Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	law_n	power_n	prince_n	6,812	5	6.0088	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44730	A letter from a nobleman in London, to his friend in the country written some months ago. Now published for the common good.	Halifax, George Savile, Marquis of, 1633-1695.	1690 (1690)	Wing H309; ESTC R215176	12,259	8

A Letter from a Nobleman in London to his Friend in the Country Written some Months ago Now Published for the Common Good I Assure you Sir whatever you have heard to the contrary my having been in and out in the present as well as the two former Reigns proceeds not from any incompatibility or uncertainty of humour but from a true English Temper and Spirit that cannot endure Slavery in it self and abhors to be the Instrument of it in otherss I ever exclaimed against the Court Maxime Live and let others Live and watch'd my fellow Ministers actions as I desired they would mine that our Master might not be defrauded nor his Subjects oppressed and believing nothing could make England unhappy but a change of our King 's limited legal Authority into an unbounded Arbitrary Power I always advised my Prince to a steddy conformity to the Laws to place his security on the affections of his Subjects which this would gain him and not on Guards or Army These principles were not like to make me thrive in any Court The apprehension I had that the late King's Religion would carry him to that extreme made me not only weary of his Service but uneasie under his Government and desirous to change it for a better which my first heat of fancy suggested I could not miss in a Protestant but my cooler thoughts what I have already seen acted and my Knowledge of what is further design'd convince me of my own and the Nations folly The reports of Char. II's Murder the Earl of Essex's Death and a supposititious Prince of Wales all Men of common sense knew to be false and malicious but I confess I looked upon the noise of a League with France to be real yet without the ridiculous and spiteful addition of cutting the Protestants throats because the King's circumstances especially the proceedings in Ireland made it absolutely necessary for his own preservation Yet now 't is plain this also was a pure invention and that the Dutch dull as they are have out-witted the English and by a trick drawn us into a War to defend them against France Nor is it less evident that Monsieur d' Avaux's Memorial of the 9th of September 88 to the States impudently pretended by the Scribler of the Desertion to have been the cause of the long before intended Invasion was though a Gentiler as meer a Stratagem The King his Master not more ascertained of the Confederacy against himself than of the Hollander's Preparations against K. I. hop'd by this flight of Generosity to have wrought into his Interests Him who before had rejected his repeated offers of succour 'T is no wonder each Party should labour to get England on their side the ballance of Europe put into either scale must of necessity have made that out-weigh the other But now too late we find our King was too good a Christian to believe his Son and Nephew could gratifie his Ambition at so barbarous a rate and too much an English Man to engage with France against his Subjects Interests which certainly was to ingross the Trade of the World and safely look on while the French and Dutch destroy'd each other But alas our want of wit and others cunning would not suffer us to be thus happy fear of Slavery artificially spred among the Gentry and of Popery among the Commonalty did not only make way for our ruine but bewitched our selves to be the Instruments of it We dreaded and roar'd against a standing Army of English of Protestants so zealous that they would loose their reputation rather than fight for their Popish King Yet now we can kiss the rod that scourges us tamely suffer an Army of Forreigners of Popish or of no Religion who will execute with joy the Commands of our new K. their General whose will and whose interest it is to enslave us You have long known my Opinion about Religion and the force of it among Men of refined Understandings I laugh at all sorts of bigotry and prefer our own Religion to Popery not as more agreable to Truth but as established by Law Disputes of this Nature ought in my Mind to be banished the Common-Wealth at least confin'd to the Schools nor should I trouble my Head nor would any Man that wanted not Brains what Religion a lawful Parliament put down or set up provided we could but be secured against Slavery and the loss of Abby Lands Nor need I tell you who have as sensibly felt it that Slavery is not a more natural consequence of Popery than of Presbitery or any other Sect. If from what I write you cannot gather why I make not the same Figure in the State I lately did read the inclosed advice to our new K. and communicate it but one by one to our Friends the Earls of K. and of E. the Bp. of and the rest of our knot 't is Word for Word taken from the Original and it is what cleared my Eyes and gave me a full prospect into the bottom of the design which after I had for some time laboured in vain to cross I made a Leg and withdrew concluding it base and ignoble for an English Peer to joyn in Council or act in Concert with a Dutch a French Hugonot and a Scotch Presbyterian under a King without Title whose Religion is Policy and whose No-Title and Policy must be supported by a strong Army the subversion of the State and the Conquest of England The enclosed Paper was in the following Words SIR HItherto it is true your Affairs seem to have succeeded prosperously you have got a Crown and you have got it with ease but it cannot be preserv'd without difficulty Your Interest as P. of O. Statholder of Holland is very different from your Interest as K. of England but since you are the one and yet for some time must be the other your game is the harder and requires double the skill that when you landed was necessary The Prince of Orange as Head of the Protestant League which among our selves we must own this to be notwithstanding that the Spaniards natural aversion to the French and the growing Greatness of their Monarchy have drawn in to it the whole House of Austria and the other Popish Princes of Germany is engaged in an Alliance the K. of England ought in prudence to have avoided Charles V. and Philip II. have sufficiently proved the Universal Monarchy a fantastick Dream impracticable impossible besides the Nature and Scituation of the English Dominion sufficiently secure it against French Incroachments England therefore in this conjuncture should have stood Neuter and enjoyed the great advantages of Commerce whilst her Neighbors especially the Dutch her Rivals for this reason ever to be suspected and kept under were interrupted by War encreased her Naval strength by building new Ships repairing the old and filling her Magazines with all necessary Stores and erected Forts and Block-houses where wanting to secure her against Invasion The Treaty