King Charls his Case OR AN APPEAL To all Rational Men Concerning His TRYAL AT THE High Court of Iustice Being for the most part that which was intended to have been delivered at the Bar if the King had Pleaded to the CHARGE and put himself upon a fair TRYAL With an additional Opinion concerning The Death of King James The loss of Rochel and The Blood of Ireland By JOHN COOK of Grays-Inn Barrester Justice is an excellent vertue Reason is the life of the Law Womanish pity to mourn for a Tyrant Is a deceitful cruelty to a City London Printed by Peter Cole at the sign of the Printing-Press in Cornhil near the Royal Exchange for Giles Calvert at the Black Spread-Eagle at the West-end of Pauls 1649. To the READER THe righteous Iudge whose judgement is not onely inevitable but infallible must shortly judge me and all that concurred to bring the capital Delinquent to condign punishment but in the interim I desire to be judged by all understanding men in the world that suffer their judgements to be swayed by Reason and not byassed by private Interest Whether ever any man did so much deserve to dye Cain for the murther of one righteous Abel and David for one Uriah had been men of death had not God pardoned them Those thirty one Kings which Joshua hanged up and Sauls seven Sons which were but at the worst as it seems to me Evil Counsellors were they not innocent nay Saints in comparison of this man Those that crucified Christ did it ignorantly For had they known him they had not crucified the Lord of Glory The Saints under the ten Persecutions suffered by the hands of Heathens the Sicilian Vespers the Parisian Massacre of the Protestants and the Gunpowder-Plot were acted and intended by Papists out of a conceit of Merit But for a Protestant Prince stiled The Defendor of the Faith in a time of light that had sworn to keep the Peace received Tribute to that end and might have had the very hearts of the People if they could have given him them without death the strongest Engagements I say for such a one so long to persecute the faithful destroy and inslave the People by oppressing cruelties And when Machiavel could not do it to levy a War to that wicked end which never any of his Ancestors durst attempt that might at any time with a word of his mouth have stopt all the bleeding veins in the three Kingdoms but would not and for the satisfying of a base lust caused more Protestant blood to be shed then ever was spilt either by Rome Heathen or Antichristian Blessed God what ugly sins lodge in their bosoms that would have had this man to live But Words are but Women Proofs are Men it is Reason that must be the Chariot to carry men to give their concurrence to this ludgement Therefore I shall deliver my thoughts to the courteous Reader as I was prepared for it if Issue had been joyned in the Cause but with some addition for illustration sake desiring excuse for the Preamble because there is some repetition in matter An Appeal to all Rational men that love their God Justice and Countrey more then their Honor Pleasure and Money Concerning the Kings Tryal May it please your Lordship MY Lord President and this High Court erected for the most Comprehensive Impartial and Glorious piece of Justice that ever was Acted and Executed upon the Theatre of England for the Trying and Judging of Charls Stuart whom God in his wrath gave to be a king to this Nation and will I trust in great love for his notorious Prevarications and Blood-guiltiness take him away from us He that hath been the Original of all Injustice and the Principal Author of more mischiefs to the Free-born People of this Nation then the best Arithmetician can well enumerate stands now to give an account of his Stewardship and to receive the good of Justice for all the evil of his Injustice and Cruelty Had he Ten thousand lives they could not all satisfie for the numerous Horid and Barbarous Massacres of Myriades and legions of Innocent persons which by his Commands Commissions and Procurements or at least all the world must needs say which he might have prevented and he that suffers any man to be kill'd when he may save his life without danger of his own is a Murtherer have been cruelly slain and inhumanely murthered in this renowned Albion Anglia hath been made an Aceldama and her yonger sister Ireland a Land of Ire and Misery and yet this hard-hearted man as he went out of the Court down the stairs Jan. 22. said as some of his Gnard told me and others That he was not troubled for any of the blood that hath been shed but for the blood of one man peradventure he meant Strafford He was no more affected with a List that was brought in to Oxford of Five or six thousand slain at Edgehill then to read one of Ben Johnsons Tragedies You Gentlemen Royalists that fought for him if ye had lost your lives for his sake you see he would have no more pitied you by his own confession then you do a poor Worm and yet what heart but would cleave if it were a Rock melt if it were Ice break if it were a Flint or dissolve if it were a Diamond to consider that so much precious Protestant blood should be shed in these three kingdoms so many gallant valiant Men of all sorts and conditions to be sacrificed and lose their lives and many of them to dye so desperately in regard of their Eternal conditions and all this meerly and onely for the satisfying and fulfilling of one mans sinful lust and wicked will a good Shepherd is he that lays down his life or ventures it to save the Sheep but for one to be so proudly wedded to his own conceits as so maliciously to oppose his private Opinion against the publique Judgement and Reason of State and to make head against the Parliament who acknowledged him to be head thereof so far as to give him the Honor of the Royal Assent in settling the Militia and Safety of the People I say for a Protestant Prince so beloved at home and feared abroad that in love and by gentle means might have had any thing from the Parliament for him to occasion the shedding of so much blood for a pretended Prerogative as hereafter will appear nothing in effect but to fix and perpetuate an absolute Tyranny I can say no less But O Lucifer from whence art thou faln and what hereticks are they in politicks that would have had such a man to live much more that think his Actions to have merited love and praise from Heaven and Earth But now to diffect the Charge 1. That the kings of England are trusted with a limited power to govern by Law the whole stream and current of Legal Authorities run so limpid and clear that I should but weary those
that know it already and trouble those that need not know the particular cases for it is one of the Fundamentals of Law That the king is not above the Law but the Law above the King I could easily deraign it from 1 Edward 3. to the Jurisdiction of Courts That the king has no more Power or Authority then what by Law is concredited and committed to him but the most famous Authority is Fortescue Chancellor to H. 6. and therefore undoubtedly would not clip his Masters Prerogative who most Judicially takes a difference between a Government wholly Regal and Seignoral as in Turkey Russia France Spain c. and a Government Politique and mixt where the Law keeps the beam even between Soveraignty and Subjection as in England Denmark Swede and Poland the first where the Edict of a Prince makes the Law resembles an impetuous inundation of the waters whereby the Corn and Hay and other Fruits of the Earth are spoiled as when it is Midwinter at Midsummer the latter is like a sweet smooth Stream running by the pleasant Fields and Meadows That by the Law of England the King ought not to impose any thing upon the people or take any thing away from them to the value of a farthing but by common consent in Parliaments or National meetings and that the people of Common-Right and by several Statutes ought to have Parliaments yearly or oftner if need be for the Redress of publique grievances and for the Enacting of good and wholsome Laws and repealing of old Statutes of Omeri which are prejudicial to the Nation And that the king hath not by Law so much power as a Justice of Peace to commit any man to Prison for any offence whatsoever because all such matters were committed to proper Courts and Officers of Justice And if the King by his verbal command send for any person to come before him if the party refused to attend and the messenger endevoring to force him they fell to blows if the messenger killed the party sent for this by the Law is Murther in him but if he killed the messenger this was justifiable in him being in his own defence so as to sue forth a pardon of course these and many other Cases of like nature are so clear well known that I wil not presume to multiply particulars That the king took an Oath at his Coronation to preserve the Peace of the Nation to do Justice to all and to keep and observe the Laws which the people have himself confesses And it was charged upon the late Arch-Bishop that he Emasculated the Oath and left out very material words Which the people shall chuse which certainly he durst not have done without the kings special Command And it seems to me no light presumption that from that very day he had a Design to alter and subvert the Fundamental Laws and to introduce an Arbitrary and Tyrannical Government but though there had been an Oath yet by special Office and duty of his place every King of England is obliged to Act for the peoples good for all power as it is originally in the people he must needs be extream ignorant malicious or a self-destroyer that shall deny it so it is given forth for their preservation nothing for their destruction for a king to rule by lust and not by Law is a creature that was never of Gods making not of Gods approbation but his permission And though such men are said to be Gods on Earth 't is in no other sence then the Devil is called the God of this world It seems that one passage which the king would have offered to the Court which was not permitted him to dispute the Supreme Authority in the Nation and standing mute the Charge being for High Treason it is a conviction in Law was That 1 Sam. 8. is a Copy of the kings Commission by vertue whereof he as a king might rule and govern as he list that he might take the Peoples Sons and appoint them for himself for his Chariots and to be his Horsemen and take their Daughters to be his Confectionaries and take their Fields and Vineyards and Oliveyards even the best of them and thair goodliest yong men and their Asses and give them to his Officers and to his Servants which indeed is a Copy and Patern of an absolute Tyrant and absolute Slaves where the people have no more then the Tyrant will afford them The holy Spirit in that Chapter does not insinuate what a good king ought to do but what a wicked king would presume to do Besides Saul and David had extraordinary callings but all just power is now derived from and conferred by the people yet in the case of Saul it is observable that the people out of pride to be like other Nations desired a king and such a king as the Heathens had which were all Tyrants for they that know any thing in History know that the first four Monarchs were all Tyrants at first til they gained the peoples consent Nimrod the great Hunter was Ninus that built Nineveh the first Tyrant and Conquerer that had no Title so were all kingdoms which are not Elective till the peoples subsequent consent and though it be by descent yet 't is a continuation of a Conquest till the people consent voluntarily submit to a Government they are but Slaves in reason they may free themselves if they can In France the king begins his Raign from the day of his Coronation the Archbishop asks the people if he shall be King the twelve Peers or some that personate them say yes they girt the sword about him then he swares to defend the Lawes And is any thing more naturall then to keepe an Oath And though vertuous Kings have prevailed with the People to make their Crownes Hereditary yet the Coronation shews the shell that the kernell hath been in Samuel was a good Judge and there was nothing could be objected against him therefore God was displeased at their inordinate desire of a King and it seemes to me that the Lord declares his dislike of all such Kings as the heathens were that is Kings with an unlimited power that are not tied to laws for he gave them a King in his wrath therein dealing with them as the wise Physitian with the distempered and impatient Patient who desiring to drink wine tels him the danger of inflammation yet wine he will have and the Physitian considering a little wine will do but little hurt rather then his Patient by fretting should take greater hurt prescribes a little whitewine wherein the Physitian doth not approve his drinking of wine but of two evils chooseth the least The Jewes would have a King for Majestie and Splendor like the Heathens God permits this he approves it not it seems to me that the Lord renounces the very Genus of such Kings as are there mentioned and the old word Conning by Contraction king does not signifie power
mending his plea or suing in what Court he will and some such prerogatives of a middle indifferent nature that could not be prejudicial to the people but that the Law of England should give the King any such vast immence precipitating power or any such God like state that he ought not to be accountable for wicked actions or Male-Administrations and Misgovernment as he hath challenged and averr'd in his answer to the Petition of Right or any such principals of Tyranny which are as inconsistent with the peoples Liberties and Safety as the Ark and Dagon light and darkness in an intensive degree is a most vain and irrational thing to imagine and yet that was the ground of the War as himself often declared and that would not have half contented him if he had come in by the Sword But some rational men object How can it be murther say they for the king to raise Forces against the Parliament since there is no other way of determining differences between the king and his Subjects but by the Sword for the Law is no competent Judge between two Snpreme powers and then if it be onely a contending for each others Right Where is the malice that makes the killing of a man murther Take the answer thus first How is it possible to imagine two Supreme powers in one Nation no more then two Suns in one Firmament if the king be Supreme the Parliament must be Subordinate if they Supreme then he Subordinate But then it is alleaged That the king challenged a power onely co-ordinate that the Parliament could do nothing without him nor he without them Under favor two powers co-ordinate is as absurd as the other for though in quiet times the Commons have waited upon the king and allowed him a Negative voyce in matters of less concernment where delay could not prove dangerous to the people yet when the Commons shall Vote that the kingdom is in danger unless the Militia be so and so setled now if he will not agree to it they are bound in duty to do it themselves and 't is impossible to imagine that ever any man should have the consent of the people to be their king upon other conditions without which no man ever had right to wear the diadem for Conquest makes a Title amongst Wolves and Bears but not amongst men When the first agreement was concerning the power of Parliaments if the king should have said Gentlemen are you content to allow me any Negative Voyce that if you Vote the kingdom to be in danger unless such an Act pass if I refuse to assent shall nothing be done in that case surely no rational man but would have answered May it please your Majesty we shall use all dutiful means to procure your Royal Assent but if you still refuse we must not sit still and see our selves ruined we must and will save our selves whether you will or no and will any man say that the kings power is diminished because he cannot hurt the people or that a man is less in health that hath many Phisitians to attend him God is Omnipotent that cannot sin and all power is for the peoples good but a Prince may not say that is for the peoples good which they say and feel to be for their hurt And as for the malice the Law implies that as when a thief sets upon a man to rob him he hath no spite to the man but love to the money but it is an implyed malice that he will kill the people unless they will be Slaves Q. But by what Law is the King condemned R. By the Fundamental Law of this kingdom by the general Law of all Nations and the Unanimous consent of all Rational men in the world written in every mans heart with the Pen of a Diamond in Capital Letters and a Character so legible that he that runs may read viz. That when any man is intrusted with the Sword for the protection and preservation of the people if this man shall imploy it to their destruction which was put into his hand for their safety by the Law of that Land he becomes an Enemy to that people and deserves the most exemplary and severe punishment that can be invented And this is the first necessary Fundamental Law of every kingdom which by Intrinsecal rules of Government must preserve it self and this Law needed not be exprest That if a King become a Tyrant he shall dye for it 't is so naturally implyed we do not use to make Laws which are for the preservation of Nature that a man should eat and drink and buy himself cloaths and injoy other natural comforts no kingdom ever made any Laws for it And as we are to defend our selves naturally without any written Law from hunger and cold so from outward violence therefore if a king would dedroy a people 't is absurd and rediculous to ask by what Law he is to dye And this Law of nature is the Law of God written in the fleshly tables of mens hearts that like the eldest Sister hath a prerogative right of power before any positive Law whatsoever and this Law of nature is an undubitable Legislative authority of it self that hath a suspensive power over all humane Laws If any man shall by express Covenant under hand and seal give power to another man to kill him this is a void Contract being destructive to humanity and by the Law of England any Act or Agreement against the Laws of God or Nature is a meer nullity for as man hath no hand in the making of the Laws of God or Nature no more hath he power to marre or alter them If the Pilot of a Ship be drunk and running upon a Rock if the passengers cannot otherwise prevent it they may throw him into the Sea to cool him And this Question hath received Resolution this Parliament When the Militia of an Army is committed to a General 't is not with any express condition That he shall not turn the mouths of his Canons against his own Soldiers for that is so naturally and necessarily implyed that it 's needless to be exprest insomuch as if he did attempt or command such a thing against the nature of his Trust and Place it did ipso facto estate the Army in a right of disobedience unless any man be so grosly ignorant to think that obedience bindes men to cut their own throats or their companions Nor is this any secret of the Law which hath lyen hid from the beginning and now brought out to bring him to Justice but that which is connatural with every man and innate in his judgement and reason and is as ancient as the first king and an Epidemical binding Law in all Nations in the world For when many Families agree for the preservation of Humane Society to invest any king or Governor with power and authority upon the acceptance thereof there is a mutual Trust and confidence between them