Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	according_a	king_n	law_n	1,630	5	4.7476	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A88241	Rash oaths unwarrantable: and the breaking of them as inexcusable. Or, A discourse, shewing, that the two Houses of Parliament had little ground to make those oaths they have made, or lesse ground to take, or presse the taking of them, being it is easie to be apprehended, they never intended to keep them, but onely made them for snares, and cloaks for knavery, as it is clearly evinced by their constant arbitrary and tyranicall practices, no justice nor right being to be found amongst them; by meanes of which they have declaratorily, and visibly lost the very soule and essence of true magistracy, (which is, the doing of justice, judgement, equity ... In which is also a true and just declaration of the unspeakable evill of the delay of justice, and the extraordinary sufferings of Lievtenant Colonell John Lilburne, very much occasioned by M. Henry Martins unfriendly and unjust dealing with him, in not making his report to the House. All which with divers other things of very high concernment, are declared in the following discourse, being an epistle, / written by Lievtenant-Colonell John Lilburne, prerogative prisoner in the Tower of London, to Colonell Henry Marten, a member of the House of Commons of England ... May 1647.	Lilburne, John, 1614?-1657.	1647 (1647)	Wing L2167; Thomason E393_39; ESTC R201615	53,968	58

may be returned to the custody and disposing of those persons of whose faithfullnesse and wisedome in managing thereof you have had great experience and that none may be put out of Command in the Trained Bands or Auxiliaries who have been and are of known good affection to the Common wealth All which we humbly intreat may be speedily and effectually accomplished according to the great necessity and exigency of these distracted times and as in duty bound we shall pray c. And having presented it in writing a day two or three after they presented it publiquely in print to the members of the House the issue of which as I have it out of your own Diurnall was thus Die Mercuris 2 Junii 1647 A Petition stiled the humble Petition of many thousands of well affected people was this day read The question being put whether an answer shall be given to this Petition at this present the house was devided the yeas went forth Sir John Evelin of Wilts Sir Michael Levisay tellers for the yea with the yea 112. Mr. Hollis Sir William Luis tellers for the no with the no●s 128 so that the qu●stion past with the negative But the Petitioners going up s●me few dayes after for an answer to their petition and being extreamly in base provoking and insufferable language abused by that worshipfull Gentleman Major Generall Massie c. which provoked divers of them to send in a paper to Mr. Speaker as their last farewell the copy of which thus followeth Mr Speaker divers Citizens have been here attending for an answer of a Petition delivered by Sir William Waller on Wednesday last their desire is that the house may be acquainted that the petitioners have seen the Vote of the House and have discharged themselves from further attendance for the present and will notwithstanding still seeke just and equitable meanes for to ease the grievances of this poore distracted Kingdome and comfortably put an end to the groanings of this miserable distressed nation And having sent it in away they came and now in my apprehension have no other course to take but to remonstrate and justly to declare to all the Commons of England and the Army the unpartaleld illegall and tyrannicall dealing of the House of Commons with them and to presse them by force of Armes to root up and destroy these tyrants which without any scruple of conscience they may doe if it were lawfull for the two Houses to levie warre against the King for tyranny declared by them seeing I am sure there is a hundred times greater and more visibler and if it be true as Sir Simon Synod and the John of all Sir Johns now cryes out and sayes that it is not lawfull in any case to fight against the legall Magistrate then I am sure Sir John and Sir Simon are a company of grand Traytors and ought principally to be hanged for being the chiefe Incendiaries in their Pulpets c. to the by past warres against the King who I will justifie it upon the losse of my life by the established law of England the declared government thereof is a thousand times more fenced about and secured so farre as Law can secure then the unjust law and liberty destroying Lords and Commons assembled at Westminster are And secondly I will justifie it that if the principalls or law of reason and nature for preservation take be a sufficient ground to take up Armes against the King and his party as the H●… Parliament have declared they are then the Kingdome and Arm have much more true grounds to take up Armes against them for tyranny visibly avowedly and professedly acted a hundred times more higher and transendent then ever he did that is yet declared And a most reall difference there is betwixt the action of them two in this particular I clearly find by all that J can yet read of either side published to the view of the Kingdome and J thinke that I have read and wayed almost all that is extant that the King by the law of his will did not impose Monopolies and Ship money c. vpon the free men of England but was made to beleeve by his Judges and Counsell at Law being those helpes or assistance that the law of the Kingdom had appointed him to be counselled by out of Parliament that he might impose those things by right or force of the Law of the Kingdome See the dispute in Mr. Hamdens case of Ship-money in the latter end of Judge Huttons Judge Crookes arguments against Ship money pag. 2 3. 4 5 printed by authority of this present Parliament and the Declarations of both sides 1. and 2. part Col. Decl. And indeed to speake according to the declared Law of England the Iudges and his counsell at Law were principally to be blamed and not the King See your own Remonstrance of the 19 May 1642. 1. part book Decl. pag. 199. 304. and the reason in Law is because the Law commands the Judges and Justices of peace and all the rest of the Administrators of it not to delay or disturb common Iustice and right for any command from the King for any other signified by the Great Seale or privie Seale or any other wayes and though such commands doe come the Iudges and Iustices shall not therefore leave to doe right in any point but shall doe common right according to the common Law as though never any such command had been see the 29 chap of Magna Charta and 2. E. 3 8. and 14. E. 3.14 and 11. R. 2.10 And to performe this in every particular every Iudge and Iustice of peace is sworne as appeares by their oathes recorded in Poultons book of Statutes folio 144. and made in the 18. yeare of Edward 3. Anno 1344. which also you may verbatum read in the 29 pag. of a late printed book called Rega● tyranny And it was the duty by law that this Parliament ought to the whole Kingdome to have made all those false and wicked Ship-money Judges examples of terror to future generations As King Alfred before the conquest did for as Andrew Horne in his miror of Iustice pag. 296. saith that Iudges and their Ministers who destroy men by false judgement ought to be destroyed as other murtherers which King Alfred did who hanged in one yeare 44. Iudges as murtherers for their false judg●ments against the Law whose particular crimes and names he specifieth pag. 296. 297 298 299 300. c. But to your everlasting shame be it spoken you took bribes of some of them after the King had surrendred them up to your justice and after that you had impeached them of high Treason and imprisoned them you set them at liberty to sit upon the seat of justice * Which if they had bin made examples of terror you would have got no Iudges to have executed your arbitrary illegall and tirannicall commands to passe sentence upon the lives liberties and properties of the free-men

wish my Judges were not worse then the unrighteous Judge But Sir seeing it is to no purpose I can no longer now forbeare but must write you my mind to the purpose cost it what it will being now at present as carelesse of you as you are and have been of me and my long but I will not say unsupportable sufferings though I might truly say it if it were not that I had a full faithfull and soule-satisfying God to rest and rely upon and the distresses and hardly to be undergone portion of my wife and little infants But Sir I beseech you give me leave before I lansh into the deep a little mildly to expostulate with you in a friendly way before we fall out and to demand this question of you what I have said or done to you to give you any tolerable cause to deale thus with me as you have done as by your delay of your duty to destroy me and given me too just cause in reference to you to say with David Psal 55.12,13,14 For it was not an enemy that reproached me then I could have borne it neither was it he that hated me that did magnifie himself against me then I would have hid my self from him but it was thou ah man mine equall my guide and mine acqaintance we took sweet counsell together And truly Sir the evill doings of a friend are the most piercing and wounding and the least to be indured and the most odious to God and detestable amongst all rationall and gallant men Jer. 9.4 to the 9. Ch. 12.6 and Ch. 20.10,11,12 But Sir if you have nothing to lay to my charge in reference to your self I desire to know if you have any thing to accuse me of in reference to the publike have I deerted my interest or betraid the Liberties of my fellow Commons of England or have I been sluggish slothfull or cowardly in mannaging the businesse I have in hand or have I been impatient in my sufferings by my madness and folly destroyed my business or given grounded advantage to my adversaries If all or anie of these can be justly laid to my charge I desire not to be spared But Sir if you can say nothing against me by way of miscarriage to you in particular or the publike in generall then I pray you give me leave to demand of you this question What have you to say for your selfe that you have thus delayed to make my report and thereby over and over againe and againe have hazzarded my destruction and utter ruine contrary to law honesty justice reason and conscience If you should say it is not seasonable and that the temper of your House is such that to make it it would do me nor the Kingdome no good but rather a mischief in hazzarding the confirmation of the Lords tyranny towards me by a vote of your House whose spirits are extreamly exasperated against me above all men in England To answer which what do you else then hereby give me too just cause to say of your House in which so many that professe honesty sit though it bee but little demonstrative by their actions that you are a corrupted and degenerated generation of men that are fallen from doing of Justice to the executing of Tyranny and from maintaining defending and protecting according to your duty and the end of your sitting where you do the Lawes and Liberties of the Commons of England to the betraying subverting and destroying them and so have all of you forfeited your trust and your Parliamentary power which as you your selves say 1. par Book Decl. p. 150. was given you to provide for the Peoples weales but not for their woes and have thereby absolutely absolved and discharged the people from all subjection to you and given them cause that sent you to call you home and chuse honester men in your places to call you to a strict accompt for all your tyranny oppression and trechercy and know what you have done with all their money which they may justly by your own arguments against the King do See the second Edition of the Outcries of oppressed Commons p. 4 5 6 7 14 15 16 17 18. And in case of disobedience from you to your trusters and impowers the severall Shires Countreyes and Corporations that choose you what do you else then thereby give them cause to look upon you as you have this foure or five years looked upon the King and deale by you as you have dealt with the King even to wage war against you for betrayers of your trust which they and the whole Kingdome reposed in you who are now degenerated from a just House of Parliament the end of calling of which by the Law is to redresse mischiefs and grievances that daily happen 36. E. 3.10 but not to augment and wholly increase them into a conspiracy and consederacy of lawlesse unlimited and unbounded men that have actually destroyed the Lawes and Liberties of England and that will have no rule to walke by but their owne corrupted and bloody wills and thereby have set up the highest Tyranny that can be set up in the world against which by your owne principles the Kingdome may justly rise up in Armes as one man and destroy all the fore-said conspirators without mercy or compassion as a company of devouring Lions ravening Wolves and crafty Foxes that would destroy the poore flocks of lambs and sheep of this distressed Kingdome the people and Inhabitants thereof for take away Law as the Parliament in a transcendent measure hath done and deny us justice and right as is constantly in a great measure done unto us by the Parliament And what are we now better then the brute beasts of the field the weakest of which are torne in pieces devoured and destroyed by the strongest for remedie● 〈◊〉 which the Parliament against the King took up Armes and when they h●d no Law of the Kingdome to warrant them in so doing they make use of the law of nature and reason and tell the King Book Dec. 1 part pag. 207. That this Law is as old as the Kingdome that the Kingdome must not be without a meanes to preserve it selfe but in which of our Statutes this is writ I never yet could heare see nor read of and am very sure it is no where but in their own Declarations and ingraven in the heart of man as a principle of nature and reason which as they very well and justly say teacheth a man or Kingdome to preserve its selfe 1 part Book Dec. pag. ●4 93 94. 112 123. 202. 465. 466. 726 728. see 2. Edition of the Outcries pag. 12 13. And if this Doctrine be true as you avouch it is then it will much more serve against your selves then the King because the King is so fenced about with the Lawes of the Kingdome that it is impossible for a man or Magistrate to bee more and if you are but a betrusted power impowered protempore by the

people for no other end in the world but to provide for their weale and happinesse and to redresse their mischiefs and grievances unfortified at all by the established knowne and declared Law of the Kingdome degenerate from your trust destroy their Liberties and trades overthrow their Lawes and the Bounds that establish meum tuum and tyrannize over their persons ten times worse then ever the King did or his wicked and evill Ministers of Justice the Judges and Patentee Monopolizers especially all of whom you cannot deny but he at the beginning of your Session surrendred up to you to be punished by you according to Law Justice which in them you extreamely perverted and tooke bribes for the acquitting the capitallest of them and otherwise made use of them to do more mischiefe since to the Common-wealth then ever they had done before by assuring any thing for Law that you would propound to them by meanes of which you with your wicked and unbounded Priviledges have dared to exercise the absolutest and grandest tyranny over the lives liberties trades properties and estates of the Freemen of England that ever was I dare positively aver it since it was a Nation governed by an established and declared Law to your eternall and everlasting shame I speake it so that truly if the Freemen of England seriously look upon all your late publike and to us visible actions and compare them with their former enjoyments they may justly take up Miach's lamentation and say with him to you The good man is perished out of the earth and there is none upright amongst you men they or you all lie in waite for blood they or you hunt every man his brother with a net that they or you may do evill with both hands earnestly the Prince asketh and the Judge asketh for a reward and the great man he uttereth his mischievous desire so they wrap it up therefore woe unto the Parliament for the best of them is as a briar the most upright is sharper then a thorne hedge the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh now with a vengeance shall bee their perplexity therefore O all ye understanding Commons of England in reference to your Parliament Trustees trust ye not in a friend put ye no confidence in a guide for your enemies are the men of your owne House Micah 7.2,3,4,5,6 Therefore M. Martin I professe it before you and all the world that were I rationally able I would make no scruple of conscience to help forward with my sword in my hand the distruction of every lawlesse tyrannicall treacherous man amongst you that I should groundedly know to be a ring-leader in the fore-said transcendent vilenesse then I should to help to destroy so many rats or devouring vermin and by your owne fore-mentioned Principles Declarations Protestations Oathes Actions and doings it will undeniably be justified to be lawfull for all the Commons of Englands to do the same towards you But now Sir let us come to some particulars in the first place the 29. Chap and the most excellent Petition of right which I call the English-mans legall treasure doth clearly condemne all the pract●ses amongst you for they expressely say that no Freeman shall be taken and imprisoned or be disseized of his freehold or liberties or free-customes or be out-lawed or exiled or any otherwise destroyed nor we will not passe upon him nor condemne him but by lawfull judgement of his Peers that is to say equalls or men of his owne condition or by the Law of the Land We will sell to no man we will not deny or defer to any man either iustice or right and that no man be imprisoned without cause shewed or expressed in his Warrant of Commitment nor no man refused Habeas Corpus's for any cause whatever nor no man taken by Petition nor suggestion made to our Lord the King nor his Counsell unlesse it be by Indictment or Presentment of his good and lawfull People of the same neighbourhood where such deeds be done 25. E. 3.4 in due manner or by Processe made by Writ Originall at the common Law nor that none be put out of his Franchises nor of hi● Free-holds unlesse he be duly brought in to answer and fore-judged of the same by th● course of the Law and that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yeeld any guift bond benevolence taxe or such like charge without common consent by Act of Parliament Now compare your daily and hourly actions to those good just and unrepealed Laws and blush for shame But to wipe all this off you will it may be say the same that is said in your Declaration of the 17 of Aprill 1645 Booke Decl. 2 part pag. 879. That the end of the Primitive institution of all government is the safty and weale of the people which is above all Lawes and therefore the Kingdome being imbroyled in warre necessitated nacessitie compells you to doe many actions contrary to the knowne Lawes of the Land without the doing of which actions wanting the puntillo of the Kings consent you could not save your selves nor the kingdome will admit all this for a truth I pray then why doe you impose such illegall devilsh impossible to be kept contradicting Oaths and Covenants upon all the Freemen of England upon such sever penalties that all men must be disfranchised or destroyed that will not take them and in them without any provisoes eautions limitations or declared exceptions and reservation tye them to maintaine the Law of the Land and the lawful● rightes and liberties of the Subjects of England is not this to force men to sweare to contradict and oppose to the death all your actions and to destory you for doing those actions because they are contrary to the Law and Liberties of England O yee forsworne men for so I may call you all that have taken these illegall damnable hellish and soule insnaring Oaths because ye do your selves and suffer to be done daily such things as tends to the absolute distruction of the Lawes and the lawfull Liberties of the freemen of England which by all these Oaths you have sworne to maintaine and defend with all your might and yet there is not one just nor righteous man amongst you that dare avowedly and publiquely to the whole Kingdom protest against all the rest but by parsilent patient and constant seting there owne approve of all their actions O ye unworthy forsworne men in the highest degree for this may too justly be the stile and title of all and every one of you without exceptions in the condition of the visablest best of whom for Millions of Gold I would not be for if perjuries swearings and false swearings be so odious abominable and detestable unto God as in Scripture he declares they are read Exod 20.7 Lev. 19.11.12 Num. 30.2 Deut. 23.21.22.23 Psal 15.4 Eccl. 5.4.5 Ezek. 17.13.14.15.16.17.18.19 Jer. 24.10 Zek. 5.3.4.9.8.16.17 Then woe wee and vengance upon earth is your vadoubted

take all or any of your fore nentioned unwarrantable Oathes for he that hath said Thou shalt not kill hath also said thou shalt not in that manner swear And I would fain know of you what confidence the Parliament upon sollid grounds can put upon any men in England that are so ready and willing to swallow your oat●es that now are become nothing else but cloaks of knavery and breeders of strife and mischief therefore for shame say them all down and presse them no more upon any man whatsoever for he that consciensiously maks nothing of an Oath will make as little of breaking his Oa●h whensoever it shall make for his profit ease or preferment whereas to h●m that conscienciously scruples an Oath his bare word promise or ingagement is the sencerest tye in the world which he would not willingly violate for all the earth But Sir to return to your forementioned grand Objection That your Houses are not in a temper to hear my report and to do me justice upon it I pray Sir what is the reason of it Is it because there is a Faction of great men in it that hates my person and therefore though my cause be never so just yet they will do me no right and if so then I tell you plainly without fear they are a company of Factious knaves and not a company of righteous Judges who ought in judgement to be so impartial that they should not regard or respect persons but the justnesse of their cause Or Secondly it is because I have not the Law of the Land sufficiently on my side and if so it is the easier judged against me but why did you receive and approve of my appeple to your house at first but know Sir that although I be no Lawyer yet I dare throw the gantlet to all the Lawyers in England and against them all before any Legall Barre in England will plead my own cause my selfe and justifie and prove the Lords proceedings with me to be point blanke against the good old and unrepealed Law of England and this I will do at my at most perrell yea let the Lords in the front put their lying Champion William Prinn the basest and lyingest of men who in less then eight lines hath told and printed twelve or thirteene notorious lyes against me see Inocencie and truth justified page 4. 5. 6. and hath such a firey zeale to my distruction that in his late booke called The Sword of Christian Majestracy supported hee would have the two Houses without Law by the power of their owne wills to hang me for no other cause in the world but for being zealous and couragious in standing for the Laws and Liberties of England which you and he have sworne vowed and covenanted to maintaine preserve and defend and for which you have shed at least in pretence so much English blood Oh brave Prinn a fit man indeed to be a Privy-Counseller to the great Turke whose will is his Law Or in the third place it is because the Lords are so great that you dare not do me justice and right for feare of displeasing them and if so why doe you not tell the Kingdome so for it is not a ●…t●le conserned in the contest betwixt the Lords and my self that we may follow your former pattren to know the names of them among them that are enemies to our Liberties and just Free some and so indeavour to give them their just defer●s For I read in the 547 548. pages of the first part book Declaration that upon a lamentable Petition of many thousands of pore people in and about the City of London the House of Commons appoynted a conference with the Lords where Mr. Hollis whose actions demonstrats thereby his ambition is not to be lesse then a Duke or a petty King though not in title yet in power and domination one of the chiefest stickler then against the King in the whole house and one of the chiefest Beginners Causers and Promoters of the by-past warres against the King pressed the Lords at there Barre to joyne with the house of Commons in their desire about the Militia and further with many expressions of the like nature desired in words to this effect that if that desire of the House of Commons were not assented too those Lords who were willing to concur in would find some means to make themselves knowne that it might he knowne who were against them and they might make it knowne to them who sent them yea in page 557 ibim it is positively aver'd that he required the names of all those of that House which would not discharge that they then ●alledther Kingdom se the Juncto● notable Declaration at Oxford the ninteenth of March 1643. page 10. 11. 12. and Mr. Hollis his owne printed Speech and if this fore recited practis were just then it is also in the like case just now yea and the rather because our case is ten times worse now then it was then and our Lawes and Liberties principally by the House of Lords means and their Arbitrary confederates in the House of Commons are now a giving up to the eyes of all rationall and knowing impartiall men their last breath yea and verily there is but one step betwixt Us the Commons of England and perfect and absolute slavery which I for my part had rather be hanged if it were possible ten thousand times over then indure but Sir remember that you in your excellent Declaration of the 19. May 1642. 1. part book Declaration pag. 207. tell us that this law is as old as the Kingdom that the Kingdom must not be without a means to preserve it self and I say by your own declared principles that if you our ordinary and legall means will not preserve us but rather destroy us we may justly by extraordinary and rationall means preserve our selves and destroy you our treacherous destroyers Or lastly is it be cause your House hath already done the last Act of Justice that ever they intended to doe for the Commons of England there Impowerers Lords and Masters and therefore I cannot expect the making of my report indeed Sir I ingniously confesse unto you I think this is the true reason indeed though you do not in plain English words tell us as much yet by your actions you undeniablely declare it for truly many say that there is no Iustice nor right to be had at your hands and for our Laws they only serve you to destroy us at your pleasure or to serve your ends when your hot burning malice is incensed against us which if they serve for your ends they shall be your engines tu undoe us But they do not in the least serve to defend or protect us against you but when we should use them against any of you as justly we may See your own excellent Declaration of the 26. May 1642. 1 part book Declar. p. 278. Sir Ed. Cookes 4. part institut chap. of the High Court of

or willingly receive relieve comfort aid or maintaine any such person before-mentioned being at liberty out of prison knowing him to be such as before is expressed shall also for such offence be adjudged a fellon without benefit of Clergie and suffer death lose and forfeits as in case of one attainted of Fellony And this Parliament hath made a solemne League and Covenant and voted that no man shall sit in Parliament without taking it nor no man beare any Office without taking it and you have voted and in severall places made the Freemen of England uncapable to give a voice to choose an Officer if they will not take it in the second Article of which unjust unrighteous and wicked contradicting Covenant all those that take it sweare to extirpate Popery 1 part Book Deel fol. 425. and yet notwithstanding the Judges and Justices of peace made by the present Parliament force the Freemen of England against their wills and minds and the Allegation of the fore-mentioned Law and Covenant to pay Tythes the root and support of Popery to a generation of new upstart Romish Priests or Synodian Sion Colledge Jure divino men that have no other Authority and Power to stand by in their function of Presbyterie but what they challenge and derive from Rome having alreadie avowedly in print renounced and scorned any Jurisdiction either from the Parliament or the people of their Parishes by vertue of which their owne avowed claime they are ipso facto within the lash and reach of the fore-mentioned Statute and may by any Freeman of England be indicted at the Assizes or Sessions for Traytors and ought without mercy by the strength of that Law to suffer as Traytors and all those that pay Tythes or otherwise maintaine them after they know they have renounced the deriving of their Power and Jurisdiction from the Parliament and challenge it Jure divino derivitive from the Pope may be indicted as Fellons and ought to die as Fellons Now Sir is it not a piece of gallant justice in the Parliaments Judges Justices and illegall Committee-men to put freemens persons in prison without Baile or Maineprize and to plunder and I think I may say rob divers of them of their goods and cattels for refusing to support Popery after they have sworne to extirpate it by paying of Tythes to a company of Popish Presbyterian Priests that scorne to derive any power from the people of their Parishes and have already publikely and avowedly renounced the Parliaments Power and Authority and doe actually and really claime and assume unto themselves an Ecclesiasticall or Clergie Authority derivitive from Rome Fourthly the Law of England hath provided an universall remedy for all the men of England to recover their debts by from those that are indebted to them the benefit of which Law the present Parliament both doe and will injoy and at their pleasure will sue anie freeman in England that is not one of themselves but are so fortified with their big swolne priviledges that no man shall dare to meddle either with their persons or estates though they owe never so much and yet divers of them will neither of themselves pay use nor principall although originally the exemption of their persons from Arrests be not a priviledge given them for themselves in reference to their particulars but for the good of the Kingdome and People that choose them that so by the malice of any prerogative man or enemy to the just Libertie of the Commons of England they might not by malicious Arrests be molested troubled diverted or hindered for doing their Countrey faithfull service in the place they had chosen them unto But when this priviledge was first given them which in its selfe is just in its institution though now by the present Parliament-men abused in its execution it remained in them but for certaine weeks for then Parliaments were very short being by the ancient and just unrepealed Law of the Land to be chosen once every year or oftner if need required 4. E. 3.14 36. E. 3.10 it being impossible to be conceived that ever they thought then that any Parliament in England should remaine seven years to the cheating cozening and devouring of particular multitudes of men of their particular debts which now are likely by some Parliament-men to be so long owing them that they will not be claimable or recoverable by Law when this Parliament is ended which by its long sitting is and is more evidently like to be the greatest subversion of Englands Lawes Liberties and Freedomes of any thing that ever was done in England King Charles his seventeen years mis-government before this Parliament as you in your Declarations call it was but a flea-biting or as a mouldhill to a mountain in comparison of what this everlasting Parliament already is and will be to the whole Kingdome and therefore I say and will maintaine it upon the losse of my life that the Commons of England may bid adieu to their Lawes Liberties Freedomes Trades and Properties unlesse they speedily take a course for the electing of a new Parliament for the Members of this Parliament many of them to my knowledge judge themselves subject to no rule nor to be governed by any law but say that they are above Magna Charta and the most excellent Petition of Right and may abolish them although there be divers things in them so founded upon the principles of pure reason which by the fundamentall Maximes of the Law are unalterable Doctor and Student Ch. 2. fol. 4 5. see Innocency and truth justified p. 62. and the Morall Law of God that it is impossible for any power whatsoever to abolish them that is not greater then God or hath not derived a just power from him to dispence with his unchangeable Lawes one of which is That Justice shall never be sold nor impartially administred which is with other most excellent rationall and unalterable things ratified expressely in the 29. Ch. of Magna Charta besides all the rest of most excellent things in those two Lawes confirmed many of which are of universall concernment to all the sons of men under any just Government in the world and as for those things contained in them that are rationally in processe of time upon just experimentall grounds alterable and changeable if you will give us better in their places doe when you will without the doing of which by your own grounds and principles you cannot justly change them being impowered and chosen by us to provide for our weale but not for our woe to provide for our better being but not for our worse being 1 part Book Dec. p. 150. Againe fifthly the Law of England hath provided That whosoever breaks the peace shall be punished or whosoever layes violent hands upon a man and if any man doe it to a Parliament-man he will trounce him for it but they themselves can breake the peace and lay violent hands without cause upon the Freemen of

England and then make what lying reports to the House they please and get their bodies committed to prison and that without hearing them and all this did M. Hollis and Sir Walter Earl the other day to Major Tuliday Againe sixthly you your selves have declared that you have received Petitions for the removall of things established by Law and say you we must say that all that know what belongeth to the course and practice of Parliament will say that we ought so to doe and that our Predecessors and his Majesties Ancestors have constantly done it there being no other place wherein Lawes that by experience may be found grievous and burthensome can be altered or repealed and there being no other due and legall way wherein they which are aggrieved by them can seeke redresse 1 part Book Dec. p. 720. Yea and in severall of your Declarations you have defended and maintained that the concourse of people at Westminster to deliver and waite for answer to their Petitions is both just and lawfull 1 part Booke Dec. p. 123. 201. 209. And yet now of late you are growne to that passe that you reject and will not receive Petitions if they crosse your humours although they be for nothing but the obtaining Justice according to the just and unrepealed long practised Law of England and this was the case of the honest Buckinghamshire and Hartfordshire men in their late Petition see the scond Edition of the Outcries of oppressed Commons p. 9 10 11 12. Yea and when divers honest Citizens of London and as firme friends to you in the day of your straits as any was in England were about a Petition for the redresse of divers things amisse and the establishment of their just Lawes and Liberties for which divers of them by your command have freely ventured their lives the Petition by one of your informing Catchpoles was stollen out of M. Thomas Lamb's house and by M. Glyn Recorder of London and one of your owne Members brought into your House and there in a great heat voted as I am informed a seditious paper which whether it be so or no let the world judge by the copie of it which thus followeth To the right honourable and supreme Authority of this Nation the Commons in PARLIAMENT assembled The humble Petition of many thousands carnestly desiring the glory of God the freedome of the Common-wealth and the peace of all men Sheweth THat as no Civill Government is more just in the constitution then that of Parliaments having its foundation in the free choice of the people and as ●he end of all Government is the safetie and freedome of the governed even ●o the people of this Nation in all times have manifested most heartie affections into Parliaments as the most proper remedie of their grievances yet such hath ●een the wicked policies of those who from time to time have endeavoured to ●ring this Nation into bondage that they have in all times either by the disuse ●r abuse of Parliaments deprived the people of their hopes For testimony whereof the late times foregoing this Parliament will sadly witnesse when it was not onely made a crime to mention a Parliament but either the pretended ●egative voice the most destructive to freedome or a speedie dissolution bla●ed the fruit and benefit thereof whilst the whole Land was overspread with ●ll kinds of oppressions and tyranny extending both to soule and body and that ●n so rooted and setled a way that the complaints of the people in generall wit●essed that they would have given any thing in the world for one six moneths ●…eedome of Parliament Which hath been since evidenced in their instant con●tant readinesse of assistance to this present Parliament excee●ing the Records ●f former ages and wherein God hath blessed them with their first desires making this Parliament the most absolute and free of any Parliament that ever was and enabling it with power sufficient to deliver the whole Nation from all kind● of oppressions and grievances though of very long continuance and to make i● the most absolute and free Nation in the world And it is most thankfully acknowledged that ye have in order to the freedom● of the people suppressed the high Commission Star-Chamber and Councell● Table called home the banished delivered such as were imprisoned for matter● of conscience and brought some Delinquents to deserved punishment That y● have suppressed the Bishops and Popish Lords abolished Episcopacy and that kind of Prelatick persecuting government That ye have taken away Ship-money and all the new illegall Patents whereby the hearts of all the well-affected were enlarged and filled with a confident hope that they should have seen long ere thi● a compleat removall of all grievances and the whole people delivered from all oppressions over soule or body But such is our miserie that after the expenc● of so much precious time of blood and treasure and the ruine of so many thousands of honest families in recovering our Liberties we still find this Nation oppressed with grievances of the same destructive nature as formerly though unde● other notions and which are so much the more grievous unto us because the● are inflicted in the very time of this present Parliament under God the hope o● the oppressed For as then all the men and women in England were made liable to the summons attachments sentences and imprisonments of the Lords o● the Councell-boord so we find by wofull experience and sufferings of many pa●ticular persons that the present Lords doe assume and exercise the same power then which nothing is or can be more repugnant and destructive to the Commons just liberties As then the unjust power of Star-Chamber was exercised in compelling 〈◊〉 men and women to answer to Interrogatoties tending to accuse themselves an● others so is the same now frequently practiced upon divers persons even yo● cordiall friends that have been and still are punished for refusing to answer 〈◊〉 questions against themselves and nearest relations As then the great oppress●on of the high Commission was most evident in molesting of godly peaceab●… people for non-conformity or different opinion and practice in Religion jud●ing all who were contrary-minded to themselves to bee Hereticks Sectarie● Schismaticks seditious factious enemies to the State and the like and und●… great penalties forbidding all persons not licenced by them to preach or pu●lish the Gospel Even so now at this day the very same if not greater molestat●ons are set on foot and violently prosecuted by the instigation of a Clergy n● more infallible then the former to the extreame discouragement and affliction 〈◊〉 many thousands of your faithfull adherents who are not satisfied that contr●versies in Religion can be trusted to the compulsive regulation of any And after the Bishops were suppressed did hope never to have seen such a power assumed by any in this Nation any more And although all new illegal Patents are by you abolished yet the oppressive Monopoly of Merchant-adventurers