of the Muse he was in thus he proceeds It is not to be denied but that our Kings have in a great measure been intrusted with the power of Calling and Declaring the Dissolutions of Parliaments Have they so Whose Trustees are they When did they first obtain this favour I protest now I was so dull as to think that this right of Calling and Dissolving Parliaments was a Natural Right inherent in the Crown and as old as the British Monarchy and that at the granting of the great Charter and at all other times before or since when the Kings of England granted any new Priviledges to their Subjects they still reserved to the Crown the power of calling Parliaments when and where they pleased and to continue them as long as they thought fit and then to Dissolve or Prorogue them Well but if I was therein mistaken yet he allows our Kings a great measure of that trust and who claims the Remainder of it Not the Petitioners I hope No the Privy Council he tells us are to be advised with Now that is matter of Expedience only not of Right for whatever His Majesty can lawfully do with doubtless he may as lawfully though not in all cases and circumstances so prudently do without the Advice of his Privy-Council who never claimed that I have heard of any co-ordinate right of managing affairs with our Kings and matter of Advice in its own nature supposes a liberty in the Person to whom 't is given either to adhere to or to reject it Well but whoever has the rest of that Trust care hath been anciently taken both for the Holding of Parliaments Annually and that they should not be Prorogued or Dissolved till all the Petitions and Bills before them were Answered and Redressed And for this my Author quotes two Acts of Parliament which because they are short I will insert here The first is this Item it is accorded that a Parliament shall be holden every year once and more often if need be Here is every word in that Statute The second follows Item for maintenance of the said Articles and Statutes and redress of divers mischiefs and grievances which daily happen a Parliament shall be holden every year as another time was ordained by a Statute which is the very same that I have recited before The Record which he 〈◊〉 I can say nothing to So I agree with him that there are two Statutes provided for the holding of Parliaments Annually and more often if need be of which the Kings of England have ever since thought themselves the Judges But where are the Statutes to be found that these Parliaments should not be prorogued nor dissolved till ALL the Petitions and Bills before them were answered and redressed Here is not one tittle of this in either of these he quotes yet that is the main thing in controversie and which only needed proving But he goes on The Constitution had been equally imperfect and destructive of it self had it been left to the choice of the Prince whether he would ever Summon a Parliament or put into his power to dismiss them Arbitrarily at his pleasure Then sure it had been worth the while to have proved for what time they were to sit as well as how often And if this can be made out that it is an Arbitrary that is in the sense he would be understood in an Illegal Act for the King to prorogue or dissolve a Parliament till all the Petitions and Bills be answered and redressed then will it be possible for a Parliament to perpetuate it self for ever by an endless succession of Petitions and Bills mixed with other great affairs which as it is contrary to the practice of all our Kings since these Statutes so if it were true the Menarchy wuld not then be what it now is but be much nearer a Commonwealth So that be the Consequence what it will this learned Gentleman must yield that it is at the choice of our Princes to summon Parliaments when they think it needful and to dismiss them when they please As for the word Arbitrarily which he here useth it is needless and was suggested to him by his Spleen and and not by his Reason That Parliaments should thus meet Annually and thus sit till all the Petitions and Bills before them are answered and redressed is secured to us by the same sacred tye by which the King at his Coronation does oblige himself to let his Judges sit to distribute Justice every Term and to preserve inviclably all other Rights and Liberties of his Subjects I thought the Law had been altered a little in the first particular by a Statute made in the Seventeenth year of his now Majesties Reign Cap. 1. the words of which are as followeth And because by the Ancient Laws and Statutes of this Realm made in the Reign of King Edward the Third Parliaments are to be held very often Your Majesties humble and loyal Subjects the Lords Spititual and Temporal and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled most humbly do beseech your most Excellent Majesty c. that hereafter the sitting and holding of Parliaments shall not be intermitted or discontinued above three years at most but that within three years from and after the Determination of this present Parliament and so from time to time within three years after the determination of any other Parliament or Parliaments or if there be occasion more or oftener your Majesty your Heirs and Successors do issue out your Writs for calling assembling and holding of another Parliament to the end there may be a frequent calling assembling and holding of Parliaments once in three years at least So that surely his Majesty may without breach of his Coronation Oath delay the calling of a Parliament three years if there be no occasion for one sooner of which he is the Judge Therefore as he goes on abruptly to dissolve Parliaments at such a time when nothing but the Legislative Power and the Vnited Wisdom of the Kingdom could relieve us from our just fears or secure us from our certain dangers is very unsuitable to the great Trust reposed in the Prince and seems to express but little of that affection which we will always hope his Majesty bears towards his People and the Protestant Religion That there was then too much need of the Legislative Power and the Wisdom of the Nation united in Parliament is not to be denied and that his Majesty was very sensible of it appears by his calling three Parliaments in twenty six Months as my Author computes it page 46. and we shall have occasion hereafter to enquire by whose fault it came to pass that they were all so abruptly dissolved and that will lead us to a probable conjecture why none hath been since called notwithstanding his Majesties Affection to his People and the Protestant Religion is such that we have great reason to bless God for it and to
of them We should question his Majesties Wisdom did we not believe him to have understood that never Parliament had greater Opportunites of doing good to Himself and his People He could not but be sensible of the dangers and of the necessities of his Kingdom and therefore could not without exceeding great trouble be prevailed upon for the sake of a few desperate men whom he thought himself concerned to love now only because he had loved them too well and trusted them too much before not only to disappoint the Hopes and Expectations of his own People but of almost all Europe His Majesty did indeed do his part so far in giving opportunities of proving for our good as the calling of Parliaments do amount to and it is to be imputed to the Ministers only that the success of them did not answer his and our Expectations Thus far my Author is recited verbatim that it may appear I do him no wrong By which discourse of his taking for the present no notice of his reflection on his Majesty for a person whose Promises were not real it is agreed that the two last Parliaments had great opportunities of doing good to his Majesty and his People and my Author goes further and adds the Hopes and Expectation of almost all Europe to them That his Majesty called these Parliaments he owns That one of them sat a competent time for that purpose cannot be denied viz. from Thursday October 21. 1680. till Monday the tenth day of January following which deducting the time spent in the Trial of Viscount Stafford was in some mens opinions sufficient to have dispatched much more business than was then done And yet it doth not appear that his Majesty was enclined to have prorogued them then if he had not been highly provoked by them What my Author means by those few desperate men that prevailed upon his Majesty so much against his Will to part with that Parliament I cannot guess except they be the Eminent Persons which were declared Enemies to the King and Kingdom which if they were they are neither so few nor such desperate men as to be laid aside barely upon a Vote of the House of Commons without any Order or Process of Law any hearing of their Defence or any proof so much as offered against them And I believe the meanest of them is equal to this Gentleman as scornfully as he speaks of them But then in the last place whether or no the dissolution be to be imputed to the Ministers or to the Parliament i. e. the House of Commons will appear best in the examination of his discourse and of the Declaration It is certain saith my Author it cannot be imputed to any of the proceedings of either of those Parliaments which were composed of men of as good sence and quality as any in the Nation and proceeded with as great moderation and managed their debates with as much temper as ever was known in any Parliament If all this is as certainly true as it is confidently asserted then is it but a folly to dispute any further about it But because his Majesty in his Declaration hath said some things that seem to look another way my Reader may if he please suspend his belief of this particular too till his Majesties Allegations and this Gentlemans defence are examined and then he will be better able to pass his Judgment If they seemed to go too far in any thing his Majesties Speeches or Declarations had misled them by some of which they had been invited to enter into every one of those debates to which so much exception hath been since taken Did he not frequently recommend the prosecution of the Plot to them with a strict and impartial inquiry Did he not tell them That he neither thought himself nor them safe till that matter was gone through with Yes doubtless his Majesty did all this but then where is any exception taken against any thing of this Nature they have done Did he not in his Speech April 30 1679. assure them that it was his constant care to secure our Religion for the future in all events and that in all things which concerned the Publick Security He would not follow their Zeal but lead it But Sir did not his Majesty then also let you know that he excepted one thing in which he would neither lead nor follow their Zeal which was the altering the descent of the Crown in the right Line or defeating the Succession which his Majesty commanded to be further explained by the Lord Chancellour in such manner that it appeared to the whole Nation that his Majesty was resolved to do any thing for the freeing his People from their fears of Popery but what might tend to the disinheriting the Duke of York or any other Lawful Successor Now you Sir may remember that nothing but this would satisfie the Commons in either of the two last Parliaments in which they were not misled by any of his Majesties Speeches or declarations much less by this which was made of purpose to prevent the Bill before it was moved in the House of Commons Has he not often wished that he might be enabled to exercise a power of Dispensation in reference to those Protestants who through tenderness of misguided Conscience did not conform to the Ceremonies Discipline and Government of the Church and promised that he would make it his special care to encline the wisdom of the Parliament to concur with him in making an Act to that purpose And did not that very Parliament draw up a long Address to his Majesty containing the reasons why they could not concur with him in that point And is not this one good proof that his Majesty was not unmindful of his Declaration at Breda but was kept from doing what he was otherwise enclined enough to not by a few desperate men but by the Parliament And least the malice of ill men i. e. the Dissenters might object that these gracious inclinations of his continued no longer than while there was a possibility of giving the Papists equal benefit of a Toleration Has not his Majesty since the discovery of the Plot since there was no hopes of getting so much as a connivance for them in his Speech of March 6. 1678-9 express'd his zeal not only for the Protestant Religion in general but for an Vnion amongst all sorts of Protestants His Majesties words here are not truly recited but are these I meet you here with the most earnest desire that man can have to unite the minds of all my Subjects both to me and to one another and I resolve it shall be your faults if the success be not suitable to my desires c. And a little after Besides that end of Vnion which I aim at and which I wish could be extended to Protestants abroad as well as at home I propose by this last great step I have made the
not so nice but it might have been â—een determined by a meaner Critick than our Author who hath shewn his great skill in the French Tongue in his learned Remarques on the Phrase it is a matter extremely sensible to us And in the Latine upon the word Republick or Commonwealth If he had not from hence sought an occasion to call his Majesties Fidelity in question which tho it may become a Republican is very indecent in a good Subject When we see the real fruits of these utmost endeavours to extirpate Popery out of Parliament when we see the Duke of York no longer first Minister or rather Protector of these Kingdoms and his Creatures no longer to have the whole direction of Affairs when we see that love to our Religion and Laws is no longer a Crime at Court no longer a fore-runner of being disgraced and removed from all Offices and Imployments in their Power That is when the Duke of York is ruined and not only his Popish but his Church of England Creatures who have shewn themselves such by Voting against the Bill of Exclusion be laid aside When our Religion which no man knows what it is and that part of the Laws which we skulk behind now to ruine all the rest and the King and Kingdom to boot shall not hinder our Preferment whatever we do or say When the word Loyal which is faithful to the Law shall be restored to its own meaning and no longer signifie one who is for subverting the Laws That is when men may safely pretend so much respect to the Laws that they may affront his Majesty who is the Fountain of all Laws and the Protector of them and us by them when the word Loyal shall have no other relation to his Majesty than the same word if in use there hath in Venice when spoken concerning their Duke When we see the Commissions filled with hearty Protestants that is with Whigs and Republicans and the Laws executed in good earnest against the Papists and the Dissenters passed by unpunished The Discoverers of the Plot countenanced or at least heard and suffered to give their Evidence except when they make bold with our selves and such a Colledge and Fitz-Harris and the Association-men in which cases they ought neither to be heard nor believed The Courts of Justice steady and not avowing a jurisdiction one day which they disown the next but just such as they were in the late times When we see no more Grand-Juries discharged lest they should hear Witnesses nor Witnesses hurried away lest they should inform Grand-Juries tho it were against his Majesty and when all Grand-Juries are of the Family of Ignoramus the Lawyer and will find according to their Conscience tho against both their Oath and their Evidence especially when a Precious man is in jeopardy to be hanged for something done or said against the King When we see no more instruments from Court labouring to raise jealousies of Associating Petitioning Protestants who have a Patent from heaven to retail all the fears and jealousies that ever shall from henceforward be put off in England Scotland and Ireland and in all other his Majesties Dominions and Countries whatsoever And to that purpose have erected several Mints for the Coining of them in London and the parts adjacent and do maintain several Presses and a great many Intelligencers to collect and disperse the same for the benefit of his Majesties discontented Subjects who receive much comfort by the worst and falsest of them and hope to have just such another harvest in the end as they reaped from the same Seed in and about the years 1640 41 42 and so on till 1660. When we see some regard had to Protestants abroad tho his Majesty should be by our defaults brought into such straits as hardly to be able to maintain the Government at home When we observe somewhat else to be meant by Governing according to Law than barely to put them in execution against Dissenters in whom our strength against the Government doth chiefly consist the Laws made against Papists In which number we desire the Church of England men that is all that stick to the Religion by Law Established may be included and then we shall promise our selves not only frequent Parliaments but everlasting ones and all the blessed effects of pursuing Parliamentary Councils the Extirpation of Popery and Prelacy the redress of Grievances the flourishing of Laws and the perfect restoring the Monarchy to the credit which it had in 1658 and 59. both at home and abroad There needs no time to open the Eyes of his Majesties good Subjects the Whigs and their hearts are ready prepared to meet him in Parliament in order to perfect all these good Settlements and Peace which are now wanting in Church and State But whilst there are so many little Emissaries imployed to sow and encrease divisions in the Nation as if the Ministers had a mind to make his Majesty head of a Faction and joyn himself to one Party in the Kingdom who has a just right of Governing all which Thuanus lib. 28. says was the notorious Folly and occasioned the destruction of his great-Grandmother Mary Queen of Scots whilst we see the same differences Promoted industriously by the Court which gave the Rise and Progress to the late troubles and which were once thought fit to be buried in an Act of Oblivion What is meant by the little Emissaries here I know not nor will I guess Nor did I ever observe the Ministers had a mind to make his Majesty the Head of a Faction which your Author much blames in Henry III. of France too when he suffered the Holy League the Prototype of the Association to be set afoot and propagated so far before he took notice of it that he was forced at last to attempt to make himself the Head of it which was properly a Faction combined by an Oath against the Right Heir to the Crown and a part of the Natural Subjects of France on pretence of Religion for the Exclusion of the first and destruction of the latter without and against the consent of the King which caused a Rebellion in France the destruction of the King a sooner Succession of Henry IV. the right Heir upon changing his Religion and if God had not prevented it had betrayed France into the hands of the Spaniards or Cantoned it into small Principalities Now this is properly to make a Prince the head of a Faction without consideration of the Rise of our late Troubles which sprung from such another League but to countenance a Loyal Party more than a Rebellious one is not so and whatever effect it had in the Reign of Queen Mary his Majesties Grandmother seems the only way now to save England and prevent the need of another Act of Oblivion and Indemnity for all those Crimes that were pardoned by his Majesty but never repented of by them that acted them Whilst