall interests of those who have at least equally with your selves opposed the common Enemy are secured and provided for and we shall thereby the more easily judge how far we are obliged in conscience or discretion to submit to it of whom you are most like to be afraid and so who are most probably in the end to be charged with the maintenance of those forces which you will finde necessarie to secure that Government and your feares that it will not be secure What is become of the Parliament and the Parliament partie that first undertook that war and pursued it till they were without an eneny is too melancholick a question to expect an answer to You cannot take it ill that I say this is not the Government we then undertook and engaged to preserve and defend and you will give me leave to observe that there is not one officer in all your Armies that in the beginning of that warre was above the degree of a Captaine so far are you from being the People who bore the heat of the day or who deprived the enemy of of their armes Nor is there one person amongst you who had then interest or reputation enough to engage ten men in the quarrell nor is one of those who had in any credit now with you or trusted in any part of your Government So that you may reasonably conclude that as they cannot hold themselves obliged to submit to it so much lesse engaged to support it and consequently amongst that number of which you have reason to be afraid After you had by bringing your Army to London and imprisoning the major part of the Commons and dissolving the House of Peeres extinguished Kingly Government erected your selves into a Commonwealth and insteed of one set up as many Kings as you had left members of your Parliament all who were uncontrolable and above the reach of Justice and exercised what kinde of Power and Tyrannie they pleased upon their fellow subjects The people were universally engaged to maintain and defend that Government of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England All Princes and forraigne States taught to make their addresses to it Warre and Peace declared by it The Keepers of the Great Seal of England the Judges and Ministers of Justice appointed in the same manner and the whole Administration of Justice throughout the Kingdome was in the name of the Keepers of the Liberty of England The Army professed it self entirely at the obedience of the Parliament and absolutely to be disposed by it and well it might do so there being so many Officers of the Army Members of Parliament that they had reason to believe all Commands would be suitable to their own desires if they desired no more than what they hitherto professed the support of that Government which not onely every person who had the least trust share or benefit in it had sworn to defend but whosoever sued for favour or Justice from it were bound to subscribe to In this manner all things were ordered Ireland reduced to perfect obedience and our enemies there to perfect slavery Scotland as your own Poet sayes was preferred by Conquest to serve us So that we were not only without any visible Enemy and so sufficiently revenged of our friends that they could be of use to none but our selves The Parliament now thought it high time that they who were in truth the Conquerors the People at whose charge alone the warre had been carried on should receive some benefit from their Conquests That when they had no enemy at all they need not have so great an Army and therefore they betook themselves to councels of good husbandry and to thinke of preferring them who had taken so much paines in their service to ease and plenty to give those Estates to them which they had taken from others and by these gratuities to disband some part of their Army But that was a Jurisdiction you never intended they should exercise you were well enough contented that they should have the Soveraigne power to raise money for the payment of the Armies but when they presumed to speak of disbanding those Armies you wisely remembred how insecure you should be without those forces which had raised you to the height you were at you remembred how many former orders you had disobeyed how you had triumphed over the long Robe and the Priviledges of Parliament and albeit Acts of Prdon and Oblivion had been passed for your Indemnity you concluded if the Government should once fall into those peaceable hands they would find ways enough to avoid the observance of any promises they had been cōpelled to make against their wills and hereupon for the good of the people you resolved to take the Government into your own hands and according to the advice given by the Servants of the King of Syria Take the Kings away every man out of his place and put Captains in their roomes You brought armed men into the house of Parliament forced the Members with many opprobrious speeches to leave their places locked up the doors that there might be no more resort thither and appointed a select number of the Officers of the Army to provide for all that King or Parliament used to do and here was an end of your Commonwealth which Government all were so solemnly engaged to defend nor is there any person who adheres to the Principles of a Commonwealth in any trust or esteeme with you Nay it is very observable and notorious that of all that select number which helped you to be free from Monarchy by sitting

to you that after a short time of sitting there the continuall Feaver of the House made my pulse beat higher too and the prejudice I had to some persons in power and authority from whom as I thought I had received some hard measure lessened my esteem and opinion of the Court Then the Lords free concurrence in whatsoever we proposed and the Kings as ready granting whatsoever we desired made me thinke my self in the number of those who were to governe all the World and insensibly I found my self a greater man than I had before imagined I was I chose the conversation of those who were believed most intent and solicitous to free the subject from the vexations and pressures he had been made liable to and I thought them the most competent Judges of the remedies which were to be applyed to those diseases which they had so exactly discovered in a word I believed all they said and out of the innate Reverence I had for Parliaments I concluded it impossible for any thing to flow from thence that could bring damage or inconvenience to King or People wherein how much I have been deceived the world knows and I am not ashamed to acknowledge And this opinion and resignation of my self to that infallible Guide made me neither strictly weigh what they did nor patiently hear those Objections which I could not answer thinking worse of the persons who objected than of the things they objected against When the matter of the Militia was first handled I had no other understanding of it than as I had observed it had been exercised very unequitably by the Lords Lieutenants and their Deputyes and therefore I hearkened willingly to those Lawyers who confidently averr'd it was not in the Crown yet the greatest reason that perswaded me to joyne with those who would presse the King in it was that I thought and was assured that he who had till then granted all we asked would not then begin to deny besides that I saw most of his Councell and Servants who were of both Houses engaged in the same party and importunity When so many Members of both Houses left the Parliament and went to the King I could not deny that very many of them were persons of great Integrity and eminent lovers of their Countrey yet I thought their condition so desperate that a Serjeant at Armes would have reduced them all and was resolved not to imbarke my self in so hopelesse a dependance the Parliament being to common understanding possessed of the whole strength of the Kingdome Nor had I ever the least apprehension of a Warre till we heard that some of our Troops were defeated by Worcester and that the King began to gather an Army about Shrewsbury which yet I thought would never have looked ours in the face but that the King would upon some Treaty have given my Lord of Essex leave to have guarded him to Westminster and that all who had obeyed the Parliament should have had offices preferments and rewards and this perswasion never departed from me till we saw the Kings Army drawing down Edghill towards us the morning before that Battell From that time I wished we had been to begin again and that we had left off to aske when the King was resolved to grant no more I remember three nights after I was quartered neer Warwick at the House of a Minister whom I had known long before and who was then fled being reckoned one of the Prelaticall party and so not taking himself to be secure among our Troops which were not eminent for civility towards that part of the Clergy I understood he was hid amongst his Neighbours and thereupon sent to him to return home assuring him he should be very safe He came very willingly and told me he could not fear the receiving any injury where I commanded and so entertained me with much cheerfulness during the time I stayed there sitting with him one evening I told him I believed the loss of blood on both sides had so much allayed all distempers that there would be no need of drawing more but that the King and the Parliament would easily come to a Treaty and compose all differences and extinguish all jealousies that had been between them He smiled and said he had read a story in Aelian that when in one of the States of Greece Nicippus his sheep brought forth a Lyon it was generally and justly concluded that it portended a Tyranny and change of the State from a peaceable to a bloody Government and it fell out accordingly Truly Sir said he when the two Houses of Parliament produced a Soveraign power to make a Generall raise an Army and to declare war after that milde and innocent Sheepe that legall venerable Councell had once brought forth that Lyon which seeks whom he may devoure I gave over all my hopes of the continuance of that blessed calme and temperate State of Government by which every man eat the fruit of his own vine and I expect nothing but rapine blood and desolation and if you have those hopes you mention you will finde your self disappointed and that they who you think are of the same minde with you have nothing less in their purposes than Peace or to perform one promise they have made to the People but they resolve to change the whole frame of Government and to sacrifice the wealth and tranquillity of their Country to their own Ambition Covetousness and Revenge and when once they discern that you will not pursue their most violent courses they will more endeavour your destruction than of them against whom you are both now so unanimously engaged This discourse which I then considered onely as proceeding from the spirit of a man who I knew approved nothing that we did afterwards made impression upon me and I discerned every day men recede from the grounds they had before seemed to consent to and to be less inclined to overtures of Peace than they had formerly appeared to have been yet upon those specious reasons That our onely security consisted in keeping so much power in our own hands that it might not be in the Kings power to do us hurt That if we receded from those Propositions which we had pressed the King to grant we should shortly be bereaved of those good Laws he had already granted at least it would be necessary in all Treaties to insert and in some degree to insist upon those Propositions how extravagant soever that by departing from them we might pretend to pay a valuable consideration for those Concessions which we must still require from the King for our own indemnity and by these means our Treaties came to nothing the Treators being never left at liberty to recede from those unreasonable Propositions which were therefore made unreasonable as was pretended that they might be receded from I will not deny to you that when upon the Kings successes Commissioners were sent to invite the Scots to our assistance and

extreamly zealous for and jealous of their liberty that they onely acknowledged one God to be Lord and Master of all things and had rather themselves with their dearest children and kinsfolk endure the most greivous and bitter torments that could be imagined than call any mortal man their Lord And this is the antientest Record I think can be produced for those Friends of yours who have lifted you up to the height you are now at though it is plain your selves are retired enough from those inconvenient scruples Be what other Nation you will how far you are from being the English Nation or that part of it which is tender of and like to advance its Interests must appear in the further examination of the Principles of your Declaration Since you would have it believed that no part of the English Nation can be concerned in or hurt by this destroying Act but onely the Royal Party you should so clearly have set down the guilt of those you punish and the rules by which you punish that no innocent man could have thought himself involved in the one or in the reach of the other it had been to be wished that since you take upon you to execute Justice and Judgement for the Nation you had according to the good old Custome alwayes observed in those Judicatories plainly set out the known Laws of the Land by which such and such Actions are declared to be Crimes and by which those Crimes are to be punished in that degree it being no more in the Judges power to exceed the punishment prescribed than to declare that to be a Crime which no Law hath declared to be so whereas without quoting one judged Case in Law or citing one Statute for your ground or mentioning one precedent to justifie your manner of proceeding you wrap up your discourse in Metaphysical notions and conclude by deductions from the Law and Light of Nature and from the dictates of Reason a Reason so abstracted from practice and so difficult to be understood that we may well apprehend that we shall hereafter be concluded guilty and condemned before we are accused or able to accuse our selves and therefore it is not out of kindness to them that we now endeavour to state the true Case of the Royal Party the Crime they are charged with in this Declaration the Judgement that is inflicted upon them and the Grounds of that Judgement that we may from thence be able to conclude how far we are from their case and consequently how secure we are from being liable to their punishments The Case then of the Royal Party is this After a War waged for some years between the King and the Parliament after several great Successes on the Parliaments side the Kings Armies and Garrisons are reduced to those streights that they thought fit to make Conditions They do not confess that they owe their admission to compound for their Estates or the moderation that was used in it to that excess of good nature you reproach them with in your Declaration But they say it was upon a full Contract between the Parliament and them and upon Articles of surrender on their part of those places of strength which remained then in their possession the which together with their acquiescence from further opposing us we of the Parliaments party they say then thought a valuable consideration for any Concessions we then made to them and that they had the Publick Faith of the Parliament for the punctual and exact performance of the Articles on our part That by our thus treating with them and their compounding with us we raised a vast sum of money for the support of our Armies without which we had been in many streights and if they had not totally declined any further thoughts of opposing us amongst so many discontents which then raged in the Parliament the Army and amongst the Scots it is not probable that we should have carried all before us with so little resistance as we did so that the advantage we got by their Compounding was not small or inconsiderable That we were so far from requiring them to change their Principles other than their no further assisting the King in a War against the Parliament the which himself at the same time declined and betook himself to Treaties that there was a special provision in all Articles against any such pressure That we of the Parliaments party were so far from urging them to wave their Allegiance to the King that we professed the same with them in all our Professions Declarations and Protestations and that the Crime we accused them of and obliged them to compound for was for their offences against the King and Parliament and therefore the Pardon drawn by order of Parliament was granted to them in the Kings name and passed under the Great Seal of England so that they were and are by that according to the Fundamental Laws of England which are the onely security every Subject hath for the enjoying his property and his liberty free and absolved from all manner of Offences committed before the Grant of that Pardon and by it put into as full a possession of their Estates and all the Rights of a Subject of England as they before enjoyed and if they have committed no offence since that time against the Laws of the Land they are and ought to be accounted in the same condition with us and not in any degree to be troubled for more than what they have done since And this is in truth the state of the Royal Party without strengthening it by any consideration of the Act of Grace and Oblivion which was afterwards granted to them Whether those Articles have been so punctually performed as you say whether that Court which was purposely erected to do them Justice in that particular was erected soon enough and before they were broken with intollerable oppression or whether that Court hath since executed Justice so effectually on their behalf as you declare I leave to themselves to make manifest being in truth as I said before no otherwise concerned for them than as the equal administration of Justice to all sorts of people is and must be the foundation of peace and happiness to any Commonwealth according to the Ordinance of God himself He that ruleth over men must be just ruling in the fear of God Where there is not exact and precise Justice there can be no fear of God pretend what you will and you cannot but have heard that very many learned and pious men have attributed the ill success which the Christians received in the several attempts which have been made with so vast a consumpsion of men and treasure in the Holy Land to that perfidious breach of faith made by the Christians after the first taking of Jerusalem in the year 1098. when after Mercy proclaimed to all that would lay down Arms it was concluded necessary for their defence upon the rumour or apprehension of