from this Authority they can have no proof and from Wise Men can be gathered nothing but such as were Noble or chief of the Realm for the meaner sort and that which we now call the Commonality were then far enough from having any great share of Learning or common Understanding and then besides these Wisest of the People were only such whom the King should think Wise and admit to his Council far from being sent by their Borroughs as elected Senators King Alfred had his Parliament and a great one was held by King Athelstan at Grately ' which only tells us there were Assembled some Bishops Noble-Men and the Wise-Men whom the King called which implies no more then those he had a mind should come But the Antiquity of a Parliament or that of an House of Commons is not so much the thing these Factious Roll and Record Mongers contend for 't is its Superiority Supremacy and there endeavours to make them antient is but in order to the making their Power Exorbitant and not to be controul'd by that of their King whom in the next place this Re-publican can scarce allow the power of calling them at his Pleasure and dissolving them when he pleases But so great is the Power of Truth and the Goodness of the Cause he Opposes that he is forc't to contradict himself to defend his Paradoxes For he tells us the King is obliged with an hear-say Law which his learned in the Faculty and Faction can't find out yet Page 111. to call Parliaments as often as need should be that is they think fit And also not to dissolve them till all their Petitions were answered that is till they are willing to be gone But then will I defie the Gentleman to shew me the difference between this their desired Parliament and a Perpetual sitting do not these industrious Endeavours for such a perpetuity of them plainly tell us 't is that 's the only thing they want and that they are taught experimentally that that alone run the three Kingdoms into absolute Rebellion and ruined the best of Kings and can as certainly compass the Destruction of the present But I 'll tell the lump of Contradiction first the words of our greatest Lawyer and then his own Cooke says none 4. Insti 27. 2. 1. Inst Sect. 164. can begin continue or dissolve a Parliament but by the Kings Authority Himself says that which is undoubtedly the Plato Red. page 105. Kings Right is to call and dissolve Parliaments 'T is impertinent to labour to contradict that which he here so plainly confutes himself the Statesman being so big with his Treasonable Notions so full of his Faction that his Memory fails him makes him forget his own Maxims and makes his subsequent Pages wrangle with the Concessions of those that went before His next Observation is a perfect Comment upon his Text that had in it implicit Treason before he tells us in Justification of the Barons Wars which all our Historians represent as a perfect Page 107. Rebellion That the Peers were fain to use their Power and can he tell me by what Law Subjects are impowred to Rebel He calls it arming of their Vassals for the defence of the Government That Bill by which they would have associated of late that I confess had it past into Act would have made Rebellion Statutable And they themselves must indeed have had the Sovereign power when they had gotten their Sovereign to suffer himself to be sworn out of his Supremacy they might well have armed their Vassals then when they had got his Majesties leave to commence Rebels and Traytors for the Protection of his Person and the Preservation of his Crown and Dignity But these humble Boons were no more than that Bill must have begged and these kind Concessions no more than was expected from the Grant of a King so Gracious a Petition that might well have been answered like that of Bathsheba's by bidding them ask the Kingdom also The Barons standing in open defiance Ibid. page 108. to the Laws tho they stood up too so much for them He calls the Peers keeping their Greatness and this is the Sovereign Power the Rebel would have them again set up for to be great in their Arms as well as Quality and demand with the Sword again the Prerogative of their Kings and the grant of the Regalia which in their preposterous Appellations was abused with the pretence of priviledge and right and which the force of the Field can soon make of the greatest Usurpation and wrong But in the very next Page 't is 109. expounded clearly what has may and must be done in such Conjunctions that is to your Arms. He tells us after they had obtained the framing of their Charters and I think they were as much as the most condescending Monarchs could grant or the most mutinous malecontents require Then arose another grievance unseen and unprovided for This was the Intermission of Parliaments which could not be called but by the Prince and he not doing it they ceast for some years to be Assembled if this had not been speedily remedied The provoking Rebel for certainly he is as much so that Animates a Rebellion as he that is actually engaged in it and is by Law so declared tells us the Barons must have put on their Armour again and 25. Ed. 3. Plat. pag. 109. the brisk Assertors of their Rights not have acquiesc'd in this Omission that ruined the Foundations of the Government After all the kind Concessions of the Prince the putting him upon that which was the taking away of the very remains of Royalty puts me in mind of one of our late Expressions of a popular Representative that could declare in open Assembly as attested by some of the very Members of it that tho this their Bill of Exclusion were past which was more we see than the most mildest Monarch could grant or even our House of Peers sure the better part of our Nation could in Modesty require yet still there was more work to be done and a Reformation to be made in the Church as well as the State The Patriot was prepared to lanch out in such kind of Extravagancies and told the truth of the Plot before his time had not calmer Heads interposed and cool'd his hot one into common Sense Several of the Speeches spoken in Parliament for which its Publisher deserves to be Pillor'd if not Authentick and True and brought before them on his Knees at least for his Presumption if they are it being here as Criminal to Print Truths at all times without an Imprimatur as 't is to tell it without leave even in several of those Speeches Publisht in that Paper I reflected on in the beginning where the Pedantick Author has exposed me in the Tail of his History that lookt like the Narrative of a Rump History of the Association Printed by Janeway there are as bold Expressions of
be their Kings Judges that they can not absolutely Judge of the mere Right of a meum and tuum among themselves Several other Instances both the Books Rolls abound with that Evidence our Kings the only Judges of the Law in all Causes and over all Persons for in the 13th year of the same †13. R. 2. Richard the Second the Commons Petition'd again the King that his Council might not make any Ordinance against the Common Law and the King Graciously granted them but with a salvo to the Regalities of the Crown and the right of his Ancestors The Court of Star Chamber which the worst of times Abolish'd and my Lord Coke makes almost the †It is the most Honorable Court the Parliam excepted that is in the Christian World of Honorable Proceeding just Jurisdiction A Court that kept all England in quiet Coke 4 Inst p. 65. and so it did till abolish'd by the Tumults of a Parliam best of Courts had heretofore Cognizance of property and detèrmin'd a Controversie touching Lands contain'd in the Covenants of a Joynture as appears in the Case of the Audleys Rot. Claus 41. Edward the 3d. There the King heard too a Cause against one Sir Hugh Hastings for with-holding part of the Living of the poor of St. Leonard in York as is Evident from the Roll. 8. Edward 4. p. 3. And tho the Proceedings of this Court were so much decryed by those that clamor'd so long for its Suppression till they left no Court of Justice in the Land unless it were that of Blood and Rebellion their High one tho the King in his giving year was so gracious that he made the very Standard An. 1641. page and rule of his Concessions to be the very request of his People and gratified them in an Abolition of this Court establish'd by the Common-Law ‖ Coke 4. Inst C. 5. and confirm'd afterward per †3. H. 7. c. 1. Act of Parliament yet ‖ Cambden Britt 130. Cambden our Historian as well as our Coke our Lawyer could commend it for the most Honorable as well as the most Ancient of all our Judicatories and if they 'll have the Reason Why it treated of Matters so high as the Resolution even of Common-Law and the Statute it may be told them in the weighty Words of their own Oracle Because the King in Judgement of Law as in the rest also was Coke 4. Inst p. 65. 63. ne dignitas hujus Curiae vilesceret always in that Court and that therefore it did not meddle with Matters of ordinary Moment least the dignity of it should be debased and made contemptible and tho by the gracious consent or rather an extorted Act of Grace the late King was forc'd to forego it yet the Proceedings of some Cases there may serve to show what a power our Kings had and ought to have in all manner of distributive Justice Several other Citations I could here set down to prove the Subjection of the very Common-Law to the Soveraign Power as Henry the Sixth superseding a Criminal Process and staying an Arraignment Verney's Case 34. H. 6. Rot. 37. for Felony Henry the Seventh's that debar'd the Beckets by decree from pursuing their suit for Lands because the merits of the Cause had been heard by the King his Predecessor and also by himself before but these will abundantly suffice to satisfy any sober Person that does not set himself against all assertors of his Soveraigns Supremacy And then if Custom and Common Usage which Plowden in his Commentaries is pleased to call the common-Common-Law lies in many Cases Subject to the Resolution of the Supream Soveraign no doubt but the Statute the result of his own ‖ 'T is that which gives them Life as I have shown before and makes them any thing besides waste Paper And the Judicious Hooker in his politicks seems to be of the same opinion when he says Laws take their force not from those that devise them but from the power that gives them the strength of Laws Sanction must of necessity submit and acknowledge a subjection to the same Power and that I think we have sufficiently prov'd already upon several occasions both from the Letter of the Laws themselves and our little light of Reason both from Arguments and †The seven Kingdoms of the Saxons had all their Laws made by their 7. several Soveraigns of which confuss'd number the Confessor cull'd out the best and call'd them after his own name St. Edward so did also the other Saxon and Danes Kings their own after theirs as you see in Lambert's Book of Laws Laws that have evidenc'd their own Resolutions to be reserv'd to the King and that we had Kings long before the Commons Commenc'd Conven'd or Concur'd in their assent to such Laws 'T is prodigiously strange to me that these mighty Maintainers of the Peoples Legislative and their Judicial Power eeven over their own Soveraigns cannot be guided by those very Laws they would have to govern their Kings thus you shall see a Needham a Nevil or a Sidney amongst our selves in all their Laborious Libels that the drudges of Sedition who seem to verify the Sacred Text in drawing Sin it self with a Cart-Rope in all that they tugg toil and labour in you seldom see that they cite you so much as a single Statute on their side or if they do only such an one as is either Impertinently apply'd or as Industriously perverted And in the same sort does the Seditious Scot Buchanan and the rest of the Books of their discontented Demagogues that ‖ Omne malum ab aquilone Northern Mischief that threaten'd us always with a Proverbial Omen till averted of late by the Loyalty of their latter Parliaments that have aton'd even for the last age and the perfidiousness and Faction of the former those all in their Libels hardly Name you so much as one single Law of their Nation to countenance the Popular Paradox the pleasing Principle of the Peoples Supremacy which the poor Souls when prescrib'd by those Mountebanks of the State must take too like a Common Pill only because 't is gilded with the pleasant Insinuations of Natural Freedom Free-State Subjection of the Soveraign Power of the People and all the dangerous Delusions that lead them directly to the designs of these devilish Republicans i. e. a damnable Rebelion whereas would they but submit their Senses to the Sanctions of the Laws of their several Lands their Libels they would find to be best baffl'd by the Statute Books as well as their Authors to be punisht by them for their Publication 'T is strange that should not obtain in this Controversy which prevails in all polemical disputes that is some certain Maxims and Aphorisms Postulates and Theorems not to be disputed these determin our Reason even in Philosophy and the Mathematicks and why should not the Laws then in Politicks too and where
most affect to Chuse Sir Walter Raleigh as Learned an Head-piece perhaps of the last Age as any that he hath left behind him in this a Person rather prejudic'd against Monarchy than bigotted for it no such Court-Favourite as the * Mercpolit Mercury makes of Salmasius A Dirty Dissolute Parasite of Kings and Pander of Tyranny this Learned ‖ History of the world cap. 9. §. 2. Historian lets us know That the first the most ancient the most general and most approved Government is that of one Ruling by just Laws call'd Monarchy and whatever wits our more modern Commonwealths-men pretend to be this Gentleman that was more sage than the wisest of them does not make paternal Right such a ridiculous thing as they would represent it but tells us that in the beginning the Fathers of Nations were then the Kings and the Eldest of Families the Princes and of such an Excellency is its Form that it is the clear result of unprejudic'd Reason and most agreeable to the sense and security of Mankind For as the natural Intellect it self by which I mean bare humane understanding when in the infancy of the World people were guided more by their own Fancies and the Paternal Power which then was all the Regal from the tenderness it might be suppos'd to have towards those that were their natural issues as well as their civil subjects had indulg'd vice and been less rigorous in Executing impartial Justice on Offenders whereby people were left more at Liberty I say Nature then and Necessity it self made them find the Inconvenience even of too much Toleration and made even the most foolish fellows apprehend as well as the wise that the Condition of reasonable men would be more miserable than that of brute beasts that an Inundation of Anarchy and Confusion would overwhelm them more than the first Flood Did they not by a general Consent submit to Government and obey those that were set over them to Govern For they found that when they were most mighty to oppress others might in time grow more so and do them as much mischief And those that were equal in their strength found themselves equally dangerous and mischievous one to another and that the most unbounded Licenciousness prov'd always to some or other the most miserable Bondage and Slavery And this natural Reason inclin'd them too to acquiesce under those Monarchical Forms that were then the Government of the Times and which the Israelites themselves desired in a more special manner tho' they were forwarn'd of its Absoluteness and told by Samuel that it would be Tyranny it self for the same necessity convenience reason and natural instinct that persuaded them to submit to Government in General did also suggest to them the Excellency of Monarchy in Particular For as by want of all Government their reason told them they could not long possess any right and that Liberty being only a License to do what they list and so left nothing to be wrong So the same reason suggested that these their Rights were best defended and soonest decided by some single Person that was Supreme than when a Multitude had the Supremacy for in that there being so many suffrages as there are men accordingly there might be so many several interests and factions which must both hinder any sudden determination as well as make the sentence liable to more partiality and injustice when it is determin'd This made the Senate of Rome so tedious always in its determinations and the people as uneasie and unsatisfied in their Decrees Their Praetores Quaesitores Judices Quaestionum selecti some of them having under them no * less than an hundred Sigon de Jud. l. 2. c. 4. de Jure Rom. lib. 2. c. 18. Commissioners might be said to confound Causes instead of determining them Their Agrarian Laws that were made for the Division of their Fields most of them having been given by Romulus and the rest of their Kings resolv'd their rights to them with Justice and satisfaction to the people while their Kings Reign'd that gave them and were the sole Judges of their own Laws But when they were confounded into a Commonwealth and the Senate set themselves to decide the divisions of their Commons and their Fields what Seditions Confusions and Unsettlement did they create So that the Reasonable presumption there is of a more Equitable and speedy distribution of Justice from a single Sovereign because suppos'd to be less prejudic'd and less unable to be prevail'd upon by favour or affection may very well be thought to have recommended at first a Monarchical Form afford us now asmuch reason for the retaining it In the next place A King being a perpetual Heir to the Crown insomuch that the Politick Laws suppose him never to dye and when in a natural sense he does the Crown still descends to his immediate Successor This will make him endeavour to preserve the Rights of it inviolate and perpetuate the same Prerogative to his Posterity Whereas the people in all their popular Sway administer only for years or at most for Life and what should hinder them then from defrauding that Publick whose Administration they must either soon quit or at last leave to those to whom they no way relate I allow in most such Communities there is commonly special provisions made by their Laws that an abusing that power with which they are intrusted or a robbing the Common-wealth of part of its Revenue shall be punish'd with some grievous Fine or perhaps made Capital for which the Romans had their several rules and regulations for their Magistrates and men in Office But there being so many ways to be injurious to the Publick that can so easily by those that administer its affairs be kept private and conceal'd it must certainly be concluded that those that have an Hereditary Power of Publick Administration as all Kings and they alone have that their Interest obliges them to preserve its rights inviolate from an unwillingness that nature it self will implant in them to injure their own Sons Successors and Posterity Whereas the same Interest which certainly is the most powerful Promoter either of good or evil will incite Senators in a Commonwealth more industriously more seriously to endeavour to serve themselves It is the most prodigious piece of Paradox to see some of our Seditious Republicans to rail at Ministers of State and Mr. Sidney of all Men had the least reason to have reflected for his Sufferings upon those that sate on the Bench with the rest of the Rabble of his Democraticks who of late in these tumultuous times have talkt of nothing less than the punishing of those that held the Sword of Justice threatned them with the Fates of Tresilians Vid. Baker pag. 146. Rich. II. Fulthorps Belknaps with the Gallows Fines and Imprisonments whereas these two were only punisht in the Reign of a King wherein they actually rebell'd and deposed their
Cook 4. Inst C. 2. Evil Counselling of their King invented very cunningly this popular Opinion to preserve themselves and please the Rabble they had so much enraged And could after so many Centuries after so long a series of time the Principles even of their execrated Enemies by themselves too be put into practice and what is worse still shall the sad effects that succeeded the practising it so lately encourage our Seditious Libellers for its Reimpression if this most Rebellious Nonsense must re-obtain all their declaratory Statute the determin'd Treasons of their good King †25. Ed. 3. Edward may pass for a pretty piece of Impertinence they may do as once they truly did they may Fight Shoot at Imprison Butcher the Natural Body the Person of their Soveraign and tell us the Laws designed them only for Traytors when they could destroy him in his politick The same Laws make it Treason to compass his Queens Death or Eldest Sons and must it be meant of their Monarchs being Married in his politick Capacity as well as murdered or of his Heirs that shall be born by pure political Conception they might e'n set up their Common-wealth then if these were to be the Successors to the Crown But yet with the same sort of silly Sophistry that they would separate the Kings natural Capacity from his political did the same Seditious Rebels as I remember make their own personal Relation to a politick Body Inseparable Rebellious Lumps of Contradiction shall not your Soveraigns sacred Person be preserved by that Power and Authority derived even from the Almighty and whose very Text tells us touch not mine Anointed and yet could your selves plead it as a Bar to Treason because perpetrated under a political Denomination and a Relation only to that Lower House of Commons that was then only an incorporated Body of Rebels and Regicides and this was told us by that Miscreant * Vid. Tryal of the Regicides page 50. Harrison the most profligate the vilest the most virulent of all the Faction concerned in that bloody Villany the MVRDER OF A KING the silly Sot had it infused by his Councel as Senseless as Seditious That it was an Act of the Parliament of England and so no particular Members questionable for what was done by the Body I confess the good excluded Members and the bubbl'd Presbyterian Senate would not allow it for a Parliamentaty Process and why because themselves did not sit in it and truly upon that unexpected and most blessed Revolution might â—hugg themselves and shrink up in a silent Joy that they were kept out And I cannot but smile to see * Vid. Ibid pag. 52. two or three sit upon the Bench and upbraiding the Prisoner for pulling them out of the Parliament and making themselves none †This was pleaded too by Carew p. 76. Treasonable words sworn against Scot. spoken in Parliament he pleads Priviledges of the House for speaking Treason tho 't is expressly declared not pleadable no not so much as for the breach of the Peace 17. Ed. 4. Rot. Parliament N. 39. Persons whom Policy had only placed there when the poor Prince was forc't to compound with a party for a Crown forc'd to prefer those that had â—dethroned his Father before only the better to settle himself in it and to compass more easily the punishment of those that murdered him after Persons and a great one too that I could name that have serv'd him as ungratefully since and been as deservedly rejected Persons that had his late Majesty's Arms been but as Victorious as his Cause was good had been as much liable to the Laws and their Crimes as Capital for fighting him in the Field with an Ordinance of the House as those that brought him to the Scaffold and Butchered him on the Block from the time that their Tumults forc'd him to fly from their Houses they were no more a Parliament than those were afterward that pulled them out and it lookt a little loathsome to see some sit a simpering and saying all Acts must be past by the King who themselves once had helpt Tryal of the Regicides pag. 52â— to pass many without and they could no more justify themselves had it been but their turn to be brought to Justice by their Memberships political Referrences to the two Houses then the Criminal at the Bar by his Relation to the Rump I have their own Authority for it their very * Answer of the Commons to the Scots Com. that the King had forfeited the executing the Duties of his Place and therefore could not be left to go where he pleased Anno. 1646. Imprint Lond. p. 20. Houses Act that they declared designed and actually made their King a Prisoner For they told the perfidious Scot that his denying their Propositions and what were those but Expedients to destroy Him had debar'd him of his Liberty and that they verifyed too when they had got their poor purchase at Holdenby in a usage of their Prince with a restraint that would have been Cruelty to a Peasant and which even his very Murderers enlarged when their Joyce took him from his Jaylers And I am sure 't is provided that to Imprison him till He assent to Proposals shall be * Parliam Roll. Num. 7. Lex Consuâ—tudo Parl. 25. Ed. 3. El. 1 Jac. High-Treason by particular Act as well as to Murder him is made so by the 25. And whatever the Mildness of ‖ H. postsc p. 89. Mr. Hunt the Moderator of Rebellion would have this Mystery of Iniquity would not have it so much as remembered it was these his own darling Daemagogues whom he defends and adores and that even for †Ibid p. 11. Restorers who script him in his politick Capacity anticipated his Murder and then left his naked Person to be persued by the * Salmasiuâ— has the same sort of simile page 3â—3 defensio Regia Wolves that worried it they had turned their House into a Shambles and that of Slaughter and were the Butchers the less Bloody that only bound Him and left to their Boys the cutting of his Throat yet this Barbarity must be defended this extenuated by them and the help of their Hunts and such Advocates the guilt not to devolve to each Individual Member because an Act of an Aggregated House But base Caitiffs to use even the very * Hunt page 94. Lawyers own Language your selves know that a politick Body may be guilty of a most political Treason and tho the †21. Ed. 4. 13 14. and noted Calvin's Case Laws tell us it has no Life or Soul and so can't suffer yet it s constituent Members may lose both be Hang'd and Damn'd in their proper Persons and that for committing it too against such another political Constitution It would otherwise be a fine Plea for Corporators that have been many times Defendants in the Case when their King has been Plaintiff And
confirmed Henry the 7th had his Negative Voice the thing those Seditious discontented Grumblers so much repine at maintained asserted for his undoubted Prerogative It is at present by the Law of ‖ 12. H. 7. 20. 7. H. 7. 14. his Time no Statute if the King assent not A Prince beloved and favoured only because he was their King who tho he had as many subsidies granted more than any before him His Subjects you see never thought it a Grievance then to contribute to their Soveraign's being Great but acknowledged his Supremacy even under their greatest pressure His Extortion upon penal Statutes * Vid. 4. Inst Baker page 248. Historians call and the Law the most unjustest way for raising of Money that was ever used yet still had he the Hearts of his People as well as their Purses They thought Rebellion then could not be Justifyed with clamor of Oppression as since by Ship-money and Lone tho levyed by a King whom themselves had Opprest The simplicity of those times made them suffer like good Subjects and better Christians when the refined Politicks of such Authors and a profligate age can tell them now to be Wise is to Rebel I need not tell him who managed Affairs in Henry the †H. 8. Eighth's Time when Parliaments seemed to be frightned into Compliance with a Frown and Bills preferr'd more for the pleasure of the Prince than the profit of the People Their Memberships then so far from medling with the measures of the State that they seemed to take them for their sole Measures so far was then an Order of the House from controuling that of the Board And I can't see that the Peoples * 1 Car 3. Petition of Right has since beg'd away too the King's Prerogative yet it was affirmed for ‖ 25. H. 8. C. 21. Law in this King's Time that he had full power in all Causes to do Justice to all Men. If the Parliament or their Council shall †Plato manage Affairs let them tell me what will become of this Power and Law His Son Edward succeeded him and tho a Minor a Prince whose Youth might have given the People an opportunity for an Encroachment upon his Power and the Subject commonly will take advantage of the Supremacy and that sometimes too much when the Soveraign knows but little what it is to be a King I am sure they were so Seditiously Wise in that Infancy of Henry the Third and yet he had Protectors too as well as this But notwithstanding such an Opportunity for the robbing the Rights of the Crown you shall see then they took the first occasion for the asserting them In the very First year of his Reign it was resolved that all Authoritie and Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived from the King but this Republican has found out another Resolution of resolving it into the power of the Parliament And in this very ‖ 5 Ed. 6. c. 11. Reign too it was provided as the common Policy and Duty of all Loving Subjects to restrain the Publishing all manner of Shameful Slanders against their King c. upon whom dependeth the whole Unity and Universal weal of the Realm what Sentence then would the Parliaments of those times have past upon Appeals to the City vox patriae's and a Plato Redivivus upon a Libel that would prove the †Plat. pag. 117. Kings Executive power of War forfeitable and that the * pag. 237. Prerogative which is in the Crown hinders the Execution of the Laws tho I am sure those very Laws are the best Asserters of the Prerogative there next resolve would have been to have ordered such an Author to the Flames by the Hands of the Hangman instead of that Honorable Vote the thanks of the House In Queen Mary's Time too the Law left all to her Majesty tells her all * 1 Mar. c. 2. Jurisdiction does and of Right ought to belong to her In Queen Elizabeth's ‖ 1 El. c. 1. Time what was Law before they were obliged even to Swear to be so Every Member of the House before qualified to sit in it forc'd to acknowledg his Soveraign SVPREAM in all Causes over all Persons And were their Memberships to be modelled according to the Common-wealth of this Plato their Oath must be repealed or they perjur'd Their very Constitution would be Inconfistant with his Supremacy they must manage and Command at the same time they Swear to submit and obey Was there ever a more full acknowledgment of Power and Prerogative than was made to King †Jac. c. 1. James upon his first coming to the Crown And tho I confess they took upon them to manage Affairs in his Son and Successors time yet this was not until they had openly bid him defyance to his Face and actually declared War against His Person then they might well set up their Votes for Law when they had violated the Fundamental ones of the Land yet themselves even in that Licentious and tumultuous time could own ‖ K. Charles his Collect. Ordinanc 1. part fol. 728. that such Bills as His Majesty was bound even in Conscience and Justice to pass were no Laws without his Assent What then did they think of those Ordinances of Blood and Rebellion with which themselves past such Bills afterward so unconscionable so unjust Here it was I confess these Commons of this pernicious Projector took upon them the management of the State their Councils their Committees set up for regulating the Kings Then their †Vid. wil. Prynns Parliam right to elect privy Councellors Pillor'd Advocate that lost his ears as this with his Treasonable Positions should his Head Publisht the very same Proposal in his pestering Prints the very Vomit of the Press to which the dangerous Dog did in the Literal Sense return to lick it up still discharing again the same choler he had brought up before in a Nauseous Crambe A Wretch that seemed to Write for the Haberdashers and Trunk-makers instead of the Company of Stationers that Elaborate Lining the Copious Library for Hat-cases and Close-stools that Will with a whisp whose fuming Brains were at last illuminated for the leading Men into Boggs and Ditches Rebellion and Sedition The Confusion of others only for the confounding of himself ‖ Vid. his Memento to Juncto for the for a King for the †2d his Parliaments Soveraigns Power For the Parliament for the * 3d. his Lords Bishops none of the Lords Bishops or the Buckle of the Canonical Girdle turned behind 〈…〉 every 〈…〉 for nothing but that ONE thing Scribble Compare the power of his Parliaments and his Vnparliamentary Juncto the meer Lumps of distorted Law or Legal Contradiction with the 25th of Edward He first deposes his King and even there then finds his Deposition Treason Their Divine Baxter never baffled himself more with the Bible and the Gospel than this Elaborate Legislator with
but of our own Soveraign's Father and that only because he could not Dissolve them but had in effect signed his Destiny with their Bill of Sitting during the Pleasure of the two Houses Base Hypocrites 't is not a Parliaments Sitting you contend for but the Sitting of such a Parliament that good honest Parliament the late long and healing one which their virulent Villains Libelled for Popish Pensionary perhaps because it would not take the Peoples pay long enough might that have been discontinued or Prorogued wen ever heard then of the Statutes of Edwards and the Triennial Acts but their Pens were employed then to prove even that Dissolution that discontents them now so much 'T is not above Eight years since their * Vide Considerations upon the Question London 1677. The dissolver The Letter of my Lord Shaftsbury Pamphlets would demonstrate a Parliament dissolved for being but for Fiveteen Months Prorogued and were we but assured of having such another the Press had never been pestered for the calling one with their impertinnent prints nor any Petitions prefer'd for their Frequency Would you perswade the World your purses are so full so free too that you long for a Subsidy to fill up the Kings Dissembling Souls the Parliament they clamour for can proceed from nothing else but a presumption of one to be their Patrons to patronize all their Irregularities and Refractoryness to the State to countenance all those gross abuses they put upon the Government they told us this to our faces and Menaced men to make them fear them Is this the way to have them Convened to make them formidable For Gods sake can you credit that honorable Assembly with making them the pretended Abettors of all your Scandalous Actions The only felicity we have in such a Senate 's sitting is That the King must summon them to sit they are Rebels by a ‖ 35. Ed. 3. Law if they convene without they must meet and Associate and the Kings happiness consists in his being able to Dissolve and Discontinue And this furious and indefatigable Scribler might have omitted the mentioning of those †4. Ed. 3. c. 14. Statutes they have beaten so bare been baffled in so much and may now blush to bring upon the Stage but he shall have his answer here to this too That nothing of Mr. Hunt's like his managed Mungrel * Vid. Courantier 4. Volum Numb 30. Julian may be call'd Vnanswerable For the First it is the 4th of this ‖ 4. Ed. 3. c. 3. 14. Edward And I confess in as few words That a Parliament be holden once every year and more often if NEED BE. It is all the Letter of the Law and every Line of it But they might as well tell us too that before the Conquest and for some time after Parliaments were held three times in one year They had then their Easter Parliaments their Whit-sunday Parliaments their Christmas Parliaments but they know then that they were but so many Conventions of that Nobility and Clergy their King should please to call And which they did Arbitrary at their Will more frequently or less as they thought convenient and the †Mirror C. 1. Lib. 3. Books tell us they many times were held but twice a year now if these Gentlemen will tell us so much of old Statute Laws why should not Custom which is Resolved by the very Books to be the * Le common Ley est common Usage Plowdens Com. 195. Common decide the case too for the King as well as the other which is their own must for the People and then we find Our Kings had the sole power of Convening Parliaments by a long prescription of whom where and as often as they pleased Are not all our Judicial Records Acts of Parliament Resolved to be but so many Declarations of the Common Law and that by all our Lawyers even concerning the Royal Government which they make the very Fundamental Law of the Land and tell us ‖ Dr. and Stud. 2. c. 2. lib. That by Common Law is understood such things as were Law before any Statute by general and particular Customs and Maxims of the Realm Now if Statute must be but Declaratory of these Customs of the Kingdom how can it be concluded but that such Acts as directly contradict any of them must be absolutely void for by the same Reason that they can with a Be it enacted void any part of it they may the whole With the same Reason that they can invade any part of the Prerogative of their Prince which the * 2d part Inst 496. tells us so in terminis By the Common Law it is the Kings Prerogative quod nullum Tempus occurret L. Coke Lit. p. 344. Book tells us is the principal part of the Common Law they may abolish the whole make Killing no Murder and except Persons from the Punishment of Treason Does not this Common Law it self void any Statutes that are made against the Prerogative of their King Was it not in this very ‖ Stanfor l. 2. 101. Edward the 3ds time that it was so Resolved even to the nulling three several Acts that put Pardons out of the Princes power The boldest of these Anti-monarchical Zealots cannot deny but that by the Common Customs of the Realm it always was Our Kings undoubted Prerogative to call and dissolve their Parliament when they pleased Chronicle confirms it * Speed 645. Inst 27. 2. Law Resolves it may practice for ever maintain it Now I cannot see why these Statutes that contradict the Customs of the Realm in determining their King to call Parliaments which the Common Law hath left at his Liberty should not be as much void as †2. Ed. 3. c. 2. of King's not pardoning Felons so Also 4. Ed. 3. c. 13. The Conffrmation of that other others that upon the like Reasons have been Resolved so And if the Common Law can avoid any particular Act of Parliament against the Prerogative of the Prince as we see it did more than one If Stanfords Authoty be Law then the Conclusion is unavoidable That for the same Reason it can any or all And in my poor apprehension that Act it self of the late Kings which reasonably repeals that of his * 16. Cap. 2. c. 1. that repeals 16. Car. 1. c. 1. Martyred Fathers that Act with which these reproachful fellows upbraided in their prints their deceased King is so far from countenanceing their clamorous Cause that it corroborates and confirms our own Case for it tells us the very Reason of repealing those Statutes To prevent intermission of Parliaments And what is that but what we say the Common Law would of it self void ‖ Vid. Preamble to 16. Car. 2. c. 1. an Act as they say in derogation of his Majestys just Rights and Prerogative inherent in the Imperial Crown of this Realm for the Calling and Assembling of Parliaments Nay they tell us
Relates to Eldest Son then even the Statute too understands it so as an Heir Possible for an Eldest Son is no more at the most and then we see that even in an Act of Parliament the word Heir shall refer to one that only may probably or Possibly be so in Futuro as well as to those that are de Facto such and so agrees with the very common acceptation Afortiori then we may even with the Consent of our Reverend Reader the Divine Lawyer Jul. pag. 20. admit of the Vulgar acceptation of the word when administred to us in an Oath so Solemn and Sacred if it does not relate to the Eldest but only to an Heir in general that may Actually Succeed then they must bring which to be sure they won't allow a Collateral as well as a Lineal Heir within the very Letter of the Law And whether they will allow him so or no for any thing they can say to the contrary a Collateral Heir may be within the Statute tho not exprest in the very Letter of the Law I don't doubt but that the same Intention they had of preserving the King's Eldest Son and Heir the same had those Legislators for the preservation of the next Heir of the Crown whether Lineal or Collateral and where their Intention may be presumed the same there the Remedy without doubt was design'd the same too and that Intention of all Law-makers must be only gathered from the parity of Reason for the making such a Law Now if there be the same Reason for the securing the Person of any Collateral Heir as well as the Kings Eldest Son and Heir as doubtless there is for the perpetuating the Succession of the Monarchy then we have Reason to believe too that such an Heir was also intended especially if we consider that but just before this Statute of the 25th * Vid. Britton Coke cap. Treason it was held That Killing any of the Kings Children was Treason all of them having a possibility of being Heirs Apparent and supplying the Crown with a Succession 'T is true ther 's nothing expressive of a Collateral Heir in the Letter of the Law so neither is there anything exprest of a Second Son or a Third when they should be come Eldest yet all these are allowed to be intended too and if Eldest shall extend to any that shall afterward become so I don't see why the word Heir which I am sure is there more extensive might not without much stretching refer to any that may become the first Heir Admitting it otherways they must admit that this Law in this point is mighty Superfluous the very thing which it always endeavours to avoi'd for if the Prince must be only understood why then that word would have exprest it better or else Eldest Son alone as well and since Heir is superadded and a Rule in Law that each Letter of it must have it's full Emphasis in Explication I cannot apprehend but the word Heir there must signifie somewhat more than Eldest Son There is no Provision made for the Queen Regent in that Statute Consort being only named yet the resolution has been That she is within that Statute as well as the King and that for the Parity of Reason And for my Life I could never apprehend the little Lords Sophistry of a Brother or Collateral Heir being but a Presumptive Shaftsbury one it look't like a piece of State Metaphysicks to distinguish his Highness out of his Title with a Diminution and that in order for Excluding him from the Crown Time always best resolves the Sense of such States-men whose Politicks are best understood from the Measures they take and who seem many times Fools in the dark till they disclose themselves to be the greatest Villains When I saw him settled for Excluding the Crown 's Heir we soon saw the meaning of Presumptive which before seem'd in so great a Man a little nonsense But I can tell them of one-sense more it might have had That is the Duke was but his Presumptive Heir because he presumed he should Destroy him Some men of the Law would laugh at such Sophisters of the Faction And truly they even at themselves should they maintain the Youngest Son in Burrough English was no Heir Apparent who can be dispossest by latter Birth as well as a Brother or Collateral but it was the want of his Lordships Law that made him abound with so much Sophistry and so little Sense For my Lord ‖ 3. Ins l. 1. p. 9. Coke lets us know that a Collateral Heir is as much an Apparent one as the Eldest Son but only this says he is not within the Statute Tho as * My Lord Hales Pleas of the Crown 1st Edit great a Judge and as good was not so Dogmatical in this point who as he had Reason so he left room too for doubt tho the Quaere in his first Edition has been very industriously omitted in the second I have been the longer upon this to let the Divine see that he may be much out in his Law and that tho he would have Excluded the late Collateral Heir from his Oath of Allegiance his preservation might have been brought in within the †25. Ed. 3. Statute of Treason and the Doctor if he pleas'd might be Hanged for him as well as Perjur'd 'T is pretty pleasant to me to Observe how men of these sort of principles can prevaricate for the Promoting of their own Cause and the Divinest of them all run to the Devil with a Lye in their Mouth at the same time they in their Conscience believe the contrary to be true No Soul Living but will believe this Libeller when so near Ally'd to the Gentleman of the Law we so lately left would entertain assoon the Damnable Doctrin of a Muggletonian as dispense with the belief of a Divine Right since his Associate in their Hotch-potch of Scrible Hunt has rendered it altogether as Devilish yet what that Lawyer won't allow this * Vid Jul. pag. 19. Body of Divinity is forced at last to prove viz. That even the Roman Emperors Reigned with a Right Divine and that all their Empire was Hereditary and this he is seriously bound to maintain too as the only Basis and foundation for his Rebellious Book so that these prevaricating Jugglers with a turn of an hand can make the two several Extreams serve for the same purpose when it will make for their Cause they shall make those Crowns Hereditary whom all Authors and all the World acknowledge Elective let it but cross the Interest of the Faction the same pens shall prove you a most Elective Monarchy from one absolutely Hereditary The Roman Empire was certainly from Caesar their first to this Julian himself and even the very last of their Emperors uncertain in it's Succession sometimes a Right Heir would interpose or an adopted one but still either set up by the Souldiers or
they shall as Samuel says cry out because of their Verse 18. King yet even this after he was by the same Prophet anointed and endowed with all that formidable Power he so fearfully represented we don't find even him reproach'd for a Tyrant or upbraided for violating the Laws or any breach of Trust whereas their Brutus in his Description of a Tyrant calls it Tyranny only for a Prince to bring in Foreigners Tyrannus est qui exteros in praesidiis collo cat Vindiciae quest 3. Page 139 140. for his Gaurd and then our Haringtons Hunts Nevels and Needhams might have made it Treason too against the Majesty of the People for our Kings that have suffered several French Souldiers in their Troops I say seriously they might have made use of such a Ridiculous Argument of this Authors for accusing our Princes of their Arbitrary Power as well as they have borrowed from the same Senseless Soul as silly and Seditious stuff But least our Republicans as they really do should rely too much upon Samuel's frightful Description of an Arbitrary Prince which they now-a-days too much make the Bugbear of the People as if their Dogs can worry the best Government when drest in a Bear-Skin 't is the Sense of some Learned Men that the Prophet gave them only this draught of a Monarch to let them know the extent of his power and as Sir Walter says to teach the Subject to suffer with patience any thing from the Hands of his Soveraign and I think Raleigh Hist Chap. 16. §. 1. that unfortunate Gentleman when he Pen'd most of that Excellent piece as a Prisoner had no Reason to be suspected for a Dissembling Flatterer of Kings as Postscript pag. 68 69. Brutus representsany one that defends his Soveraign's Right for a Traytor Betrayer of the People as Hunt has it or as Merc. Pol. Num. 92. Needham Debauch'd with the Brutish Principles of MONARCHY but I am sure may be allowed to have had more than them all In the next place the Laws of Nature of all Nations and particularly our own all absolutely exclude the People from being Judges in the Case of their King For the first It is the most Preposterous and Unnatural Inversion in the World that inferior Subjects should be invested with such a Power as common Sense will not admit to be Pedes elevabuntur supra Caput part of the Oxford Oracle Vid. Baker lodg'd tny where but in the Supream they may as well invert the common Course the constant Order of unalterable Nature it self expect the Sun and Lamp of Heaven should no longer move in an Orb so high but Stars of the meanest Magnitude set up for the sole Dispensers of the day and the simile for ought I see is not so Foreign neither for we find there is more than a mere ordinary Analogy between that Harmonious Symmetry of the World and such a System of Government as if that Eternal Protoplast had found it most agreeable for the frame of the Universe which he the very God of Unity had form'd as if the Institution of the one were nothing less Divine than the Creation of the other And for this I dare appeal even to the Almighty and that with better Authority than Mr. Harrington with his Antient Prudence The God of Heaven who by all unless they be Barbarous ‖ And even Homer a Heathen was of that Opinion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hom I◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hes Theog v. 96. Heathens is allowed to be but one and he himself is pleased to call Kings his very Vice-gerents here on Earth and the very Polytheists of Old Rome that had their Gods for almost every day as numerous as they say the Modern Romanist in his Calendar of Saints yet they among the many Deities they ador'd still lodg'd the Supremacy in one and ascrib'd all the Government all the sole Supream Power to their Mighty Jove For this he framed one Sun to Rule by Day and a Moon Gen. 1. verse 16. by Night For this he Justified that paternal Right in one Man which even their Aristotle a Heathen Born bred under a Republick reckons for a sort of Monarchy But I confess such a sort of Argument can not be concluding with Men that will oppose Heaven it self and all the Harmony of its Creation rather than be convinced That their own Models end commonly in Confusion and are best represented in the Primitive Chaos For the Second Consult but the Imperial Laws and the Codes of Justinian Laws that were Collected from other Nations as well as made by their own Laws that their Solon and Lycurgus with all their Attick Legislators all the great Republicks of Greece which these Seditious Souls so much extol could never have reform'd and you 'll find what provisions those make for the Supream Magistrates being the sole Judge The resolutions of some of those Heathens of the Royal Authority their Humble Submission to the Supream Jurisdiction in all Causes and over all Persons as our Protestant Oaths have it one would think should make the boldest of our Christians blush that can run up resistance at the same time they are Sworn to submit and obey these their Laws which for their equity have obtain'd even thro the universe these tell us That the * Imperator solus Conditor interpres Legis Zouch Element part 4. §. 4. p. 103. and c. 1. 14. 12. King is both the Maker and sole Interpreter of the Laws that what ever ‖ Quod princi placuit Legis vigorem habet D. 1. 4. 1. pleases the Prince has the Power and efficacy of a Law and that 't is a Crime equivalent to * Sacrilegii instar est principis rescripto obviare C. 1. 23. 5. Sacrilege it self to resist a Proclamation or Edict of their Soveraign that he himself is bound by no Law and then I am sure can't be Judg'd by any and that he is †In omnibus Imperatoris excipitur fortuna cui ipsas Leges Deus Subjecit Nov. 105. 2. exempted from them here on Earth because Subject to none but the Judge of Heaven And for fear least Arguments drawn †Si summo dare urgetur ad Regem provocato Lambert in his Laws Edgar 1. 23. 5. from the Laws of Nature and all Nations should be insufficient to convince men of such Seditious Sentiments we 'll for Confirmation of the Third Subjoin the Resolution of the very Lawyers of our Land and they tell us too what the God of Heaven and almost the Universal Concurrence of all the Nations upon Earth have agreed in before our Britton as I 've shown before has in effect with the very digest of the Imperial Law made our Statutes to consist in the Will The words of Bracton Chief Justice in Henry the 3d's time Rex non alius debet Judicare and in another place Illius est Interpretari cujus