Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bench_n	court_n	king_n	1,919	5	4.4386	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A76808	Sir Richard Blake his speech in the House of Commons at a grand committee for the bill against paper petitions. Master Brereton sitting in the chaire Iune XXVIII. 1641.; Speech in the House of Commons at a grand committee for the bill against paper petitions	Blake, Richard, Sir, d. 1663.	1641 (1641)	Wing B3137; Thomason E198_25; ESTC R11468	5,924	16

Sir Richard Blake HIS SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS At a Grand Committee for the Bill against paper Petitions Master Brereton sitting in the CHAIRE Iune XXVIII 1641. LONDON Printed Anno Domini 1641. Sir Richard Blake his Speech in the House of COMMONS at a Grand Committee for the Bill against Paper Petitions Master Brereton sitting in the Chaire June 28. 1641. Master Brereton THe matter we now treat of is of great importāce it is of the power that Paper Petitions have of late usurped in this Kingdom by the Arbitrary Judicature of Civill Causes and Controversies It will become the Judgment of this great Councell to consider First of the Nature and Essence then of the fruits and effects of these Paper Petitions and lastly if we finde those fruits so bitter and unsavoury that instead of pleasing they poyson us to grub them up and root them so out that they shall never grow again in this Garden of ours this our Eden our deare Country to destroy us and our posterity as the forbidden fruit did in Adam all mankind Sir there are many things described by their Contraries this will be granted is Color contrarius albo it is the deprivation and annihilation of our Fundamentall and vitall Laws Our Laws Sir are the ne plus ultra to all Kings and Subjects and as they are Hercules his Pillars so are they Pillars to every Hercules and Prince that they cannot passe and Pillars that beare and support every Subject in his life in his Lands and his goods When Rome triumphed in her ancient greatnesse and was acknowledged sole and sovereigne Empress of all the Nations in the World a Poet of those times shewes the cause of her continued splendour and flourishing estate by this Verse Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virique I may not unaptly apply that Verse to this Kingdome and truly say that Legibus antiquis stat res Hiberna virique Our Laws are the breath of our nostrils the sight of our eys the very Soul and Nerves by which this great body politique of ours doth live and move they are the best Guards of Kings Magistrates and vertuous men they are Snaffles to bridle the wicked they are Sickles to cut downe all weeds growing up in the Common-weal those paper Petitions are their Antagonists their profest enemies they trample them under foot not revering or respecting their venerable gray-headed antiquity not regarding that by their influence and vertue wee now sit together in this great Councell aswell for the conservation of them as propagation of a new fruitfull seed of more to posteritie not valuing the great and unspeakable benefit that mankinde hath originally received from them in that by their means we lead the lives of reasonable men not of brute Beasts of Free-men not of Slaves of Civill men and not of Salvages Those paper Petitions like whirlewinds throw down all before them that stand in their way make one man in the Lucifertan as I may term it Exaltancie of his power to monopolize and appropriate unto himselfe the abilities of all men the properties of all Courts The Judges once like so many Planets shining in their severall Orbs observing their constant motion in their severall Courts of Judicature imparted unto us the comfortable light and vivificant heat of the Laws those paper Petitions extinguish and put out this light with the vapours that rise from them they ecclipse and darken the Lustre of it they sully the white Furres of their Roabes they endanger the blackning of their whiter consciences when by force of the Commands of those Petitions they are required contrary to their Oath not onely to delay but to denie Justice The Marshals Court was originally erected for Armes and Honour the Chancery for Equitie the Exchequer for the Revenues Kings Bench for the Pleas of the Crown the Common Pleas for Pleas between Subject and Subject and the Prerogative Consistory and Bishops Courts for Ecclesiasticall Causes from those Cisterns the water of life did issue and flow upon us but inimicus iniqu●s homo superseminovil z … in … dio tritici one man in his vast unlimited and transcendent power tooke all their Functions upon himselfe alone vainly acted himselfe Omnipotent which is an Attribute proper to God Almighty and that in quarto modo as your Logicians terme it soli semper uni created himselfe Earle Marshall Lord Chancellor Chiefe Baron nay all the Barons of the Exchequer Chief Justice nay all the Justices of either Bench Archbishop Bishop nay all the Archbishops Bishops Deans and Chapters of the Kingdome Justine in the Preface to his History tels us that in the non-age and first infancie of the World Populus nullis legibus tenebatur arbitria potentium pro Legibus erant The people had no positive Laws to govern them the wills of great ones were their Laws and those wils were so inordinate and so exorbitant that for the most part they made their own wils and fancies to be their Treasurers and Hangmen measuring by that yard and weighing in that Ballance both good and evill After the Revolution of so many Ages as if Pythagoras his opinion of Transmigration were true or that the Platonicke yeare of reducing all things to the same beginning continuance and period how false soever in the books of nature had bin come have we not lived as it were in these times have we not groaned and were not our backs cracked under the weight that paper Petitions and the Commands of those great ones upon them involved and fettered us in were not our adversaries by their References made our Iudges and our Iudges our sworne Iudges made Arbitrary Censurers of what properly was to bee determined before themselves in their Courts were not our Freeholds and goods violently extrajudicially taken from us were not our bodies imprisoned Our bodies Sir whose libertie the Common Law did so highly esteeme that they were not for any cause whatsoever to be restrained but onely for force and that because the Law being the preserver of the quiet and Tranquility of the Kingdome detested and abhorred force as the enemy and violator thereof those bodies of ours were not onely imprisoned but pillori'd whipt and scourged upon Sentences given upon paper Petitions and our selves forced as Children are to kisse the rod by making a forced acknowledgement of Guilt against our knowledge and conscience without which we could not redeeme those bodies from perpetuall Imprisonment our estates from being extended and our goods from being seized Vpon the late solemne and famous Triall of the Earle of Strafford and in the greatest presence of the World for that the King was pleased to be personally present all the States of the Kingdome of England assembled in Parliament with the Commissioners and Committees of both his other Kingdomes it hath beene offered to Consideration as a matter of great consequence that it imbaseth the spirits of a Nation when they must stand in