as to take upon them a power to depose and powr out the sacred blood of their lawfull Soveraign Yet is there no such power in rerum natura It is the off-pring of the Devil The cloak Sanctuary and refuge of Treason Rebellion and Tyranny to blinde the people taking advantage of their ignorance and lead them hood-winckt into everlasting destruction unless the God of mercy prevent not With this new upstart Doctrine have our Apochryphal Dogmatists in England led the rascal rabble of the people about like a Dog in a string buzzing in their ears that the Monarchy of England is composed of three kinds of Commonwealths and that the Parliament hath the form of an Aristocracy the three estates of a Democracy and the King to represent the state of a Monarchy which is an opinion not only false absurd fond foolish and impossible but also worthy of the most severe punishment For it is high treason to make the Subject equal with the King in authority and power or to joyn them as Companions in the Soveraignty For the power of a Soveraign Prince is nothing diminished by his Parliament but rather much more thereby manifested The Majesty of a Prince consists in the obedience of his Subjects and where is the obedience of the Subjects more manifested then in his Parliament where the Lords and Commons the Nobility and Comminalty and all his Subjects from the highest Cedar to the lowest Shrub with bended knees and bare heads do cast down themselves at his feet and do homage and reverence unto his Majesty Humbly offering unto him their requests which he at his pleasure receiveth or admiteth So that it plainly appeareth that if the Parliament be not extravagant and leap over the bounds limited by the laws of God and our Realm of England the majesty and authority of our Soveraign is not decreased by the assembly of Parliament but rather augmented and increased For the Peers cannot assume Aristocracy nor the Commons Democracy without violation of their Oaths with which they are tyed in obedience to their Soveraign as well as with the Laws Indeed our Prince doth distribute places of command Magistracy and preferments to all his Subjects indifferently and so the Government is in a manner tempered with Democracy But yet notwithstanding the State doth continue a pure and simple Monarchy because all authority floweth and is derived from the King and the Soveraignty doth still continue in him as the fountain from whence those streams of power run and the Parliament is so far from sharing in this Soveraignty that the whole current of our acts of Parliament acknowledge the King to be the only Soveraign stiling him Our Soveraign Lord the King And the Parliament 25 H. 8. saith This your Graces Realm recognizing no superior under God but your Grace c. And the Parliament 16 Rich. 2.5 affirmeth the Crown of England to have been so free at all times that it hath been in no earthly subjection but immediately to God in all things touching the Regality of the said Crown and to none other And without doubt these Parliaments and many others had as much might and right though not so much Knavery as our Anabaptists and Puritans and other Sectaries have now who pretend that the Government originally proceedeth and habitually resideth in the people but is cumulatively and communicatively derived from them unto the King and therefore the people not denuding themselves of their first interest but still retaining the same in the collective body that is to say in themselves suppletive if the King in their Judgement be defective in the administration or neglect the performance of his duty may question their King for his misgovernment dethrone him if they see cause and resuming the Collated power into their own hands again may transfer it to any other whom they please These men would make themselves extraordinary wise or else our Ancestors extraordinary fools for surely if there had been such a power residing in the people as these men blab of it would have been preached up before these new-lights ever saw the light some busie-head like themselves would have awakened it and not let it sleep so long But it is impossible and a meer foppery to think that such a power should be for suppose that the people had at first Elected their Governour and gave him Soveraignty over them could they with justice and equity dethrone him again Surely no. For sive electione sive postulatione vel successione vel belli jure princeps fiat Principi tamen facto Divinitus potestas adest Let the King be made by election lot succession or conquest yet being he is a King he hath Divine power And therefore they have no power to take away that which God hath given The Conceit of a mixed Monarchy that the supreme power may be equally distributed into two or three sorts of Governours is meerly vain and frivolous because the supreme power being but one must be placed in one sort of Governors either only in Monarchy or only in Aristocracy or only in Democracy Our Parliaments of England never until now claimed either Aristocracy or Democracy Therefore as hitherto it hath been granted so the Government must of necessity still be Monarchical And the gracious Concessions of our Soveraign not to make Laws without a Parliament do not make the Parliament sharer or his equal in the Soveraignty because as I shewed before the Parliament hath no power but what is derived from the King His limitation of his Prerogative doth no way diminish his Supremacy God himself who is most absolute may notwithstanding limit himself and his power as he doth when he promises and sweareth that he will not fail David and that the unrepentant Rebels should never enter into his rest so a man that yieldeth himself to be bound hath his strength restrained but not lessened neither is any of it transferred to them who bound him So our Soveraign doth limit his power in some points of his administration and yet this limitation neither transferreth any power of Soveraignty unto the Parliament nor denyeth the Monarchy to be absolute nor admitteth of any resistance against him Monarchy is either Lordly or Royal. Adam proved to be the first King and made by God in Paradise not by the people All Kings are made by God The Son hath more right and it is more pleasing to God for him to murther his Father the Wife her Husband and the Servant his Master than it is for the people to kill their King Though in truth he be wicked The Kings institution and authority declared by Divine and Humane Writers The Horrible Labyrinth of sins which Regicides plunge into with their guilt The most famous Nations in the World have and do live under Monarchy Englands glory and love to Kings in times past and her Apostacy in times present Pater familias were petite Kings and how little Kingdoms grew great Kingdoms The Kings power is
And therefore Sir John Davis in his preface confidently averreth that the Common-law doth excel all other laws in upholding a free Monarchy which is the most excellent form of Government exalting the Prerogative royal and being tender and watchful to preserve it and yet maintaining all the Ingenuous liberty of the Subject Nay so carefull is the law of the Kings Soveraignty that in all cases from the highest to the lowest it demonstrateth the Kings supreme power and dignity The law will not permit any Subject to come so near the King as to be jointenant with him for if Lands are given to the King and a subject or if there be two Jointenants and the Crown descend to one of them the Jointure is severed and they are Tenants in Common for no Subject is equal with the King Co. Lit. 190. Plowd Com. in Seig. Barkleys Case Nay rather than the Suâ—â—ect shall be equal with the King in any thing he shall lose all for the King being Tenant in Common of entier Chattel personal he shall have the whole as if an Obligation be made to two or two possessed of an horse and one is attainted the King shall have the whole duty of the Obligation and the horse 13 El. pl. 322. Finch 178. To instance all particular cases is endlesse and impossible all land is holden of the King immediately or by means himself not having any higher upon earth of whom to hold 50 Ass pl. 1. 18 Eli. Pl. 498. For it would be against Common right and reason that the King should hold of any or do service to any of his subjects saith Cook lib. 8.118 Because he hath no Superior but God almighty Cook Lit. 1. Escheats of all Cities appertaineth unto the King all mines of Gold and silver or wherein the gold and silver is of the greater value appertain unto the King 8 E. 3. Escheat 12. 1 El. Plo. 314. The King is Anima legis he governeth and defendeth the law all Writs and Processe run in his name and receive authority onely from him and all persons have their power from him and by his Writ Patent or Commission The King hath the sole Government of his subjects The body Politick and the natural body of the King make one body and not diverse and are inseparable and indivisible Plo. 234 242.213 lib. 7.12 Rex tuetur legem lex tuâ—tur jus We muâ— be for God and the King because by his laws we are protected and it is a miserable case to be out of the Kings Protection Co. Lit. 129. All Jurisdictions and the punishment of all offenders against the Laws belongs to the King And Treasons Felonies and other Pleas of the Crown are propriae causae regis For why The King is viva Lex a living Law who only hath power to give Laws and therefore he only ought to punish those who break them Not the Parliament as it is called viz. the two Houses or either of them singly because they without the King can make no Law and therefore they are murtherers because they have put to death many worthy Innocents having no other Law but their own wicked wills And for my part if any one should tell me that the Law of England is nothing but the will of the King I could not disprove him for what are the great volumes of our Statutes but the Monuments and Repertory of the Kings will What is the reason that it is a Law that the King cannot make new or alter old Laws but in Parliament with the consent of his Lords and Commons Because the King was pleased to will it so for it was not so from the beginning The King was long before Parliaments and therefore did most certainly make Laws without them What is an Act of Parliament but the will of the King Nay what is Magna Charta but a Roy le veilt All our Rights and Liberties we enioy are by the gracious concessions of our Soveraign Lord the King who esteemeth our good and freedom his best praerogative and happinesse Omnium domos illius vigilia defendit omnium otium illius labor omnium delitias illius industria omnium vacationem illius occupatio The King by his watch and diligent care doth defend and keep every mans house in safety his labour doth maintain and defend every mans rest and quiet his diligence doth preserve and defend every private mans pleasure and delight his businesse doth maintain and defend every mans leasure So that as Manwood hath it even as the head of a natural body doth continually watch and with a provident care still ook about for the safety and preservation of every member of the same body Even so the King being the head of the body of the Commonweal doth not only continually carry a watchful eye for the preservation of peace and quietnesse at home amongst his own Subjects but also to preserve and keep them in peace and quietnesse from any forein invasion Therefore if the Rebells since the murther of our gracious King Charles the first have taken the freeborn Subjects of this Nation and imprisoned them like Slaves without any just cause or due processe of Law If they have violently driven us from our Lands and Livelyhoods possessing themselves of them and taken away our free Customs and Liberties If they have unjustly deprived us of the benefit of the Law banished us out of our Country and destroyed us with their high Courts of Injustice without the verdict of our equalls contrary to the Law of the Land if they have delayed Justice and Right denyed it to all men and granted it to no man but to those who would buy it Blesse God for Charles the first and pray for the restauration of Charles the second Praise God for their noble Praedecessours who have been our Nursing Fathers and their Queens our nursing Mothers who have willed and enacted Magna Charta ca. 29. Nullus liber homo capiatur vel imprisonetur aut dissisietur de libero tenemento suo vel libertatibus vel liberis consuetudinibus suis aut utlagagetur aut exuletur aut aliquo modo destruatur nec super ibimus nec super eum mittemus nisi per legale judicium parium suorum vel per legem terrae nulli vendemus nulli negabimus aut differemus justitiam vel rectum That no man should be arrested imprisoned disseised of his Free-hold of his Liberties or free customes or out-lawed bâ—nished or otherwise destroyed but by the verdict of his equals and the Law of the Land neither should Law and Justice be delayed sold or denyed to any man but the King in judgment of Law is present in all his Courts of Justice repeating these words We will sell deny nor delay Justice and right to no man Inst 2.55 O Magnificent blessed and golden Oration It proceeded from the lips of Kings and we shall never hear such Doctrine preached again in any of our Courts of Justice untill our King be
is never good which turneth again and the good Christian will suffer himself to be broken in a thousand pieces before he will turn again with resistance against his persecuting King for why He knoweth that though he suffer here on Earth yet God will glorifie him in Heaven though he be contemned by the King yet he shall be exalted by God and though he dye by the Kings unlawfull command yet his comfort is that his dead body shall arise by the eternal Decree of the Almighty and so the good will always receive praise of the Power Neither are the Rulers a terrour to him because he always aboundeth with good works Hor. Integer vitae scelerisque purus Non eget Mauri Jaculis nequè arcuâ— Nec Venenatis gravida sagitis Fusce Pharetra Who lives upright and pure of heart Oh Fuscus neither needs the Dart Nor Bow nor Quiver fraught with store Of Shafts envenom'd by the Moor. Innocence is the only buckler which protecteth a loyal Subject from the terrour of his Soveraign But Traytors who have rebelled against their king deserved death by the known Laws of the Land These men must preach up Mr. Prynnes Doctrine to cover their malice hold the truth in unrighteousnesse and when with offensive Arms contrary to all Law and Religion and against their allegiance and oaths they set upon the Kings sacred Majesty and with an innumerous multitude of unhallowed Rebels they fight against and strive to murther their dread Soveraign in the open Air They must have the impudence with Mr. Prynne to excuse themselves may think it a glorious Apology To averr confidently that it was never the meaning of St. Paul nor the Holy Ghost to inhibit Subjects to take up defensive Arms against Kings themselves And thus they invoke St. Paul himself and the Holy Ghost to patronize their wicked Treasons and unparallel'd Rebellions and belch out Blasphemy to defend their injustice and themselves from the justice of their injured Soveraign The Apostles did not only teach us with their Doctrine that resistance of the power was unlawful but also suffered themselves to be wickedly massacred and murthered before they would resist an unjust power Nay all the primitive Christians which Mr. Prynne confesseth although they were many in number and sufficiently able to defend themselves against their Persecutors by force and Arms yet did refuse to do it yielding themselves up to any tortures punishments deaths without the least resistance of the power either in word or deed Nay our Saviour himself acknowledged that Pilate had power given him from above to Crucifie him as you may read in St. Iohn 19.10 Then saith Pilate unto him Speakest thou not unto me knowest thou not that I have power to Crucifie thee and have power to release thee Jesus answered Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above Therefore he which delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin Yet Mr. Prynne with his confident averrment for he cannot bring one word of Scripture for what he saith goeth about to maintain the defensive Warr as he calls it of the Subjects against their Soveraign Lord the King lawfull both in point of Law and Conscience Tantumnè potest suadere malorum Religio Could his Religion do this His surely and only his for it is against the foundation of Christian Religion and Mr. Prynne must publish a new Gospel or else rectifie the Bible at the Presbyterian Oracle before his King-killing books will be Canonical He bringeth his arguments from the time that never was nor ever will be for saith he 2d pâ—rt of his Soveraign power of Parliaments fo 82 83. Kingdoms were before Kings ergo the King hath no absolute negative voyce c. I alwayes thought that Kings were before Kingdoms they being correlativa and doubtlesse if Fathers were before Sons and Masters before Servants then Mr. Prynne speaks nonsense but for his Apology you must understand that he means Countryes and people were before Kings but I think that is false too for the first man Adam was a King and Mr. Prynne cannot shew any time before England was governed by Kings And the word Kingdom in the Reports of our book cases and in Acts of Parliaments also is oftentimes taken for the King himself as you may read in Calvins case lib. 7.12 Therefore since by the Laws of the Land there can be no Parliament without the King that the word Kingdom is often used for the King himself who can deny the truth of the Title of Mr. Prynnes book which saith That the Parliament and Kingdom are the Soveraign power But latet anguis in herba Open the leaves of his book and you will see the mystery of iniquity clouted together If the King saith Mr. Prynne dye without heir then the people might make what lawes they should think fit Ergo the Members at this day have power without the King to make Lawes and are the most absolute supreme power and law-giver not the King If the Sky fall we may perhaps catch Larks but it doth not therefore follow that we may catch Larks presently Mr. Prynne knoweth that it is a Maxim in Law that the King never dyeth But admit the King should dye without heir and that then the people had power to make Lawes yet grosse it were to conclude that the members of the two Houses might so do because they are dissolved and are extinct when the King dyeth Therefore with more reason as a Royalist observes the King might argue thus All the lands in England are holden mediatly or immediately of the King and if the owners dye without heir by the lawes of the Realm their lands escheat to the Crown and so become at the Kings disposal But every man may dye without heir Ergo All the lands in England at this present are the proper inheritance of the King No Lawyer can deny Major or Minor yet the Conclusion thereupon is absurd The Court of Parliament saith Mr. Prynne hath power to avoid the Kings Charters c. made against law Ergo it hath the Soveraign power and is above the King and why not Ergo the Court of Chancery or any other of the Courts of Law at Westminster have the soveraign power and are above the King for they have power to nullifie and avoid the Kings Charters c. made against Law But I am sick of Mr. Prynnes impertinence and nonsense if any one be desirous to drink more of it I referre him to the Ocean his Book I will only give you a taste of the abuses which Mr. Prynne hath cast on Venerable Bracton and how Mr. Prynne endeavoureth to make Bracton speak Mr. Prynne's own sense against Bracton's own sense expresse words and meaning And since Mr. Prynne can make the Gospel and Holy Ghost speak what he pleaseth no wonder if he hath the Law-books at his beck Bracton saith as you have already heard That the King
own stipendaries and cast out of the pack as an unprofitable Member He incouraged the Souldiers to fight against the King dedicated his Volumes to their chief Commanders loaded them with high Commendations and incomparable praises and made them believe that they could do God no better service than to go on vigorously in their Rebellion So that it may be truly said that his paper pellets did more harm than the roaring Guns or cutting Swords He laboured night and day to glorifie and vindicate the Parliament in their wicked proceedings at home and as his books will manifest he spared many hours from his natural rest to promote the unnatural Warrs abroad Yet now nec invideo he prosecuteth them with reproaches as much as he did then with praises himself being become hatefull to them all verifying the Proverb of Solomon cap. 24.24 He that saith unto the wicked thou art righteous him shall the people curse Nations shall abhorre him Therefore I once more advise him as a friend to write a book of Retractations The Lord be merciful unto us the men of our times would make one believe that there never was a King in the World Nay they would seem to make the Kings so highly esteemed of by God all the Prophets and Apostles in Scripture but meer white walls the empty shadows of the people and the Bible but a bundle of Fables as if God never took no more notice of a King than of an ordinary Porter How Judas sirnamed the Long Parliament betrayed and murthered Charles the first The best of all Kings and contrary to all Law and Religion and the common interest of the people Banish Charles the 2d our only lawful King and Governour The mystery of their iniquity laid open and that they are the greatest and most wicked Tyrants that ever dwelt upon the face of the Earth and the Child which is unborn will rue the day of their untimely birth Of what persons a Parliament consisteth No Parliament without the King The Original institution of Parliaments and that the House of Commons which now make themselves Kings over King and people were but as of yesterday have no legal power but what is derived from the King and never were intrusted with any power from the people much lesse with the Soveraignty which they now Tyrannically usurpe The Kings Soveraignty over Parliament and people copiously proved King Charles his Title to the Crown of England To him only belongeth the Militia the power of chusing Judges Privy Counsellors and other great Officers c. He is head in Ecclesiastical causes and our sole Legislator Our Ancestors alwayes found and accounted Monarchy to be the best of Governments and most profitable for us yet these 40 or 50. Tyrants contrary to all Antiquity and common sense and feeling sit and vote Monarchy dangerous and burthensome That all persons put to death since the murther of Charles the Martyr by the power of our new States-men have been murthered and their Judges Murtherers and so it will continue until they receive their power and authority from Charles the 2d and that we shall never enjoy peace or plenty until our King be restored to his Kingdoms which a pack of Tyrants and Traytors not the People keep from him How the Law abhorreth to offer violence to the King and how these Rebels transgresse all Laws both of God and Man to uphold themselves in their unparallel'd Villanies A History which commandeth the serious contemplation of our age and worthy of the observation of all the people in the World and of all future Generations not that they might imitate but detest and loath these Perfidious and Rebellious transactions Perlege deinde scies HAving sufficiently prov'd out of our Law books that by the Common Law of the Realm the King hath the Soveraign power over Parliament and People and ought not to be questioned for his actions by any of his Subjects taken either distributively or collectively in one intire body because he hath no Superiour on Earth but God Almighty Let us now take a brief view of the Statutes and Acts of Parliament which have from Age to Age confirmed what I have said as an undoubted inviolable and indisputable truth And since there are those amongst us who talk much of a power in the Parliament as they call the two Houses which they pretend to be above and Superiour to the King Let us examine what this high and mighty Creature is whence and when it had its original what is its true natural and legal power and of what persons it doth consist The Kings high Court of Parliament consisteth of the Kings Majesty sitting there as in his Royal politick capacity and of the three Estates of the Realm viz. 1 Of the Lords spiritual Arch-Bishops and Bishops being in number 24 who sit there by succession in respect of their Counties or Baronies parcell of their Bishopricks which they hold also in their politick capacity 2. The Lords temporal Dukes Marquesses Earls Viscounts and Barons who sit there by reason of their Dignities which they hold by descent or creation being in number 106. And every one of these when the King vouchsafeth to hold a Parliament hath a Writ of Summons The third Estate is the Commons of the Realm which are divided into three parts viz. into Knights of Shires or Counties Citizens out of Cities and Burgesses out of Borroughs All which the King commandeth his Sheriffs to cause to come to his Parliament being respectively Elected by the Shires or Counties Cities and Burroughs and in number 493. It is called Parliament because every Member of the Court should sincerely and discreetly Parler la ment for the general good of the Common-wealth This Court of Parliament is the most high and absolute the supremest and most antient in the Realm it Maketh Enlargeth Diminisheth Abrogateth Repealeth and Reviveth Laws Statutes Acts and Ordinances concerning matters Ecclesiastical Capital Criminal Common Civil Martial Maritine c. to be short so transcendent is the power and jurisdiction of the Parliament as it cannot be confined either for Causes or Persons within any bounds Of this Court it is truly said Si antiquitatem spectes est vetustissima si dignitatem est honoratissima si jurisdictionem est capacissima Yet notwithstanding this Almighty power as I may say of the Parliament do but cut off the Kings head or any ways take away the King and it is nothing Then a petty Court of Pypowders hath more power and jurisdiction than that The King is the Soul of the Parliament and without him it is but Putre Cadaver a stinking Carcasse for as my Lord Coke observeth of this Court the King is Caput principium et finis And it is a baser and more odious part then the Rump of a Parliament which wanteth all these and as in a natural body when all the Sinews being joyned in the head do joyn their forces together for the strengthening of the body
Kings gracious Concessions each Member of the house of Commons ought to be respectively elected out of the Shires or Counties Cities or Boroughs by the Kings Writ ex debito Justitiae Now would it not strike a man with admiration and make his hair stand an end to hear that the House of Commons should claim the Legislative power and protest to the world that they were greater in authority and Majesty than the King who raised them from nothing surely 't is but a dream which troubled the head a while with strange Chimaeras and then vanish'd it is but a Phantasm which fanatick distempers raised in lunatick brains and so perish'd after ages will account it but an Ovids Metamorphosis or as a Fable told more for mirth and novelty than for any truth or reality for why are the pots greater than the Potter or doth he who ought for to obey give Laws to him whose right it is to command The King sayeth to the House of Commons come and they come and he sayeth to them go and they go whatsoever the King commands that they cannot chuse by Law but do Nay the Lords their Masters are but the Kings Servants the King is the head and they are but the servile Members it is the property of the Head not of the Members to command the inferiour Members are all at the will and nod of the Head the feet run the hands work and the whole body moveth at the pleasure of the head but without the head the whole body is but a dead trunck and neither hands nor feet have power to move so the Members of the Parliament without the King their head have not power to sit much less to Act there is no body without a head nor no Parliament without a King they cannot move nor convene together without his Royal Summons neither can they dissolve themselves being convened without his command the King assembles adjourns prorogues and dissolves the Parliament by Law at his pleasure and therfore it is called in our Statutes and Law-bookes Parliamentum Regis Curia Regis et Concilium Regis and the Acts of Parliament are called the Kings Laws and why not the Kings Laws doth not he make them The whole body and volumes of the Statutes proclaim the King the sole Legislator What is Magna Charta but the Kings will and gift The very beginning of it will tell you 't is no more viz. Henry by the grace of God c. Know ye that we of our meer and free will have given these Liberties In the self same style runs Charta de foresta In the Statute of escheates made at Lincoln 29 Edw. 1. are these words At the Parliament of our Soveraign Lord the King by his Council it was agreed and also commanded by the King himself That c. The Statute of Marlebridg 52 H. 3. runs thus The King hath made these Acts Ordinances and Statutes which he willeth to be observtd of all his Subjects high and low 3. Edwardi primi The title of the Statute is These are the Acts of King Edward and afterwards it followeth The King hath ordained these Acts And the first Chapter begins The King forbiddeth and commandeth That c. 6. Edw. 1 It is said Our Soveraign Lord the King hath established the Acts commanding they be observed within this Realm And in the 14 Chap. the words are The King of his special grace granteth That c. The Statute of Quo Warranto saith Our Lord the King at his Parliament of his special Grace and for affection which he beareth to his Prelats Earls and Barons and others hath granted that they who have liberties by prescription shall enjoy them 1. Ed. 3. To the honour of God and of holy Church and to the redresse of the oppression of the people our Soveraign Lord the King c. At the request of the Commonalty of his Realm by their Petition made before him and his Counsel in the Parliament by the assent of the Prelats Earls Barons and other great men assembled in the said Parliament hath granted for him and his heirs c. But wherfore evidences to prove that which no man can deny The styles of the Statutes and Acts printed to the 1 H. 7 are either The King willeth the King commandeth the King provideth the King grants the King ordains at his Parliament or the King ordaineth by the advice of his Prelats and Barons and at the humble Petition of the Commons c. But in Henry 7 his time the style altered and hath sithence continued thus It is ordained by the Kings Majesty and the Lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons in this present Parliament assembled And why do the Lords and Commons ordain Is it not only because the King doth It is so they do because the King doth which only denotateth their assent for the Kings Majesty giveth life to all as the Soul to the Body for did ever the Lords or Commons make an Act without the King Never they cannot the Lords advise the Commons consent but the King makes the Law their Bills are but inanimate scriblings untill the King breaths into their nostrils the breath of life and so that which was but mould before becometh a Law which ruleth living Souls and as Sr. Edward Coke observeth In antient times all Acts of Parliament were in form of Petitions which the King answered at his pleasure now if it be the duty of the Parliament to Petition and in the power of the King to receive or reject their Petitions at his will judg you who hath the supreme power Neither doth the King only make the Laws but he executeth them too for all executions which are the life of the Law receive their force and vigour from the King Car la ley le roy et les briefes le Roy Sont les choses per que home est Protect et ayde saith our Father Littleton Sect. 199. There be three things whereby every Subject is protected Rex Lex rescripta Regis The King commandeth his commands are our Laws and those Laws are executed only by the Kings Writs and Precepts and although the King Moses-like deputeth subaltern Judges to ease himself of some part of the burthen of administring Justice yet what they Judge are the Kings Judgments the Law is the rule but it is mute the King judgeth by his Judges and they judging are the Kings speaking Law The Judges are Lex loquens the Kings mouth the Commons are his eys and the Lords his ears but the Kings head is Viva Lex the fountain of Justice to whom God hath given his Judgments and we have none but what the King Gods Vicar giveth to us and why not the Kings judgments Quod quisque facit per alterum facit per se The Kings Patent makes the Judges the power of pardoning offences only belongeth to the King He may grant conusance of all pleas at his pleasure within any County
And it is the sweetnesse of the Bishops Lands which makes the Office of a Bishop so bitter and odious to our new States-men The Law would have them ejected from their ill gotten Fortune and Estates therefore they persecute the Law as their utter Enemy And say that they will have it no more coached in the City of London but carted in the Country amongst the Swains But they must likewise send the City with it into the Country otherwise the Body will dye when the Soul departeth and the City will perish when the Law and its Retinue bid it farewell As Histories both forein and domestique antient and modern and the whole Accademy of the Common Law so it is apparent by many Records and Judgements in Parliament And both the Lords and Commons in divers Acts of Parliament through many successions of Ages have declared that the King of England is Monarcha Imperator in regno suo a Monarch and Emperour in his Realm above all the people in his kingdom and inferiour to none on Earth but only the Almighty holding his Crown and Royal dignity immediately of God and of none else By the Statute of 28 H. 8. ca. 2. enacted in Ireland it is declared that the Kings of England are Lawful Kings and Emperours of the said Realm of England and of this Land of Ireland So by the Act of 16 R. 2. ca. 5. It is declared That the Crown of England hath been so free at all times that it hath been in no earthly subjection but immediately subject to God in all things touching the Regality of the same Crown and to none other And what is the House of Commons a God if they are but men the Crown is not subject to them for the Statute telleth you it is in no Earthly subjection But perhaps they are Devils neither will that serve their turn for as it appeareth by the Act The Crown is immediately subject to God and to none other So by the Statute of 24 H. 8. cap. 12. it is declared Where by divers sundry old authentick Histories and Chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed That this Realm of England is an Empire and so hath been accepted in the World Governed by one Supreme Head and King having the Dignity and Royal Estate of the imperial Crown of the same unto whom a body politick compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of Spiritualty and Temporalty been bounden and ought to bear next God a natural and humble obedience he being also institute and furnished by the goodnesse and sufferance of Almighty God with plenary whole and entire power pre-eminence authority prerogative and Jurisdiction to render and yield justice and final determination to all manner of Folk and Subjects within his Realm and in aâ— causes matters and debates whatsoever Behold here and consider the Judgement of the whole people both Lords and Commons Who can contradict what they said None but the Antipodes of our Age who contradict all Truth Justice Law and Honesty I heard it affirmed that they were about to explode out of the new Testament the 13th Chapter of the Romans and other Texts in Scripture which commanded subjection to Kings Truly I believe they did not want knavery but only conveniency to effect it If the Bible had had but one Head off it had went as sure as the Kings In the Statute of 1 Eli. cap. 1. and in several other Acts of Parliamenâ— the Crown of England is called an Imperial Crown and the Parliament the Kings hâ—gh Court And that you may see that the Murtherers of Charls the Martyr pretended to want water when they were in the Sea read the Act of Parliament 1 Ia. cap. 1. wherein the Lords and Commons made this joyfull Recognition viz. Albeit We your Majesties loyal and faithfull Subjects of all Estates and Degrees with all possible and publick joy and acclamation by open proclamations within few hours after the decease of our late Soveraign Queen we declared with one full voice of tongue and heart your Majesty to be our only lawfull and rightfull Liege-Lord and Soveraign yet as we cannot do it too often or enough so it cannot be more fit than in this high Court of Parliament where the whole Kingdom in person or by Representatives is present upon the knees of our hearts to agnize our most constant faith obedience and loyalty to your Majesty and your Royal Progeny humbly beseeching it may be as a memorial to all Posterity recorded in Parliament and enacted by the same that we being bounden thereunto by the Laws of God and Man do recognize and acknowledg that immediately upon the death of Queen Elizabeth the imperial Crown of this Realm did by inherent birth-right and lawfull and undoubted succession descend and come to your Majesty and that by lawfull right and descent under one imperial Crown your Majesty is of England Scotland France and Ireland the most potent and mighty King and thereunto we most humbly and faithfully submit and oblige our selves our heirs and posterities for ever untill the last drop of our bloods be spent and beseech your Majesty to accept the same as the first fruits of our loyalty to your Majesty and Royal Progeny and Posterity for ever Which if your Majesty will adorn with your royal assent without which it neither can be compleat and perfect nor remain to all Posterity we shall adde this to the rest of your Majesties inestimable benefits But now Tiber runs backwards and the Moon giveth light unto the Sun the Servant ruleth the Master and the Peasant is mightier and greater than the King Nay in stead of walking on our feet as our fore-Fathers did we walk upon our heads and as for the old paths where is the good way we will not walk therein Our Ancestors have attested the Kings Soveraignity with their lives and sacred oaths but we attest the contrary so that if we of this age are not our Ancestors of all ages past were ignorant perjured fools Our Fathers as you see in the fore-going Statute did humbly submit and oblige themselves and us their heirs and Posterity to be constant and faithfull in subjection to the King and his Royal Progeny But we undutyfull to our Parents as well as Rebellious to our King oblige our selves and bind our souls with many sacred oaths to expell him from his Crown rob him of his Revenews and extirpate his Royal Progeny being constant and faithfull to nothing but our own lusts and ambition They would spend their bloods to maintain and defend the King but we spend both our bloods and Estates to offend and destroy him They esteemed their Act void and imperfect without the Royal assent But we esteem and vote the Royal assent void imperfect and uselesse But wherefore do I say we Lay the saddle on the right horse It was neither Lords nor Commons Parliament nor people who perpetrated all these villanies
the power which they then and now exercise over these three Kingdoms is unjust and Tyrannical because not derived from the People There are no Representatives amongst them for Scotland nor Ireland nor the greatest part of England neither did they ever receive any power at all from the People of either England Scotland or Ireland and now all the People publiquely declare against them as the greatest Usurpers and Tyrants in the world yet contrary to all the Peoples wills they sit and Rule and will admit of no Member of the Peoples chusing to come amongst them unless they first qualifie and fit him for their own purpose therefore it plainly appeareth that this Vote that the People had the supreme power under God was but a meer juggle to gull the people and to bring their wicked designs to passe So that as A whip for the Horse or a bridle for the Asse have the People made of this quondam Parliament a rod for their fools-backs Pro. 26.3 The King being murthered by these Tyrants and all our Laws and Religion totally subverted a time wherin every one did what was right in his own eys Oliver Cromwel who for his excellency in wickedness and villanies was made General of the long called Parliaments unjust Forces the twentieth of April 1653. entred the House attended with some of the chief Commanders of his Army and delivering his reasons to them in a Speech why he came to put a period to their siting as judging it a thing much conducing to the publick wellfare of the Nation dissolved them And why might not he turn out them by force who by force had already turned out the King Lords and all the Commons besides themselves Surely if he had taken and hanged them all it would have been a glorious Act pleasing to God and the whole people and a Cordial to heal the miseries of our long-distressed Nation But his ambition was to make himself Great not to give relief and take away the Tyranny therfore he summoned a certain select number of his own creatures to appear at Westminster on the fourth of July next which he called a Parliament and none could deny but that they had the Soveraign power because Cromwel said so yet not so but that he made them resign up their power to him and make him the Lord protect us Lord Protector not a King because a King might do nothing but by Law but the Protector did nothing but according to his will and pleasure yet in this were we happy that in his reign one Tyrant Lorded it over us but in the long Parliaments many It is worth the observation that notwithstanding a Parliament had newly abrogated the very name and being of a King as dangerous and burthensom to the Common-wealth yet a Parliament summoned by Cromwel in July 1656. to meet on the 17 of September Petitioned and made many humble addresses to Cromwel that he would take Kingship upon him and be anointed King which old Nolls mouth watered at yet because some things did not fall out according to his expectation he declined it and refused to be what he eagerly though not openly persued Cromwel likewise created a House of Lords which was called the other House but the high aspiring thoughts of this turbulent Scorpion were at length blown down and extinguished by a high and mighty wondrous and unparalleld wind which out raunted Old Nol and whirried his black Soul down ad inferos So that after this storm we had a Calm and as the Sheep are at quiet ease when the bloody Woolf forsakes them so the People did rejoice and solace their hearts when this Tyrant made his Exit yet no sooner were we rid of this crafty Knave the Father but we were troubled with a simple Fool his Son Richard his eldest Son was proclamed by the new Courtiers and Army-Officers Lord Protector of England Scotland and Ireland and so tumble down Dick thought to have risen and Reigned in his Fathers room But a Fools bolt is soon shot Richard was quickly up quickly down No sooner had he called a Parliament but the Souldiers who feared that his Parliament should be honest and disband them as the only instruments to execute all Villanies went to the Mushroom Protector and by dnresse made him dissolve the Parliament and divest himself of all his Power and Authority And in this respect it is better to be a Knave than a Fool For crafty Noll kept the rude Souldiers in due obedience But simple Dick let them be his Masters whereas he might easily have made them and the whole people have been his Servants to this day When Richard was dismounted the Souldiers could not well tell where to hang the Government to secure them in their Rebellion and Roguery At last they pitcht upon the old rotten Rump viz. the fagg end of a worn-out perjured Parliament who had formerly dissolved themselves witnesse the Entry in their own Journal Book April 20.1653 although they pretend to be interrupted by Cromwells force So these Knaves the worst of Tyrants cemented together again like a Snakes tail and for colour called themselves the Revivers of the Good Old Cause and were as busie as if they had had another King and 3. Kingdoms to destroy So these infamous wicked Traytors returned to their wickedness as a Dog to his vomit to the great grief and grievance of all sorts of People in the Land who groaned and murmâ—red as if they were entering into a far worse than Egyptian bondage and Slavery under these task-masters To say that the people not they had the Soveraign power was now high Treason although they themselves had voted so formerly and to talk of a Free Parliament the antient birthright of the people as they themselves likewise formerly affirmed was now made a greater offence than Crimen lae sae Majestatis These Custodes filled all the Prisons in the Kingdom with those persons who desited a Free Parliament and in that respect they may be called The Keepers of our Liberty as Gaolers do Thieves in Chains or as the Cage doth Birds in grates For they keep us so much from our Free Liberty to do well that they will not so much as give us leave to speak or think well But there is no peace with the wicked when these Tyrants had beaten down Sir George Booth and other Assertors of a Free Parliament and made themselves as secure as Force and Violence could make them One Lambert a Chip of the old Block newly made General of their Forces displaced the Rump and with his Souldiers inhibited their usuped sitting which made the whole people not only rejoyce inwardly but break out in open laughter for joy But nullum commodum sine incommodo there is no pleasure without a displeasure No sooner did the Rump leave riding of us but up gets the Committee of Safety into the Saddle who made account that they were so absolutely our Masters as
Woolves with the destruction of the Innocent I need no other proof for this than every mans experience Virgil. Tantane vos generis tenuit fiducia Vestri Jam caelum terramque Dei sine numine venti Miscere tantas audetis tollere moles Quos Deus at motos praestat componere fluctus Post sibi non simili poena commissa luetis Maturate fugam Regique haec dicite vestro O ye Empty Clouds and raging winds of Ambition could Attempts enter into your Dunghill thoughts as to assassinate your King provoke Heaven and molest the Earth Durst you encounter the Almighty pitch battail and sight against his Deity Are your Commandments above his and can your Statutes repeal his Hath not he in his Vpper-house constituted a King and commanded you to honor and obey him and can your Mortal nothings in the Lower-house next door to hell vote him useless Can you put asunder that which Jehovah hath joyned together and take away not only the Crown but the life also of your dread Soveraign Can you do these things and look upwards Aposiopesis But God will that he will Ah rather repent of your villanies It is better for you I think though not your deserts to go peaceably to Heaven than to be thrown headlong into hell For there you will be murthered with the Devils and you cannot murther any more Kings death lyeth at your door and after this life ended you shall not be punished with the Sermons of holy Ministers or with Gods Word which is now odious unto you But with the Scorpions of the Devil Beelzebub and his Angels shall execute Tyranny over you in the infernal pit as you and your Angels have done over the Lords anointed and his innocent subjects in the open air before God and man Therefore Repent for Repentance is your nearest way to salvation Maturate fugam Regique haec dicite vestro Make haste and go and tell your King these things That you are sorrowful and that it gnaweth and biteth your seared Conscience to think that you should be the Authors of so great a wickedness beg his gracious pardon restore his sacred Patrimony which you have torne in pieces and cast lots for his pardon and peace with him will do your Souls more good than all his Lands or Royalties Acknowledge his Soveraignty as ye ought and set the Crown again upon his head which you did injuriously pluck off or else the time will come that one drop of the many tears and waters which you have caused to flow from the eyes of the Royal party their Widdows and Orphans shall be more desired of you to cool your tongues than ever their estates and honours were If a Thief should set upon you or any other subject to rob him It is lawful for the honest man to draw his sword and kill him if he can How dare you then with violence set upon your King to rob him not only of his goods but also of his life yet because he defended himself and so some of the Rebels slain Therefore you impeach him of high Treason and murther O monstrous did you ever hear of any Law in the whole world that ever the King could commit high Treason Be dumb for you did not The Laws of England are divided into three parts viz. 1. Common Law which is the most antient Law of the Realm 2. Particular Customes 3. Statutes or Acts of Parliament There is no offence punishable by the Laws of England unless it be against one of these Laws He that doth not offend against the Law is no sinner for where there is no Law there can be no transgression I had not known sin saith St. Paul but by the Law Rom. 7.7 Then cannot the King be guilty of Treason to the people or of any other offence punishable unless he offend against one of these three Laws And that he did not offend against any of them nor was guilty of those offences laid to his charge by any one or all of those Laws is as clear as the Sun and a Maxim with all honest men For 1. The Common Law is nothing else but the general custome and common usage of the Realm Finch 77. Plowdens Com. 195. Therefore the King cannot be an offender or guilty by the common Law nor the people have power to call him in question for any of his actions because it is so far from being the general custome and common usage of England for the King to be punished by the people that before this first and last great and monstrous distractive and destructive wicked and abominable murther of the last most gracious and merciful King such a thing was scarce ever heard of or entred into the thoughts of any English man Therefore the Rebels are cast by common Law and the Chancery will never give relief against the common Law li. 4.124 D. and St. So that take them which may you will this Dilemma will hang them Amen 2. Customary Law is where a particular custome grounded upon reason differeth from the general usage and common custome of the Realm Now to prove that the King is not an Offender against this Law would be a thing altogether frivolous and ridiculous it being known to every one that he cannot 3. Statute Law is a Law positive made by the King with the assent of the Parliament And there is no Statute or Act of Parliament in England which maketh any offence in the King high Treason or that giveth the people power to call the King to an account accuse or condemn him But there are many offences committed by the people made high Treason against the King by several Acts of Parliament But that the King could commit Treason against the people is such a novelty that Heaven nor Earth never heard of before perditious England hatcht it But since our age is much given to fictions Let us for once feign with our false Republicans That by the antient fundamental Laws of the Realm The King might commit Treason against the people and be a Traytor to the Common-wealth for which the people might lawfully question him Yet since Leges posteriores priores contrarias abrogant The Statute Law may alter and abridge the common Law The King cannot now commit Treason against the people nor be a Traytor to the Commonwealth Because by the Statute made 1 H. 4.10 and several others It is enacted by authority of Parliament who as the common people think may do any thing vote Heaven Hell or Hell Heaven That in no time to come any Treason be Judged otherwise than it was ordained by the Statute of 25 E. 3.2 In which Statute I am sure there is no mention made of any Treason but only against the King as any one may read at large which Statute being it was made by Benedictum Parliamentum a blessed Parliament for so it was called Co. Inst 3.2 I commend it to the perusal of every English man as the best
But these men with their practice most wickedly affirm it King Henry the 7 â— h and many Burgesses and Knights of the Counties being first attainted by Act of Parliament of high Treason against Richard the 3d. The question was in H. the 7 ths Parliament How this Act of Attainder should be reversed and made void It was resolved by all the Judges That those Knights and Burgesses which were attainted should not sit in the House when the Act of Attainder was to â—e reversed But when that Act was reversed then they might come again and sit in Parliament But as for the King it was unanimously agreed and resolved by all the said Judges that ipso facto when he took upon him to be King that he was a person able and discharged of the Attainder for said they the King hath power in himself to enable himself without a Parliament And an Act for the reversal of the Attainder is not at all necessary See 1 H. 7.4 Com. 238. Parliament B. 37. and 105. In which case you may see the power of a King of a King that was attainted of the greatest offence viz. High Treason Here likewise you may view the power of a Parliament of a Parliament who had asmuch right to dethrone their King as ever the long Parliament or any other had Here likewise you may hear the voyce of the Law of the Common law not since repealed by any subsequent Statute But as it was then so it ought to be now the Resolution of all the Judges in England That the King hath power to take pardon and ought not to crave pardon of the people for his offences The Crown once gained taketh away all defect is the Sentence of the Law and an Adage amongst all honest Lawyers If the people had the Supreme power why was not the Attainder of the King in this precedent case reversed by Act of Parliament as were the Attainders of the other Members If the King be but an Officer of trust deputed by the people and receiveth his power from them Why was not the King in this case freed from his offence by the people What would they entrust a person attainted of so great an offence as high Treason with the highest place in the Common-wealth And yet not permit others guilty and attainted of the same offence not so much as to fit and Act as Members of the Parliament without they were first purged of their offence It doth not stand with reason that the highest Offender should exercise the highest office And doubtless if the people had had power the Parliament would have cleared King H. the 7th from his crime before he should have Officiated his Office of Kingship But that Parliament well knew that the feet were not higher than the head and that the Inferiour Members could not impose Laws on the King their Soveraign They knew with Bracton that the King Parem non habet in Regno suo had not in his Kingdom any single man or the people his equal Therefore since it is the Law of the land Magna Charta 29. That no mâ—n shall be judged but by his Peers and being the King hath no Peer or Peers in his Dominions They resolved not to judge their King nor to commit so great a vanity as to reverse the Attainder For can a King be attainted or can the people who have no authority but what they have from him have authority to correct and revise their King O foolish imagination Horac Caelo tonantem credidimus Jovem Regnare praesens Divus habebitur Augustus adjectis Britaunis Imperio Jove governs Heaven with his Nod King Charles he is the earthly God Great Britain being his lawfull Inheritance Our King Augustus high and mighty Solus Princeps qui est Monarcha Imperator in Regno suo Davis Irish Rep. fo 60. Our only Prince who is both Monarch and Emperor in his kingdom hath only authority and the only right to govern the Britains who though long since have been accounted Rigidi hospitibus feri rigid and cruel to strangers yet that they should ever so much degenerate as to be rigid and cruel to their own natural King and kill their natural Soveraign is such a wonder and murther that never entred into the thoughts of former ages and will be a bugbear and scar-crow to all succeeding generations for by robbing their King of his Crown and Life they have robbed the Turk of his cruelty Judas of his treachery and all the Devils of their malicious wickedness For the Turks cruelty Judas his perfidious treachery and the Devils malicious villanies do all conjoyn to make up and center in an English Rebel one of those beasts who like the Enemies of King David Psal 102.8 Have sworn together against their King are mad upon him and revile him all the day long Yet that they may seem religious even when they commit Sacrilege they like the Devil when he tempted our Saviour taking him up into an exceeding high mountain and shewing him all the kingdoms in the world and the glory of them saying unto him All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me Mat. 4.9 will promise fairly and as if they were resolved diametrically to oppose St. Peters Doctrin who commands them 1 Pet. 2.16 Not to use liberty for a cloak of maliciousness they use the liberty of the people as a Wolf doth the Lambs skin to destroy poor Lambs as the only cloak and cover for all their malicious wicked prodigious and damnable actions For if you ask them for what cause did they murder the King Their answer is for the liberty of the people For what cause do they make themselves Governours and Lords and Masters over all that we have For the liberty of the people For what cause do they subvert the Laws expell and throw down the orderly and holy Clergie and all Religion with them For the liberty of the people For what cause do they enslave the whole Nation For the liberty of the people Nay these men are so well furnished with godly pretences and wicked intentions that even whilst they cut the peoples throats they make them believe they give them a blessing And as the man who swore that the Coat of the true owner was another mans only because he might have the use of it himself So these men have the impudence to swear though not without perjury that the Supreme power is in the people only because they might throw down our royal Government with all goodnesse with it and use that Supreme power themselves which they protest is in the people O delusive Mountebanks Was there ever such a jugling deceit acted by any Jugglers or Quacksalvers in the world Surely there was not And did not every one nay they themselves very well know the truth of what I have said I might easily make it clear and evident even to the blind with multitudes of Examples For
the House by the martial violence of the Souldiers their Masters whose Journy-Men they are yet no sooner do they find the door open but in they slip again like Dogs into the Buttery where they sit and eat the fat of the Land and the fruits of our labours for which they now and then shite us an Act of Parliament whereby they destroy our fundamental Laws and Liberties and invent new high Treasons against them such as our Law-Books nor Statutes never told us of by which they maintain themselves in their Robbery and the people in their Slavery As for the oath of Supremary Vows Protestations and Covenants which they made in the presence of God with hands lift up to heaven for vengeance if they did not perform them and all other oathes of Homage Fealty and Allegiance which the People took to be true and faithfull to the King These they discharge themselves and the People of by an Act of Parliament as if these Caterpillers could discharge debts due to the Almighty But to make God amends they passed another Act that the People should swear to be true and faithfull unto them To go about to number their villanies deceits treacheries perjuries and other their wicked Actions were to go about to number the sands of the Sea or the fraudulent devices of Belzebub their Master they being the Genus generalissimum of all Treason Rebellion Murther Blasphemy Hypocrisie Lying Swearing and For-swearing abounding in Wâ—oredom Drunkenness Leachery Treachery Covetousnesse Pride Ambition and all other detestable vices They are a pack of rotten putrefied Members glued together in the stinking body of sin And if I should give you a Character of each Simple wherewith this Compound is contracted it would fright you out of your wits for I speak really I think they are the very Quintessence of all the Devils in Hell And although this beast cannot well agree which horn or legge shall go foremost they being somwhat troubled in dividing the spoil and their usurped authorities which is caused by their pride and covetousness and although they differ in Ceremonies and Ciâ—cumstances yet they make it one of their Fudamentals upon which themselves and all their proceedings are builded to murther Charles the second as they did Charles the first when they can lay their unhallowed Claws upon him and although they hate and bark and snarle at one another like dogs yet in the great work of their Salvation like Pilate and Herod they all agree to be Traytor and Rebels against their King And so long as these Mastives Lord it over us we must never expect peace but alwayes live like dogs fighting and biting for what we have We must with them account vice vertue and vertue vice we must hold their words more canonical than Gods word and say that is law which they say is law though it be neither law truth nor reason Unlawfull wars set them up and we shall alwayes have wars and rumours of wars amongst us untill they are pulled down To be short we must resolve to forsake God and serve the Devil if we intend to keep any thing safe so long as this Phalaris the Tail of the House of Commons domineereth over us For the Children of this world being in their Generation wiser than the Children of Light Luke 16.8 These Worldlings are so wise and subtil to do mischief that when they commit the most deadly sin They make it passe to the world as the best service done to God and when they themselves make plots to murther honest Royalists then they get some of their hirelings to discover it and swear that the Royalists invented the plot against them and presently forsooth they vote and command that their three Kingdomes give God thanks for their great deliverance ascribing that which was done by their own providence to the Providence of the Almighty Nay they have their Lillies and other lying Astrologers whom they consult with before they commit any great wickednesse and make them publish to the world that the Heavens ruled and voted what these Beagles please to perform It is as natural for their Judges to judge unjustly if it be for the profit or pleasure of their Masters at Westminster as it is for them to live For how many innocent Gentlemen have they condemned to death for doing their duty in defending the King from unjust violence which we are all bound to do by the law of God Nature and of the Realm They have their Balaam Prophets and Priests too almost in every parish and pulpit which they make the Organs to sound forth their own praises so that the ignorant country multitudes who scarce know that there is a God but that they heard their Minister tell them so thinking that he doth God the best service and credit who hath the finest ribbond on his hat or that weareth the best cloaths on his back at Church these Momusses believe that the Saints at Westminster are the only supreme power on Earth and that no men in the world for some of them think that the sea side is the end of the world are to be compared to them either for wisdome learning or honesty and the only reason of their thoughts is Ipse dixit their Minister said so but last Sunday And this was the chiefest reason wherefore the countrey Peasants flocked in so fast to the Armies of those Neroes at Westminster raised against the King who alwayes made the ignorance of the people their greatest Champion And lest we should see the superiority of the King above and over the Knaves and other Cards they abolish and prohibit Card-playing as a great sin in their Commonwealth Why did they not give the superiority to the Knaves How these godly Villains stumble at strawes and leap over blocks They prohibit innocent recreations on the Sabbath day purposely because they would have the people esteem them zealous in Religion and stricter observers of Gods Commandments than the King But in truth they serv'd God only to serve themselves In nomine Domini incipit omne malum acting all their wickednesse in the name of the Lord. For when they have got a good name amongst the people they think under that shadow to act any wickednesse and yet to the world seem saints Murther their King too and yet be accounted good Christians nay Reformers of the Christian Religion O Religious Impostors To these Quacksalvers belongeth two Speakers alias dictos Lyars viz. the private Speaker Lenthall now called by the common souldiers the Father of their Country Can you blame the little Thieves if they applaud the great Thief and the publick Speaker Needham the one rough hammereth lyes at the forge the House of Commons the other fashioneth them in his Mercurius Politicus Thus they fill our eares with as many lies as their breasts be yet forsooth none must dare not to believe what they publish by authority Now the Presbyterian Judasses when they saw that the King
nor detract the Magistrate 1 Pet. 2.17 Fear God honour the King Prov. 30.31 A King against whom there is no rising up Eccles 10.20 Curse not the King no not in thy thought 1 Sam. 24.6 The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my Master the Lords anointed to stretch forth mine hand against him seeing he is the anointed of the Lord. From which premisses none unless those who deny the Scripture can deny these Consequences That the jura regalia of Kings are holden of Heaven and cannot for any cause escheat to their Subjects That active obedience is to be yielded to the King as Supreme in omnibus licitis in all things lawfull But if God for the punishment of a Nation should set up a Tyrannical King secundum voluntatem pravam non rationem rectam regentem governing by his depraved will against reason and commanding things contrary to the word of God we must not by force of arms rebel against him but rather than so if not prevailing by Petition unto him or escaping by flight from him patiently submit to the losse of our Lives and Estates and in that case Arma nostra sunt preces nostrae nec possimus nec debemus aliter resistere Our prayers and tears should fight and not our Swords For who can lift up his hands against the Lords anointed and be guiltless This in Scripture we find practised by Gods people to Pharaoh Exo. 5.1 and the same people to Nebuchadnezzar a Tyrant were commanded to perform obedience and to pray for him Though there was no wickednesse almost which he was not guilty of His Successor Darius Daniel obeyed and said O King live for ever Dan. 6.21 For now no private person hath with Ehud Judg. 3.21 extraordinary commandment from God to kill Princes nor no personal warrant from God as all such persons had who attempted any thing against the life even of Tyrants Nil sine prudenti fecit ratione vetustas 2. The King hath his Title to the Crown and to his Kingly office and power not by way of trust from the people but by inherent bigthright immediately from God Nature and the law 1 Reg. Ja. ca. 1. li. 7.12 Calvins caâ—e 3. The Law of Royal government is a Law Fundamental 1 pars Jnst fo 11. 4. The Kings Prerogative and the Subjects Liberty are determined and bounded by the Law Bracton fo 132. Plowden fo 236 237. 5. By Law no Subjects can call their King in question to answer for his actions be they good or bad Bracton fo 5 6. Si autem ab eo petatur cum Breve non Currat contra ipsum locus erit supplicationi quod factum suum corrigat emendet quod quidem si non fecerit satis sufficit ei ad poenam quòd Dominum expectet ultorem Nemo quidem de factis suis praesumat disputare multo fortius contra factum suum venire If any one hath cause of action against the King because there is no Writ runneth against him his only remedy is by supplication and petition to the King that he would vouchsafe to correct and amend that which he hath done which if he refuse to do Only God is to revenge and punish him which is punishment enough No man ought to presume to dispute the Kings actions much lesse to rebel against him 6. The King is the only Supreme Governour hath no Peer â— his Land and all other persons have their power from him 3 Ed. 3.19 Bracton li. 1. cap. 8. Sunt etiâ—m sub Rege liberi homines Servi ejus potestati subjecti Omnis quidem sub eo ipse sub nullo nisi tantum sub Deo Parem autem non habit in Regno suo quia sic amitterit praeceptum cum par in parem non habeat imperium Item nec multo fortius superiorem nec potentiorem habere debet quia sic esset inferior sibi subjectis inferiores pares esse non possunt potentioribus Ipse autem Rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo sub lege quia Lex facit Regem The King hath no superior but the Almighty God All his people are inferior to him he inferior to none but God 7. The King is Caput Reipublicae the Head of the Commonwealth immediately under God 1 Jnst 73.1 h. 7.10 Finch 81. And therefore carrying Gods stamp and mark among men and being as one may say a God upon Earth as God is a King in Heaven hath a shadow of the Excellencies that are in God in a similitudinary sort given him Bracton fo 5. Cum sit Dei vicarius evidenter apparet ad similitudinem Jesu Christi cujus vices gerit in terris That is to say 1. Divine Perfection 2. Infinitenesse 3. Majesty 4. Soveraignty and Power 5. Perpetuity 6. Justice 7. Truth 8. Omniscience 1. Divine perfection In the King no imperfect thing can be thought No Laches Folly Negligence Infamy Stain or Corruption of blood can be adjudged in him 35. h. 6.26 So that Nullum tempus occurrit Regi 2. Infiniteness The King in a manner is every where and present in all Courts And therefore it is that he cannot be non-sute and that all Acts of Parliament that concern the King are general And the Court must take notice without pleading them for he is in all and all have their part in him Fitz. N. B. 21. H. 25. H. 8. Br tit Non-sute 68. 3. Majesty The King cannot take nor part from any thing but by matter of Record and that is in respect of his Majesty unless it be a Chattle or the like Because De minimis non curat Lex 5. Ed. 4.7 4 E. 6.31 2 H. 4.7 4. Soveraignty and Power All the Land is holden of the King No action lyeth against him For who can command the King He may compel his Subjects to go out of the Realm to war Hath absolute power over all For by a clause of Non-obstante he may dispense with a Statute Law and that if he recite the Statute Though the Statute say such dispensation shall be meerly void 7 E. 4.17.21 H. 7.2 H. 7.7 Calvins case Bracton Rex habet potestatem jurisdictionem super omnes qui in regno suo sunt ea quae sunt jurisdictionis pacis ad nullum pertinent nisi ad Regiam dignitatem habet etiam coercionem ut delinquentes puniat coerceat And therefore ought to have the Militia 5. Perpetuity The King hath a perpetual succession and never dyeth For in Law it is called the demise of the King and there is no Inter-regnum A gift to the King goeth to his Successors though not named For he is a Corporation of himself and hath two capacities to wit a natural body in which he may inherit to any of his Ancestors or purchase Lands to him and the heirs of his body which he shall retain although he be afterwards removed from his Royal estate and a body
politick in which he may purchase to him and his heirs Kings of England or to him and his Successors Yet both bodies make but one indivisible body Plowden 213.233.242 li. 7.12 6. Justice The King can do no wrong Therefore cannot be a disseisor He is all Justice Veritas Justitia saith Bracton circa solium ejus They are the two Supporters that do uphold his Crown he is Medicus regni Pater patriae sponsus Regni qui per annulum is espoused to his Realm at his Coronation he is Gods Lieutenant and is not able to do an unjust thing 4 Ed. 4.25 5 Ed. 4.29 Potentia injuriae est impotentia naturae His Ministers may offend and therefore are to be punished if the Laws are violated but not he 7. Truth The King shall never be estopped Judgement finall in a writ of right shall not conclude him 18 E. 3.38 20 E. 3. Fitz. Droit 15. 8. Omniscience When the King licenceth expresly to aliente an Abbot c. which is in Mortmain he needs not make any Non obstante of the Statutes of Mortmain For it is apparent to be granted in Mortmain And the King is the head of the Law and therefore shall not be intended misconusant of the Law For Praesumitur Rex habere omnia jura in scrinio pectoris sui 1 Jnst 99. And therefore ought to have a Negative voice in Parliament For he is the fountain of justice from whence the Law floweth 8. The Opinion of the two Spencers in Ed. 2. Who held that the oath of allegiance was more by reason of the Kings Crown that is his politick capacity than by reason of his person Is a most detestable excreable damnable and damned invention 7 Rep. fo 11. Calvins case 9. High Treason can be committed against none but the King neither is any thing high Treason but what is declared so to be by the Statute 25 Ed. 3. c. 21. To leavy war against the King to compass or imagine his death or the death of his Queen or of his eldest Son to counterfeit his Money or his great Seal to imprison the King untill he agree to certain demands to leavy war to alter Religion or the Law to remove Counsellours by arms or the King from his Counsellours be they evil or good by arms to seize the Kings Forts Ports Magazine of war to depose the King or to adhere to any State within or without the Kingdome but the Kings Majesty is high Treason For which the Offendor should have judgement First to be drawn to the Gallows 2. There to be hanged by the neck and cut down alive 3. His Intralls to be taken out of his belly And he being alive to be burnt before him 4. That his head should be cut off 5. That his body should be cut in four parts and 6. That his head and his quarters should be put where the Lord the King pleaseth 10. Treason doth ever produce fatal destruction to the Offender either in body or soul sometimes in both and he never attains to his desired end 3 Par. Jnst pag. 36. Peruse over all Books Records and Histories and you shall finde a Principle in Law a Rule in Reason and a tryal in experience that Treason doth ever produce fatal and final destruction to the Offender and never attains to the desired end two incidents inseparable thereunto and therefore let all men abandon it as the Poysonons bait of the Devil and follow the precept in holy Scripture Serve God Honour the King and have no company with the seditions 11. That Kings have been deposed by their Subjects is no argument or ground that we may depose ours A facto ad jus non valet argumentum Because Children have murdered their own fathers is no warrant for us to murder ours Judas betrayed his Soveraign yet should not we follow his example unless we strive for his reward There was never King deposed but in tumultuous and mad times and by might not by right 12. The King is Principium caput finis Parliamenti the begining head and end of a Parliament The body makes not the head nor that which is posterior that which is prior Kings were before Parliaments There were not in England any formed bodyes called the two Houses of Parliament untill above 200. years after the Norman Conquest 13. The King of England is armed with diverse Counsels one whereof is called Commune consilium the Common counsel and that is the Court of Parliament and so it is legally called in writs and judicial proceedings Commune Consilium Regni Angliae Consilium non est praeceptum Consiliarii non sunt praeceptores It is not the office or duty of a Counseller to command and make precepts but only to advise 14. The King is the fountain of justice and the life of the Law The two Houses frame the body the King giveth the soul for without him it is but a dead carcase And Si componere magnis Parva mihi fas est If I may compare small things with great As in a bond though one find paper and another write it yet if the obligor do not seal and deliver it it is nugatory and no obligation So if the King assent not to an act of the two Houses it is void and no Statute It is the royal Scepter which gives it the force of a Law Witnesse the whole Academy of the Law perspicua vera noâ— sunt probanda It would be foolish to light the Sun with Candles 15. Originally The King did make new Laws and abrogate old without the assâ—nt of any known body oâ— assembly of his Subjects But afterwards by his gracious goodnesse perceiving that his people could best know their own soars and so consequently apply the most convenient remedy he vouchsafed so much to restrain his power that he would no make any Law concerning them without their assent For at the first Populus nullis legibus tenebatu sed arbitria regum pro legibus erant Which truth iâ— so clear that it shines almost in every History The oldest and best stile of an act of Parliament is Be it enacted by the Kings Majesty with the assent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons c. which proves where the virtual power is 16. The Commons have no Authority but by the Writ of Summons That Writ gives them no power to make new Lawes but onely to do and consent to such things which shall happen to be ordained by Common Counsel there in Parliament which are the words of the writ and all their Jurisdiction At a Conference the Commons are alwayes uncovered and stand bare when the Lords sit with their hats on which shews that they are not Colleagues in Judgement with the Lords Every Member of the House of Commons takes the oath of allegiance and supremacy before his admission in the House and should keep it too 17. It is Lex consuetudo Parliamenti The Law and Custome of a Parliament
That no Arms are to be borne in London or Westminster in the time of Parliament Lest the proceedings in that high Court pro bono publico should thereby be hindred or disturbed For it is more congruous for Red-coats with their Pikes Muskets Swords and other ammunition to keep a Den of Theeves than to keep the Members of so honourable a Court. 3 Jnst 160. 4 Jnst 14. 18. When an Act of Parliament is against Common right or reason as that Debtors should not pay their debts c. or repugnant or impossible to be performed the Common Law shall controle it and adjudge it to be voyd And such is an Act for a perpetual Parliament or to kill the King Dier 313. li. 8.118 Doctor Bonhams case 19. The premisses being rightly and duely considered if any person be so impudent insolent and arrogant as to deny the King his Negative voyce in Parliament They may aswell deny him his life and take upon them to frame a new Law and Commonwealth to themselves Shall the Commons have a Negative voyce who are most of them Tradesmen and not educated in the Law but in Mechanick handy-crafts And shall not the King have this priviledge who is assisted by the advice of the Judges his Counsel at Law Sollicitor Atturney Masters of Chancery and Counsel of State consisting of some great Prelates and other great Personages versed in State affairs 20. The Parliament is actually dissolved by the demise of the King For the Individuum Carolus Rex being gone from whence they derived their power consequently their authority is gone likewise For cessante statu primitivo câ—ssat derivativus And Derivativa potestas non potest esse major primitivo The Division of Governments Monarchy is the most natural and Divine The King hath no equal in his Kingdome Soveraignty can not be divided beâ—ween the King and the People Neither can the People either jointly or singlely have the supreme power where the Government is Monarchical The tenets of our new Statesmen yet old Knaves confuted as damnable Parliaments have no power but from the King neither did ever any Parliament unless our late Rebels ever claim any power but what came from the King But all Parliaments ever since they had their being by the very Statutes which the King made with their consent have acknowledged the supreme power to be in the King and have sworn it with sacred oaths So did that Parliâ—mâ—nt which murthered their King swear that the only supreme power and Soveraignty was in the King next to God and that there was no power on earth above his which being true I would fain know what power they had not only to remove their King from his evil Counsellers which they did in removing him from themselves but also from the Land of the living Quos Deus sed c. HAving dissolved the Parliament and set foot on the ground of the Politician let us travel a little further and take a survey of the main Triangle upon which the art of Government consists viz. 1. Monarchy 2 Aristocracy 3. Democracy or popular estate which degenerate into 1. Tyranny 2. Oligarchy 3. Ochlocracy or Commonwealth And first of Monarchy For a principalioribus seu dignioribus est inchoandum The most excellent must have precedency Monarchy which we may call a Kingdome is where the absolute Soveraignty lyeth in the power of one only Prince for so much the word Monarchy of it self importeth who ruleth either according to the rule of Law and equity or contrary Which form of Government doth as far transcend and excel all others as the glorious Sun doth the pale-fâ—ced Moon or the Moon the lesser Stars It is the Embleme of the Almighty For behold the blessed Trinity where there are three persons but one God There is an Arch-angel The Angels adore but one Lord and Soveraign Take a view of the heavenly Orb where you shall see the caelestial creatures give place to the Kingly Sun The Moon ruleth Queen regent amongst the Stars Behold the Eagle the King of the Birds of the air The Lyon the King of the beasts on the earth And the Whale the King of fishes in the sea Fire hath the majestick preheminence above the other Elements among granes the wheat among drinks the wine among spices the baulm among metals the gold The Devills themselves will not be so disorderly as not to have a King for Satan is their Prince and chiefest Leader The Members of the Natural body are subjects to the Head their Soveraign and the same Congruity and Harmony is there in the Politique body of Monarchy And such is the stately preheminence of this Government that the Monarch can admit of no Peer in his Kingdome no more than the Sun can of an other Sun in the Firmament Si duo soles velint essâ— periculum ne incendio omnia perdantur Serinus If two be equal in power in a Commonwealth it is Aristocracy or rather Duarchy and not Monarchy For one of them hath not Soveraignty over the other For Par in parem non habet potestatem he only is a Soveraign who commandeth all others and can himâ—elf by none be commanded Then no less foolish than wicked and detestable is their opinion who confess their Government to be Monarchical yet would have Duo summa imperia and hold that the Universe of the people are of equal if not higher power than their Monarch and may call him in question for his actions and prosecute him even unto death if they please who make their dreadfull Soveraign a Jack a Lâ—nt a Minister of trust at the best to be turned out of his Office at their pleasure when God and all the World knows that by the Law of God as I shewed before and shall more fully shew hereafter the Law of Nations the Law of Nature and the Law of England both Common and Statute They ought not to touch him though in truth he were so wicked as they would have and pretend him to be No they ought not so much as to think an evil thought of him Quod summum est vnum est Soveraignty is a thing indivisible and cannot at one and the same time be divided between the King and his Subjects If the Soveraignty be in the people then is the Government either Popular or Aristocratical and not Monarchical To mix the estate of a Monarchy with Democratical or Aristocratical estate each having a share of the Soveraignty is altogether impossible For if every one of the three estate or but two of them hath power to make Laws who should be the Subjects to obey them or who could give the Law being himself constramed to receive of them unto whom he himself gave it Then might the King make the acting of his people against him treason and the people make the acting of their King against them treason which would bring all to Anarchical confusion And although our age had produced such a Monster
instructions so he that denyeth this truth ought with the oratory of the sword and not of the mouth to be perswaded into his due obedience For it is an uncontrolable Maxim that he doth not honour and serve God as he should who doth not honour and serve his King as he ought God will not own him to be his subject who will not be a subject to his Soveraign the Lords anointed Therefore since by the Law of God for nothing is more frequently commanded in the Scripture and our Kings are of like institution with those Kings in Scripture and ought to have the same honour and obedience by the Law of Nature by the Law of Nations by the Common and Statute Law of England we are commanded to honour our King Let no man be so much an Enemy to God to Religion to his Country to the Church to the Law and to his own soul as to Rebel against his Legal Soveraign For he that doth it transgresseth against the ten Commandements of the Law the new Commandement of the Gospel he committeth the seaven deadly sins the four crying sins the three most detestable sins to the soul of man viz. Prophaness Impudency and Sacrilege In a word he committeth all sins is the Embleme of the Devil and unless he repent he will have his Lot with Belzebub the great Rebel and Traytor against Heaven If punishment cannot compel them me thinks the beauty of Monarchy might allure men to love it Surely there is no generous spirit who doth not for the most renowned and famous Nations in the World have lived under Monarchical Government as the Scythians Ethiopians Indians Assyrians Medes Egyptians Bactrians Armenians Macedonians Jews and Romans first and last and at this day the French Spaniards Polonians Danes Muscovites Tartars Turks Abissines Moors Agiamesques Zagathinians Cathaians yea and the Salvage people lately discovered in the West-Indies as being guided thereto by the rules of nature and rip up Antiquity and search Histories both antient and modern and thou shalt never finde our Realm of England so much an Enemy to virtue as to hate Royal Government until these latter and worst of dayes wherein it is accounted a sin to be noble and vertuous Nay so much did our Nation love Kings in former times that we had seaven of them in England at one and the same time viz. 1. The King of Kent 2. Of the South-Saxons 3. Of the West-Saxons 4. Of the East-Saxons 5. Of Northumberland 6. Of Mercia 7. Of the East-Angels which ruled and shined like the seaven Stars each absolutely reigning in his Country not under the subjection of other until at length by the Law of Conquest one became Monarch over all ruling like the Sun and acknowledging none on Earth his Superior so much that it is amongst us a common adage viz. The King holdeth of none but of God But it seems God hath now granted away the Seigniory to the House of Commons and the King must hold of them But from hence ariseth a point in Law whether they are absolutely and legally seized of the Seigniory without attornment of the tenant In my simple opinion the Seigniory doth not pass before attornment but I leave it as a quaere to the House of Commons who are best able to resolve it because they have all the Law in their own hands Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites From what hath been said it is apparent that Adam was the first King on Earth and that Kingdoms have been ever since Adam haereditary for a family which was before Commonwealth is nothing else but a small Kingdom and a great Kingdom is nothing else but a great family for the Pater familias were petite Kings and had royal power and potestatem vitae necis even over their own Children as Abraham and others But when the family increased and the numerous off-pring of their first parent multiplied built Villages Towns and Cities and so became a great people so long as their first parent lived their love and duty towards him would not permit them unnaturally to strive with him for the superiority but to acknowledge and obey him as their Soveraign and lawfull King from whence they had their being And this is the reason that Kings are called Patres Patriae Fathers of their Country Sal. 1. Inde enim origo regum regiique regiminis petenda est Haec cum primo homine cum solo novo cepit quoniam primum parentem numerosus ex eo descendens natorum qui ex â—is nati sunt populus pro rege habuit observavit ut primum sui generis auctorem So much for Monarchy the best of all Governments No man can serve two Masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other ye cannot serve God and Mammon Math. 6.24 If any Anti-Royalist think himself wiser than our Saviour and that he can serve two Masters and love them both let him hate Monarchy and set up his two headed Master and let experience the mistris of fools correct him as it hath many already But since our age is given to nothing but vain imaginations there be some who do Imagine and will object that Adam was no King because he is not stiled so in Scripture I answer though this frivolous objection doth not deserve an answer that neither do you find Adam stiled in Scripture my Father or thy Father yet Adam was the Father of all flesh Si res apparet Cur de nomine certas He that hath the supreme power is a King But Adam had the supreme power Ergo Adam was a King Rex cometh from Regere to rule and Adam was sole Lord Ruler and King and so continued untill he died Adam was created by God the Monarch of the World before he had any subjects And by right of Nature it was due to Adam to govern his posterity even before his subjects were born So that though not in act yet in habit Adam was a king from his creation Neither could Eve nor her Children ever limit Adams power It was God that gave the power therefore no Mortals could ever diminish or increase it For Quid Jove majus habetur They must be above all that which is called godlinesse who go about to put asunder that which the Almighty hath joyned together This Paternal power continued Monarchical to the Floud and after the Floud to the Confusion of Babel at which time God scattered the people abroad from thence upon the face of the whole earth as you may read Gen. 10 11. Yet they went out by Colonies of whole families over which the prime Fathers had the Soveraignty and were kings deriving their Fatherly and Regal power from Noah whose Sons or Grand-children they were all And although I think there are but few Kings in the world who can prove their title to their Crown hereditary ever since Noahs
authority is originally and radically in the people from them by consent derived to Kings immediately mediately only from God that the donation or collation of the power is from the Community the approbation only from God and that Soveraignty and power in a King is by conveyance from the people by a trust devolved upon him and that it is Conditional fiduciary and proportioned according as it pleaseth the Community to entrust more or lesse and to be weighed out ounce by ounce and that the King may be opposed and resisted by violence force and arms and the people resume their power which we deny and shall prove by the law of God of Nations of Nature of the Common and Statute law of England that the Royal power and Soveraignty of Kings is primarily formally and immediatly from God and that the people through pretence of Liberty Privilege Law Religion or what Colour soever ought not to oppose imprison resist much lesse Murther their King though he be wicked and subvert Law and Religion much lesse when he is pious upholdeth and maintaineth both First I conceive that there is no man so impudently wicked as to deny that there is a God who created all things Heaven and Earth Angels and Men the power of Angels and the power of Men there is one power of Angels and another of Men so there is a difference of powers amongst men the power of a King inferior to no power on earth but only Gods the power of the Subjects inferior to the power of the King the power of a Father over his Children and the power of a Husband over his Wife and so every power limitted by God and as one Star doth excel another in brightnesse so one power doth excel another in dignity and glory There is nothing more plain and evidently asserted in the Scripture than that Kingly power is the most Sacred Divine and glorious of all powers immediately from God peculiarly owned by him as a power wherin his Nature and Majesty is most manifested and as I have already shewed hath a shadow of all Divine Excellencies Man was made Gen. 1.26 and God said let us make man in our Image But man had no power or dominion untill God further said And let them have dominion over so that it is from hence most clear that man had no power or Soveraignty untill God gave it him and the first man to whom God gave it was Adam a King the sole Monarch of the world Then let not our new Sectaries fondly wickedly conceit that royal authority is originally and radically from them that it is by their consent immediatly derived from them to Kings Since the Kingly power office was before they were born or had any power from whence such authority could be derived By me Kings raign saith God not only particular Kings as Kings of the Jews c. but all Kings Prov. 85.1 Qui succedit in locum succedit in jus Therefore whosoever claim unto themselves that power which is universally and perpetually peculiar unto the God of all power do Blaspheme and rob God of his honour and what lyes in them do make God no God and themselves the only Almighty But the people which challenge unto themselves the original power of earthly Dominion do challenge unto themselves that power which is universally and perpetually peculiar to the God of all power Therefore those people do blaspheme and rob God of his honour and what lyes in them do make God no God and themselves the only Almighty There is no power but of God The powers that be are ordained of God Rom. 13.1 5. Wherefore ye must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience sake Doubtless our superintendants did never learn their Doctrine from this Text but they may aswell learn it from hence as from any other place in Scripture for I finde nothing in my Bible contrary to this but every text in Scripture doth harmoniously agree with this and unanimously resolve that Kings are of God they are Gods Children of the most high his Servants â—ir publick Ministers his Deputies his Vicegerenis his Lieutenants their Throne their Crown their Sword their Scepter their Judgements are Gods their Power Person and charge are of Divine extract and so their authority and person are both sacred and inviolable God removeth Kings and setteth up Kings Daniel 2.21 Thou settetst a Crown of pure Gold on his head Psal 21.3 I gave thee a King in mine anger and took him away in my wrath Hos 13.11 Which proveth that God not the people did institute Kings and that God not the people should take them away God hath spoken once yea twice have I heard this that power belongeth unto God Psal 62.11 By him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers Col. 1.16 And now O Lord my God thou hast made thy servant King instead of David my Father 1 Kings 3.7 I have provided me a King saith God 1 Sam. 16.1 Whole heaps of Scipture might I gather to confirm that Kings are solely and immediatly dependent from God and independent from all others which truth the suffrages of the Holy Fathers which are but as so many Commentaries on the Scripture and therefore not so necessary here to be recited do affirm and maintain But some may ask me how Kings in these dayes can be said to be immediatly from God when somtimes they are elected Kings by the people sometimes they come to their Crowns by Conquest and sometimes hereditarily by succession and never by extraordinary manifestation and revelation from Heaven as did Moses Saul David To this I briefly answer That as Divines hold a thing is immediatly from God several wayes 1. When it is solely from God and presupposeth nothing ordinary or humane antecedent to the obtaining of it So was Moses made captain over Israel and so had Joshua his authority But Soveraignty now to our Kings is not so conveyed but some humane act is alwayes intervening 2. When the Donation and Collation of the power to such a person is immediatly from God though some act of man be antecedent as Mathias was an Apostle immediatly from Christ though first the Apostles put two a part and cast lots yet neither of these two acts jointly or severally did virtually or formally collate the Apostolical power upon him When an Atturney maketh livery of seisin according to his letter of Atturny the Feoffee is in by the Feoffor and not by the Atturny though his act was interposed Is is not the Feoffment of the Atturney but of the Feoffor and the Feoffee his Title is only from the Feoffor though he had not had it but by the means of the Atturny In the second sense Soveraignty is conferred on kings immediatly from God though some created act as Election Succession Conquest or any other
non usu valet argumentum But they all unanimously resolve and report the contrary Reader I Would not have thee imagine as some men through malice or ignorance do most impudently assert that when we say The King is absolute and above the Law that thereby is intended that the King is freed from and hath power to act against Gods Laws when he pleaseth No this is but their false glosse and interpretation For non est potentia nisi ad bonum hability and power is not but to good There is no power but what is from God and therefore no mortal man can have a power to act against God To sin and break Gods commandements is impotency and weakness no power For the Angels which are established in glory do far excel men in power yet they cannot sin The Law of God is above the King and he is bound to God to keep it yet neverthelesse he is an absolute King over men because God hath given him the Supreme power over them and hath given no power to men to correct him if he transgresse But God only whose Law only he can transgresse can call the King to an account Hoc unum Rex potest facere quod non potest injuste agere the King only is able not to do unjustly is a rule in Commonlaw and the reason is because the people do not give Laws to the King but the King only giveth Laws to the people as all our Statutes and Perpetual experience hath taught us Therefore how can the King offend against the Laws of the people or be obnoxious to them when they never gave him any Laws to keep or transgresse and then how can the people punish him who never offended their Laws Therefore the King must needs be absolute over the people and only bound to God not to the people to keep those Laws which God not the people gave him and as God is above the Laws and may alter them at his pleasure which he gave and set over the king so is the King above and may alter at his pleasure those laws which at his pleasure he gave set over the people still observing that he is free from all Laws quo ad coactionem in respect of any coaction from the people but not quo ad obligationem in respect of obedience to God by his obligation Therfore well might Solomon counsel us to keep the Kings commandement saying Eccles 8.2 I counsel thee to keep the Kings Commandement and that in regard of the Oath of God Be not hasty to go out of his sight stand not in an evil thing for he doth whatsoever he pleaseth Where the word of a King is there is power and who may say unto him what dâ—st thou These words are the words of God which King Solomon did speak by infusion of the Spirit In which you may see that the King doth what he pleaseth And we are commanded not to stand in an evil thing that is according to Iunius and Tremel translation perturbatione rebellione quae tibi malum allatura esset ageret tecum arbitratu suo sive jure sive injuria We must not murmur and rebel against the King though he deal with us unjustly He may be just when we think he is unjust The Kings heart is in the hands of God the searcher of all hearts as the Rivers of Water not in the hands of the people Therefore God not the people can turn it whether soever he will Prov. 21.1 King David was filius Dei non populi The Son of God not of the People Psalm 89.26 It was God who made him higher than the Kings of the Earth verse 27. not the People He was neither chosen of the People nor exalted of the People For I have exalted one chosen out of the people saith God verse 19. The exaltation was Gods and the choice not of but out of the people For I have found David my Servant with my holy oil have I anointed him saith God verse 20 Kings are the Children of the most high not of the people Psalm 82. Therefore who can say unto the King what dost thou If the people of England have power to depose and make Kings Why are they usurpers who by the power of the people destroy the lawfull King as did Richard the third and by the consent of the people established himself in the Government They are Kings de facto but not de jure as all our Books agree For the people have not the Soveraignty but the King Surely the people of England thought so when by act of Parliament they ordained that none should be capable to sit in Parliament before they had Sworn it vide 1 Eliz. 1.5 Eliz. 1.1 Jac. 1. And I am sure that the breaking of the Oath can give the Parliament no new Authority It is declared by the Lords and Commons in full Parliament rot Par. 42 E. 3. nu 7. Lex consuetudo Parliamenti 4 Inst 14. upon demand made of them on the behalf of the King that they could not assent to any thing in Parliament that tended to the disherison of the King and his Crown whereunto they were Sworn And it is strange to think that the House of Commons which is but the tail of a Parliament should have that power which both Lords and Commons had not But since there can be no Parliament without the King 4 Inst 1 2.341.356 We may conclude that these men being Traytors Rebels and Tyrants will take upon them to do any thing Defensive War against the King is illegal or the Great question made by Rebels with honest men no question Whether the people for any cause though the King act most wickedly may take up arms against their Soveraign or any other way by force or craft call him in question for his actions Resolved and proved by the Law of God the Law of Nations the Law of Nature the Laws of the Realm by the rules of all Honesty Equity Conscience Religion and Piety by the Example and Doctrine of our Saviour Christ all the Prophets Apostles Fathers of the Church and all pious Saints and holy Martyrs That the peoplâ— can have no cause either for Religion or Laws or what thing soever to levy War against the King much lesse to murther him proved in Adam The manner of the Government of the King Gods Steward and Stewart when he cometh described The Bishops Lords Prayer and Common Prayer Book must then be restored with their excellencies now abused He will lay down his life before he will betray his trust and give his account to any but God as did our last great Stewart his Father The blessednesse of the people when the King shall come and rule over them declared his Majesty The Christians duty towards their King laid open and warranted by the Death and Sufferings of Christ and multitudes oâ— Christians The madnesse of the people in casting oâ— the Government of a gracious King and submitting
Almighty hath said that ye are Gods and I will not say that ye shall die like men The radiant beams of your Countenance declare you more than mortal For in the light of the Kings countenance there is life saith Solomon Prov. 16.15 Neither is their voice like the voice of other men For A divine Sentence is in the lips of the King and his mouth transgresseth not in judgement Prov. 16.10 Therfore I will conclude that the King is a sacred Deitie A day in his Courts is better than a thousand I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of the King than be a Protector c. and reign in the tents of wicked Traytors For the Kings Throne is established by righteousnesse and mercy but Traytors reign by their Villanies and raise themselves up by the bloud and downfall of their superiors But God hath given his judgements to the King and his righteousnesse unto the Kings son and he will judge the people with righteousness and the poor with judgement Therefore kiss the son lest he be angry and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little blessed are all they that are trusty and faithfull unto him I counsel thee to keep the Kings commandment and that in regard of the Oath of God Be not hasty to go out of his sight stand not in an evil thing for he doth whatsoever he pleaseth Rejoyce greatly O daughter of Zion shout O daughter of Jerusalem behold thy King cometh unto thee he is black but comly he is just and will be a nursing father to the people his Queen shall be a nursing mother For God hath made him our King And our King cannot be made glad with our wickedness But our lies and hypocrisie grieve him to the heart The King by Judgement shall establish the Land It is abomination to Kings to commit wickednesse neither is it for Kings to drink wine Mercy and truth preserve the King and his Throne is upholden by mercy Therefore thrice happy would the people be if they did not rebel against the Lords anointed who is righteous and pious For when the righteous are in authority the people rejoyce but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn Rebellion is as the sin of Witchcraft and stubornnesse is as Iniqvity and Idolatry and an evil man only seeketh Rebellion Therefore a cruel Mâ—ssenger shall be sent against him For if ye rebel ye shall be devoured Therefore Rebel not against the Lord nor the King But when he cometh salute him Hail King but not of the Jews for you professe yourselves Christians Therefore learn of Christ obedience to the King But sâ—ppose you were Jews the Jews abound with reverence to their King and loath to be so wicked as to murther their King For when Pilate said Behold your King shall I Crucify your King They answered We have no King but Caesar accounting it a most barbarous and worse than Jewish act for any people to crucifie their King though in a way of publique justice Therfore even of the Jews let Christians learn their duty to their King and rejoyce at his coming as the Bribe doth at the approach of the Bridegroom The Husbandmen indeed in the Gospel killed the servants and when the son came to demand the fruits of his Fathers Vineyard they conspired against him and said This is the Heir come let us kill him and the Inheritance shall be ours But they were wicked and their Judgement and doom was miserably to be destroyed to have their Vineyard taken from them and to be let out to others who would yield better obedience and render the fruits in their seasons Therefore let all men take heed that they doe not perish in the gainsaying of Core and with those wicked Idolaters Isa 8.21 Curse their King and their God and look upwards Whose reward is Hell where the Devil shall curb them and rule over them for ever because they would not let their King whom God placed over them be as in truth he was and is their only lawfull Soveraign It is so well known to every one who knoweth any thing how the Heathens did honour their Kings as Gods not onely when they were dead but also whilst they were living that it would not only be losse of inke and paper but also expence of time which is better to relate the particulars But pudet heu their obedience and allegiance may shame aswell as be a pattern to the Christians of our age who wander so far from the path their Lord and Master went in And if any one be desirous to know how God hath alwayes esteemed of Kings and with what reverence Gods people have alwayes obeyed them I refer him to the Bible Where I may with confidenee speak it there is no duty more commanded and prest upon the people than obedience and no sin so much punished as Treason and Rebellion And the chiefest end of their obedience to the King is not only for God his glory and the Kings honour but also for their own good praise and profit For for this cause did the Apostle exhort the people to pray for Kings and all that are in authority That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour 1 Tim. 2.2 O Melilaee Deus nobis haec otia fecit Virgil could tell that the welfare of the King brought Tranquillity and Peace upon the Land and therefore he calleth him a God Nay he will therefore honour him as a God Namque erit ille mihi semper Deus saith he And I fear his allegiance and due obedience will rise in Judgement to condemn many who profess themselves Christians yet by their actions are worse than Infidels who Judas like pretend loyalty to their Soveraign whilest they plot and contrive with a kisse to betray him But Judas hanged himself and if these men do not hang themselves It is a great mercy beyond their deserts if some body else do not do it for them before they live out half their dayes For in the fifth Commandment which as Divines hold is most obliging We are commanded to honour our Father and Mother by which words are meant Kings Princes and other Magistrates That our dayes may be long upon the Land which the Lord our God giveth us which is the first Commandment with promise as St. Paul observes Ephes 6.2 But this promise is not absolute lt is upon this condition that we honour and obey our Soveraign and if we do not perform our parts God is not tyed to perform his If we break his Commandments he may well break his promise which was made only on that condition that we should obey and if we had loved him we should have kept his Commandments But whosoever breaketh one one of them it were better for him that a milstone were hanged about his
lesson he can learn by which he will see the error of the times and what changes the wicked have wrought amongst us Therefore since several Parliaments have made Statutes That the King can commit no Treason nor no Treason be committed but against the King Ex ore tuo te Judicabo we may conclude from their own mouths that by no Law but against all Laws they murthered their King the meekest and justest of all men For whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the Law for sin is the trangression of the Law 1 John 3.4 Then how could the King sin when there was no Law for him to transgress By the common Law as I have already shewed he could not be an offender neither could he by any Statutes For at that very time when the Parliament the peoples representatives charged the King with Treason they had made many Statutes That those things which they themselves acted against the King should be high Treason against the King But they had made no Law whereby the King might become a Traytor against them Therefore the King could not offend against that Law which was not Adam had not sinned in eating the forhidden fruit had he not been first forbidden Neither had St. Paul known lust except the Law had said Thou shalt not sin Rom. 7.7 And for the King to commit Treason when there is no Law which maketh any offence in the King whatsoever Treason but all laws both Common and Statute both Divine and Humane resolve the contrary is such a Chimaera which passeth the understanding of every reasonable creature But forsooth our new upstart pragmatical Lawyers as they call them such as Cook was witness his King Charls his case fol. 22. A Cook but rather a Scullion I am sure of no affinity in judgement nor comparable in learning with our great Master and Oracle of the law Sir Edward Cook do say and profess that they have a Law written in their hearts whereby they are enabled and authorized to kill the King if he offend But I wonder holy David had not this Law written in his heart to kill wicked King Saul when it lay in his power so to do The question is easily answered for God said that David was a man after Gods own heart and therefore could not do so great a villany But I am sure if the Scripture be true Neither God nor man will say that these men are men either after Gods heart or any honest mans heart And divide the Kingdom and you will finde a thousand for one in whose hearts this law was never written Therefore if it be written in some few mens hearts yet since it is not written in the hearts of the Major part according to their own tenets that law is not binding You may read in 1 Sam. 24.6 and cap. 26.11 That it was in Davids power and he was admonished to kill his enemy wicked King Saul once in the Cave where he cut off the Kings skirt indeed but his heart smote him as if he had committed Crimen laesae Majestatis high Treason against the King And then in the Trench where Saul lay sleeping 1 Sam. 26.7 So David and Abishai came to the people by night and behold Saul lay sleeping within the Trench and his Spear stook in the ground at his Bolster But Abner and the people lay round about him Then said Abishai to David God hath delivered thine Enemy into thine hand this day Now therefore let me smite him I pray thee with the Spear even to the earth at once and I will not smite him the second time And David said to Abishai Destroy him not For who can stretch forth his hand against the Lords anointed and be guiltless David said furthermore As the Lord liveth the Lord shall smite him or his day shall come to dye or he shall descend into battel and perish The Lord forbid that I should stretch forth mine hand against the Lords anointed but I pray thee take thou now the Spear that is at his bolster and the Cruse of Water and let us go Here you may see how greivous a thing it is to lay hands upon the King though he be wicked and persecute you For by holy Davids own confession no man can do it without committing an high and wofull offence Therefore better it is for all men with King David to commit the punishment of their King to God who most assuredly will punish the King aswell as the Beggar for his offences and not violently oppose or stretch forth their hands against him for none can do that and be guiltless It is true the law of England in many particulars is lex non scripta and when our law books are silent we must repair to the law of Nature and Reason But when a law is established by the law of God declared by many Statutes and reported by multitudes of reverend Judges in their Reports as it is that the King can commit no offence so great as to be punished by the people Then sit liber Judex We must Judge according to the written Law though it do not agree with our own private reason If the King before the descent of the Crown be attainted of Treason felony or any other offence yet by the descent of the Crown The Attainder eo instante is void as it fell out in the case of Henry the seventh 1 H. 7.4 Jnst 1.16 Then if the Coronation of the King prohibiteth the punishment of those offences which he committed before he was King only because he is King and so not punishable by any earthly power how can he commit any offence after his Coronation for which the people may call him in question It being a Maxim in Law That the King can do no wrong that is no wrong for which the people may punish him And to say that the King is an Officer of trust placed by the people is a meer foppery and against the express letter of a principle in Law viz. That the King is not capable of an office to use but to grant Co. Jnst 1.3 But why should I speak of Law to those who God and all the World knows Act all things against law For is there any Law which maketh it high Treason in the King if he commit such or such an offence or is there any law to enable the people to call their King to an account I appeal to the whole World and even to the Consciences of our wicked Folarchical upstarts Whether they ever read any such Law in the old or new Testament in the Statutes or Reports of the laws of our Realm or whether they ever heard of any such law in any Kingdom or Nation under the Sun No they did not The Devil brought it if any there be out of the infernal pit whither it will bring them all unless God most high prevent not can a posteriour Law make that an offence which was lawful at the Commitment without doubt it cannot
who was it that murthered the King Was it the people Every man knoweth that it was neither the people nor the Parliament But a Company of Jesuitical treacherous Rebels and damnable Usurpers Who flaming the people in the mouth with a tale that the supreme power was in the people made use of this power themselves against the wills of the people as an Engine to perform and bring to passe all their wicked and horrible designs But say they we are the peoples Representatives chosen by the people and so what we do they do Catch a Knave without a Knaves answer and he will give you leave to hang him I must confesse if this were true they might have somewhat the more colour though not the more honesty for what they do But this is as false as themselves For the people chose them to sit in Parliament and act according to the Kings Writ as part of the Kings Parliament according to the Laws of the Realm But since the Parliament is destroyed for what Parliament can there be without a King and House of Lords such a headlesse Monster was never seen untill of late Consequently their power which they derived from the people is gone also Neither are the Commons in Parliament the representative body of the whole Kingdom or people For they do not represent the King who is the head nor the Lords who are the nobler and higher part of the body of the Realm the Commons only represent the Inferior and lower sort of the people but if they did as they do not represent the whole body yet did not the people ever give them any power to cut off their Kings head For the Lords voted it unlawful all the honest Commons forsook the House and the people were all displeased except a few of their own hatching up and every one else murmured against it The Nobility mourned The Gentry were amazed The Common people wept and men women and Children did cry The Heavens cloathed themselves in black And the Sun hid his face The Lion King of Beasts died at the â—ight of his royal blood And the wild foules came wondering to see this execrable fact on the Scaffold And if the Thundering and Lightening of the Almighty be a true sign of Gods Angry Deity Then even from this we may conclude that these Regicides took too much upon them and very much provoked his wrath For Diespiter Igni coruseo nubila dividens Plerumque per purum tonantes Egit equos volucremque currum The Heavens roared with thunder which made the earth shake and the darts of fiery lightening threatened the ruines of both And who can think upon this worse than Gunpowder-Treason plot for then was but intended that which now is put in Execution viz. The murther of our gracious King and the subversion of all Laws and Religion with him and not justly expect all the Plagues of Aegypt and the punishment of Sodom and Gomorah to fall upon him and the whole people For Hor. Hoc fonte derivata clades In patriam populumque fluxit From the death of the King as from a fountain did flow the slaughter of the Nobility and people with the ruine of the Glory and freedom of the English Nation Tantae molis erat perversam condere gentem Such and so great villanies were perpetrated to raise this generation of Vipers Yet forsooth they will tell you that the supreme power and Soveraignty is in the people and that they act under them O grand Delusion Did the people turn out the long Parliament Did the people set up Oliver Protector Did the people turn out Dick his son Did the people foist up again the Rump of the long Parliamene Or did they hunt them out again Did the people sanctifie the Committee of Safety over them Or did they hunt in the Rump again Or have they made all the Revolutions and Choppings and Changings amongst us No neither the people nor their Representatives But the Devil his Representatives have been the cause of all our subversions For as the people have not so neither did the twentieth part of them ever challenge or claim the supreme power But have alwaies acknowledged the Soveraignty to be only in their King and only Soveraign only under God Reader take notice that in many places of this Book by the word Parliament is meant those Traytors the House of Commons who have unjustly usurped the name of Parliament For by the known Laws of the Land there can be no Parliament without the King Therefore let every one of the Regicides repent and pray to God to open his eyes and that the scales of blindnesse may fall from them that he may see his duty which is so evidently written in the Scripture and all other pious Writers which is to fear God and to honour his King which is acceptable in the sight of the Lord. And so I shut up my discourse with these verses which I would have the Reader get without book for his Edification Astra Deo nil majus habent nil Caesare terrae Sic Caesar terras ut Deus astra regit Imperium regis Caesar Deus astra gubernat Caesar honore suo dignus amore Deus Dignus amore Deus dignus quoque Caesar honore est Alter enim terras alter astra regit Cum Deus in coelis Caesar regâ—t omnia terris Censum Caesaribus Solvile vôta Deo A Tyrant without a Title set out in all his Colours and proved by the Laws both of God and man by the sentence of all honest and wise men by the vote of Antiquity and several Examples That it is most lawfull and glorious for any man either publique or private to fall upon Tyrants and kill them without Examination according to the usual forms of Judicature Where the consent of the people after Vsurpation makes an Vsurpers Title good and where not That the assent of the people cannot ratify any Government without him so long as their King liveth though banished but all their acting is Illegal How Tyrants pretend the safety of the people only for their own safe-guard and how they delude the people with specious names for their Magna Latrocinia their great villanies and robberies The Devil was a Rebel so are they and like Satan they have their power only by permission with an incitement to all men to execute them for these are not the Dignities we should obey LEt us now take our Swords in our hands and arme our selves to incounter with this Tyrant sine Titulo a Tyrant without a Title That bird of prey that beast of the game Orbis flagellum that scourge of the world that Devourer of Mankind Fulmen belli that Thunderbolt of war that Maule of the earth Poliâ—rcletes that destroyer of Cities that Hangman that Murtherer that great Robber whose might is his only right whose multitude of thieves makes him formidable builds himself up with honest mens blood feared by all men and fears
restored to his own and sit Judge amongst us It was King Charles the first who granted that the burthen of excise should not be laid on the shoulders of his Subjects but the Rebels with their intollerable and monstrous Excises new found impositions and other unspeakable grievances have beggered the Subjects and undone the whole Kingdome both in their Estates and Reputation To be short whatsoever they voted unlawfull for the King to do they have done that and ten thousand times worse so that though we want not bodies to feel the miseries which they have brought upon us yet we want tongues to expresse the wofulnesse of our Condition and the incomparable wickedness of these Traytors And what greater pretence have they had for their actions than to say that the King was not the Supreme Governour over his Subjects A contradiction in it self but we will proceed further to manifest their error Sir Thomas Smith in his common-wealth of England saith cap. 9. By old and antient Histories that I have read I do not understand that our Nation hath used any other general Authority in this Realm neither Aristocratical nor Democratical out only the royal Kingly Majesty who held of God to himself by his Sword his People Crown acknowledging no Prince on Earth his Superiour and so it is kept holden at this day which truth is sufficiently warranted in our Law-Books The state of our Kingdome saith Sir Edward Cook li. 4. Ep. ad lectorem is Monarchical from the beginning by right of inheritance hath been successive which is the most absolute and perfect form of Government excluding Interregnum and with it infinite inconveniences the Maxim of the common Law being Regem Angliae nunquam mori That the King of England never dyeth then doubtlesse the Rebels could not by Law mortifie both the natural and politique capacity of the King And in Calvins case li. 7. The weightiest case that ever was argued in any Court than which case according to my Lord Cokes observation never any case was adjudged with greater concordance and lesse variety of opinions and that which never fell out in any doubtfull case no one opinion in all our books is against that judgment In this case it was resolved amongst other things Fo. 4. c. 1. That the People of England c. were the Subjects of the King viz. their Soveraign liege Lord King James 2. That Ligeance or obedience of the Subject to the Soveraign is due by the Law of Nature 3. That this Law of Nature is part of the Laws of England 4. That the Law of Nature was before any judicial or municipal Law in the world 5. That the Law of Nature is immutable and cannot be changed From which resolutions we may conclude that the Subjects of the King of England unlesse they like God Almighty could alter the Law of Nature They could not alter their obedience and subjection to their Soveraign Lord King Charles For if by the Law of Nature obedience from them was due to the natural body as I shall further prove of King Charles and if the Law of Nature is immutable as most certainly it is Bracton lib. 1 ca. 5. D. Stu. ca. 5. 6. then could not they have any cause whatsoever as altering their Religion banishing or killing of them a sufficient ground for them to take up arms against him and put him to death For by this they go about to change the Law of Nature which is impossible for mortals to do But say some by the Law of Nature we may defend our selves and therefore leavy war against the King for our own defence I answer that by the Law of Nature we are bound to defend our selves yet must we use no unlawfull means for our defence for the Subjects to levy war against their Soveraign is forbidden both by the Laws of God and Nature Therefore vain and foolish is that excuse as well as all others which the Rebels make use of to defend their Rebellion Ligeance is a true and faithfull obedience of the Subject due to his Soveraign It is an obligation upon all Subjects to take part with their Liege Lord against all men living to aid and assist him with their bodies and minds with their advice and power not toft li up their arms against him nor to support in any way those who oppose him This ligeance and obedience is an incident inseparable to every Subject of England and in our Law-books and many Acts of Parliament as in 34 H. 8. cap. 1. 35 H. 8. cap. 3 c. The King is called the liege Lord of his Subjects and the people his liege subjects Every Subject of England taketh the Oath of ligeance which is only due unto the King yet doth not the ligeance of the Subject to the King begin at the taking of this Oath at the Leet For as it was resolved in Calvins Case so soon as the Subject is born he oweth by birth-right ligeance and obedience to his Soveraign Lord the King Because ligeance faith and obedience of the Subject to the Soveraign was by the Law of Nature written with the Finger of God in the Heart of Man before any municipal or judicial Laws were made 1. For that Moses was the first Reporter or writer of Law in the World yet government and subjection was long before Moses 2. For that it had been in vain to have prescribed laws to any but to such as ought obedience faith and ligeance before in respect whereof they were bound to obey and observe them Frustra enim feruntur leges nisi subditis obedientibus You may read likewise in Calvins Case That the King of England hath his title to the Crown by inherent birth-right by descent from the blood royal from God Nature and the Law and therefore not by way of trust from the two Houses of Parliament or from the People Neither is his Coronation any part of his Title but only an ornament and solemniation of the royal descent For it was then resolved that the title of King James was by dessent and that by Queen Elizabeths death the Crown and Kingdom of England descended to his Majesty and he was fully and absolutely thereby King without any essential ceremony or act to be done Ex post facto So in the first year of the same Kings reign before his Majesties Coronation Watson and Clarke seminary Priests and others were of opinion that his Majesty was no compleat and absolute King before his Coronation but that Coronation did adde perfection to the descent and therefore observe saith my Lord Cook their damnable and damned consequent that they by strength and power might before his Coronation take him and his royal Issue into their possession keep him prisoner in the Tower remove such Counsellors and great Officers as pleased them and constitute others in their places c. and that these and others of like nature could not be treason against
his Majesty before he was crowned King But it was clearly resolved by all the Judges of England that presently by the descent his Majesty was compleatly and absolutely King without any essential ceremony or act to be done Ex post facto and that Coronation was but a royal ornament and outward solemniation of the descent And this evidently appeareth by infinite Presidents and book cases where such execrable opinions have been no sooner hatched than destroyed and if the Judges of our age had been so honest as to have cropped in the bud such like opinions broached by the Rebells Charls the first had still been our King and we a flourishing and happy Kingdom Although the King of England hath two Capacities the one by Nature the other by Policy yet ligeance is due to the King in his natural capacity and his natural and politick body make but one indivisible body Plo. 213. The Oath of Alligeance is made to the natural person of the King so is the Oath of Supremacy and all Inditements of Treason when any do intend or compasse mort◠et destructionem Domini Regis the death and destruction of the Lord our King which must needs be understood of his natural body for his politick body is immortal and not subject to death the Inditement concludeth contra ligeantiae suae debitum ergo the ligeance is due to the natural body vid. Fitt Justice of Peace 53. Plo. Com. 384. in the Earl of Leicesters case It is true that the King in genere dyeth not but no question in individuo he dyeth as for example Charls the first dyed yet the King is not dead because Charls the second whom God preserve is still alive For by the Laws of England there can be no interregnum within the same lib. 7.11 And to affirm as the Traytors now do that the Kings power is separable from his person is high Treason by the Law of the Land hear the Oracle of the Law tell you so lib. 7.11 In the Reign saith he of Edward the second the Spencers the Father and the Son to cover the Treason hatched in their hearts invented this damnable and damned opinion that Homage and Oath of Ligeance was more by reason of the Kings Crown that is of his politick capacity than by reason of the person of the King upon which opinion they inferred execrable and detestable consequents 1. If the King do not demean himself by reason in the right of his Crown his Lieges are bound by Oath to remove the King 2. Seeing that the King could not be reformed by Sute of Law that ought to be done by aspertee that is by force 3. That his Lieges be bound to Govern in aid of him and in default of him All which were condemned by two Parliaments one in the Reign of E. 2. called exilium Hugonis le Spencer and the other in Anno 1 E. 3. cap. 1. If the opinions of the Spencers were so wicked and detestable what then are the actions of the Rebells of our age who have put in practice what was but intended by the Spencers and that they might reform the King according to their minds cut off his head because he was a headhigher than they O Monstrous Reformers Did I not know that the Euthusiasts of our times do by their diabolical interpretations subvert even the Holy word of the Almighty making themselves absolute Kings over the Scripture to do what they please with it though they will not permit their King to have Soveraignty over themselves his Vassals And like the raging torrent of the foaming flouds which running down the lofty Hills demolisheth and carrieth away all opposites in its roaring Streams or as the violent fury of a Masterless headstrong multitude who hew down Kings as well as Royal Subjects in their tempestuous fury so these men set upon the Bible and stretch every Text of Scripture to their own meaning although there is as great a distance between their meaning and the Scripture as there was betwixt the Glutton in Hell and Lazarus in Abrahams Bosom in Heaven else should I wonder how they could seem to make the very Letter of the Law speak against the very Letter and like the Philosophers stone which turneth all things into Gold so the tongues of these men turn the sense of all the Lawbooks into their golden meaning and cite those books as authorities on their sides which are so contrary and opposite against them as if they had been purposely prepared to encounter and confute them For where is the Kings Soveraignty more fully demonstrated and evidenced than in Reverend Bracton and what book so much abūsed as his For lib. 2. cap. 24. speaking of Liberties and who had power to give them Quis saith he who hath power he answereth that the King hath For Sciendum quòd ipse dominus Rex qui ordinariam habet jurtsdictionem et dignitatem et potestatem super omnes qui in regno suo sunt habet enim omnia jura in manu sua quae ad coronam et laicalem pertinent potestatem materialem gladium qui pertinet ad regni gubernaculum habet etiam justitiam et judicium quae sunt jurisdictiones ut ex jurisdictione suae sicut dei minister vicarius tribuat unicuique quod suum fuerit Habet enim ea quae sunt pacis ut populus sibi traditus in pace sileat quiescat ne quis alterum verberet vulneret vel male tractet ne quis alienam rem per vim roberiam auferat vel asportet ne quis hominem Mahemiet vel occidat Habet enim coercionem ut delinquentes puniat coerceat Item habet in potestate sua leges constitutiones assisas in regno suo provisas et approbatas et juratas ipse in propria persona observet et subditis suis faciat observari nihil enim prodest jura condere nisi sit qui jura tueatur Habet igitur Rex hujusmodi jura five jurisdictiones in manu sua And again in the same Chapter ea quae jurisdictionis funt pacis ea quae sunt justitiae paci annexae ad nullum pertinent nisi ad coronam dignitatem regiam nec a Corona separari poterunt cum faciant ipsam Coronam The sum of which in English is this the King hath supreme power in all civil causes the Law floweth solely from him he is super omnes above all men in his Kingdom all jurisdictions are in him The material Sword of right belongs to him and whatsoever conduces to peace that the people committed to his charge may live peaceably and quietly The power of holding Assizes is derived from him and of punishing Delinquents for it would be in vain to Enact Laws if there was not some body enabled to protect us by defending them c. And the same Author saith lib. 2. ca. 9. Potentia vero omnes sibi subitos praecellere parem autem habere
which is not subject too but resisteth the power shall receive damnation but whosoever with defensive arms resisteth the King is not subject to but doth resist the power Therehe which with defensive arms resisteth the King shall receive damnation The Major no man can deny the Minor is inviolable and the Conclusion is perfect and sound There be those indeed who do confidently averr and have written a book too that there were men before Adam but I could never see any Scripture but their own interpretations and meanings to warrant their averments And untill Mr. Pryn can produce Texts of Scripture to warrant and maintain his confident averment he must excuse me if I still hold St. Paules Doctrine Canonical and his averment meer Apocripha For suppose the King subverteth both Law and Religion yet doth not that take away his supreme power he is still a King and Gods ordinance Saul was a King though an impious sinner and there have been wicked Kings as well as wicked Subjects to do evil saith one is no power but impotency therefore if the King command me to murther my self my Father to destroy my Country or to do any other wicked act I will not do it but obey God not him because it is his corruption not any power he hath from whence his commandment proceedeth and therefore I am not obliged to obey him because I must be a Subject to his power not to his sins yet if he should run after me with a naked Sword to kill me my Father my Mother ruine my Country Laws and Religion Yet would not I with defensive arms lift up my hands against him to resist hurt and destroy him because he is still my King and hath still that supreme power which God placed in him although he doth not then execute it and therefore if I should with defensive Arms lift up my hands to resist hurt and destroy him I should with defensive Arms lift up my hands to resist hurt and destroy the Ordinance of God and so receive damnation for my reward Not to perform the Kings command is a resistance although we suffer death Therefore if it be the Kings power and not his wicked will which commandeth me to do an evil thing if I did not perform his evil commandment I should resist his power and so be lyable to damnation although I patiently and meekly suffered death But doubtlesse the Kings power cannot command me to do any evil but it must proceed from his sinfull will for God is not the Author of any unrighteousnesse and there is no power but what God is the Author of therefore according to venerable Bede the Apostle doth not say Non est cupiditas nisi a Deo est enim mala cupiditas quae non est a deo nocendi autem voluntas potest esse a suo quoque animo pravo That there is no concupiscence but what is of God for there is an evil concupiscence which is not from God and the evil will of sinning proceedeth from our own depraved mindes therefore if the King command me to do an evil thing I ought to obey God not his wicked will but rather than to lift up my hands against him though in my defence I ought cheerfully and meekly to suffer a thousand deaths for by dying unjustly here I shall live eternally in Heaven and since the Glory of a Christian is the Crosse by suffering and dying a Martyr I shall obtain everlasting Glory and by my thus doing well I shall get praise even of the Power which the Kings wicked will made use of to destroy me but defence against the power of a King is offence therefore if with defensive arms I should fight against him I should resist Gods Ordinance and so receive damnation for by Gods Ordinance the King hath the power over all and his Actions ought not to be questioned or resisted by any but the Almighty But for my part I hold clearly that when the King executeth Tyranny taketh away the Lives or Estates of his Subjects unjustly that he doth it not only by reason of his wicked will according to the precedent distinction but by force and virtue of his power which God hath given him and that this is the power which St. Paul commandeth us to be subject unto which if we resist we shall receive damnation and that for several reasons It is most certain that there is no power but of God the powers that be are ordained of God for by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers all things were created by him and for him Col. 1.16 Which expressions in the Abstract do expresse existents in the Concrete from whence it followeth that bad Kings have their power from God and are Gods Ordinance as well as good And it is manifest in Scripture that wicked Kings are often sent for the punishment of a Nation as in Hosea 13.11 I gave them a King in my wrath and took him away in mine anger And God commandeth us to pray for and be subject not only to the good but also to the bad Kings I exhort you that Prayers and Supplications and Thanksgiving be made for all men for Kings and such as are in Authority 1 Tim. 2.1 Thus Abraham prayed for King Abimeleck Gen. 20.17 And Jacob blessed the King of Aegypt Gen. 47.10 Yet the Kings of those times were Infidels and most notoriously wicked No man is ignorant that Nebuchadnezzar who destroyed Jerusalem was a great spoyler and oppressor yet the Lord tells us by Ezekiel that he had given unto him the Land of Aegypt for the good service he had done in laying it waste on his Commandement And Daniel said unto him thus Dan. 2.37 Thou O King art a King of Kings for the God of Heaven hath given thee a Kingdom Power and Strength and Glory and wheresoever the Children of men dwell the Beasts of the Field and the Fowls of Heaven hath he given into thy hand and hath made thee Ruler over them all Again to Belshazzar his Son Dan. 5.18 The most high God gave unto Nebuchadnezzar thy Father a Kingdom and Majesty and Glory and Honour and for the Majesty that he gave him all people Nations and Languages trembled and feared before him And again Jer. 27.6 I have made the Earth saith the Lord the Man and the Beast that are upon the ground by my great power and by my outstretched Arm and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me And now have I given all these Lands into the Hands of Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon my Servant and the Beasts of the Field have I given him also to serve him and all Nations shall serve him and his Son and his Sons Son untill the very time of his Land come And it shall come to passe that the Nation and Kingdom which will not serve the same Nebcchadnezzar
odious woman when she is married and an Hand-maiâ— that is Heir to her Mistresse Is not our Englanâ— disquieted with all these Oh who can bear it yet these Tyrants rejoce at it Delight is not seemly for a Fool much lesse for a Servant to have ruâ— over Princes Pro. 19.10 Yet these Slaves tryumph over their Prince and scoff at his Miseries And as the Jews in a deriding manner said of oâ— Saviour This is Jesus King of the Jews So thesâ— Jews scoffingly call their Soveraign Lord The King of Scots yet keep his Kingdom from him jeeâ—ing him out of his Estate O Heavens As perpetually afterwards so allwayes before the Conquerour the legislative power did continue in the King tanquam in proprio subjecto as in the true and proper subject of that power and the Kings Edicts were the only positive Laws of the Realm and indeed who can be a King without this power for what difference is there between the King and Subject but that the one gives the Laws the other receiveth them And most clear it is by all Historians that the Common Council of our antient Kings were composed only of Prelates and Peers the Commons were not admitted to any Communication in affairs of State Camden in his Britannia telleth us that in the times of the Saxon Kings and in after Ages the Common Council of the Land was Praesentia Regis Praelatorum Procerumque collectorum The presence of the King with the Prelates and Peers Ingulphus who dyed before 1109 saith Rex Eldredus Convocavit Magnates Episcopos Proceres Optimates ad tractandum de publicis negotiis Regni He did not call the Commons So Edward the Confessor that great Legislâ—tor made all his Laws without the consent of the Commons Now when the Norman Conqueror one of the Praedecessors of Charles the Martyr came in who had a triple title to this Kingdome to wit by Donation Conquest and by the Consent of the people for as it is well known when Edward the Confessor lived in Normandy he gave this Kingdom after his decease to William Duke of Normandy as he was his kinsman near of bloud so that the Conquerour was heir of the Crown to the Confessor by adoption Which title if it was invalid you must know he was a Conquerour and no man will deny that Conquest maketh a legal title Jure Belli But suppose both those titles were as they were not invalid yet by the Law of Nations the Consent of the people maketh an inviolable title even to an Usurper in continuance of time if they have no other lawfull King much more to a lawfull Soveraign And his people our Ancestors ever since the Conquest for the space of about six hundred yeares have all done allegiance to and unanimously resolved that the Conquerour and his Successors were our only true Kings Liege Lords and Soveraigns having the supreme power over us and never did the people claim power to depose the King until those Monsters at Westminster under pretence of such a power murthered Charles the first and against all Law Justice and Equity and against thâ— wills of the people make themselves masters of our lives and fortunes and of all that we have taking them away when they please It would make a man cry and it would make a man laugh to see what fools these fellowes make of us Royal Government by Kings hath been used here time out of mind and approved by all our Ancestors to be the best of Governments and most natural and profitable for us yet these few stinking Members at Westminster made an Act March 17. 1648. contrary even to their own Oaths and Protestations to abolish the Kingly Government as unnecessary I use their own words burthensome and dangerous to the people as if this small company consisting of fifty or sixty at the most of the Scum and tail of the people were wiser and knew what was better for us than all our Ancestors both noble and ignoble in all ages But what was their reason to abolish Kingship To make each of themselves Kings nay Tyrannical Kings over us So may the slave say that the government of his Lord over him is unnecessary burthensome and dangerous and therefore he will murther his Lord and make himself Maâ—ter changeing the name and execute the office worse So may High-way men take away the true owners purse and tell him it was unnecessary for him to keep it or by the same law may thieves murther and rob the Master of his house and then vote the Master burthensome and dangerous to his family Yet notwithstanding while these Tyrants destroy our fundamental Government Lawes Religion Freedoms and Liberties making of us absolute slaves villains only to satiate their lust and pleasure yet even then they stile themselves The Keepers of the Liberty of England by Authority of Parliament Close and trusty keepers of our liberty indeed for we can come at none of it they keep it from us not for us so Wolves may call themselves keepers of the Lambs which they have caught or by the same law may a Cut-purse be called the keeper of the purse and be said to have the same care of it for they are heepers of our liberty only to keep themselves For by what authority was this Individuam vagum the Keepers erected By what authority why they will tell you by authority of Parliament Cunning Curres How they take the people with this word Parliament when God knows they themselves were all the Parliament by whose authority the thing called Keepers I know not what they be for I never yet heard them named were invented So may Adulterers vote themselves keepers of Chastity or so may I murther a man against his will and then call my self keeper of his life by his authority For they destroyed the Parliament when they destroyed the King and there hath been no Parliament since Vide 1 H. 4. Rot. Parl. n. 1.14 li. 4. Coke 4 Inst p. 46. and 4 C. 4. f. 440. Therefore they most falsly call themselves a Parliament Neither are they the Representatives of the people as I shewed before but a company of Ungracious Tyrants acting against the wills of the people Yet forsooth they tell us that the people have the supreme power and that they act for the people being their Representatives Just as if I should take away all that another man hath against his will and then tell him that he hath the supreme power over his goods and that I took them away by his authority and power or as if I should take away his money without his leave and tell him that I am his Representative So these Foxes cozen the people with nonsensical cheats and in all things are Representatives of the Devil not of the People for they all well know and some of them have declared so that if the people might chuse their Representatives those Representatives would restore the King to his
is as much to say as Tenures de persona Regis because the head is the principal part of the body and the King is the head of the body of the Commonwealth Which Tenures brought many profits and commodities to the Crown which would be too tedious here to particularize and are a clear testimony of the Kings Soveraignty For no man can alien those lands which he holdeth in Capite without the Kings Licence if they doe the King is to have a fine for the contempt and may seise the land and retain it untill the fine be paid By example and in imitation of the King For Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis Did the Nobles and Gentry of this Nation to whom the King had given large portions of land grant out parcells of their land to their Servants and under-Tenants reserving such services and appointing such like Tenures as the King did to them as Homage Fealty c. whereof you may read plentifully in Littletons Tenures But their Tenants in doing Homage and Fealty to them did alwayes except the Faith which they did owe unto the King As in their making Homage appeareth viz. I become your man from this day forward of Life and Limb and of earthly worship and unto you shall be true and faithful and bear you faith for the Tenements I claim to hold of you saving the Faith that I owe unto our Soveraign Lord the King Though they Swore to become the men of and be true and faithfull to their Lords yet not so but that they still were the men of and ever would be true and faithful to the King their Soveraign who was Lord over their Lords and over the whole Realm Omnis homo debet fidem Domino suo de vita membris suis terreno honore observatione consilii sui per honestum utile salva fide Deo Terrae Principi Lib. Rub. cap. 55. We can oblige our selves to no men so deeply as to take away our allegiance and fidelity towards the King We must be for God and the King in all things all our actings and undertakings should tend to their Glory which would prove our greatest good and comfort Homagium Ligeum is only due unto the King the Law prohibiteth us to do Homage to any without making mention of this Homage due unto the Lord our King therefore we must not be opposite to or armed against him but both our lives and members must be ready for his defence because he is Soveraign Lord over all Co. Lit. 65. As the Conquerour did make all his Subjects Feudaries to him so likewise did he change our Lawes and Customes at his pleasure and brought in his own Country fashions which is the Common use of Conquerours He caused all Lawes to be written in his language and made what Lawes he thought meet Quod Principi placuerit legis habet vigorem whatsoever the King willed was the only law His fiat was as binding as an Act of Parliament and what he voted no man no not the whole Kingdome had power to dispute There was no question then made but that the King ought to have the Militia neither did any one think of much lesse deny him a Negative voice The Commons then thought it an high honour to look upon the Kings Majesty a farre off To sit and rule their families at home was all the Jurisdiction which they had or claimed They had not power to condemn one of their servants to death much lesse their Soveraign Lord the King from whom they then and we now have our being The King had not then made them so much as the Lower House nor ever did admit them to his Counsel The Lords their Masters were only deemed worâ—hy of this dignity for why Tractent fabrilâ—a fabri Let the Shepheard keep his sheep and the Hogheard keep his hogs and not meddle with the tuning of musical Instruments Though the Plow-man can drive and guide his horses well yet he would make an ill Pilot to steer a ship The Blacksmith may have skill to make a horse-shooe but he would rather marre than make a watch The Commons may make good Subjects but experience teacheth us they will rather destroy both King and Kingdome than reform or rectifie either Therefore the Kings of England did never admit the Commoners into their Counsels much lesse intrust them with the Legislative poâ—er For it is a Meridian truth that as before so from the Conquest until a great part of the Reign of Henry the third in whose dayes as some hold the writ for election of Knights was first framed the Barons and Prelâ—tes only made the Parliament or Common Council of the Realm whom the King convoked by his Royal Summons when he pleased Neither did the Council so convened consist of any certain number but of what number and of what persons the King vouchsafed Nay clear it is by the Lawes made in the Reign of Edward the first which was above two hundred yeares after the conquest that there was no certain persons or formed body whose consent was requisite to joyn with the King in making an act of Parliament but when the King conceived it fit to make a Law he called such persons as he thought most proper to be consulted with Indeed at the Coronation of Henry the first all the People of England were called by the King and Laws were then made but it was per Commune Concilium Baronum And that King and his Successours did not usually call the Commons but made Laws with the advice of which of their Subjects they pleased and as Sir Walter Rawleigh and others write the Commons with their Magna Charta had but bastard births being begotten by Usurpers and fostered by Rebellion for King Henry the first did but usurp the Kingdom and therefore to secure himself the better against Robert his eldest brother he Courted the Commons and granted them that Great Charter with Charta de foresta which King John confirmed upon the same grounds for he was also an Usurper Arthur Duke of Brittain being the undoubted heir of the Crown so the House of Commons and these Great Charters had their original from such that were Kings de facto not de jure But it maters not which of the Kings first instituted the House of Commons certain it is that long after the Conquerour its name was not so much as heard of in England but as it is apparent one of his Successours did form them and grant not to make Laws without their consent and by a Statute made 7 H. 4. the Writ of Summons now used was formed and by an other Act made 1 H. 5. direction is given who shall be chosen that is to say For Knights of the Shires Persons resiant in the County and for Cities and Boroughs Citizens and Burgesses dwelling there and Free-men of the same Cities and Boroughs and no other So that now by the
his Common-Counsell they are but only Ministerial Servants and by the Writ it is clear that they are no part of the great Counsel of the Kingdom they are but the grand Inquest and general Inquisitors of the Realm to find out the grievances of the people and Petition to the King for redress the Burgesses and Citizens to present the defects in their Trade and the Knights of the Shires the burthens and Sores of their Counties they ought not nor are not admitted into the House before they have sworn that the Kings Majesty is the only and supreme Governour over all persons in all causes This oath did every Member of the long Parliament take before they set foot into the House of Charls the Martyr whom they afterwards murthered and took possession themselves of all that he or his royal progeny had or should have let the world judge how faithfully these Keepers kept their Oathes and Covenants Now forsooth none must come into the House but those who first swear that the King who is is not but that they who are not are the only supreme Governours over all persons in all causes And will these oaths be kept 'T is perjury to keep them Thus they joyn hand in hand and oath to oath but it is but to do wickedness for like King Davids Rebels they make a Covenant against their King and would murther him as they did his Father if they could catch him but nulla pax malis the wicked cannot hold together long though they unite their forces into one intire body yet it is but like Samsons Foxes by the tailes only to set the world on fire When the Commons have taken the oath of Supremacy and met together in a body collective in the house they have not so much power as a Steward in his Leet or a Sheriff in his Tourn for they cannot minister an oath imprison any body but themselves nor try any offence whatsoever much less try their King and assume the Legislative power At a conference the Commons are always uncovered and stand when the Lords sit surely these are no marks of Soveraignity They indeed chuse their Speaker but after their choice the King may refuse him at his pleasure and make them chuse another and Lenthal himself as all other Speakers do did when he was presented to the King disable himself as a person unworthy to speak before the King yet now he is styled the Father of our Country How the world is turned up-side down These Parliamentiers heretofore were wont to be arrested by any common Person and lyable to all Sutes and punishments as other men untill the King graciously passed an Act for their indemnity 4 H. 8. ea 8. So that they are nothing but what the King made them nor have nothing but by his grant and all that the King did make them appeareth by the Writ which is to do and consent to such things as the King with his Common-Counsell should ordain Then stay Reader and behold stand still with thy head and hands lift up to the heavens and admire with what impudence and oppression tyranny and usurpation the long Parliamentiers are fraught with who never had any other legal power than by the Kings Writ and have lost that by the Kings death yet tyrannize over three kingdoms calling themselves the Representatives of the whole Kingdom and that they were intrusted by the People with the Supreme and Legislative power which God and all the world knoweth is as false as the Almighty is true For first they do not represent the King the head nor the Peers who are the higher and nobler part of the kingdom therefore they are not the Representatives of the whole kingdom neither were they ever entrusted by the People with the Supreme and Legislative power Nay the people did never confer any power on them at all for by their Election the people did but design the person all the power the Commons have proceeded from the King which is contained in the Writ by which they were called As Free-holders worth forty shillings a year and free-men of Cities and Borroughs would make very unfit Electors of Supreme Magistrates so never did they they cannot make any Election of their Commons untill the King commandeth and giveth them power they have no power so to do of their own much less to authorize supreme Legislators The King giveth liberty to Towns and Cities to make choice of Burgesses which had no such power before the Kings grant so that all the power which the Commons have floweth from the King not a drop of it from the people Therefore if the Commons exceed their commission to wit the power given them by the Kings Writ it is illegal and their actings void in Law and since the power given them by the Writ is extinguished by the Kings death the Long Parliament is by Law dissolved and all the power which they take upon them since is usurped illegal and Tyrannical and contrary to the Lawes both of God and man And to make their Tyranny the greatest under the Heavens they protest to the world that the Representatives of the people ought to have the Legislative power yet they give Lawes as they call them to Scotland and Ireland not having so much as one Member from both Kingdomes in their representative body nor the eighth part of the Representatives chosen by the Counties Cities and Burroughs in England So that no Tyrants since the Creation of the world did ever equallize these either in cruelty or absurdity wickednesse or foolishnesse yet forsooth in 1649 they made an Act that it should be High Treason for any one to affirm the present Government to be Tyrannical Usurped or Unlawfull or that these Commons are not the supreme Authority of the Nation So thieves may murther the Father and take away the inheritance from his Children and then make a Law that it shall be high Treason for any one to call them thieves or usurpers or to say they had not the supreme Authority Thus they defend Tyranny with Tyranny and one sin with another Unumquodque conservatur eodem modo quo fit Things impiously got must be impiously kept They got their authority by blood and by blood it must be kept they juggled themselves by lyes into the supreme self-created authority and we must lye and say they are the supreme authority only because they do otherwise we shall be executed for high Treason against this infamous conventicle So that of necessity we must displease God if we please them and live no longer than we sin for they have made it a capital offence to speak truth I must confesse most men amongst us are frighted with this scarr-Crow not only to lye and affirm the long called Parliament to be the legal supreme authority but also with St. Peter forswear and deny their persecuted Lord and Master the King accounting no weather ill so they be by their warm fire
are called of God to be Kings as his Vicegerents they have power to look to and have a care of the Church that the word be preached and the Sacraments administred by fit persons and in a right manner else how should Kings be Nursing Fathers to the Church had they not a Fatherly power over it Therefore many Acts of Parliament in several Kings Reigns and the whole Current of Law Books resolve and affirm the King to be head and have Supreme Jurisdiction in Ecclesiastical causes In the first year of Edward the sixth a Statute was made That all Authority and Jurisdiction both Spiritual and Temporal is derived from the King So in the Reign of Edward the Confessor was this Law ca. 17. The King who is the Vicar of the highest King is ordained to this end that he should Govern and Rule the Kingdom and People of the Land and above all things the Holy Church and that he defend the same from wrong doers and destroy and root out workers of mischief But since Reverend Coke in the fifth part of his Reports De jure Regis Ecclesiastico hath with luculent examples and impregnable lawes made it so clear that no man can gainsay it that the King ought and the Kings of England ever since before the Conquest until the Reign of Queen Elizabeth at which time he writ have had the supreme power and jurisdiction in all Spiritual and Ecclesiastical causes I referre you to his Book only reciting part of his conclusion viz. Thus hath it appeared as well by the antient Common Lawes of this Realm by the Resolutions and Judgments of the Judges and Sages of the Lawes of England in all succession of ages as by authority of many Acts of Parliament antient and of later times that the Kingdome of England is an absolute Monarchy and that the King is the only supreme Governour as well over Ecclesiastical persons and in Ecclesiastical causes as temporal within this Realm And in another places fo 8. he saith And therefore by the antient Lawes of this Realm this Kingdome of England is an absolute Empire and Monarchy consisting of one head which is the King and of a body politick compact and compounded of many and almost infinite several and yet well agreeing Members All which the law divideth into two several parts that is to say the Clergy and the Laity both of them next and immediately under God subject and obedient to the head Also the Kingly head of this politick body is instituted and furnished with plenary and intire power prerogative and jurisdiction to render justice and right to every part and member of this body of what estate degree or calling soever in all causes Ecclesiastical or Temporal otherwise he should not be a head of the whole body Now he that looketh upon these Authorities and yet saith that the King is not above both Parliament and people nor hath soveraign power over them will likewise look upon the sun in the Heavens and yet say that it is not above but below the earth and when he is in the midst of the sea say that there are no waters in the world If then the King hath the supreme power over Parliament and people as most certainly he hath how then could the Parliament or people much lesse sixty of them question or judge their King For no man can deny but that the greater power ought to correct and judge the lesser not the lesser the greater How could they did I say Why vi armis by violence and injury not by law So may I go and murther the King of Spain or the King of France and then tell them that their people have the supreme power over them The case is all one only these Rebels murthered their natural Father and King to whom nature and the Lawes of God and man had made them subjects but I should murther a forein King whom I ought not to touch he being the Lords annointed It is easie to prove the Soveraignty of the Kings of England by their Stiles unlesse our anti-monarchical Statists will say they nick named themselves Their several stiles since the Conquest you may see in the first part of my Lord Coke's Institutes Fo. 27. Therefore I will not trouble you with a recital of them as for the styles before the Conquest take one for all which you may find in the Preface of Co. li. 4. and in Davis his Irish reports Fo. 60. In a Charter made by Edgar one of the Saxon Monarchs of England before the Danish Kings viz. Altitonantis dei largiflua clementia qui est Rex Regum dominus dominantium Ego Edgarus Anglorum Basileus omniumque rerum Insularum Oceani quae Britanniam circumjacent cunctarumque Nationum quae infra eam includuntuâ— Imperator et dominus Gratias ago ipsi Deo omnipotenti Regi meo qui meum imperium sic ampliavit exaltavit super Regum patrum meorum Qui licet Monarchiam totius Angliae adepti sunt a tempore Athelstani qui primus Regum Anglorum omnes Nationes quae Britanniam incolunt sibi armis subegit nullus tamen eorum ultra fines imperium suum dilatare agressus est mihi tamen concessit propitia Divinitas cum Anglorum imperio omnia regna Insularum Oceani cum suis ferocissimis regibus usque Norvegiam maximamque partem Hiberniae cum sua nobilissima Civitate de Dublina Anglorum regno subjugare quos etiam omnes meis imperiis colla subdare dei favente gratia coegi By which you may observe the first Conquest of Ireland and that the Kings of England are Emperours and Monarchs in their Kingdom constituted only by God the King of Kings and Lord of Lords not by the people And so did many other Kings of England stile themselves as for example Etheldredus totius Albionis Dei Providentia Imperator and Edredus Magnae Britanniae Monarcha c. But that our preposterous Commonwealths men might make themselves most ridiculous as well as impious in all things they would argue the King out of his Militia and have him to be their Defender yet they would take away his sword from him O Childish foppery What a Warriour without arms a General without souldiers why not aâ— well a Speaker without a mouth such Drollerâ— was never heard of in the world until the Infatuation of these infandous Republicans hatcht it Nay but there shall be a King over us cryed the Israelites that we also might be like all the Nations and that our King may judge us and go out before us and fight our battels 1 Sam. 8.19 Anâ— what should he fight without the Militia should the King be over the people judge them and go out before them to battel yet ought the people tâ— have power to array arm and muster the souldierâ— at their pleasure ought they to appoint whaâ— Officers and Commanders they thought fit surely no For he will saith Samuel verse 12.
appoinâ— him Captains over thousands and Captains oveâ— fifties So 11 Sam. 12.29 David gathered aâ— the people together and went to Rabbath and foughâ— against it and took it But why do I cite David Had not all the Kings in the Scripture nay havâ— not all the Kings in the world the chief poweâ— over their Militia Surely nothing is more certain otherwise what difference would there be between the King and Subject Militarem autem prudentiam ante omnia necessariam Ego Principi assero adeo ut sine ea vix Princeps Quomodo enim aliter se tueatuâ— sua ac suos saith Justus Lipsius No Militia no King For how can he defend himself and Kingdome without it The Puppy dogs would master the Lyon were it not for his pawes the cowardly Owles would conquer the Eagle if he had no talons and the King would be a laughing stock both at home and abroad were it not for the sword which God not the people hath girded to his side The King beareth not the sword in vain saith St. Paul Rom. 13.4 But surely he would bear it in vain had he not power of himself to draw it or sheath it but when the people pleased he would be but a poor revenger to execute Gods wrath had the people as our Novists feign not he the sole disposing of the Militia Unges eum ducem 1 Sam. 9.16 Thou shalt annoint him to be captain over my people Which shewes the Kings right to the Militia being Captain over his people Unum est Regi inexpugnabile munimentum amor civium I must confesse the Citizens and Peoples love is the best fortresse and bulwork for Kings but Charity growes cold Loyal love and Citizens are not alwayes companions whole Cities nay whole Countries may prove perfidious to their King and whilst the King dischargeth the office of a loving father his people may turn Traytors and rebell against his goodnesse Therefore it is good walking with a horse in ones hand and ever safest for Princes even in the greatest peace to have a well-disciplin'd Militia in a readinesse for the affection of the people like the wind is never constant In Rege qui recte regit necessaria sunt duo haec arma videlicet leges quibus utrumque tempus bellorum pacis recte possit gubernari utrumque enim istorum alterius indiget auxilio quo tam res militaris possit esse in tuto quà m ipsae leges usu armorum praesidio possint esse servatae Si autem arma defecerinâ— contra hostes rebelles indomitos sic erit regnum indefensum si autem leges sic exterminabitur justitia nec erit qui justum faciat judicium The Law and Arms are so necessary and requisite in a King that without both he can have neither for how could he execute and maintain his lawes withouâ— arms and how could he levy war without lawes to direct and guide his Arms He could neither proclaim war nor make leagues or peace without them The King is Custos totius Regni and by law ought to defend and save hiâ— Realm But surely he would bâ— but a poor keeper if the peoplâ— had power to keep his weapon from him at their pleasure Custodes libertatis Angliae The Keepers of our liberty could not keep it from us without the force of the Militia and how should the King maintain his Realm in peace and defend our lives liberties and estates from the forein and domestick Tyranny of Traytors and Rebels had he not the sole power and strength of Arms The Subjects of England are bound by their liegeance to go with the King c. in his wars as well within his Realms as without as appeareth by the Statute of 2 Ed. 6. cap. 11. and by a Statute made 11 H. 7. c. 1. The Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament declare it to be the duty and allegiance of the Subjects of England not only to serve their Prince and Soveraign Lord for the time being in warres but to enter and abide in service in battel and that both in defence of the King and land against every rebellion power and might reared against him But wherefore should I make my self ridiculous in attempting to prove that which no age hath denied It hath been the Custome of all Kingdoms the practice of all times and the Common Law of the Realm of England ever since it was a Realm that the power of the Militia did alwayes belong unto the King nay it is proper to him quarto modo he hath an inherent and inalienable right to it Which right hath been declared and affirmed by many Acts of Parliament in all succession of ages which in a case so clear need not to be recited It belongs to the King only to make leagues with forein Princes 2 H. 5. ca. And as it is resolved in our Law Books if all the people of England should break the league made with a foâ—eâ—n Prince without the Kings consent yet the league holds and is not broken Nay so farr are the People or House of Lords or Commons from having the power of the Militia that as you may read the expresse words 3 Inst pa. 9. If any levy Warr to expulse strangers to deliver men out of Prisons to remove Counsellors or against any Statute or to any other end pretending Reformation of their own heads without Warrant it is high Treason For no Subject can levy Warr within the Realm without Authority from the King for to him it only belongeth O then admire at the impiousnesse and impudence of the long called Parliament who murthered their King for committing Treason against them whereas by the Laws of the Land they were the only Traytors against him So may the offender punish the offended for the offence which he himself committed and so may the Prisoner condemn and execute the Judge for the Crime whereof himself is only guilty The only reason why they demanded the Militia of the King and said that it only belonged to them was not because the King ought not to have it for they well knew that by the Law of all Ages it did only belong to him and not to them But how then could they carry on and accomplish their wicked design of Murthering him if they still let his Sword hang by his side Therefore they first laid hold on that and wrested the Militia out of his hands arguing that it did not belong to the King but to them So Murtherers may say that the Sword of him whom they intend to murther doth not belong to the owner but to them to the end they may with the more ease and safeguard perpetrate their wickedness And that they might have a shadow to hide all their filthynesse They first got several Counties to Petition for the Militia which they afterwards took by violence nay they themselves did first Petition the King for it So sturdy Beggars first beg
for an Almes and by and by knock their Benefactor on the head and make themselves Masters of what they before entreated for And indeed the most part of their Villanies did commence with Petitions for in driving on their wicked designs they alwayes got the Rascal rable of the People to heap in Petitions for what they themselves set them upon as if these Godly Villains did nothing but what they were driven to through commiseration of the people when God knows they did nothing but what was for the satisfaction of their own wicked Lusts and Ambition For when the Souldiers and other baser sort of the people cryed out for Justice and Privilege of the Parliament Even then was the Injustice of these Rebels most promoted and the Parliament did not then only lose its privileges but its very life and being Thus Barbers may cut off the Head when they pretend to trim the Hair and so may Physicians destroy and kill the Body when they pretend to apply Medicines For as now it appeareth even to the blind their pious pretences were but a Colour for their wicked intentions to destroy both King and Parliament and root up all our Laws and Religion when they seemed to act most to preserve them Now since the power of Warr only belongeth unto the King it must of necessity follow that the King hath power to levy Taxes and impose Subsidies on his people to maintain the Warr otherwise it would be in vain to think of waging Warr for all Souldiers must have Vectigalia Food Apparel and Arms and where should the King have this but in his own Kingdom To be short it is a duty laid upon the Consciences of all Subjects to supply their King with all necessaries both in time of Warr and Peace And a thing commanded both by our Saviour and his Apostles Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesars And 13 Rom. Render therefore to all their due Tribute to whom Tribute is due Custom to whom Custom Fear to whom Fear Honour to whom Honour But our Antipodes subverting all Scripture render to no man their dues and that they may act contrary to the very words and meaning of every Text They do not render Tribute Custom Fear and Honour to the King to whom it is only due but forsooth to themselves to whom it is not due So may the Servant murther his Master and take all his Revenues and Honour as due only to himself He which argueth that the King hath not right to chuse his Privy Counsellors Great Officers and Judges c. will likewise say that the Master hath not right to chuse his Servants it being the practice of all Kingdoms as well as of England and due to him by the Law of Nature Thou shalt provide out of the People able Men saith Jethro to Moses when the 70. grand Senators of Israel the Great Sanhedrim of the Jews were to be chosen By which you see the great Officers c. are to be chosen out of and not by the people but by the King So Pharoah not the people made Joseph Ruler over all the Land of Aegypt and Nebuchadnezzar and not his people made Daniel Ruler over the whole Province of Babylon And since our Lawyers are so forward to take Commissions and be made Judges by every power which getteth uppermost be it right or wrong Let me tell them that it is an undoubted truth that every person who hath been since the murther of Charls the Martyr or shall hereafter without the authority of Charls the second be condemned and executed for any Crime whether guilty or not guilty in the Kings Bench or at the Assizes or elsewhere is murthered and all the Judgments acts and proceedings of those nominal Judges or Commissioners are void as things done Coram non judice So that it consequently followeth that these lawless Judges are principals in every murther so committed Vengeance only belongeth unto God Deu. 32.35 The King is the Minister of God a Reuenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil Therfore whosoever prosecuteth in the Kings Courts against the life of any man as in an Appeal c. or sueth for recompence for any wrong done unto him he doth not take vengeance but God who executeth his wrath by his Minister the King But if any private man or the whole people take upon them to make themselves their own Carvers taking what recompence they think fit either against the King or any of their fellow Subjects in this case they make themselves their own Revengers and rob God of his rights for vengeance belongeth to him not to them Therefore if any man though in a way of publick Justice take upon him to condemn and execute any man without authority and power from the King he is a Murtherer and malicious Revenger upon whom the vengeance of God whom he endeavoureth to cheat and rob will fall Oh then admire and bewail the Infandous Murthers and Murtherers of our age wherein the good are destroyed for performing their duty towards God and their King and the wicked flowrish only because they are sinfull for whosoever will not be a Rebel must not be a Common-wealths-man amongst these new Republicans Yet forsooth they have such a form of Godlinesse amongst them that whosoever doth not approve of their wickednesse but speaketh of their actions according to their deserts they call such men the ungodly and flatter themselves saying the Saints of all ages have been spoken evil of by the wicked holy David nay our Saviour and his Disciples were reviled by the Reprobate therfore no wonder if the Malignant Cavaleers do reproach and vilifie our piousness and brotherly love and charity one towards the other So Belzebub may call them impious who do not account him the only good Angell How these men would be esteemed most Religious even when they commit Sacrilege and seem righteous even in the very act of wickednesse They murther many and take away the Estates of all Royalists yet if the Royalists whom they have thus spoyled tell them according to Gods Commandments that they ought not to be swift to shed blood nor covet their neighbours goods these Saints presently tell them that they have not the Spirit of Godliness in them but that they are the abusers of Gods word and his Children as if Gods Spirit gave them authority to act wickedly and that none but they were the children of God who had got their wealth by murther rapine and sacrilege O Monstrous If you call their ill gotten Government Tyranny or Usurpation they number you amongst those filthy Dreamers who speak evil of Dignities and will noâ— submit to lawfull authority Yet these Antipodes could revile their Soveraign the King with multitudes of scurrilous Pamplets cut off his head and banish his Royal Progeny taking away their Lands and the Estates of thousands more yet they would make one believe that they never spoke evil of Dignities nor ever resisted lawfull
time hunted the distressed King and his Royal party pretending to be set on only by their Master Rebels the Commons but it seems they had a game to play of their own which on the sixth of December 1648. they begun to shew And therefore when the Trayterous Commons had obtained what they could ask or desire of their Soveraign then their Prisoner at the Isle of Wight being such Concessions which never any King before him granted nor Subjects ever demanded So that shame compelled them to vote them satisfactory Then the bloody Souldiers thinking themselves lost if the King and Parliament should find a peace went up to the House of Commons and by force kept out and imprisoned those who voted the Kings Concessions satisfactory which the militant Saints pleased to call purging of the House so that body is purged which hath poyson left in it and nutriment taken out of it by the purge yet this purge would not do the Lords must be turned out too and only 40. or fifty packt Members of the House of Commons who had sworn to be as very if not worse Knaves than the wicked Souldiers would have them to be were only left in the House who presently took upon them what power their own lusts could desire or the over-ruling Sword help them to Murthered the King and the chiefest of the Royal Party and yet to colour their Tyranny caâ—led themselves a Parliament by which name blowing up King Lords Spiritual and Temporal and all our Lawes and Religion with them they still Domineer and Rule over us yet not so but that the Army Rule them as the Wind doth a weather-cock turning them which way and how they please sometimes up and sometimes down and no doubt but that shortly they will be cast down for altogether for the wicked shall not last but vanish as a shadow Blessed art thou O Lord when thy King is the Son of Nobles Eccles 10.17 But alas Servants have ruled over us and there is none that doth deliver us out of their hands Lamen 5.8 The Crown is fallen from our head Wo unto us that we have sinned Verse 16. For now they shall say we have no King because we feared not the Lord What then should a King do unto us Hosea 10.3 ENGLANDS CONFUSION OR A True Relation of the topsy turvy Governments in mutable England since the Reign of Charls the Martyr The Tyranny of the Rump further manifested And that we shall never have any setled State untill Charls the second whose right it is injoy the Crown Though frantick Fortune in a merriment hath set the Heels above the Head and gave the Scepter unto the Shrubs who being proud of their new got honour have jarred one against the other during the Interregnum Yet Charls the second shall put a period to this Tragedy and settle our vexed Government which hath changed oftner in twelve years than all the Governments in the whole world besides Oh the heavy Judgment when Subjects take upon them to correct their King AS a distracted Ship whose Pilate the rageâ—ng violence of a tempestuous storm hath cast down headlong from the stern staggereth too and fro amongst the unquiet waves of the rough Ocean somtimes clashing against the proud surly Rocks and somtimes reeling up and down the smoother waters now threatening present Shipwrack and Destruction by â—nd by promising â— seeming safety and secure arrival yet never setled fast nor absolutely tending to the quiet and desired Haven So the vexed Government of frantick England ever since the furious madnesse of a few turbulent Spirits beheaded our King and Kingdom threw down Charls the Martyr our only lawfull Governour from the stern of Government and took it into their unskilfull and unlawfull hands it hath been tossed up and down somtimes falling amongst the lawless Souldiers as a Lamb amongst Wolves or as a glass upon stones and somtimes happening amongst Tyrants calling themselves a Parliament who are so much worse than the Souldiers by how much wickednesse covered with a colour of Justice is worse and more dangerous than naked villanies Yet in all our Revolutions although many gaps have been laid open that way hath not the Government steered its course directly to Charls the second it s only proper right and quiet Haven to which until it come we must never expect to have the Ship of our Common-wealth so secure but that Tempests and Storms will still molest and trouble if not totally ruine it Though it stand so fast one day that it seemeth impossible for humane strength to remove it yet the next day it moultereth away to nothing I vouch every mans experience to warrant this truth And were not our blind Sodomites intoxicated with Senselesse as well as Lawlesse Counsels They would never gape after preferment nor hope for continuance in their imaginary Commonwealth where the greatest one hour is made least the next and they themselves swallow up each the other never having rest or peace no not in their own House And can this divided Monster which is the cause of all our divisions cloze up our divisions and settle our Nation in peace and happinesse 'T is madnesse to think it So fire may quench fire and the Devil who was the first Author of wickedness put an end to all wickedness Examine the condition of the times since the Reign of Charls the first and you may see what times we shall have until the Reign of Charls the second Tyranny and Usurpation Beggery and Slavery Warrs and Murthers Subversion of our Laws and Religions changing the Riders but we must alwayes be the Asses Hunger and Famine Guns and Swords Drums and Trumpets Robberies and Thieveries Fornication and Adultery Brick without Straw Taxes although no bread These must be the voices which will alwayes sound in our Ears untill we cast off this old man of Sin viz. The Long called Parliament and submit as we ought to Charls the second our only lawfull King VVe may read of many Kings who have been suddainly killed by the rash violence of an indiscreet multitude who in the heat of Blood do that which they repent of all their life after mad Fury being the only cause of their unjust Actings But to commit sin with reason and piety to kill their King with discretion formally and solemnly is such a premeditated Murther that the Sun never saw until these Sons of perdition brought it to light For a long time before the fact they machinated and plotted the Kings death and contrived how they might with the best colour and shew of Justice effect it At length as if their Votes were more authentique than all Srcipture they passed amongst others this Vote Die Jovis Jan. 4. 1648. viz. That the People under God were the original of all just power This was the foundation upon which the superstructure of all their murthers and villanies which they call just Judgments were built which granted it consequently followeth that all
their free will and pleasure So that the peoples Representatives must represent these Traytors in all their wickednesse otherwise they shall be no free-Statesmen for they account that Government most for the liberty of the people wherein themselves may have liberty still to continue in their Treason Rebellion and that they call slavery and oppression of the people which would suppresse their wicked and infandous Tyranny All the reason which they can give against Monarchy is because say they many of the people would lose their interests in their new purchased estates and we should be turned out of our possessions and perhaps lose our lives too A good argument indeed if maintained by the Logick of the sword So thieves and murtherers may argue against the Sessions because then perhaps they should lose their stollen goods and be hanged for their murthers and robberies O abominable that English men should degenerate into such impious impudence for this is the truth of their case might they but still have the Kings and Bishops lands which they have gotten by their horrible Treason and Rebellion and be sure to live secure from the punishment which the Law of the Land would inflict upon them they would easily confesse if the Devil have not made them contradictors of all manner of truth that Monarchy is the best of all Governments especially for the English Nation where as one may say it grew by nature until these destroyers of the Lawes of God Nature and the Realm rooted it up and endeavoured to plant their fancied Commonwealth in its room which will grow there when plums grow in the sky or when rocks grow in the air not before as you may see by the small root it hath taken ever since the reign of Charles the Martyr Dig and delve they may yet they will never set it in so fast but that if the right heir do not which God grant he soon may the wind and ambition of some one of their own sect and faction will quickly blow it down as did Oliver the wicked c. As Monarchy is the best sort of all govetnments so the Monarchy of England is the best of all Monarchies and hath in it the perfection and all that is good either in Aristocracy Democracy or Free-State For every one knoweth that Charles the Martyr though a King yet alwayes made himself a subject to his lawes accounting his prerogative safer being locked up in the custody of the law than in the absolutenesse of his own will And what lawes of any Nation in the world did ever maintain the liberty and freedome of the people more than the Kings Lawes of England I may most truly answer none more nor so much for what greater freedome can the people wish for than not to have any lawes imposed on them than what they please and desire The Kings of England never make any law but what the people consent to the Lords and Commons have a Negative voice as well as the King Although the inferiour Members receive all their authority from the head yet cannot the head act without their consent and privity so neither â—oth the King impose any lawes on his subjects without their concurrence and approbation The House of Lords resembleth Aristocracy and the House of Commons Democracy or a free State yet the King like the Sun which doth not diminish its own light by giving light to others continueth stil a royal Monarch and without any Solecism in State I may truly say that the House of Lords did excel Aristocracy and the House of Commons Democracy in preserving the Peoples rights and wel-fare because the necessity of their joyning votes each with the other and both of them with the King in making of a Law did inhibit either of them from having an unlimited arbitrary power which either of them without the other would have and so enslave the People as the House of Commons now do according to their lusts having destroyed their Master the King and the House of Lords their Moderators Whilest the King Lords and Commons like the three Graces joined hand in hand in passing votes approved by this triple touchstone then were our Laws like Gold seven times refined which made our Nation most glorious abroad and to overflow with peace and plenty at home we were then feared not derided by all forein Kings and Princes Religion not Faction then reigned in our hearts and our industry was then to preserve not to destroy Gods Sanctuary But now since the hand hath said to the eye I have no need of thee and the feet to the head I have no need of you the whole body of our Kingdom hath groaned and every Member therof as with a Consumption is wasted and grieved The Crown is fallen from our head and we are become a reproach and hissing amongst all Nations Oh therfore to redeem our credit and long lost happiness Let us all unanimously agree to be loyal Subjects to Charls our King and let all his loyal Subjects pray for and earnestly desire his safe arrival into our England that we may once more eat the Manna of our old Laws and Religion with the sweetnesse wherof we surfeited in the reign of Charls the Martyr Then shall we beat our Swords into plow-shares and our Spears into pruning hookes faction shall not rise up against faction neither shall we learn war any more For if we be willing and obedient we shall eat the good of the Land Isa 1 19. Hor. Concines laetosque dies urbis Publicum ludum super impetrato Fortis Augusti reditu forumque litibus orbum Tum meae si quid loquor audiendum Vocis accedet bona pars O Sol Pulcher O laudande canam recepto Cáesare falix Tuque dum procedis Io triumphe Non semel dicemus Io triumphe Civitas omnis dabimusque divis Thura benâ—s Then shall we sing the publick plays For his return and holy days For our Prayers heard and Law 's restor'd From Rebels Sword Then I if I may then be heard Happy in my regained Lord Will joyn ' i th' close and O! I le say O Sun-shine day The City leading wee 'l all sing Io triumph and agin Io triumph at each turning Incense burning Thus when we have received our gracious Soveraign from his long unnatural banishment what then can the Lord do more for us that he hath not done Wherefore when he looketh that we should bring forth good grapes let us take heed that we do not bring forth wild grapes let us fear God and honour the King and meddle not with them that are given to change as God hath commanded us for if we refuse and rebel we shall be devoured with the Sword for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it and so our last rebellion will be worse for us then the first General Monk hath amply repaired his honour which he lost by pulling down the City Gates and Perculisses and
But be they good or bad the people must not resist them because as Samuel sheweth the manner of kings is to do what they will Principi summum rerum arbitrium Dii dederunt subditis obsequii gloria relicta est To Princes God hath given the highest power to Subjects only is left the glory of obedience saith Tacitus which indeed is the greatest glory can be conferred on them if they had but hearts to receive it for what is more glorious in Subjects than obedience to God and their King Super imperatorem non est nisi solus Deus qui fert imperatorem The King hath no superior but only God saith Optatus Bishop of Milivis Generale pactum est societatis humanae obedire Regibus It is a Natural a General a Universal Compact Covenant of humane society to obey their Kings saith St. Austin li. 3. Confess cap. 8. But since optimus Legum interpres praxis practice is the best interpreter of the Law Look into the Scriptures and learn what our Ancestors have done before us I am confident you cannot find in all the Scripture where God appointed any people to be the chusers of their Kings but rather to accept of them and submit themselves to them whom the Lord had chosen and placed over them Nusquam invenio Regem aliquem Judaeorum populi suffragiis creatum quin si primus ille erat qui designaretur a Deo vel a prophetae ex Dei jussu vel sorte vel alia ratione quam Deus indicasset I never find any Jewish King made by the suffrages of the people but whom God did first by some means appoint saith Piueda de rebus Solo. li. 1. c. 2. neither did the Children of Israel chuse any unlesse Abimelech the Bastard son of Gedeon and as some say Jeroboam who made Israel to sin and of the evil successe of their reigns the Scripture will give you an account Would not the people have established Adonijah in King Davids throne crying out before him 1 Kings 1.25 God save the King Adonijah But God whose property it is only to make Kings rejecteth Adonijah and maketh Solomon to rule in his Fathers stead although Adonijah his title was by birthright aswell as by the consent of the people For 1 Kings 2.15 saith he to Bathsheba the mother of Solomon Thou knowest that the Kingdom was mine and that all Israel set their faces on me that I should reign howbeit the Kingdom is turned about and is become my Brothers For it was his from the Lord. In this verse you may see the title of Adonijah and the title of Solomon to their Fathers Crown Adonijah claimed it by birthright and the power of the people But Solomon claimed it from the Lord. It is no marvel that Adonijah put in his title for the Crown for God hath appointed the right of primogeniture by which the Patriarchs and all the rest of the posterity of Adam injoyed their royalty The elder is to rule over the younger by the Law of Nature Suppose Adonijah to be more wicked than Solomon yet doth not that take away his Birthright For God saith to Cain though he was never so wicked an Hypocrite unto thee shall be the desire of thy Brother and thou shalt rule over him though Abel was never so Godly and sincere a server of God which made Jacob so earnest to purchase his Brothers Birthright Gen. 25.31 And Jacob said sell me this day thy Birthright But Adanijah his Title was not only by birthright but also the people would have made him King and if those people had had as much power as the people of England pretend to have Adonijah would have wanted no other title than their power for the people of England are not afraid to say like Gods By us Kings reign we throw down Kings set them up again there is no power but what comes from us they provide themselves Kings they have spoken once yea twice have I heard this that Power belongeth unto them and that their Kings are only Derivatives from them O monstrum horrendum ingens cui lumen ademptum Did ever the world produce such blind prodigious Monsters Was ever God and Christ robbed so much of their Power Honour and Majesty as by these Vipers Adonijah no sooner saw his Brothers Title but he released his own and quitted the Crown wo be to them who usurp the Crown and have no Title of their own The Title of King Solomon was from the Lord he only set the regal Diadem on his head the people stood by as Ciphers Solus verus Deus dat regna terrena bonis malis saith St. Austin de Civit. Dei li. 4. cap. 33. It is God alone who disposeth of Crowns he crowned Adam a King in Paradice before his fall and before the rise of our Mâ—so-Monarchical Statists and therefore Monarchy is no Creature of the peoples which makes them confess and believe the Devils do the same that Monarchy is the best of all Governments which perhaps is the reason that they would so fain have it to be a Bird of their own hatching But me thinks their Tenets prove the contrary for if all Supreme power were originally in the people and derived from them to the King then without doubt Democracy were the best of all Governments for that form of Government which cometh nearest to its Original is the best But Democracy cometh nearest to its Original therefore Democracy is the best for the nearer the Fountain the purer the stream But change the Supposition into a true Proposition and then the Conclusion will be found as thus All Supreme Power is originally derived from God That Government which cometh nearest to its Original is the best But Monarchy cometh nearest to its Original therefore Monarchy is of all Governments the best And that Monarchy is the best form of all Governments is the conclusion of all Politicians Omnes vero palmam dant regno all give the palm to Monarchy Praestantiam autem Monarchiae non ex vetustate cum Lipsio nec ex naturae ductu cum Hieron ad Rastic Mona probo sed ex commoditatibus quibus caeteras species antestat I do not only prove Monarchy to be the most excellent because it is most antient and most natural but also because it is most profitable saith Henningus Arnisaeus As it is the most beautifull so it is the most profitable government Therefore none but mad men will dart forth the weapons of their Tongues and Hands against Monarchy or else those who would be Commonwealths-men only for their own private ends or else those men who will not have a kingdom unless it be their own and Reges abominantur nisi ipsi sint think kings abominable unless they may be kings themselves And these men think they may the easier attain to kingship by preaching this new Doctrine with the Iesuits that the kings power is derived from the people and so fool the ignorant multitude
into an act of joyning with them to take the Regal Diadem from off their pious Soveraigns head place it on their own fanatick Coxcombs and so become our good Lords Masters of all that we have for never was king illegally dethroned but a hundred Tyrants came in his room Regem quidem apparet eos sustulisse sed nec minus manifestum est Regnum sibi retinuisse dum quod sub uno erat in plures diviserunt triginta ac septem socios tyrannidis adscivere qui imperium secum tenerent gravique intollerando servitio cives suos premerent nam sub specie libertatis tyrannidem saevissimam velle eos exercere vel caecis clarum est saith Sal. But caveat emptor let them take heed they do not purchase their vain glory at too dear a rate their counterfeit dissembling may find a real Hell Nec est diuturna possâ—ssio in quam gladio inducimur this world will not last alwaies Let them assure themselves the people did never give nor ought for to take the power of their King Non tribuamus dandi Regni potestatem nisi Deo vero Let us not attribute the power of disposing of kingdoms to any but to the true God saith St. Austin de Civit. Dei li. 5. c. 21. Nemo enim ante infelicissimam hanc nostram tempestatem non fassus est Principem populo dominari Principi vero Deum For no man before these most unhappy times of ours did ever deny but that the King ought to govern the people and the King to be governed by none but God saith Barclay Had I not known that our Regicides have voted the Lords prayer as well as kings useless for uno absurdo dato mille sequuntur over Shooes over Boots I should have wondred with what face they could conclude their Prayers to the Almighty saying For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory for ever Amen yet claim the same power to themselves for if theirs be the kingdom the power and the glory if they have power to make and unmake kings when they please then what or where is Gods power Surely if their Doctrine be true then our Saviours is false and he did ill to teach us to pray and command us to say Thine is the kingdom the power and the glory for ever and ever But let God he true and every man a Lyar. Our Saviour is the Truth and the Light and if these men had been inlightned by our Saviours doctrin the darkness of these errors would never have so damnably blinded them who make God a Parenthâ—sis thinking themselves perfect and compleat without him and profess that the king whose â—oodness like their wickedness is incomparable is but a Brat of their own begetting and that they like God may take him away as occasion shall serve These Antimonians who pick out places of Scripture only to destroy Scripture that they may be Canonical in all things and do nothing without the Bible say that the people make the King and that they are so taught out of Gods word For 1 Sam. 11.15 All the people went to Gilgal and there they made Saul King before the Lord in Gilgal which say they is an invincible proof that the people made Saul their King and not God and so consequently all Kings are made by the people but if these men will tie themselves up so strictly to the letter of the Scripture because it makes for their purpose as they suppose that they will not hearken to the true meaning and interpretation let their own weapons kill them for 1 Sam. 12.1 Samuel said unto all Israel Behold I have harkned unto your voice in all that ye said unto me and have made a King over you This verse saith that Samuel made the King which is the very next verse to theirs which saith that the people made the King so that litterally one of these verses must needs speak falsly for if the people made the King then Samuel did not but if Samuel made the king then the people did not so that this Dilemma must needs confute our new Doctors But let Scripture interpret Scripture and the interpretation will tell you that God only made the king For though the people say We will set a king over us Deuter. 17.14 Yet they must in any wise set him king over them whom the Lord their God shall chuse The Lord must who only can give their king Soveraign power he must make and give the king The people have only power to receive and set him over them 1 Sam. 10.1 Samuel took a vyal of Oil and poured it on his head But the Lord anointed him King he is the Lords anointed not Samuels For why Is it not because the Lord hath anointed thee to be Captain over his Inheritance Saith Samuel Paul may plant and Apollo may water but God only giveth the encrease God is Master of the Substance and only giveth regal power Samuel c. and the people are but masters of the Ceremony and the Coronation of Kings is only a Declaration to the people that God hath given them a King Outward Vnctions and Solemnities used at coronations are but only Ceremonies which confer no power to the King For it was his from the Lord. 1 Ki. 2.15 The Elders of Judah and Israel chose David to be their King and anointed him over them 2 Sam. 5.3 But they did not give him power or right unto his kingdom For saith God 1 Sam. 16.3 I will shew thee what thou shalt do and thou shalt anoint unto me him whom I name unto thee The people make the King not by giving him Soveraign power for that feather doth not grow in their wing but by receiving him and approving that which God hath done For the Lord the King of all the Earth ruleth in the Kingdom of Men and giveth it to whomsoever he will Psal 4.7 Dan. 4.25 Old Horace more a Divine than most of these new Sectaries the incendiaries of all mischief could teach them this truth Regum timendorum in proprios greges Reges in ipsos imperium êst Jovis Clari Gigantaeo triumpho Cuncta supercilio moventis Fear'd Kings command on their own ground The King commanding Kings is Jove Whose arm the Gyants did confound Whose awfull brow doth all things move Which Sentence lest it should seem too light and savour too much of Poetical assentation Let our Antichristians for those who by their practise though not which their mouths deny Christs Doctrine deserve no better name hearken unto the Words of our Saviour if they will vouchsafe to debase themselves so much and behold what Doctrine he preached to Pilate which is the more remarkable because it was his last John 19.11 Iesus answered Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above For Cujus jussu homines nascuntur illius jussu reges constituuntur He who made men made Kings That Kings