Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	king_n	lord_n	parliament_n	2,800	4	6.3839	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34716	The field of bloud, or, rebellion blazoned in all its colours in a lively representation (grounded upon fact) of the fatal consequences of inhability in a prince, exorbitant ambition in the nobility, and licentious insolence in the Commons.	Cotton, Robert, Sir, 1571-1631.	1681 (1681)	Wing C6491A; ESTC R17249	21,251	38

ignorance is a secure knowledge we may rely upon them but they are not to be harken'd to in their clamorous Harangues against Authority Now to remedy all these Confusions and supply the Kings necessities a Parliament was call'd at last much to the liking of those Lords who as little meant to Relieve the King as they did to Heal the State their End at that time being only to lay open at Home the Poverty of their Master lessen his Reputation Abroad and in those times of Privilege to breath out their Passions freely Here they began to twit him with the Wrong he had done to the Publick in engrossing the choyce of the Chief Justice Chancellor and Treasurer who ought not they said to have been Elected but by the Common Counsel of the Realm highly applauding the Resolution of the Bishop of Chichester in refusing to surrender the Great Seal but in Parliament where he receiv'd it Then they charge him with having conferr'd all the places of Trust and Profit in his disposal upon Forreigners and leaving his English Subjects unrewarded with having ruin'd the Merchants Trade by the introducing of Maletolts and imposing of Heavy Customs with having violated the Common Liberty by Non obstantes in his Patents thereby to secure Monopolies for his private Favorites with having taken the Bread out of the Peoples mouths and forced away their Horses from the very Plow with sending his Justices into the Country to oppress and fleece the People by fob'd Actions and false Accusations telling him that Sr. Robert de Pursloe had extorted great Summs of money from the Borderers of his Forrests upon pretence of Encroachments So that they were amazed they said to hear that he should now demand Relief of them since the Commonalty was so miserably pill'd pol'd and empoverish'd by the multitude of former Contributions that they were incapable of making any sort of supply And therefore they suggested to him that they being able to prove his needless Expences since the Kingdom began to be oppress'd to have amounted to above eight hundred thousand pound it was but fitting that he should call to account and pluck from his Favorites who had gleaned the Treasure of the Kingdom and shared the old Crown-Lands amongst themselves Several of them having in a short space from the Inheritance of an Acre advanced into the Possession of an Earldom instancing in the Case of one Mansel an inferiour Clerk who rose from Nothing to spend at the rate of four thousand Marks beside fifty Promotions that he had engross'd in the Church in annual Revenue they being of Opinion that more moderate Fees ought to have contented a Pen-man that was no better qualified than with the ordinary fruits of a Writing-School Yet they assured his Majesty after all that if a Reasonable Supply would suit with his Occasions they were ready so far to testifie their Obedience in that particular as his Behaviour should fairly merit setting a day says Matt. Paris by which the King was to redress the Abuses and Corruptions of his Court and work into the good Opinion of the Nobles The time being come and he having ratified afresh the Great Charter admitted into his Councel some persons of the Commons Election and promised for the future to apply himself for Counsel to Natives not Forreigners they at length granted him such an Allowance as left him at their Devotion for a further Supply Thus Parliaments that Before were ever a Medicine to heal up any Rupture in the Princes Fortunes grew now to be worse than the Disease malignant Humours being more predominant in them than well-composed Tempers The King having by this fully discovered the Drift of his rebellious Lords and finding that they took advantage of his Necessities to enslave him begins now to act the good Husband closeth his hand of Waste and resolves though too late to bear himself upon his own Legs But this Experience is still pernicious to the Private and dangerous to the Publick Weal of a State as not being able to do but by undoing nor to discern Order till Disorder shews it And yet still Alas such was his easiness and flexibility when he came to be prest hard by his French Minions that he was not capable of witholding his hand from their insatiable Desires and endless squanderings Insomuch that it then became a By-word Our Inheritance is possess'd by Aliens and our Houses by Strangers Dependents upon a King that is excessive in Largesses become exorbitant in their Demands measuring them not by Reason but example Past favours are never reckon'd upon nor any Bounty valued but what is purely Future and look how much a Prince disables himself by Giving so much the poorer he is of True Friends such Prodigality in a Sovereign ever concluding in the Spoyl and Plunder of his Subjects But before the King would again submit himself to so many bold and strict Inquiries of his Disloyal Subjects as he had endured the last Parliament he resolves to try and undergo all shifts and extremities that necessity and a great mind could impose upon him First therefore he exposes the Crown-Lands then his Jewels to sale pawns Gascoyn and after That his Imperial Crown And when his Credit would serve him no longer having so often fail'd of his word nor any thing of his own left to raise mony upon he then pawns the Jewels and Ornaments of St. Edwards Shrine and at the long run being destitute of means to defray the Charge of his Court was forced to break up house and with his Queen and Children to press upon the Charity of his Subjects for his Daily Bread Having thus by Improvidence again reduced himself to this low Ebb the Rebellious Lords grew more and more intractable in Confidence that the Sovereign Power would now at last inevitably fall a prey to their ambitious Machinations which that it might the sooner come to pass they coveted nothing more passionately than to drive the King into Want that so they might constrain him to call a Parliament as phansying to themselves that Subjects at such times seem more than they should be Princes less In order hereunto they take a great deal of pains to propagate false and seditious Rumours of the Kings intention to repair his broken Fortunes by the Ruine of those of his Subjects and that having nothing left of his own he might and intended to force from others further insinuating that Princes will never Want so long as the people has the means of supplying them This scandalous Aspersion had the wished for Effect for it troubled the State and the flame would questionless have advanced Higher had not the King asswag'd it by Proclamations wherein he declared that he was not insensible of the evil Arts that had been made use of to seduce his Liege People into an ill Opinion of his Person and Government by false and groundless Suggestions and Surmises of his designing to oppress them in their just Liberties and

to add to this Figure the more of Number Great is the Errour of a Prince when the Hope of the Subject comes to recognize it self beholden to the Servant for that which ought to be acknowledg'd as the immediate Bounty and Goodness of himself And though they are not to be deny'd the privilege of advancing above the rest some trusty Friend to whom they may communicate their nearest Passions yet ought they so to temper the Current of Favour as not to darken the Lustre of their Regalities The Great and Gravest Men beholding the unworthy thus to deal alone in that which ought of Right to have pass'd through their hands and to step over all their heads to the greatest Honours and Offices began to repine but upon second thoughts they ran along with the rising Grace of the Kings Half-Brethren though Strangers hoping by this way of proceeding to divide that Power which otherwise they saw it impossible to Break. Yet Leicester being confident of his Masters Love and impatient of bearing either Rival in Favour or Partner in Rule opposeth them all But he found at length in his Ebb of kindness the fortune of others and that the King could with as much ease transfer his Phansie as he had settled his Affections And in truth extraordinary must needs be the Artifice and Address of that man that is able to keep himself aflote in the stream of a Monarchs good Opinion in regard that the change of his Will which for the most part is strongly influenc'd by Phansie and soon cloyed is hardly to be arrested To effect this the Favorite must solely attend the Honour and Service of his Master and abandoning all other Considerations insinuate himself into his inward Inclinations winding into a necessity of Employment by discharging the Offices of most Secrecy in reference either to publick Service or the Princes peculiar Pleasures He must also be careful to suppress Competitors by the hands of others conceal in Publick his own Greatness by counterfeit Affectations of Humility and in his persute of Authority he is to cast a shew as if his Promotions were the work of others or of Conveniency rather than of any great Ambition of his own But now upon this Advantage the Reines of Rule were possess'd by the ambitious Lords and entrusted as Henry Knighton says in the hands of the Kings Half-Brethren Adam Guido Godfrey and William the King contenting himself being left to act his own part as before with the Shadow only and License of a great Fortune And to say the truth he was ever Wyer-drawn when he was so happy as to have about him such worthy Servants as would urge and suggest things that were for his Honour But these Masters on the contrary being puff'd up with the conceit of having no Superiour made it their business by gentle Words and Flatteries to seduce the unsteady mind of the King from the Path of Reason thereby to gain to themselves the privilege of doing what they list So that they fell immediately to filling the Courts of Justice and Places of Trust with their own Country-men exacting of whom how and what they would wasting the Publick Freasure and Crown Lands to the enriching of themselves and dependents setting Prices upon all Offences and squaring the Law according to the Rule of their own Breasts And upon any Complaint of the Subject the usual Reply of their Servants was How'le ye help your self for the Kings Pleasure 's in my Masters Pocket Nay to so insupportable a degree of Licentiousness did these Strangers proceed that they seem'd rather to have entr'd the Land by Conquest than upon Invitation they enforc'd upon the great men not Obedience only but Servitude and reduced the meaner sort to so wretched a degree of Poverty that they might justly say they had nothing Yet lest the Groanes of his People and the wickedness of his Ministers should come to the King's Ear by the means of good and able Men they deny all such the least Access Suspicion being the best preserver of her own Deserts still keeps a strict eye upon those that have a due sense of Honour and Virtue as fearing them most Thus by the Inhability of the Prince the Government becomes a Prey to these Lawless Minions which occasions infinite Corruptions and Disorders in all the Members of the State all presuming upon his weakness do endeavour to grasp at an Arbitrary Authority that they may make Profit of it and easily permit the encreasing of Ill as the ready way to make their own Fortunes These Confusions were usher'd in by a Famine and that so violent an one that the king is forc'd to direct Writs to the several Counties to bury their Dead they were so Numerous The Dearth continues and then fell the Sword to raging so terribly that no man durst walk abroad without Arms all the Villages being left as a Prey to the tumultuous Rabble who raving up and down by the Connivance of such as ought to have suppress'd them it plainly appear'd that the Factious Lords whom the King suspected had fomented and given Life to the Commotion Seditious Peers ever bringing Fewel to such Popular Fires Neither was the Church it self without a busie Part in this Tragical Scene For the Bishops of Worcester and Lincoln being well-wishers to Montford and his Faction were far engaged In such Designs Church-men are never wanting and the distast of the establish'd Government as well Ecclesiastical as Civil will ever be a Knot of Strength for such unquiet Spirits who are as greedy after Innovations in the Church as in the State and ever crying up some new Model of Policy or other such as is most relishing to the giddy Multitude who at this time were mightily offended and not without reason neither at the new Courts of the Clergy their Pomp Rapaciousness and the Extortions of the Pope This was a fair pretext for the factious part of the Clergy so far to persue the Orders Ceremonies and Constitutions of the Church with bitter Speeches and Invectives that some of them incur'd the sentence of Excommunication at Rome and of Treason at Home they enjoyning the Earl of Leicester as he tendered his Salvation to maintain the Cause meaning his Rebellion to the very Death and asserting that the Peace of the English Church was never to be establish'd but by the Material Sword But that could never surely be the soundest Doctrine what ever might be pretended which was only to be propagated by War and Licence seeing the first Church contrarywise grew up by Fasting and Prayer True Piety obliges the Subject to desire a Good Sovereign but to bear with a Bad one and take the Burthen of Princes with a bended Knee so in time to deserve Abatement rather than resist Authority Church-men ought not always therefore to be our Oracles as to matters of Loyalty and Allegeance they may safely inform us of our Duty in difficult Poynts of Religion and where an humble