Bohemia and that by the designed Marriage of His late Majesty with the Infanta of Spain he endeavoured all he could to allay and quench the Fire which the Wars about that and the Palatinate had kindled in Germany and had put too many of our English into an humour and fit of Zeal to desire the propagating of the Protestant Religion by the Sword no such Fears or Jealousies had gained a Possession in the Minds of some unquiet People who were in Duty as well as Reason to have acquiesced in the Constancy and Care of that Religious King for the preservation of the Protestant Religion Nor escape your Observation that the benefits of the Marriage with the Infanta of Spain being not well understood and the misapprehension of a Toleration of Popery to ensue thereupon multiplying the supposed Dangers Having induced the House of Commons in Parliament in the Nineteenth year of his Reign to Petition that peaceable Prince that the time was come that Janus Temple must be opened and the Voice of Bellona not of the Turtle must be heard and therefore they thought it their Duty not only to provide for the present supply of the War but to take Care for the securing of their Peace at home which the dangerous Increase and Insolency of Popish Recusants apparently visibly and sensibly did lead them unto And yet in the same Petition did acknowledge That they did not assume to themselves any Power to determine of any part thereof nor intended to incroach or intrude upon the sacred bounds of his Royal Authority to whom and to whom only they acknowledged it did belong to resolve of Peace and War and the Marriage of the most Noble Prince his Son Unto which he did Answer That his Son in Law 's unjust Usurpation of the Crown of Bohemia from the Emperor had given the Pope and all that Party too fair a ground and opened them too wide a gate for curbing and oppressing of many Thousands of the Protestant Religion in divers parts of Christendom that the Palatines accepting of the Crown of Bohemia had no reference to the Cause of Religion and therefore would not have the Parliament to couple the War of the Palatinate with the Cause of Religion and that the beginning of that miserable War which had set all Christendom on fire was not for Religion but only caused by his Son-in-Law's hasty resolution following evil Counsel to take to himself the Crown of Bohemia and in the last year of his Reign in a Speech to the Parliament wished that it might be written in marble and remain to Posterity as a mark upon him when he should swerve from his Religion And certainly he must be much an Infidel and a great Master in the Phantasticks and School of Opinionastrete that will not believe King Charles the First his Son to have been a great Assertor of it when in the fourth year of his Reign in a Speech to the Parliament he declared That he was and ever should be as careful of Religion and as forward as they could desire and would use all means for the maintenance and propagation of that Religion wherein he had lived and did resolve to die And in the Head of his Army and very great Distresses afterwards profess by the taking of the blessed Sacrament to maintain it and took so great a Care of it as a Popish Book could not peep into England but he speedily appointed some of his Chaplains or some other Learned Man of the Church of England to Print and Publish an Answer unto it made many of his Coins of Silver to Proclaim his resolution to Defend the Protestant Religion Laws Privileges of Parliament and the Liberties of the People and died a Martyr because he would not deliver up his Subjects to a perpetual slavery of a never to be shaken off Arbitrary Power And His Majesty that now is being the Son and Heir of his Constancy in the Protestant Religion hath been so much of that fixed and unalterable Resolution as the Love of a Mother and all those Obligations that a filial Obedience had put upon him could not disswade him from enforcing the Duke of Gloucester his younger Brother out of her Tuition and Intention to breed him up in the Popish Religion and the Syren Charms of Militiere in his Book purposely Dedicated unto him to make him averse to that Religion whose Pseudo-Professors had murdered his Father and been the Cause of those very many Miseries Affronts Ill Usages Wants and Reproaches which he and his Royal Brothers endured in the Twelve years longsome time of his Distresses could never perswade him to accept of a strong and powerful Aid of Catholick Princes for his Re-establishment in his Kingdoms nor incline him to do that to save Three Kingdoms which his Grandfather by the Mother-side the Great Henry of France by reconciling himself to the Church of Rome did to save only one when his Sufferings outwent and far surmounted any which his Grandfather had endured But if any would have our Laws the severest of which was Enacted in the Conspiracy and feared evil Consequences of the Gun-Powder Treason to be put so much in execution as to forfeit and take away two parts of three the whole in three parts to be equally divided of the real Estates of those who have Lands and Subject those that have no Lands to great Forfeitures and Penalties and incapacitate all to bear any Office in the Kingdom They are to consider that it will be as hard as unequal for their King and Common Parent as well as ours to allow a Liberty and Connivance to those that are of worse Principles or at least as dangerous as the Papists fought and were active in our last Wars and Miseries against His Majesty and His Royal Father and all that were their Loyal and Obedient Subjects and deny it to those that fought were Sequestred Plundered and Suffered for them that all the Protestants in the World are not in England and that amongst those in England there are too many the more is the pity who have so rent and divided themselves from the Church of England and do so much and so often vary in their Judgments Practice and Opinions as they appear rather to be no Protestants or very little embracing the Profession and Interest thereof that our Incomparable and Prudent Queen Elizabeth could never have maintained and supported so much as she did the Protestant Religion as well Lutheran as Calvinist in the Parts beyond the Seas and that of the purer and better reformed Religion of the English Church at home by her Aids Embassies Leagues and Intercessions if she had not requited the Catholick Princes with the like Indulgence and usage to any of her Subjects that were of the Romish Religion and that neither the Rebellions of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland for the advance of Popery many several Attempts to take away her Life and Plots to Dethrone her could ever
League with the French may as little Prejudice us and our Laws and Liberties as it did those of the Dutch when they were in the strictest Alliance or Confederacy with them For no man can be so transported out of himself as to believe that a Neighborhood or a League for Civil and other Respects can work any Prejudice to the Religion Laws and Liberties of the Subjects of either Prince or State not granted away or Contracted for by such Leagues when every days Experience declares the contrary for otherwise the Poles whose King is Elective and their Laws so very much obliging him as he cannot alter the Freedom and Constitutions of the Peoples Liberties would be in danger of the Mahometan Extravagancies of Power to be brought in upon them when their Kings have made any Leagues with the Turks or Grand Seignior and the Sweedish Nation in fear of their Elective King 's introducing the vast and unruly Power of the Muscovite whose Subjects being under a mighty awe Ignorance and enforced Obedience have no more to answer when any State-Affairs are enquired of them than that God and the Great Duke do only know it Insomuch as the Provocation of the Dutch being so great and the Vindication of the Honour of the King Trade of the Nation Safety of the People and Soveraignty of the Sea so necessary as a War with them could not be avoided There was no other either visible or possible means to manage it with Prudence or Success than by the making of the League with France who had pretences of his own to joyn with ours In regard that Land-Armies and Forces were not able alone to bring them to good Terms without the assistance and aid of a great and mighty Navy at Sea which might be able to overcome and beat them in that which was their greatest Strength without which it would have been impossible for the English or French joyntly or seperately ever to have forced them to reason The King of Spain who would heretofore have been glad of such a Part'ner as the English to help to subdue those his formerly truly accompted Rebels of the United Provinces who by the help of the English and French had in a War of almost Sixty years together done him so very much wrong and many Mischiefs was then become so jealous of the growing greatness of France as he found it to be his Interest to assist those that had so greatly damnified him and were no other than his Hogen Mogen Rebels The Swede and Danes greatly concerned in their Trade and the Profit and Gain which they daily received by them in the Baltick Sea would not joyn in any War against them and if they would have been willing were at too great a distance and the forcing of passage would have been as difficult and dangerous as it would have been Chargeable and the like might have been said of the Elector of Brandenburgh who was in League Amity and Interest with them and the most part of the other German Princes being of small Power far off and inconsiderable who might not make War with any Members of the Empire as the Dutch being part of the lower Circle of Burgundy were without the Approbation of the Emperor and their Diets and the Charge and little Success of hiring the Bishop of Munster to raise Forces whereby to make a Diversion and Incumbrance upon them in our former Wars with them had taught us what little good and at how great an Expence that design effected And it is well known that an Army for the intended Recovery of the Palatinate was in the 21 th year of the Reign of King James by an able and select Council of War and the Approbation of the Parliament then thought not to be sufficient with the Aid of the Dutch in their Provisions and passage under the Number of 25000 Foot and 5000 Horse and the Charge of 30000 l. to furnish them with Necessaries And when afterwards Count Mansfeild a second Hannibal and one of the greatest Captains of his time in Christendom had with 12000 Foot and 200 Horse Levied here and encouraged by K. James and the Parliament some promised Aids from France and some other States and Princes undertook to regain that wasted Countrey of the Palatinate Ship'd his Men and was at Sea with them the King of France's denying their Landing at Calice and promised Passage and the Province or States of Zealand when he attempted to Land his Men upon their Coasts making a like refusal the Pestilence and Flux whilst they were at Sea penn'd up and almost stifled in the Ships killed two parts in three of them and the remaining third part mouldring away that Action and all the Design hopes charges and Endeavours of it miscarried and came to nothing And certainly the English War with the Dutch Petitioned for by the Parliament put and carried on with so much reason of State and by so many very Important Necessities might Claim to be as well allowed to be without any detriment to the Interest of the Protestant Religion as other Wars betwixt Protestants heretofore have been upon Civil Accompts and Controversies The Dutch upon a pretence of their better defending themselves against any Attempts or Increase of Power of the Spaniard their then Enemy did take and keep Wesell and some Towns in the Dutchies of Cleve and Juliers and other Frontier Towns belonging to the Elector of Brandenburgh a Protestant Prince the Justice whereof hath not yet been understood by the Learned in Politicks and Affairs of State were not Incumbred with any Accusation of weakening the Protestant Religion and it must needs remain a Problem never to be determined but put upon the File of Eternity what can be the Reason that Oliver Cromwell and his Party of Regicide Rebels about the year 1654. upon far less Provocations should so chearfully be aided and assisted in his Maritine Wars with the Hollanders until he beat them into a Peace and acknowledgment of the English Soveraignty over the Brittish Seas enforced upon them the Act of Navigation That no Commodities Transported into England from thence or of the growth of those Countries or any other Neighbour Countries should be brought by them but in English Bottoms and made them stink in the Nostrils of all Nations and to be guilty of a most horrid Ingratitude in the renouncing the Prince of Orange and his Illustrious Family and taking from them those Offices and Places which they and their Ancestors had in their Defence so dearly purchased and yet his Cromwellian Power was not at all accused for hurting the Protestant Religion or how our Wars with the Dutch in the years 1664. and 1665. upon far less Provocation should be Petitioned for by our Merchants and both Houses of Parliament and willingly contributed unto and not at all believed to be against the Protestant Religion and why the War now made upon greater Affronts and Injuries should be an undermining of
Ursa Major Minor OR A Sober and Impartial ENQUIRY Into those Pretended Fears and Jealousies OF Popery and Arbitrary Power WITH Some Things offered to Consideration touching His MAJESTIE' 's League made with the King of FRANCE upon Occasion of his Wars with Holland and the United Provinces IN A LETTER Written to a Learned FRIEND LONDON Printed for H. S. MDCLXXXI SIR IF a very long and sad for many years together often repeated Experience with the sence of very many National and Universal needless Miseries which are so certainly to be believed as all the People of the Nation the wickedly-gaining Party by it only excepted may safely make Affidavit of it were able to obtain any thing or prevail with us not one but every man should think that it was and would be a duty Incumbent upon every English-man and true Lover of his King and Countrey for there be too many Counterfeits who do not well understand either the one or the other to abhor and fly as the affrighted Greek and Relator of the Strength and Gigantine Cruelties of the monstrous Polyphemus did with a Fugite ô Fugite from the Phantasms of those ungrounded Fears and Jealousies which usher'd in and fomented that Subversion of our Religion Laws and Liberties especially when it is not yet gone out of memory how many Dismal and ever to be lamented Effects and Calamities the inflamed and affrighted Vulgar and too hasty and inconsiderate Factious part of the People in the Years 1641 and 1642. with the Fancies of Popery and Arbitrary Power and Dangers rushing in upon us viz. a Plague-Plaister supposed to have been Attempted to be delivered to their great Champion Mr. John Pym to Infect and Destroy him Horses kept and trained under Ground the Lord Digby in his Coach and six Horses upon his ordinary occasions appearing at Kingston upon Thames in a Warlike manner with many other dressed up Bugbears not enough to affright old Women and young Children have brought upon us and that a Bloody and Costly War Murder of their King and fellow Subjects Rapine and Spoil of each other the washing over in Blood and almost Destruction of Three Kingdoms and the Ruine of Church and State have been the Products of them And when all was done could not assign any other Ground or Cause for it than Rebellion that Sin of Witchcraft and the Relish and Content which was found in the violation of all the Commandments in the second Table of the dreadfully by God himself pronounced Decalogue and as much as they could of the first and by yielding up their Discretions to the first Summons of their Fears of Imaginary apparitions of Dangers have made themselves to be well deserving or fit for the Reproach or Castigation which St. Paul used to a far less intoxicated People O ye foolish Galatians who hath bewitched you Though your Learning long Conversation and large acquaintance with history together with your curious recherches and retrospection into the Affairs of the World and Ages past a great Insight into the Politiques and a strict watch and observation kept upon the Causes Effects and Events of Actions of State and as many of the Reasons and Intrigues thereof as are proper and do usually come to publick View may sufficiently fortifie you against those kind of Impressions which have bespoken and taken up so much room in the Minds of such as are less Cognisant or do too much accustome themselves to make their Designs to be the only measure of their own Errors in Judgment which are not seldom built upon guess or contraries yet lest your great care and vigilance in all the Concernments of the Protestant Religion and the Property and just Rights of the Subjects should raise in you more than ordinary Apprehensions and carrying you down the Rapid stream of those great mistakings bereave you of that Happiness which hitherto hath attended the Temper and Tranquillity of your Mind and make you a Prisoner to those Fears and false Alarms which your more Sedate Thoughts will I assure my self tell you are not to be numb'red amongst those quoe in virum Constantem cadere possint which can ever be able to disturb the quiet and repose of a Man who from the mountains of Time hath looked further than yesterday and by the Rules of Prudence Policy and former Examples may with more certainty than Astrology ever afforded foresee what is likely to happen I have adventured here inclosed to send you my Thoughts and Sentiments which I hope will not want your Candid Reception especially when they shall but bring before you and your judicious Censure the Considerations that there will be enough surely to satisfie and quiet the most timerous or melancholick Persons who too often trouble themselves with their own Imaginations that the increase of Popery since the Statutes of the first and 23 th of Queen Eliz. and 3 d of King James in the year 1638. when Liberty Pretence of Religion and Conscience began to run out of their Wits and never stayed until they came to an Open and Horrid Rebellion hath been so little although the Popish Party have gained too many great Advantages by that and our many Divisions in Matters of Religion and Church Government and our late National Debaucheries and Atheism which do carry too many into the Delusions of Popery As it may if a strict accompt were taken probably enough ascertain us that there hath been rather a Decrease than an Increase of it And that if Commissions which will be no way inconsistent with the Rules and reason of Law and good Government were granted by His Majesty unto Orthodox Loyal Discreet Sober and Unbyassed Persons in every County and City of England and Wales to Inquire and Certifie how many Papists there are therein Resident the Result and Conclusion will assure His Majesty and His great Council of Parliament that there is not above Five in every Hundred of the Nation if so many that are guilty of direct Popery or Infected with it and in Scotland not many more unless that small Number should happen something to be increased by the late addition of the Jesuited Masquerade counterfeit Protestants And their increase in Riches or Estate not like to be much when they that shall be Convict and have no Lands or real Estate are by the Statutes of 29 Eliz. to forfeit and pay 20 l. every Month. And they that have Lands and real Estate are to pay 2 parts the whole in the 3 parts to be divided by the Statute of 3 Jac. ca. 4. And if that should not impoverish their Estates and make them less terrible than the Anakims it would nevertheless be effected by the Maintenance Necessities and corroding of their Priests and Jesuits with the multitude of Papal Exactions and Contributions to foreign Colleges and Religious Houses Pensions Censes Peter-pence Procurations Suits for Provisions Expeditions of Bulls Appeals Rescripts Dispensations Licenses Grants Relaxations Writs of Perinde
valent Rehabilitations Abolitions and other sorts and natures of Breves and Instruments enumerated in the Statute of 25 H. 8. ca. 21. And there said to be Infinite with their many times costly Masses Indulgencies Releases and Purgatory favours by which the common kind of Papists are sure in their Contributions and Taxes charged upon them by their wellgaining Superiours or Conductors the wrong way to have themselves and their Families kept and continued poor and low enough without the least of danger of Surfeits or overmuch Satieties especially when they are to live after the excessive Rates of Houshold Provisions and Expences for Food and Raiment now more than formerly exacted to the shame and disgrade of the Protestant Religion by a mighty and insupportable excess of Pride Usury Brocage and Cheating to maintain it Neither are their Numbers or Increase considering their strict Observations of Lent very many Publick Penances Vigils and Fasts and Private Mortisications like to be as dreadful as that of the Children of Israel in Aegypt to the Aegyptians Or of the Moors that had 800 years together Conquered and Overpowred Spain when the numerous Posterity of them were in the memory of Man Banished and sent home again into Affrick upon so severe and short a warning as they were constrained to abandon and leave behind them all their Lands and Possessions and carry only such moveables as a rigorous and short prefixion could allow them Or to cause them to be Transplanted as many of the Irish were by Cromwell in his Hypocritical Zealous and unmerciful Policy from their other more comfortable Provinces in Ireland as Ulster Lymerick and the English Pale into Connaught the worser part of that Kingdom And that there is no foundation to support those Panick Fears which have so greatly and more then needs tormented the Minds of too many of the either over-credulously fearful or over-medling part of the People and being only more supposed than demonstrated to be a Grievance and lying heavy upon some kind of Spirits will be as necessary to be taken out of their Minds and as well becoming a State Policy and the Care of the Soveraign as it was of our King Henry the Third who in the turbulent Commotions of his Barons and their Adherents and the Distresses which were put upon him found it to be no Mountebank's Medicine to Cure and asswage the Distempers of the all-discerning and giddy Multitude by granting out his Commissions into every County to inquire of their Grievances or causes of discontents so as not to excuse or Patronize any one Sort or Sect whatsoever in their maintaining the Unchristian and Damnable Doctrine of Killing or Deposing Princes for Male-Administration of Justice or those that dissent from our truly Loyal and Religious Church of England It may be a thing capable of wonder and fit to be put as a Question to the more Intelligent How it should happen that Fears and Jealousies should so disturb the Minds of such as endeavour to affright themselves and others with the Attempts and Dangerous Doctrines of the Popish Party and the same persons nevertheless to be so calm and silent in the fast-rooted unrepented and offered in publick to be justified groundless ungodly and disloyal Opinions of too many of those that would be called Protestants and accompted Zealots in the Practice and Promotion of it That a King is accomptable to the People for breach of Trust may be deposed and is but Co-ordinate with both his Houses of Parliament and as not content with that which can never be proved to be due unto them would mount a great deal higher and pretend that there is a Soveraignty in the People and that the King is but an Artificial Man set up or appointed by them And suffer a Seditious Book called The Obligation of Humane Laws to be publickly Sold and never complained of when it doth all it can to prove That every man how simple or illiterate soever he be is to be a Judge whether the Law or a Command of his Prince or Superior be good or bad and direct or apply his Obedience unto it accordingly As if they had never heard or read of the folly and dire Effects of Rebellion and Sedition in that of the Spencers in the Reign of King Edward the Second That Allegiance was only due to the Crown and not unto the Person of the Prince being exploded by two Acts of Parliament and the Promoters Condemned of Treason and his Inforced resignation of his Crown to his Son King Edward the Third by the Faction of his Queen and Mortimer and the deposing of King Richard the Second by an over-power of the Army of Henry of Lancaster and his Party occasioned by affrighting him into a seeming voluntary Surrender disallowed and detested by Succeeding Ages Or may we not rather commend and imitate the better temper of the Subjects of this Kingdom before the 23 d year of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth when in the beginning of her Happy and ever to be praised Government they never started at her Indulgence to the Popish Party or took it ill that she kept an Embassador at Rome and was offered to have the English Liturgy and Reformation established by the Pope's Authority if she would but acknowledge his Supremacy gave Aid to Don Antonio a distressed Popish Prince towards the Recovery of the Kingdom of Portugal and so much assisted Mary Queen of Scotland a Papist and Mother to our King James who if she had survived her was by Inheritance to have been Queen of England against the Presbyterian and Congregational Rebellious Party in Scotland as they called her the Whore of Babylon and publickly Preached that she was an Atheist and of no Religion Or can we do less than deem the English Nation in the Reign of King James to be happy in their enjoyment of so great a Tranquility as to be free from any Suspitions of the Increase of Popery when he was wrongfully accused by Elphiston to have written a little before his coming to the Crown of England a seeming friendly Letter to the Pope and that the Pope had after he came into England sent a Cardinal to Seduce him into the Snares of that Religion wherein although upon reason of State he had given his Royal Protection unto Preston and Warrington two Secular Priests against the Practices of some Jesuits which Abbot Arch-Bishop of Canterbury a professed enemy to Popery did allow as a thing not evilly done his afterwards Learned Books and Writings against that Church might have abundantly manifested the folly of such who should but have imagined that he had any Inclination or good Will unto it For it cannot be unknown to you that until the 16 th year and the after succeeding years of the Reign of that peaceable and wise Prince when his Son-in-Law Frederick Prince Elector and Count Palatine of the Rhine had as unhappily as rashly and unjustly taken upon him to be Elected King of
the Protestant Cause or tend to a Subversion of that Religion more than it did than when Oliver could League with France and its Politick Cardinal Mazarine and set the Dane to Invade the Sweed and after that to put the Sweed upon the Dane on purpose to disenable him from assisting His now Majesty his near Allie and Kinsman without any prejudice supposed to the Protestant Religion of either side and be commended for it Charles the Fifth Emperor Imprisoning the Pope and putting him to a Ransom made him not suspected to be a Calvinist or Lutheran Lewis the 13 th King of France a Catholick Prince could heretofore make a League with the Great Gustavus Adolphus King of Sweeden a Protestant back him with Leagues and yearly great Sums of Money to Deplume the Roman Eagle and make those glorious feats of Arms which he did accomplish to be the Ruine and Disturbance of many a Popish Prince and to be so formidable as to shake the Foundations of the House of Austria and the Pope and all the Partakers of them The now King of France could for a wrong done by others to his Embassadors in the Court of Rome make the Pope himself submit to the setting up of a Pillar of Infamy at Rome to be a witness to the World of the Indignation of the one and Chastisement of the other and hath lately vigorously assisted the now King of Sweden against the Danes and Elector of Brandenburgh being all Protestants and did not think that he forfeited thereby the Title of the most Christian King and a great Maintainer of the Popish Religion of which and much more which might be said there may be as many approved Examples to be met withal in History as there may be well digested Reasons in order to Publick Peace and Tranquility alleadged for it so that they that would Criticise and be over Censorious should if they would be just whilst they Condemn His Majestie 's League with France to be as a strengthening and weighing down of the Balance on the Popish part consider that the last King of France did by his League with Gustavus King of Sweden so advance the Protestant side of the Balance as it endangered all the other side that the Villanies at home against His late Majesty and the setting up of Oliver and his League with France depressing the Spaniard and making France so over-Potent hath ever since turned the Balance and disordered it And that Balances may notwithstanding at other times be rectified and made equilibrious without any damage to the Protestant Religion or the various Profession of it Which League of His Majesty with France and that Active Princes Power and concurrent Interest to enervate the dangerous neighbouring greatness of the Dutch overgrown Republick did so little weaken the Balance on the Protestant part as the Event hath clearly demonstrated it to have been the only means of re-establishing the Prince of Orange his Nephew no remote Heir to the Crowns of England Scotland and Ireland and the Heirs Males of His Body in the Authority and Dignity of Stadtholder of the United Belgick Provinces Generalissimo of all their Forces and Armies by Land and Admiral of their formidable and to a wonder very numerous Fleets of which by the contrivance of Cromwell the Profess'd Enemy of His Majestie 's Royal Line and Family and his encouragement of the Faction of the De Wits he had most ingratefully been deprived concerning which there appears not in the Petition of the Parliament for a War with the Dutch to have been any prospect or design and rendred him thereby together with the access of his Personal Virtues Valour and Wisdom being not yet of the Age of Thirty years not only the great Imitator of his glorious Ancestors on the Fathers and Mothers side but the probability if the over-hazarding of his Person doth not shorten the hopeful race and course of his life of being the greatest Captain of the Christian World an Honour of the Protestant Religion and the strengthening of it And it can therefore be no unwholsome advice not to set our own House on Fire by needless Fears and Jealousies as we have done or make our selves less wise than the Seditious Rabble of Rome who by the Wisdom of Menenius Agrippa were Charmed into a Pacification and quiet of Spirits by the Fable or Apologue of the mutiny of the Members of the Body against the Belly or Paunch which could not be altogether so perillous as ours would be against the Head for until the Laws of God Nature and Nations shall be repealed and the wiser part of the People who have lived in the habitable World can by any of that Party or Children of Contention now living be convinced and brought by any Rules of right Reason or Wisdom to acknowledge that Particulars in a Body Politick are more to be heeded and taken Care of than Universals the lesser part more than the greater a few more than a multitude or that in the Body Natural the Heart Liver Lungs Arms Back Belly Legs Bones Sinews Muscles and Ligaments with Hundreds of little Parts and Particles appertaining to that excellent Frame and Structure of Man's Body can subsist and do well when the Head which gives motion and comfort unto all and the least of them is Sick and ruining for want of its necessary Support and Supply from them in their several Offices We need not be at much pains in the search of Reason that they who do purchase the Occasions or Advantages of Contention which may in the end howsoever contenting and profitable it may seem to be in the beginning or pursuit of it prove to be their own as well as others Irrepairable Ruine and do all that they can to disturb and mud the Waters that refresh and make glad the Valleys of our Syon should justly be accompted to be no wiser in the Event than he who having all his Goods in a Friend's House set on fire by some that designed it and their own Benefit as our Neighbour Dutch were said to have done in the Wars of Bohemia or by some evil Accident would so much forget his Charity and Duty to his Neighbour and care of himself as to refuse to aid or help him either by Water Ladder Buckets or Engines until he should first have called him and his Servants to Accompt and Examination how and where the Fire began by whose negligence or miscarriage what method care and order will be taken to prevent it for the future and what Security he will or can give that there shall be no more such an accident hereafter And whilst he is thus over-running his Discretion and acting his own Folly and new sound Politicks suffer the Fire to do what it list Burn the House and all his own Goods as well as those of his Friends and Neighbours in it When History and the Records and never enough bewailed Experience of times past might have told him and all that
Grandfather King Henry the Seventh the happy Uniter of the White and Red Roses having by a Provident Care made such a Choice of Wise and ValiantSea and Land Commanders Sage Counsellors and Ministers of State and Judges of the Law as no Prince of her Age or Time could equal did by a constant encouraging and imploying no other than those who made it not their only Business to seek their own Profits but were as fixt to her as she was to them by whom and her own careful Conduct and Guidance she withstood all the Assaults of Rome and Spain and the Machinations which their Jesuits could Plot or Promote against her and her most excellent steddy Monarchical Government weather'd out the Storms and Rebellions raised up against her with no single or few Attempts to take away her Life supported her Allies and was a Bulwark impregnable not only to the more refined Protestant Religion which she had planted and defended here in England but to those different Forms elected or set up by Luther and Calvin and the Huguenots in the Foreign and other Parts of Christendom was in her glorious and ever to be imitated happy Reign as she made her Subjects as happy as her self in the Councils Love Duty and Allegiance of her Parliament and assistance of her People for their own as well as her Preservation and Good who although they were by her limitted not to meddle with Church or State Government forbid and sharply reproved for medling with the Successors had some of their several Members as Mr. Peter Wentworth and Sir Henry Bromley Prohibited to sit in the House of Commons and afterwards Committed Prisoners to the Tower of London sent for Sir Edward Coke their Speaker and charged him to deliver her Message to the House which he did not omit to do That It was in her Power to Call Prorogue Adjourn Dissolve or Determine Parliaments and to Assent or Dissent And in one of the said Parliaments refused her consent to 48 Bills which had passed in both Houses informed the House of Commons That she misliked their Irreverence towards her Privy Councellors Members of that House who were not to be accompted as Common Knights and Burgesses that are Councellors but during the Parliament whereas the others were standing Councellors and for their Wisdom and great Service were call'd to the Council of State Blamed some that seem'd to make their Necessities more than they were forgetting the urgent Necessities of the Time and Dangers would not have her People feared with Reports and speaking to them that she heard that upon the last Attempt of the Spaniard some had abandoned their Towns fled higher into the Countrey and left all Naked said I swear unto you By God if I knew those Persons or any that shall do so hereafter I will make them know and feel what it is to be so fearful in so urgent a Cause And when the Commons had Petition'd unto her against some grievances of her Purveyances and Court of Exchequer answer'd That she had given some Order to the Lord Steward for the redress of the Purveyances That she had as much Skill and Power to rule and govern her own House as any of her Subjects whatsoever to rule and govern theirs without the help of their Neighbours and would shortly take further order therein by the advice of her Judges and Learned Council Commanded the Speaker of the House of Commons That if any Bills should be there exhibited touching the Succession Matters of State or Causes Ecclesiastical he should not receive them Which several Speeches Directions and Messages of her Majesty with many others in all the time of her Parliaments and long and happy Reign were well esteemed of whose Birth-Day for now almost Fourscore years last past in London and many other Places of England hath upon every 17 th day of November by Legacies of Annual Commemorative Sermons and Ringing of Bells been Celebrated and was so happy in the Duty Allegiance and Obedience of her Parliaments As a Prudent very Eminent Learned Member of the House of Commons said That before he would speak or give any consent to a Case that should debase her Soveraignty or Abridge it I would wish my Tongue cut out of my Head Anno 43. of her Reign A Bill being brought into the House of Commons for Explanation of the Common Law concerning the Queens Letters Patents and certain Monopolies Mr. Spicer a Burgess of Warwick said That that Bill might touch the Prerogative Royal which was as he had Learned so transcendent as the eye of the Subject may not aspire thereunto and therefore be it far from him that the State and Prerogative of the Prince should be Tyedly him or any other Subject Mr. Francis Bacon after Lord Chancellor said That for the Prerogative Royal of the Prince for his part he ever allowed it and is such as he hoped should never be discussed And said Mr. Speaker pointing to the Bill This is no stranger in this place but a stranger in this Vestment The Use hath been ever by Petition to humble our selves to her Majesty and by Petition to desire to have the Grievances redressed especially when the remedy touchethiher in Right or Prerogative I say and I say again That we ought not to deal or meddle with or judge of her Majesties Prerogative I wish every man therefore to be careful of this point Mr. Lawrence Hyde said I do owe a Duty to God and Loyalty to my Prince I made it and I think I understand it far be it from this heart of mine to write any thing in Prejudice or Derogation of her Majesties Prerogative Royal and the State Mr. Serjeant Harris moved That the Queen might be Petitioned by the House in all Humility Mr. Francis Moore afterwards Serjeant Francis Moore said He did know the Queens Prerogative was a thing curious to be dealt with Sir Robert Wroth a Member of that House did in his own particular offer 100 l. per Annum to the Wars Upon a Debate of Monopolies the Queen understanding that a List of such as she had granted had been brought into the House sent for their Speaker and declared unto him That for any Patents granted by her whereby any of her Subjects might be oppressed she would take present order for Reformation thereof her Kingly Prerogative was tender and therefore desired them not to speak or doubt of her Reformation but that some should be repealed others suspended and none put in Execution but such as by a Trial at Law should appear to be for the good of the People which being reported by him to the House filled them with unspeakable Joy Mr. Wingfield wept and said His heart was not able to conceive or his tongue express the Jov that he had in that Message And thereupon Mr. Secretary Cevill said That there was no reason that all should be revoked for the Queen meant not to be swept out of her Prerogative And
gave them a Caution for the future to believe that whatsoever is subject to a publick Exposition cannot be good And the Parliaments in her long and glorious Reign were so unwilling to give any disturbance to her Great and Renowned Actions for the defence and good of her Self and her People and all the Protestant Concernments in Christendom As in the First year of her Reign a Parliament granted her Two shillings eight pence in the Pound of Goods and Four shillings of Lands to be paid in several Payments In her Sixth year one Subsidy was granted by the Clergy and another by the Laiety together with two Fifteenths and Tenths in the Thirteenth year of her Reign towards the Charges of Suppressing the Northern Rebellion a Subsidy of Six shillings in the pound by the Clergy and by the Temporalty two Fifteens and a Subsidy of Two shillings and eight pence in the Pound in her Six and twentieth year had granted her by the Clergy two whole Subsidies and by the Laiety three besides Six Fifteenths and Tenths with a Proviso that that great Contribution should not be drawn into Example in her Fortieth year had granted by the Clergy three entire Subsidies and as many by the Laiety with Six Fifteens and Tenths and in the 42 th year of her Reign to furnish Money for the Irish Wars had Commissions granted to confirm the Crown Lands of Ireland to the Possessors o◠defective Titles And all little enough when in the same year Sir Walter Raleigh a Member of the House of Commons declared unto them That the Moneys lent unto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet unpaid her Jewels and much of her Lands sold and she had spared Money out of her own Purse and her Apparel for her Peoples sake And yet when in the Eighth year of her Reign the Parliament had offered unto her four Subsidies upon Condition that she would declare her Successor she magnanimously refused it and remitted the fourth Subsidy saying It was all one whether the Money was in her own or in her Subjects Coffers Our King James being born and bred in the Kingdom of Scotland where their Laws are mingled with some Neighbour English Customs drawn out of our Glanvil brought thither by their King James the First who lived some time here in England and afterwards so much Compounded and over-born by the Civil Law brought out of France long after by King James the Fifth which with some part of their Common Law makes them to be so overmuch Civil and Canon and a Miscellany of them as they are very much different from ours had so great an affection to the Civil Laws and those of his own Countrey before he had understood the Excellency of ours that shortly after his coming to the Crown of England he earnestly recommended to the Parliament of England not only an Union of both the Kingdoms and the Subjects thereof but of their Laws also And so much savoured the Civil Laws as he complained in a Speech to the Parliament of the Contempt of them allowed or was much taken with the Comedy of Ignoramus and Dulman which was purposely framed to expose the Professors of our Common Laws to a Derision of the People and render them guilty of an Ignorance of good Letters and Learning which all of them witness our great Selden and some other of his Coaevals could not justly be charged with and suffered it to be Acted before him at Cambridge with great Applause and to be afterwards Printed and Published without any murmur or jealousie of the English Nation that he endeavoured to introduce an Arbitrary Power who manifested no unwillingness to give him Subsidies and Aids in Foreign as well as Domestick Affairs when he had occasion to require them All which the Cares and doings of our Ancestors for the Publick and Common good joined with their Duty and Allegiance to their Soveraign Kings and Princes may afford us convincing Reasons and Arguments out of concluding Premisses that the Weal and Woe of Kings and their People are like those of Hippocrates's Twins partaking each with other and that the Fear of God Honour of the King Self-Preservation and Oaths and Duty of Allegiance will be more than enough to enjoyn every good Christian and Subject where the welfare of the King and Publick are concerned to be as willing to help the King as he would himself And it cannot be deemed to be either unadvisedly or ill done by our English Fore-fathers or Predecessors in the House of Commons in Parliament in the Seventh year of the Reign of King Richard the Second when being required of the King to give their Advice concerning a Peace to be made with the King of France And the Chancellor then said That the King of himself could well do it yet for good will he would not without their Knowledge or Consent And it could not be Concluded without a Personal Interview of the King of France which for his Honour required great Charges whereof he Charged them of their Allegiance to consult and give him Answer unto which they answering That it becomed not them to Intermeddle their Council therein And therefore referred the whole Order thereof unto the King and his Council And being urged again to answer whether they desired Peace or War for one of them they must choose They answered Peace But when they understood that the King of France desired that the King should hold Guyen of him by Homage and Service they knew not what to say only they hoped that the King meant not to hold of the French Calice and other Territories gotten of them by the Sword whereunto when the King replied That otherwise Peace could not be granted and therefore willed them to Choose They in the end rather desired Peace But Peace not ensuing or being to be had and the King by his Chancellor the next year after in Parliament informing them how that the King was Invironed with the French Spanish Flemmings and the Scots who were Confederate and had made great Preparations to destroy him and his People which was like to ensue unless some means were used to resist it That the King Intended to hazard his own Person to whatsoever Peril which might justly encourage all Estates willingly to offer themselves and what they had to such defence And declared unto them the falshood and treachery of the French in their Treaty of Peace at Calice when they finding the English inclined to it had departed from their Offers The Lords and Commons when they found the Honour of the King and Safety of the Nation so deeply Ingaged granted unto the King two Fifteenths Conditionally that a Moiety of the Fifteenth granted in the last Parliament be part of it and so as if the King go not in Person or that Peace be made the last Fifteenth might Cease Can the sullen rude and ungodly Dutch the most of whose Religion is Trade and all that can be gained by it to maintain their Incroachments
upon our Brittish Seas obstinate Pride and the greatest of Ingratitudes Drown and lay under Water a great part of their Countries to preserve the remainder from the fury of their Enemies endure the Assaults both by Sea and Land of two of the mightiest Princes of Christendom suffer their undrowned Cities to be Taken and Garrisoned and their People to lie under all the Miseries of a Conquering Over-running and Ruining Army by Land Behold and see their Banks of Treasure with their formerly great Riches and Credits for which they had Circled the Terrestrial Globe floating upon the Seas and like the Dead Bodies of the Slain of their People suddenly disappearing and sinking whilst the Inhabitants weeping as they work were scarcely able when their numerous over-burdening Taxes were paid to support their sad Souls in the Lodgings of their languishing and care-wasted Bodies with what was lest them of their Gains And shall not the Subjects of England for the Vindicating of their Soveraigns and the Nations long ago confirmed and allowed Rights in the Brittish Seas for the Honour and Safety of the King and themselves Protection of our Isles and our Ships which are not only the wooden Walls but glory thereof and the Girdle of Strength encompassing them lay aside their too often causeless Fears and Murmurings and out of their Luxury Pride Peace and Plenty spare that which may well be contributed towards his and their own Aid and Assistance Shall our Brittannia that was wont triumphantly to sit upon her Promontories looking into her Brittish Seas viewing her Glories and enriching many Nations with her Merchandize now like one affrighted tremblingly look back and behold the Divisions of her People at Land ready to make her and themselves a Reproach and Hissing to all Nations small and despicable in the eyes of those which were accustomed to honour her Shall the Tears lie upon her Cheeks Shall she cry out that her Friends have dealt Treacherously with her and are become her Enemies Shall she recount unto them how our Discords at Land heretofore made the Romans Masters both of our Seas and Land where the Conquerors confessed That Dum singuli pugnant omnes vincantur That their greatest Advantage was the Disagreement of the Conquered And will it not now be high time to believe what the Lords and Commons in Parliament declared in their Petition to King Charles the Martyr for our Religion Laws and Liberties in the fourth year of his Reign That Jealousies and Distractions are apparent signs of God's displeasure and of ensuing Mischiefs And that the Distempers and Fermentation thereof more and more increasing may recall to our remembrance How little those Fears and Jealousies did profit Mr. Pryn or his Adoring the Soveraignity as he once called it of Parliament when he was afterwards pull'd out of the House of Commons made a Prisoner and driven to an utter Detestation of their Arbitrary Power Or of how little avail they were to the restless spirit of Levelling John Lilburn when he was after as much out of love with the Republicans or Cromwellians as he was once with them and wrote his Book entituled if my memory fail me not Of the Oppressed Men in Chains And after his Cashiering out of the Army Imprisonment Bafflings and Trials at Law lugged and carried about with him Sir Edward Coke's Comment upon Magna Charta and other English Law-Books to no purpose The Fears and Jealousies which had gotten Possession in the head of Alderman Andrews Lord Maior of London in those wickedly pernitious Times could not rescue him from the Title of Anti-Christ bestowed upon him by some of his own Party And Oliver Cromwell before he took upon him the Title of Protector of his herd of Villains Regicides Murtherers and Felons was fairly threatned or attempted to be Indicted for High Treason by Cornet Day against the foolish Fancies of their Wat Tiler Jack Cade John of Leyden or Massianello rowling confounding and never-resting Common-wealth Or how much did those Fears and Jealousies benefit the City of London or advance their Trade or Riches when in the late Rebellion they forfeited all their Charters and the Liberties which they had in more than 600 years last past obtained of their Indulgent Soveraigns Perjured themselves ruined much of their Estates by being some Good and Loyal Citizens excepted who could not be without great Sufferings Instrumental in the Ruine of many of the Nobility and Gentry their Debtors and Customers betook themselves to Plunders and Sequestrations of honester Men than themselves Purchased with others the Palaces and Lands of the King Queen Prince Bishops Nobility and Delinquents as they stiled them for fighting against His late Majesty when they fought for him Bought at cheap Rates his Pictures and sold the Ornaments of his Chappels Plate Copes and Vestments not sparing the Coats of his Guard of Halberdiers pull'd down his Statue at the Royal Exchange with the basest and vilest Declaration put in the place of it Exit Tyrannus Regum ultimus took away or spoiled the Statues of William the Conqueror and all the succeeding Kings of the English Monarchy which the love which they ought to bear to Monarchy might e're this time have perswaded them to have supplied When the Mercers Company of London had Revenue sufficient lest in Lands by Sir Thomas Gresham Knight that Prince of Merchants the Founder of that Royal Exchange for the constant Reparation thereof And to how little benefit and small accompt did their fears and wilfulness come unto when in the late Dreadful London Fire when they might at the first in a little time have quenched it by Blowing up with Gun-Powder less than Sixteen Houses or half a Street they did suffer it to rage and do what it would from the later part of the Saturday Night until the latter part of the Wednesday Night next following until it had Burned in that City and its large Suburbs little less than Twenty thousand Houses with St. Paul's Cathedral and almost a Hundred Churches and had not been so unhappy if the Owners and Neighbours had taken the Advice or hearkened to the earnest Perswasions of His Majesty who on foot laboured even at the Pumps and cryed out for Help amongst them and did all he could to perswade them to take that better course to stop that Fire but with other that gave the same advice was answered as the Duke of York was at his quenching the Fire at the Temple commanding an absent Gentleman's Chamber to be Broken up to preserve his Books and Writings and preserve the contiguous Building from Burning that to blow up Houses or break open Doors was against Magna Charta and they might have Actions brought against them And in the interim whilst they were so distracted with their Fears as all the Care they took was to lugg and carry away their Goods into the Fields or Churches in the latter whereof the one helped to burn the other and leave their own
Nations who were the Mediators for Peace at Cologne emboldened by our home Divisions and want of Supplies lengthened it self beyond all Expectation And hath notwithstanding in the Interim by his Protections Royal and many other Cares taken done as much as he could to keep the Bankers from Arrests Imprisonments and other Ruines impendant often happening and falling upon Men indebted Although if Reports and the Laments of some that were concerned be not much mistaken a great part of that Money was belonging to many of his own Servants who by his Bounty and Places of Profit under him had easily gained it and many of those who so heavily complained of that detention of their Moneys had for their own advantages intrusted it to the Bankers who by an Imaginary Credit far exceeding their own Estates furnishing one man with another man's Money and paying out that which was but the same day or a little before come in had inticed a great part of the Money of the Nation into their hands And some if not many of the Owners did well enough understand that they did not only furnish them and their Credits upon all Emergent occasions of Profit or Accommodation by that kind of alluring much of the Money of the Nation into their Custody but his Majesty also at an high and intollerable Usury which if a strict enquiry were made by His Majesty or Order of Parliament of the particular Owners of the Money brought into the Exchequer by the Bankers and from thence borrowed and made use of by his Majesty upon his Publick and most urgent Affairs would plainly appear And it will be as manifest that he afterwards gave no respite to his Royal Cares and Intentions of Repaying it with the Legal or as much Interest as the Bankers were to pay for it And finding that the Fee Farm Rents amounting unto Seventy thousand pounds per annum sold at Sixteen years Purchase which nothing but a grand Necessity could enforce him to Alien for that many of them being the Tenths were by two several Acts of Parliament annexed to the Imperial Crown of England for the maintenance thereof and were as so many Ties and Obligations which made the Owners of these Lands to be dependant upon the Crown would not reach to a Satisfaction of his other Debts and Expences which having been longer due were more importunate than those of the Bankers did lately in a Speech to the Lords and Commons in Parliament make it his earnest Request that they would take the Necessity and speedy Payment of the Bankers into their Considerations And when nothing of help could be obtain'd for that purpose did by his Letters Patents under his great Seal with great difficulty and hardship order a part of his burdened Revenue to be assigned for the due and orderly payment of the Interest until the Principal Moneys should be justly satisfied and paid So as his doings therein or making use of that Money if impartially and judiciously weighed in the Ballance of Truth and Judgment is not to be called a seizure or forcible taking of the Bankers Money or to be ranked either as to the necessity or the thing it self or the number of the persons concerned with what King Edward the First a Wise and Prudent Prince did do when he in the 22 year of his Reign seized into his hands upon occasion of supplying the Publick Necessities all the Wools in the Kingdom as the Merchants were lading them in the Ports giving them Security for Payment at his own Rates and a long day and a short price and transported them to his own best and readiest Sale and at another time upon a like necessity seized all the Pope's Moneys which had been Collected for him by the Clergy of England amounting to very great Sums of Money towards the Wars of the Holy Land gave Protections to those that had the Custody of it and retain'd and made use of it for his then pressing Publick Affairs two years and more notwithstanding that the Pope had in the mean time sent unto him then hugely formidable threatning Bulls and Letters for it Or the like done by King Edward the Third in the 12 th year of his Reign with all the Tynne or with what King Henry the 6 th did by way of Purveyance of great Store of Grain and Corn and transporting it into Gascony where it was very dear or by Queen Elizabeth of a great deal of Beer Transported and sold to her use beyond the Seas and by defraying a great part of the Charges of her Wars in Ireland with Moneys Coined of Tynne with a promise to make a Satisfaction for it with Moneys made of Silver which was justly performed by her and King James her Learned Successor Concerning all which matters fears and jealousies I can be confident your Sentiments and mine will so little disagree as your Judgment of the Ages past and observations of the rise and progress of our late Troubles and Miseries which brought the greatest Shame and Scandal to the Protestant Religion profest in England and Scotland that ever it had or could have laid upon it and cast an unhappy Reflection upon those that were in the parts beyond the Seas will not refuse me your Company in the Opinion of a Truth so experimented that the fruit of all those Artifices rather than any just cause of any such fears or apprehensions have yielded no better Effects than the Ruine and Confusion of the former Glory and Honour of our Nation by setting up a Rebellious part of the People the Offspring as to some of their Levelling Principles of Wat Tiler and Jack Cade to undo and Rule over the better sort of the People and the Poor to Plunder and rob the Rich. And that therefore they which have been the cause of so many Mischiefs and Evils which their and our Seri Nepotes will have reason enough bitterly to bewail and without God's great Mercy will scarcely live to see eradicated ought better to consult their Conscience the Precepts and Examples of Wisdom Salus Populi Interest of the Kingdom and Honour of the King and Nation and abandoning their former Follies and false Lights which led them and their partakers into so great Sins and made them to be the Causes of so many National Miseries not run themselves and others into the fear of one or two incertain Evils but an Hundred which will be most certain and can never be recalled And I cannot but assure my self that you will be ready to conclude with me that there is no Rational or just Cause of Fear that we can have by any Infection contracted from the now Laws and manner of Government of France under His most Christian Majesty For until their Civil and Intestine Wars and Ill Usage of Charles the Fifth and Charles the Seventh their Kings in their greatest Distresses that Nation had Liberties more than at present they have or are likely to enjoy And that our
England by Inheritance And their mutual Rancors and Displeasures with the grand Contests of them and their Parties to procure the Statutes of Articuli super Chartas de Tallagio non Concedendo were not healed without the Aids and Subsidies of his People The mis-government and mis-leading of King Edward the Second by his several Favorites Peirce Gaveston and the Spencers did not hinder him from the Supplies of his People King Edward the Third after a fifteenth of the Temporalty a twentieth part of the Goods of the Cities and Burroughs and a tenth of the Clergy granted unto him by Parliament in the Eighth year of his Reign having consumed much Treasure in his Wars made for the Kingdom of France which he claimed as his Inheritance wherein the English Nation more than for the Grandeur and Honour of their Prince were not much concerned but were jealous until an Act or Declaration of the King in Parliament was procured to the contrary that the Conquest of France might have caused England to have been afterwards dependant upon that greater Crown and Kingdom was notwithstanding the seizure and taking into his hands the Goods and Estates of three Orders of Monks viz. The Lombards Cluniacks and Cistertians and all the Treasure committed to the Custody of the Churches through England for the Holy War forced to revoke divers Assignations made for Payment of Moneys though he had received Three Millions of Crowns of Gold for the Ransom of John King of France whom his Son the Black Prince had taken Prisoner and was not put to lose any of his Honour Friends Estate or Interest for want of the necessary Assistance of his Subjects who for the maintenance of those and other his Wars were howsoever well content to give him half of the Laieties Wool and a whole of the Clergies and at another time the ninth Sheaf the ninth Fleece and ninth Lamb for two years and after many other Taxes and Aids granted in several Parliaments of his Reign and a Commission sent into every Shire to enquire of the value of every man's Estate The Treasure of the Nation being much exhausted found the People so willing to undergo that and other Burdens which those successful Wars had brought upon them as the Ladies and Gentlewomen did willingly Sacrifice their Jewels to the Payment of his Souldiers That Unfortunate Prince Richard the Second his Grandchild tossed and perplexed with the Greatness Ambition and Factions of his Uncles and the subtil underminings of John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster the most powerful of them fatally continued and pursued by Henry of Bullingbrook his Son Duke of Hereford was not in all those his Distresses so unhappy but that although the Commons in Parliament had by their Petitions unto him complained That for want of good Redress about his Person and in his Houshold and Courts the Commons were daily pilled and nothing defended against the Enemy and that it would shortly undo him and the whole Estate yet they were so mindful of their Soveraign and themselves as they not only afforded him very great Aids and Assistances but in the Fourteenth year of his Reign the Lords and Commons in Parliament did Pray That The Prerogative of the King and his Crown might be kept and all things done or attempted to the contrary might be redressed and that he might be as free as any of his Royal Progenitors were And in the Fifteenth year of his Reign did in Parliament require him That He would as largely enjoy his Prerogative as any of his Progenitors notwithstanding any Statute and namely the Statute of Gloucester in the time of King Edward the Third the which Statute they utterly repealed out of their tender affection to the King King Henry the Fourth Fifth and Sixth although well understood to have been Kings de facto not de jure for so not seldom have been the Pleadings at the Law of their Acts of Parliament and although the later of those Kings being Crowned King of France in his Infancy and in Possession of that Kingdom was by his Meek and Pious rather than Prudent Government a great part of the Cause of the Bloody Contests betwixt the Two Houses of York and Lancaster which ruined very many of the Nobility and Gentry by taking their several Parties and were by their Discords the loss of all the Kingdom of France but Calice And that Richard Duke of York had in Parliament so claimed and wrestled for the Crown as he was declared Protector of the Kingdom of England enjoyed notwithstanding the care and good will of their Subjects upon all occasions either at home or abroad in times of Peace or War by their Contributions of Subsidies King Edward the Fourth in the brunt and hottest of the long continued bloody Contentions of the two great Houses and Families of York and Lancaster after nine Battels won by himself attested by his Surcoat of Arms which he wore therein hung up as a Trophy in the Cathedral Church of St. George at Windsor and his many struglings with King Henry the Sixth and his Party in losing and gaining the Crown again War with France and compelling the crafty Lewis the 11 th the King thereof to demand a Peace and consent to pay him 75000 Crowns towards his War Expences and a Tribute of 50000 Crowns yearly during the life of King Edward notwithstanding that he had in the second year of his Reign sate in a Michaelmas Term three days together in his Court of Kings Bench and gathered great Sums of Money of the People of England by his Privy Seal towards his Wars with the Scots and in the Seventh year of his Reign resumed by Act of Parliament all the Grants which he had made since he took Possession of the Realm raised great Sums of Money by Benevolences and Penal Laws had in the Eighth year of his Reign granted him by Act of Parliament two fifteens and a Demy and in the Thirteenth year of his Reign a Subsidy towards his Wars with France when the Actions Courage and Wisdom of Parliaments were so incertain as there was in the space of half a year one Parliament Proclaiming King Edward an Usurper and King Henry a Lawful King and another Proclaiming King Edward a Lawful King and King Henry an Usurper King Henry the Seventh although that he sometimes declared That he held the Crown as won in Battel by Conquest of King Richard the Third and at other times by his better Title from the House of York and his Marriage with the Lady Elizabeth the Daughter of King Edward the Fourth and avaritiously took all the ways possible for the enriching of his Treasury had divers great Aids and Subsidies granted unto him by Parliament King Henry the Eighth notwithstanding that he had after many great Subsidies and Aids both as to the Money and manner of Collecting it granted unto him his Heirs and Successors by several Parliaments and the first Fruits and Tenths of
all Ecclesiastical Promotions and Benefices overturned the then established Religion of the Kingdom seized and took into his Possession the great yearly Revenue of 600 Abbies Priories and Nunneries most of the Hospitals and Colleges which had been given to Religious Uses with Anathema's with as many other dreadful Curses and Imprecations as the Minds of Men could imagine to fall upon the Violaters thereof amounting in the then yearly value unto something more than One hundred and Ninety thousand Pounds sterling per Annum being at a then low and undervalued rate scarce the 20 th Peny of the now since improved yearly value excluded the Founders from their Reversions and Legal Rights thereof when the uses unto which they were first ordained should be altered or otherwise applied Confiscated the very many rich Shrines Chalices Plates Copes Jewels Pearls Precious Stones Gold and Silver not only found in those Religious Houses but in all the Cathedrals and Churches in England the Riches of all which could amount to no less than many Millions of Money Sterling more if not equal unto the vast and admired Reserves and Treasures of the Venetian Republick or that of many Popes Provisions reported to have been laid up in the Castle of St. John de Angelo at Rome in case of any Invasion or War of the Turks and unhappily wasted expended and gave away not only a great part of those immense Riches and Land Revenue but all the Eighteen hundred thousand Pounds sterling which were left him in his Father's Treasury debased some of his Gold Coin and made it Currant for a greater value than in truth it would yield And the better to gentle and pacifie the People who stood amazed at it promised and undertook that they should never more be troubled with Aids or Subsidies Was notwithstanding when afterwards the Publick Occasions required Aids or Supplies neither foreclosed by his Promise or denied the assistance of his People But the Lords and Commons in Parliament did in the 35 th year of his Reign assent to an Act of Parliament for the remitting unto him all such Sums of Money as he had borrowed of them or any other by way of Impress or Loan by his Privy Seals sithence the First day of January in the 33 th year of his Reign and if he had paid to any Person any some of Money which he had borrowed by Sale of Land or otherwise the same Person his Heirs Executors or Administrators should repay it again to the King and if any Person had sold his Privy Seal to another the Seller should repay the Money to the Buyer thereof And for a further Supply did in the last year of his Reign grant unto him one Subsidy with two Fifteenths and Tenths by the Temporalty and one Subsidy by the Clergy Whose Successors and Posterity have ever since not refused to Subscribe to those Laws of God Nature and Nations That Children are obliged to assist both their Political and Natural Parents The contrary whereof would be against the Rules of Humanity and Mankind Judge Hutton a greater Friend unto the Law then Ragioni di Stato Reason of State or Government declaring in his Argument in the Exchequer Chamber against the Ship-Money in the latter end of the Reign of King Charles the Martyr That an Act of Parliament that a King should have no aid or help of his Subjects would be void and of none effect King Edward the Sixth after the many Seditions and Troubles which assaulted his Infant Government and excellent endowments of Virtue and Piety by the Wars with Scotland quarrellings of the Protector and Admiral his Uncles on the Mother's side and the Plots of Dudley Duke of Northumberland was although he had taken into his hands all the Lands Houses and Tenements formerly given under dire Imprecations and Curses for the quiet and welfare as the People then thought of the Souls of their Ancestors Children Friends and Benefactors departed out of this World and gone into the next together with the Colleges given to Superstitious Uses free Chappels Fraternities and Guilds with all their Lands Goods and Estates seizure of Church Goods in Cathedrals and Parish Churches and such as had been imbezil'd with Jewels Gold and Silver Chalices ready Money Copes and other Vestments reserving to every Church one Chalice and one Covering for the Communion Table was not grudged in the last year of his short Reign one Subsidy with two Fifteens and Tenths granted by the Temporalty and a Subsidy by the Clergy Queen Mary being a profess'd Catholick renversed the Protestant Religion put many to Death Banished and Persecuted all the Eminent Professors thereof Married Philip the Second King of Spain and thereby endangering if she had any Issue by him to have brought England under the Laws and Yoke of his Spanish Dominions with the Bloody and Cruel Inquisition to boot began to restore the Lands of the Abbies and Monasteries and intended to relinquish all her right therein Lost Calice which had been in the English Possession ever since the Conquering of it from the French by King Edward the Third Made severe Laws against the Protestants Abrogated all those that were made against the Catholicks shook and tottered the Estates of many of the Protestants great Nobility in their Lands which had belonged to their Monasteries and Religious Houses and of many Thousands of considerable Families of the Kingdom who had those kind of Lands either given them by King Henry the Eighth or King Edward the Sixth or had Purchased them of others who might well have foreseen their not Enjoyment of them if she had but a little longer continued her Reign to perfect the entire returning to the Church of Rome of her self and as many of the People as she should be able to force into it was not in her short Reign without the Aids and Assistance of the People when the Publick Affairs called for them Richard the Third though for his Cruelties and ill obtaining of the Crown he merited not the Title of a King after his stabbing King Henry the Sixth whereof he died in the Life-time of King Edward the 4 th and after his Death procuring himself to be made Protector of the Kingdom during the Minority of King Edward the Fifth his Nephew whose Guards when he had made to be dismissed and enticed him and his Brother into the Tower of London upon a counterfeit pretence of Safety and Honour he procur'd to be Murthered Did the like to his own Elder Brother the Duke of Clarence whom he contrived to be drowned in a But of Malmsey made himself King and in the setling of his wrongful Title and wicked Usurpation made some good Laws was notwithstanding in the Second year of his Reign besides the great Confiscations of divers of the Nobility and other great Men not refused an Aid or Imposition Queen Elizabeth Inheriting the Courage of her Father King Henry the Eighth and the Wisdom and Prudence of her