England Bought and Sold OR A DISCOVERY OF A HORRID DESIGN TO Destroy the Antient Liberty Of all the FREE-HOLDERS IN ENGLAND In the Choice of MEMBERS to Serve IN THE Honourable House of Commons IN PARLIAMENT By a Late Libel Entituled The Certain Way to Save ENGLAND c PROV xvi 28. A Tale-bearer maketh Strife and a Whisperer separateth chiefest Friends LONDON Printed for T. O. 1681. England bought and sold c. THERE was never any Design so black and Criminous but found some persons so Profligate as to become its Patrons there wanted not an Iscariot for Thirty pieces of Silver to betray his Master nor a popular pretence saving of the State lest the Romans should come and take away their Place and Nation to put the better colour upon the Murder of our Saviour And a nearer Instance will abundantly refresh our Memories without more than the trouble of remembring Jan. 30. 1648. The worst Surfeits are taken by the most lushious Fruits and no Poyson can be so dangerous as that which has the name of an Antidote written upon the Box. There was never any mischief in State or Kingdom but the People were first drawn in to believe that the Projectors were their Friends and then those Juglers pre-possess them with false apprehensions of things and undertake to redress all their Grievances They are prodigal in their fair Promises and flattering Speeches like Absalom when they intend the foulest Enterprizes Certainly the happiness of a People consists in Peace which is the Mother of all desirables of this World and Peace most certainly depends upon the due Subjection and Obedience of the People to their Sovereign and the wise and wholsome establishments of Laws And therefore they who design to subvert the one or disturb the other always represent the Laws uneasie or the Sovereign unjust and apply their whole endeavours to create foment and increase Mis-understandings between the Prince and his People Whoever goes about to divorce these two whom God hath joyned together ought to be reputed an Enemy to both a betrayer of his Country and a most dangerous Incendiary a pestilent Fellow and a mover of Sedition Now as the greatest Artifice is to conceal the Act so I find the Author of this Libel by which he pretends to save England so great a Master in the Talent of deceiving that he might have been Tutor as he is certainly the Scholar to that old guilded Serpent who deceived Eve For he has not planted his Battery against any particular part of the Government That would have been too visible but he has undermined the very Foundation and has endeavoured to spoil the whole frame not by open breaking the whole but by altering the weights which keep the Movement right and in due order He has first violated the greatest Priviledge of the People of England indeavouring to rob them of that ancient right liberty and freedom of Election of persons to represent them in Parliament imposing upon them by the specious way of Advice Restrictions Limitations Rules and Directions in their Choice Secondly He has violated the priviledge and honour of the Commons-House in Parliament who have ever endeavoured to have their Reputation secured by the freedom of the Election of their Members And I remember that even the Commons of that Parliament of November the Third 1640. who are sufficiently memorable and possibly for which this Libeller has a veneration when some great Lords only writ a Letter Recommendatory about the Election of an inconsiderable Burrough voted it a high breach of Priviledge And yet our pert Libeller or Legion for any thing I know has had the confidence to write and for expedition to Print a Letter Recommendatory and disperse it to all the Counties and Cities Burroughs and Corporations of England thereby to forestal the Elections One of which Letters by mistaking his person came to be discovered and you shall presently see the Tenor of it Thirdly He has by many false disloyal not to say traiterous Insinuations indeavoured to defame His Sacred Majesty and the established Government and to bring a general Odium upon both thereby to alienate the affections of the People from their natural Liege-Lord to the impairing of his Honour Justice and Wisdom the great supporters of his Imperial Scepter Crown and Dignity Fourthly He has indeavoured to heighten the present unhappy mis-understandings and to possess the People with Fears Terrors and dismal Apprehensions of I know not what Despotick power Tyranny and Arbitrary Government that is coming in upon them and that their ALL Lives Liberties Religion and Estates are at Stake with such fulsomly Rebellious reflections upon the King and Government as may animate the People by a desperate effort of Sedition to Rebel against their most Gracious Sovereign Fifthly He has cunningly aspersed and vilified a great number of His Majesties most Dutiful and Loyal Subjects of all Orders and Ranks as Enemies to the Kingdom Pentioners Courtiers romoters of a Popish Interest and Succession and defames by whole-Sale many worthy Gentlemen of most approved Loyalty and Fidelity to their King and sound principles in the Protestant Religion as by Law Established thereby to incapacitate them from being Elected to serve their King and Countrey as Members of Parliament by rendring them suspected and odious to the Electors And indeed the whole drift of the Libel is to prevent such as are of known Integrity to the King and the Church from coming into the next House of Commons and to persuade them to choose Men of large Principles as he calls them which I need not I think explain for he does it himself as you shall see hereafter This is a great and heavy charge but I will make it out true to a Tittle and yet shall draw but a few strictures upon a Libel for which at some times the Author would not only have lost his Ears but hazarded the Head that framed it and let him have a care Justice and the Vengeance both of Heaven and of Kings that have long Arms. The Letter will make good the first and second Articles and the Book both them and all the rest The Letter was superscribed and sent by the Post and has the Post-mark Feb. 5. stamped upon it but the Contents to the Surprize of many worthy Gentlemen to whom they were directed were in Print as follows SIR THere is newly published a small stitched Book well worth the serious perusal of all your Electors and I think if you would put your self to the small charge of buying a parcel of them for your Countrey People It may be one great means of keeping them tight and steddy in their Choice of good Protestants and true Englishmen for their Members in the next ensuing Parliament whereupon depends the Weal or Woe both of King and Kingdom not only in this but in future Ages It has comprised in it all the material things that were in any of the former sheets upon the same
Doctor saith Exposing and Declaiming against His Majesties Person Counsels and Actions in Parlliament For adds he by what Counsels you have been defeated in the Dissolution of Parliaments you cannot be ignorant And upon this like Gavan at a Quakers Meeting or Whitebread at a Conventicle he falls a Canting of what an excellent spirit was poured upon them in their last Elections Even such a spirit as fell upon the Jews Exorcists Acts xix 16. which in some places inspired the Dissenters with such Fury as to beat wound and kill those who opposed their Choice of such as were in the Opinion of Dissenters particular Friends to their Opinions and Practices or had been in Actual Arms against the late King and His present Majesty But he proceeds and I must keep pace with him in his dirty Road tho we travel to different Quarters In his second Qualification They must be men throughly principled in the Protestant Religion very good and why could it not be added as now by Law Established are the Lawless Protestants the best Protestants and they who obey the Laws the worst We must come to distinction then I find since the very word Portestant admits of Ambiguity All lay claim to it Quakers who are no Christians and Anabaptists who are very ill ones and all others by what names soever dignified or distinguished will all challenge the Name of Protestants which of these doth he mean and what Protestant Principles those of the Law Protestants or Lawless Protestants We shall not need to go far for a Resolution They are the large Principles that he means such as will not sacrifice his Neighbours Property to the frowardness of his own Party in Religion Now tho this is plainly level'd at such Gentlemen as have in obedience to the Law and discharge of their Consciences prosecuted Dissenters not out of frowardness but necessity as considering what a dangerous influence their pretences of Religion have had upon the State yet in the next page to clear his Counsel and Truth and make it plain you shall see a double portion of the excellent spirit of Ned Coleman and of the late Lord Stafford poured upon him when he tells the People Pag. 10. That the great Interest of England at this day is to tolerate the tolerable to bear with the weak to encourage the conscientious and to restrain none but such as would restrain all besides themselves Lo here Toleration and Persecution both in a breath The Church of England because by the help of the Secular Laws she endeavours to restrain men from running to damnation must be restrained her self This is so large a Gospel-Principle as I am sure Christ never taught I would ask this vir quidam whether he thinks Schism a damnable Sin or not If not then he hath neither Principles nor Religion If he doth believe it so let him read Doctor Stilling fleet 's late Book which hath sufficiently convinced all Dissenters to be Guilty of Schism Would it not be great honour then for a Parliament to Establish Iniquity by a Law and is it then the great Interest of England that the People should have an Act of Parliament to damn themselves by Authority Sure this is Doctrine and Advice fit for none but Jesuits and Devils to Preach Good God! What will not some men do to make a Party His Third Qualification is Men of Courage who will not be Hector'd out of their Duty by the Frouns and Scouls of Men. Let him be who he will he deserves a severe Castigation for two things First For want of due Respect and Manners to his Superiors Secondly For Charging them with such Actions as they are not Guilty of Why there is not the littlest Fop about the Town but would think himself affronted with the name of Hector and yet this piece of Insolence fears not to pin it indefinitely upon the Highest Characters in the Nation His Fourth is Men of Resolution that will stand by and maintain the Power and Priviledges of Parliament for they are the Heart-string of the Nation Then Mr. Parenthesis you have broke the Heart-strings of the Nation for the Fundamental Priviledge of the House of Commons is Freedome of Choice of the Members of which Fraud and Force are equally destructive and which both by your Letter and your Book you have endeavoured to violate Fifthly Men that will prosecute the Plot and search into the bottom of it With all my heart for by Dr. Oats's Narrative your Worship Sir and all that are like you will be found there and the Nation will never be at quiet till such fellows as you who lie sculking there be found out and severely punish'd Sixthly such as will remove and bring to Justice Evil Counsellors Corrupt and Arbitrary Ministers of State that have been so Industrious to give the King wrong Measures to turn things out of their Antient and Legal Channel of Administration and Alienate His Affections from His People Sure the Man is besides himself did ever one take such pains to make a silken Cravat for himself Are you in serious Earnest Sir Would you have all that endeavour to breed misunderstandings between the King and His People severely punish'd Then are you in exceeding danger of the Fate of Haman who built a pair of Gallows of fifty Cubits high for Mordecai no man I will say that for you hath taken more pains or indeavoured with more Art to alienate the Affections of the People from the King vice versa than you have done and by your own Law you know what you deserve As for any other who have done as you say His Majesty who hates all thoughts of Arbitrary Government hath told you He will leave them to the Law and you should have acquainted the People with that Just and Honourable Resolution of His Majesty accordding to Magna Charta Nec ibimus super eum nisi per Legale Judicium parium suorum He will neither displace nor disgrace any Person but by the Legal Tryal of his Peers which is the true Legal Channel and antient Fence against Arbitrary Government Seventhly Men of improvement That 's agreed with him for I am not for picking knots in Rushes And now having shewed the positive Qualifications he comes unto the Negatives And First Not those who with as much Defiance as Error assert the Honourable House of Commons began by Rebellion 49. H. 3. And that they were not till then an Essential or Constituent part of the Legislative Power of the Kingdom For my part I know none that have done it more or in better terms than this Person in the words just recited I perceive this Gentleman is a meer whiffler for without Reflection It being no dishonour to know the true Original either of things or persons had he been conversant with Selden Cambden or any other Antiquary he would have found them no vilifiers of the House of Commons and yet they allow that House no higher a pedigree than
been much better relished by Persons of Loyalty To pass by his limping paraphrase upon the first Men that fear God i.e. Halt not between two opinions which yet is not without its design against all those Gentlemen who are zealous for the present Establishment in the Church who are ever represented to the People as halting between God and Baal Popery and Protestantism and in that sense incapacitated by this Gentleman for Representatives of the Commons of England His Second Comment is stollen from the late Rebel-Parliament who are very ill Patterns for the People to choose by Loving Truth i. e. Such as the King and Kingdom may trust All they did in the late Rebellion was for the good of the King and Kingdom they chose into the Parliament all that could be pickt up that had manifested any Animosity against the King or His Government for the good of the King and Kingdom they displaced all His Friends under the notion of Evil Counsellors for the good of the King and Kingdom and they raised an Army against the King under the Earl of Essex for the good of the King and Kingdom they fought against him in the Field and Bullets flew as thick as Hail about His Head for the good of the King and Kingdom and in fine they cut off His glorious Head too for the good of the King and Kingdom And for the Third hating Covetousness he is quite by the Cushion with his i. e. For it clearly intimates that they should chearfully assist their Sovereign with necessary Aids Subsidies and Supplies But he knows what hath gone abroad of late as a State-Maxim If upon any Terms we part with our Money till we are sure the King is ours the Nation is betrayed And yet Cicero a better Orator I cannot say a greater Common-wealths Man positively affirms Imperium sine vectigalibus retineri nullo modo potest which it is to be feared is the true foundation of the fore-recited Maxim And because this Adviser like the Jesuits doth not think the Scripture a sufficient Rule He proceeds to lay down Truths and Counsels as plain as possible he can and by his Recommendatory Letter he would have his Traditions make out the Insuffciency and Obscurity of Old Jethro's Rules who being a Priest or a Prince or both may be thought too much inclining to the Court Party as I suppose Solomon and St. Peter for the same Reasons are quite omitted or otherwise those who Fear God and Honour the King and meddle not with such as are given to change whose Calamity ariseth suddenly and who knows the Ruin of them both might have bid fairly to have been admitted for such Counsellors in whose multitude the safety of King and People too consists And now this Quack State-Doctor begins to talk learnedly of Critical Days and times and I pray consider says he this is a Critical Time upon your well or ill chusing depends your well or ill Being and you had need to do that well which you do not know whether ever you may do again Your Fate may not suffer you to offend twice in this one Particular Indeed this is an Amazing Paragraph This Fellow is the very Epitome of the Consult of the Jesuits at Wild-House as Doctor Oats in his Narrative Deposes That they intended to effect their wicked Plot Pag. 67. by disaffecting the Kings best Friends and Subjects First Charging him with Tyranny and Designs of Oppressing Governing by the Sword and without Parliaments Secondly By aspersing Deriding Exposing and Declaiming against His Person Councils and Actions in Parliament and elsewhere Nothing but the Impudence of a Plotter such a one as the Doctor describes could give the Lye to Majesty The King assures His People he will meet them in frequent Parliaments and here comes an Adviser to tell the People they do not know whether they may ever chuse Members for Parliaments again that their Fate may not suffer them to offend twice in that one Particular which is only in softer words the better to deceive the People to promote the Popish Plot by persuading the Nation they are like to have no more Parliaments These two Paragraphs of Doctor Oats which I have mentioned are in truth the Contents of his whole Book and the Libel is only an culargement upon these two heads of the Plot And if that be the way to Save England God deliver all good Protestants from such Savers and such Salvation And I desire the Reader to carry these Expositors in his mind for he shall find him all along indeavouring to traduce either the King or the Government or both upon which he is so violently bent that he persuades the People to whom for their Edification the Discourse is addressed That Kings have been their Constant Enemies for says he Liberty and Property were rescued by Inches out of the hands of incroaching Violence and this is another of his stabbing parentheses When in truth the People owe all their Liberties Franchises Charters and Immunities and even that great one of Commons to represent them in Parliament to the Bounty and Goodness of former Kings and never any King either did or attempted to deprive the People of the Grants of their Predecessors Let the Charter of London now publickly Printed and Sold be looked into and it will shew from William the Conqueror to His most August Majesty King Charles the Second what vast favors the Kings of England have con-ferred upon that City which it is to be hoped will incline them to Loyalty and Gratitude to His Majesty and to stop their Ears against such Charming Seducers as this and other Libellers especially if they remember that the first violaters of their Charter and the great Charter of England were the late Usurpers who dethroned and murthered their Lawful King by the very same popular Arts the Fears and Jealousies of Evil-Counsellors and Arbitrary Government Consider saith he you trust the Parliament with your Estates Liberties Religion and Lives And do the People chuse the Parliament too or only the House of Commons Are not the King and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal to be trusted A late Libel has indeed said we want a King and a Government that we may trust c. And now comes in our Commentator and obtrudes the word Parliament as if it only consisted of the Lower House and the whole trust were in them as presently after he adds they have the Interest and Charge of us all upon them For saith he should you be undone in any of these when it 's too late you may lament that you are undone by making such a choice as hath undone you by Law A fair prosecution of the Design and Plot mentioned by Doctor Oats but that will not satisfie him the man is for speaking plain Truths and Counsels and therefore he does it to purpose in the next page How your Expectations have been frustrated your hopes blasted you feelingly bewail Pag. 9. exactly as the
H. 3. and Mr. Prinn who was the most violent Assertor even of the Sovereignty of Parliaments in his Book which bears that Title and who ransacked all the Records in the Tower and in the Cotton Library and all other places yet could not raise the water a hairs breadth higher than the spring and if he could have produced any Evidence of the Commons being a Constituent Part of the Parliament before Hen. 3. he would not have been sparing to acquaint us with it But for his Certain Note that is so worthy a particular Observation that such men only aim at the Destruction and Ruin of both c. I think it is beyond Aiming and worthy a particular Observation That they who cryed up the House of Commons as the Parliament as I have observed to you this Libeller doth Pag. 13. where he talks of not considering to chuse a Parliament making that part the people chuse indefinitely the Parliament I say they were such as he that voted the Honourable House of Lords useless and dangerous turned them out of Doors depriving the Nation of their supream Court of Judicature and setting up the most Arbitrary and Despotical power under the name of Parliament that England ever saw thereby ruining the famous Constitution of Parliaments Certainly they are the true Lovers of the Government who give to every Degree and Order among us their proper due not diminishing one to augment the other which is the true healthful Temperament of the Body Politick Then he falls into a great fit of Modesty Pag. 12. he will not with Effrontery conclude but he tells the people of some that cry up an absolutely absolute power in the Prince that we are all Slaves or Vassals that voluntas Regis is Lex Populi why does he not name them that they may receive their deserved punishment if he cannot do it and I am sure he would if he could He is the Author and publisher of this Arbitrary Doctrine and the disperser of a Defamation of his Sovereign And if Malice and Art were not mingled in him to perfection why could he not as well have told the people that his present Majesty says the same as his Royal Father did that he that will Preach more than he can prove let him suffer And certainly had there been as loyal Preaching in Schismatical Conventicles of which with his large principles he is so great a Patron and Advocate as there hath constantly for Twenty years last past been in all the Churches of England and more particularly in White-hall Chappel we should have had no need of his Advice to save England His second and third Head are Co-incident Pag. 13 a Declamation against Cakes and Ale and would you think that Cakes and Ale and roast Beef should be such dangerous unqualifying things in an Election why I will unfold the Mystery the zeal of his party and the underhand bearing their Charges he knows will carry them to Elections And indeed they dare not offend their Teachers who have them in as much awe as the Jesuites have their Missioners But the other party of whom they are afraid who do not love the Trouble and the rudeness of their Opponants at Elections and had rather be minding their Affairs do by the prevalency of Custom expect to have their Charges defrayed And methinks this crosses one of his former Qualifications of such as will propagate the Improvement and Consumption of the Growth of their Countrey I assure you the Manufacture of good English Ale Beef and Bread are strangely help'd off at all Elections and the good Towns rejoyce as much at a Dissolution in hopes of the Advantages of Elections as he seems to Lament His fourth is a Satyr against Pensioners But least that should not hold water in comes Reputed Pensioners like Papists and Popishly affected This sweeps all how many worthy Gentlemen have their Reputation blasted with this scandal It is the hardest case in the World sure that such Loyal Gentlemen as spent their Estates in defence of their King Countrey Laws Liberties and Religion cannot receive the favour of their Prince but they must be branded with the Infamous name of Pensioners and Enemies to their Countrey I think indigent persons as unqualified as he does but I have learnt to distinguish between Indigent by Loyalty and Indigent by Prodigality the last I abominate the first I pity But by no means chose a Courtier or Durante beneplacito Man and why I pray Sir It is a Crime to be a Courtier in former Parliaments those who were Courtiers had the Honour to sit always near Mr. Speakers Chair And if he were as well acquainted with Parliamentary Records as he pretends to be with Qualifications he would find many Orders even in 40. and 41. wherein the honourable Gentlemen that sit next the Chair are desired to represent the Affairs of the House to His Majesty Cannot a Man serve his King and his Countrey too are their Interests so opposite as you make People believe It was never good World since this was Preached for good Doctrine nor ever will be till this State Heresie is condemned by a Parliament which I will not despair to live to see but the wonder to me is to see the Confidence of the Jugler first to topp upon us that this is no Reflection upon the King and at the same cast of his hand to slur the old Quick-silver Dy of Coordinacy of Power The King being One Part of the Government should leave the other free But the Sophister never tells the People what part he is but to supply his defect I will from the great Oracle of the Law the Lord Coke inform them That the King is Caput Finis Principium Parliamenti the Alpha and Omega the Head the End and Beginning of Parliaments He is their Fountain from whence they spring and the Sea of Power into which they run and devolve themselves As for His Admonition about Non Residents I believe there are some who live about the Town who will give him little thanks for his Caution especially the Gentlemen of the Long Robe upon whom this is a sour and severe Reflection As few Minors as he can hinder tho the House of Commons hath formerly had the Reputation of a great School of Wisdome which he seems to lessen by this Reflection And he might have added no bis Pueris if he had pleased I should not have quarrel'd him for it The same I say as to Prodigals and Voluptuous Persons No Zealots for a Popish Successor I am none nor know any such and wish he would distinguish between Successor and Popish Successor I do not find that Christ or His Successors the Apostles were branded for Zealots for Heathen Successors because they never endeavoured to exclude them but Taught Commanded and Practised all Obedience to them And certainly we should have had none but State-Martyrs if this Doctrin had been known to Tertullian to Julian the