Selected quad for the lemma: act_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
act_n	king_n	law_n	prerogative_n	3,673	5	10.4433	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96259	The case of the Irish Protestants in relation to recognising, or swearing allegiance to, and praying for King William and Queen Mary, stated and resolved.	Wettenhall, Edward, 1636-1713.	1691 (1691)	Wing W1490A; ESTC R229883	19,849	30

for a Protestant People to assist and defend in the Exercise and Possession of Regal Power such a King as James II. has made and carried himself for they could not thereby but manifestly contribute and put their Hands not only to the destroying their own but their Protestant Fellow Subjects Estates Liberties and Lives and what is more their Common Religion too * The proof of these Particulars by some Historical Instances in the Treatment which the poor Irish Protestants found from those in Power under the late King would cast such Odium on more perhaps than were guilty that I cannot persuade my self to set it down and possibly it is so notorius that I need not Enough has fallen from my Pen in the Sequel through a kind of Impotency or too tender Sense of what I have seen If it be said the King promised to maintain us in the Profession of our Religion and Possession of our Estates Liberties c. He did indeed so promise and I believe of himself at first intended it But he had put the Power of all into such Mens hands thar he could not perform what he had promised Were not our Rights our Lands our Goods and our Churches themselves taken from us contrary not only to his Promises but Proclamations And which of any of these especially our Churches tho upon his express Command under his Hand and Seal was ever restored What can be expected from him who first incapacitates himself to perform and then makes fair Promises Did not the Irish Act of Attainder debar the King of his Prerogative to pardon those which it made Criminals and Traitors contrary to the Law of Nature that common Test of Equity so much appealed to by some in the late Irish House of Lords for flying merely to preserve their Lives or securing themselves from Irish Mercy that is from what I will not say Nor will I insist upon what I might add and aggravate By the Constitution and Laws of the Religion he professes he either had sworn to destroy or ought to have sworn to destroy both us and our Religion And when Men first swear to do a thing and then promise not to do it and capacitate themselves to perform their Oaths but incapacitate themselves to perform their Promises which can be expected should take place the Promise or the Oath I may safely avow in behalf of the Protestants of the three Kingdoms there is not a conscientious Man amongst us would ever have withdrawn from King James even our Active Obedience could we have secured our Religion and good Conscience by active Adhesion to him I will add also because in my Conscience I believe it had not the securing the Protestant Religion more forcibly moved the Prince of Orange than the Ambition of a Throne he would never have attempted so speedy a Succession In a Word we did obey as far as God's Command goes Gods Command is with Limitation Obey in the Lord we did so We did obey as long and as far as was lawful and that is as far as any Oath can bind us for to an unlawful Act no Oath can bind Herod's Oath did not bind him to cut off S. John Baptist's Head nor can our Oaths oblige us to be Assistants and aiding to the cutting off the Heads of innocent Protestant Peers or hanging up such Commons and to the disarming and putting out of Power all Protestants and arming and advancing all Papists and so destroying our selves Neighbors and Religion This is unlawful by the Law of God VI. I might here instead of saying King James has made the Allegiance due to him by this Oath unlawful for Protestants to pay have said perhaps with more Propriety of Speech he has made the Oath as to him void and null For all his Subjects who took it were supposed by Law to swear to a Legal King that is to a King who would govern according to Law and protect his Subjects and their Rights as by his Oath and Law bound Such a King the Oath was design'd to and actually to such a King we swore Allegiance But such King James did not please to be Wherefore by this Oath no Allegiance is due to him But I thought this notion might seem to some more subtile and the proof of it might as above suggested have been more odious than the other Each comes much to the same final issue for according to either the Obligation ceaseth as concluded and the Reader may take in his Candor which he pleases To proceed then VII GOD has made it to us the Irish Protestants here at least morally impossible to perform to King James the Duty which in the Oath of Allegiance we swore Therefore the Obligation of that Oath ceaseth as to him or which is the same we are not bound to him by that Oath I doubt not but that our Adversaries will say defending the Person and Possession of a King by force of Arms to be a point of Allegiance I say we are here by God's Providence unable to defend King James by Arms in the Possession of the Crown Not to mention that it is not long since our Roman Catholick Adversaries by King James's Orders as they said took away our Arms from us and surely we are not perjur'd for not being in Arms for a King who would not suffer us to bear Arms God has now put us under the Power of the Second William the Conqueror whom I must affirm besides his being more ways than one otherwise justly intitle'd to have a Right to our Allegiance by Conquest that which gave the King of England the first and still avowed Title to Ireland I do averr us in Ireland conquered and with my Heart bless God for it For besides our being thereby delivered intirely and finally I hope from Popery we are delivered also if we attend thereto from all Scruple which would stick in us touching the Will of God as to our Subjection to our new King For we cannot doubt but that we ought to be subject to them whom God has set over us And when by his Providence he so plainly pulls down one and sets up another we cannot doubt who it is whom he has set over us If still any will doubt I demand of them what should a vanquish'd Multitude what should Men Women and Children brought under Subjection do Must they all dye Martyrs for the Title of a Prince who would not preserve their Rights by Law and Peace and through the hand of God has not been able to defend his own or theirs by War Do not the Irish Roman Catholicks who blame us most daily make Conditions for themselves and shall it be unlawful for us to do the same The great difference betwixt them and us as to our present Circumstances is They were conquered with their Swords in their hands We as being their Prisoners perhaps they may think Slaves and Properties as it has been too plain to us they would have

saw their Men would not stand and they had nothing to do to think of contesting with such an Army as was against them commanded too by such a Prince for their General He therefore advised them to shift for themselves as he said he would do and indeed did and to make the best Terms they could for themselves The same in effect as is testified by many he afterwards repeated at his passage through Dublin and 't is plain he confirmed these his Sentiments by his practice Now what was said to them we cannot but take as implicitly at least reaching and extending it self to all his People in Ireland then in subjection to him as I am sure were we touching whom the present Consultation proceeds Wherefore we were then released amongst others and left to our selves to make Terms and the Conqueror allowing us no other Terms but these we are therefore by this Release if we had not been so before at liberty to embrace and accept them We have then thus done with the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy together with the Obligation of them both as to King James the Second XI IT follows we proceeed to the Oath or Declaration of Not taking up Arms against the King or any Persons commissionated by him extant in the Act of Vniformity Anno Dom. 1662. and either taken or subscribed and avowed publickly by very many of us Touching this I will not say what I have heard some Learned in our Laws have said that this Declaration is not to be found in the Original record of that statute IN TERMINIS as in our Books but has been corruptly and surreptitiously inserted as it stands into the Printed Copy If this be true it was an abominable Wrong and Imposition on the Subject and upon whom to be charged I will not speak nor so much as suffer my self to guess But certainly it would in such case much take off from the Obligation of that Oath or Declaration that it should be so fraudulently and illegally imposed My Answer then is I conceive Most I might have said all Irish Protestants have little to do wirh this Oath in the present juncture For either we are already in Arms or Not. Those of us who are already in Arms cannot but be presum'd to be satisfied touching the lawfulness of that War wherein we now are engaged and are not after Vows to make Enquiry To me truly the satisfaction seems easie For a Commission contrary to Law as are all Commissions of late years granted or in present being to R. Catholicks is by Law no Commission and consequently the Persons who bear it not commissionated but private men or rather while they Act pursuant to such Commissions Publick Robbers which point justified all that rose against Tyrconnell or any other R. Catholicks in this Kingdom pretending to Commissions from K. James And if K. James would put himself at the head of such a body to countenance and abet them I do not see how his presence even if he had been in full possession of his Crown could give them more Authority Since he could onely thereby make himself less a Legal King not them more Legal Officers And the same thing if there were no more still justifies those who now fight against them that act in his name Not to speak that K. James has otherwise here Vn King'd himself for certainly a King which releases his Subjects of their Allegiance as we have shewn him to have done is no longer their King Those who are not yet in Arms if they have any scruple for which I profess I see no reason may forbear taking Arms in that Cause wherein they are not satisfied I do not see any compulsory means used to bring them into Arms. It is not required of us all to fight but all of us are to promise to be quiet and to pray for our Protectors which certainly all may do without touching on any thing in that whether Oath or Declaration Wherefore in our present condition these also are out of Doors XII WE are in the next place to consider the Recognition which was made personally of James the Second in the late pretended Parliament of Ireland As to which parliamentary Act be it what it can be it must be said No Irish Protestant even of those few that were present in either House are accomptable for the very Body and Frame of it much less for every particular Expression or even Clause therein It was the first Act that was past and truly precipitated It was not admitted to any due debate at least in the Lords house and some who in the end earnestly desired the alteration but of one Expression which was apprehended to be improper Language could not speed therein Now those who would not at our importunity alter their style would not for our sakes have waved any of their fundamental materials of which they were much more fond What Perpetual dread and Moral Force all the protestant members were under I am very unwilling if not unable to speak It sufficiently speaks for them that as many of them as by their quality were capacitated to protest did protest against all the more Momentous Acts that passed this haply being excepted against which they had no time well to think much less to form a Protest the Act being first brought in to the House of Lords there read hastily three times for Forms sake rather than otherwise and to the best of my memory immediately sent down to the Commons and never by the Protestant Lords heard of again till brought in for the Royal Assent Besides this having been all along kept in the dark the Protestants there knew not on what bottom or in what posture things stood in England a Regency and many such Expedients were whispered up and down Nor had they had experience how a Royal Catholick would keep his renewed Promises with Hereticks Possibly they thought his own Misfortunes might have taught him if not better Faith yet more of Government And finally none could either with safety of their Liberties or even Lives have protested To have spoken against this Act had been to have struck at the Foundation of the Authority not only of that whatsoever it was of a Parliament jealous and tender enough be sure of its own Power but even of the whole Government of the Kingdom in all its Branches And it was as clear as the Sun such person would have been either ipso facto by Vote of both Houses executed for Treason or if he had got out of the Protection of either House been forthwith De Witted and torn in pieces by the Multitude In a word let this Recognition be of all the force and exactness imaginable to oblige us it was extorted from us Vi et Dolo malo And how far then it can oblige being satisfied in our own consciences we will leave to any who will be so just as to suppose themselves to have been in our case and to