An ENQUIRY or a Discourse between a Yeoman of Kent and a Knight of a Shire upon the Prorogation of the Parliament to the second of May 1693. Yeoman SIR your humble Servant I am happy to meet you at this Friend's House where I did not expect you Pray Sir is the News true that the King hath prorogued the Parliament to day Knight 'T is very true we are prorogued to the second of May next Yeom Were all your Bills passed that were agreed on by both Houses Kt. I wish I could tell you they were Yeom I hope Sir the King hath not refused any Publick Bills Kt. Which are those you call Publick Yeom Truly Sir those two wherein the Country reckoned themselves most concern'd are That for securing the Foundations of the Civil Government by such a constant Succession of new chosen Parliaments that their Deputies by their long continuance in that Trust may not be in danger to be corrupted by Offices or private Interests and That for preserving our Property in our Lands and Mines against the Pretences of a Royal Prerogative to take away our Mines and Oar tho wt have spent most of our Estates to discover the Mines in our Lands Kt. I am sorry to tell you that those are the two only Bills to which his Majesty would not assent Yeom Are those Bills then to be utterly lost after that both Houses have spent so much Time and Care to compose them May they not be offered to the King again as soon as the Parliament meets Kt. You seem not to know the Force of a Prorogation of Parliament which as our Lawyers have of late resolved makes void all Bills of that Session not enacted and all other Matters depending as if they had never been These are no more to be accounted Bills of Parliament but if any thing contained in either of them be desired to be hereafter enacted it must begin anew as if it had never been before either House of Parliament Yeom Sir if all the Care and Pains of our Deputies in Parliament may be thus neglected or blown away with one Breath what Hopes have we then from the Consultations of Parliament of the promised and long-expected Settlement of Liberty and Property Kt. I know no Remedy until the King shall please to cause a new Session of Parliament Yeom And is such a Session to be absolutely at the King's Will whether it shall be six Months hence or a Year or seven Years Kt. You know it was so designed and in part practised in the late Reigns and the Judges then were so corrupted that they declared notwithstanding the Laws for Annual Parliaments Vid. The minutes of the Judges Opinions in the King's-Bench upon the Arguments about bailing the Earl of Danby out of the Tower That the holding of Parliaments depended entirely upon the King's Pleasure But 't is most manifest besides the positive Laws for Yearly Parliaments that †Inter Laeges Edgari cap. 5. by the ancient Constitution of our Government they did meet of course at least twice every Year Afterwards in the Reigns of the Saxon Kings it was made a perpetual Law that a Parliament should be holden every Year once at London and the same Law was incorporated into the Laws of Edward the Confessor and from thence all the successive Kings of England to this day have been sworn to the Observance of it I must confess to you nothing prevailed with me more to concur with our King in his Pretentions to restore our Parliaments and the Laws to their due Authority than my own Knowledg that the late Civil Wars in this Kingdom and the Subversion of our Religion Laws and Liberties were principally occasioned by the Powers usurped in several late Reigns to refuse the calling of successive Parliaments and to continue the same Parliament for many Years to form them into a Compliance with their Designs of Despotick Power When I read the solemn and repeated Assurances his Majesty gave us That his Design in coming into England was to remove from the Administration of the Government those evil Ministers that had promoted the Murders and Treasons committed in attempting to set up an Arbitrary Power over the People and their Parliaments And also heard him desire the Parliament to make such an effectual Provision for their Fundamental Laws and Liberties that they might never hereafter be in danger to be again invaded I thought the Ancient Legal Course of annually chosen Parliaments would have been immediately restored and the strongest Fence made for that Constitution that the Wisdom of the Kingdom could have invented but I must tell you to my Sorrow that we are left as much to the King's Will for a Session of Parliament as evil Ministers in the late Reigns design'd we should be Yeom If this be our case it is no wonder that Mens Minds are so unquiet we are in daily imminent hazard of Confusion whilst the Government remains wholly unsettled in its Fundamentals It seems to be apparent that after the Expence of twenty Millions besides the vast Effusion of Blood we are no more secured against the Slavery we fear'd by subverting our Constitution than we were before the Convention of the People for a Settlement when King James had just abdicated the Kingdom Kt. You take it rightly If no Bill should pass to secure the certain Legal Succession of Parliaments and we should connive at the Usurpations made by the late Kings therein and seemingly approve the Turkish Doctrine of the then Judges That the holding and continuance of Parliaments depended absolutely upon the Wills of our Kings then the Supream Power vested by the Constitution in Parliaments to maintain the Laws and Statutes and preserve Justice and good Government must be acknowledged not to be the Kingdom 's Right but to arise from the Gracious Will and Pleasure of their Kings and the People must not dare to claim Liberty and Property as their due If this Point of our Constitution should remain thus unsettled and an ill King succeed his present Majesty then the free Counsels of the whole Kingdom for its Defence and Welfare appointed by our Laws to be in Parliament may by the pretence of his Prerogative be utterly rejected and despised and his Flatterers and Designers to make him absolute Master of our Laws Liberties and Lives may be exempted by him from the danger of Punishment certain Justice being to be done upon such Offenders only upon the Peoples Complaints and Impeachment of them in Parliament If the due Succession of Parliaments be not established so as the Kings cannot by any Artifices avoid their meeting an ill King may in effect authorize whom he pleases to subvert and destroy our Religion Laws and Liberties by renewing Pardons of all such Crimes as often as they can commit them I am sorry to say it but our present case is such that all the Security we have for our Religion our Laws our Liberties our Lives depends
chose them being dead and others were either grown up or had purchased Estates whose Opinions both of Persons and things might be much changed from what the Sense of the Nation was when that Parliament was first called But having got a considerable Party in the House of Commons they laboured to confirm and increase it Places and Pensions were liberally bestowed on all that could be brought over to them and 't is no wonder they gave such prodigious Sums of Money out of the poor Peoples Purses when a great part was again to be refunded into their own This scandalous Proceeding was manifest and confirmed by the open Confession of a Gentleman through whose Hands much publick Money then passed in the House of Commons the next succeeding Parliament who there acknowledged his paying annually many and great Pensions to Members of Parliament Besides thus corrupting those already in the House there was neither Pains nor Money spared to get their Friends chosen where any Vacancy happened insomuch that the Court spent 14000 l. at one Election of a Burgess for Northampton Yeom Sir you have fully satisfied me that the Ministers in that Reign were as bitter Enemies to the English Constitution about Parliaments as those in the two former that went before it but their Measures are more dangerous and likely to succeed and it was God's great Mercy that these Hirelings did not enslave us as it were by our own Consent and by colour of the Authority we had given them for our Preservation But pray Sir what was the meaning of the great Bustle all over England about Charters What made the Court so mightily labour to perswade all Corporations to surrender their old Charters and take new ones from the King Was not that done with a design to influence the Elections of Members to Parliament Kt. Yes most certainly and this was a more pernicious and dangerous Design than any put in Practice in the former Reigns This struck at the very Root of all the Liberties of England that the People should never again have a free Parliament chosen according to the Constitution but such Men imposed upon them as would servilely comply with the Court in all their Measures to enslave us They corrupted some in every Corporation to perswade the rest to surrender their Charters and where they could not prevail by Entreaties these wicked Instruments in several Towns broke open the Trunks wherein their Charters were kept and stole them away to deliver them up Where this could not be done they brought Quo Warranto's against the Charters of almost every Town in England that hath a Right to lend Members to Parliament and by means of corrupt Judges declared them void upon some Pretence or other that the present Magistrates had acted be yond or contrary to the Powers granted in them and thereby forfeited all their Rights and Privileges New Magistrates were placed thereupon in those Towns such as they could most confide in and such Clauses were inserted into their new Charters as put the Choice of their Representatives in Parliament absolutely for the future into the Power of the Court. Yeom Sir I am infinitely obliged to you for your Pains and Kindness in shewing these things to me but I stand amazed to think that there could be so many English-men found in every Reign to join in carrying on this continued Design to subvert our Constitution and enslave us What present Advantage could delude and tempt them they themselves and their own Posterity must be involved in the same Misery and Ruin they endeavoured to bring upon others Sir I have trespassed too long upon your Patience and shall not therefore trouble you further about their Designs under the late King James those being most excellently laid down and made manifest in his Majesty's Declarations when Prince of Orange published upon his coming into England but upon the whole 't is most plain That neither we nor our Posterity can be safe in our Religion Laws and Liberties till we obtain and absolute Settlement of the Legal Course of successive Parliament Kt. I will only tell you one thing more Neighbour before we part that these Kings who endeavoured to subvert the Constitution as to Parliaments were always embroiled with their People about Rights and Privileges and that when once the People had discovered these Designs in them tho they called many Parliaments yet the same Jealousies continued and they never after came to a good Understanding or had a mutual Confidence in one another Our Histories declare the Truth of this Observation in many former Princes Reigns so that I hope the King will avoid a Rock that hath been fatal to all who have struck upon it and I am confident that his Majesty will do all that a good King and honest Man can do to restore to us our Constitution having in his Declaration call'd God and Man to witness That was the Design of his coming hither FINIS
Descent Some of them laughed and told me that I gaped for a new Jerusalem to drop from Heaven wherein there would be nothing but Righteousness and that the Government should be administred by none but Men of Vertue and known Fidelity to their Country They have upbraided me with what I said that God had sent us a Prince that would deny his People nothing but pressed and conjured them to provide most effectual Ways and Means for securing their Religion Laws and Liberties Yeom Sir I suppose the Gentlemen that talk to you in this manner have a Mind to disgrace the honest Principles that led the People justly to reject King James and make you believe that they were cozened in thinking that the Security of Religion Laws and Liberties or the Reformation of the Government were ever intended in the Revolution They would have you believe that there was nothing but Ambition and Avarice in the bottom of the Design and that whatever was pretended the Crown and its Powers were the only things in the Eyes of King William and his Followers They would perswade you and the People to think that our Religion and Liberties might be secured by a Treaty for bringing back King James and that an End may be put to the War thereby and the People acquitted from the heavy Taxes and Burdens they now lie under They would impose upon you to believe if possible that he who so basely cast the People of England at the Feet of the Pope by an English Ambassador and ran the utmost Hazards to subvert the Protestant Religion establish'd should desire to secure our Religion without pretending to be converted and be fit to be trusted to defend our Faith and that he who is known to the whole World to have occasioned so vast an Effusion of Christian Blood to enslave us to his Arbitrary Power and make himself our absolute Master should be fit to receive Royal Powers and Authorities for the Defence of the English Laws and Liberties Kt. Neighbour you are in the right but this sort of Gentlemen dare not upon these Occasions argue plainly for King James and I hope that neither the Parliament nor the Country are in much Danger by them But there are another sort of Men who enjoy the Powers and the Profits of the late Revolution and highly pretend to maintain it that upon the Occasion of this Bill do so pervert the Meaning and Construction of our Laws and assert such dangerous Notions as really tend to introduce Arbitrary Power and Slavery if they do not unhappily throw the People upon King James These Men make a specious Shew of their Love to the Advancement of the Honour and Greatness of the Crown as if they were their Majesties principal Friends though in truth they are daily undermining their Majesties Legal Title to the Crown by the pernicious Notions of the late Reigns which are contrary to the Fundamental Maxims of our Government They commend and applaud the King's Refusal of the late Bill and some of them have been so bold as to say whether in love to K. William or K. James I will not determine that what the King did therein was the chief thing that he hath done like a King He hath shewed say they that the Being and Sitting of Parliaments are only Acts of Grace from the Crown that the People have no other but a precarious Right to them to have them only at such Times in such Manner and for so long as the Crown pleases These Gentlemen pretend to great Moderation and privately whisper to such as they hope to lead that the Principles of our Government were too strictly and severely laid down in the late Revolution They say that the original Contract between the King and the People should not have been set forth as an equal Contract on equal Terms whereby the Kings were as strictly bound on their Part as the People on theirs as if each Party had no Right to claim a share in the Legislative Power in Parliament or any other Administration of the Sovereign Authority save only by Force of the Contract No doubt say they his Majesty is now advised that the Original of the Legislative and Executive Sovereign Power ought to be wrapp'd in Clouds and not exposed to vulgar Eves 'T is an Indecency to have it commonly said of so Great and almost Divine Persons as Kings that they receive all that Majesty and Glory only from their People It 's below say they the high Regal Office to have it said by all the People that their Majesties must within appointed times call the Parliaments and let them redress the Peoples Grievances as the Laws direct They praise the Wisdom of his Majesty's Counsels to refuse the Bill and to avoid any further Obligations to the People than were upon his Predecessors 'T is fit the Kingdom should as much depend upon his Grace and Clemency for their Parliaments as upon any others that have sat in the Throne and if he had condescended to this Bill the Insolence of the People in their Demands of their Liberties might have been insupportable Yeom Sir you have taken infinite Pains to instruct me yet I was such a Blockhead that 'till this last Discourse of yours I did not apprehend why the King refused the Bill it was hard for me to believe that there is so great a Party as now I suspect that prosecute the same Designs that were in the late Reigns to enslave us I thought that such as enjoyed great Preferments Honours and Profits by K. William's Election into the Throne would never have thought to revive the former Designs of enslaving us by setting up Pretences of a Power in English Kings above Parliaments by Divine Right antecedent to the Contract between King and People Though I am convinced there are some Men who have so far lost all Sense of Honour and Conscience that they may be still engaged in the former pernicious enslaving Designs yet before this your Discourse I did not think that any number of Englishmen were so corrupted or infatuated as to think that our whole Constitution our Government by Laws and all our Estates Liberties and Lives are holden by the mere Grace and Favour of our Kings I must confess you have mentioned several of those Gentlemens seeming Reasons against passing the Bill that are spun too sine for our Country Heads We should have thought that nothing of our Rights could have been too plainly set down when we were to declare as was done in the Revolution what are and have been the Rights of us and our Ancestors reserved in the very Constitution from all Ages But I perceive that what cannot be denied to be the Peoples legal Rights about Parliaments is desired by that sort of Men to be concealed They would not have a new Law pass about holding Parliaments lest this King should have more Obligations upon him to hold Parliaments than some of his Predecessors The true meaning whereof