will be gainers by it or were not Acted by some Jesuitical party or influence would disturb and destroy this Commonwealth To prevent which and to do what we can as long as there is any hope left we shall intreat them by the Tears and Compassion of their already too much impoverished torn and languishing Mother England and the love they ought to bear to their Brethren and their own if they will not be carefull of other mens posterities to stand a little and look about them before they drown us and themselves in that Sea of misery and confusion they are letting in upon us and either to read our Lawes or be informed by those that understand them and consider well before-hand now they may help it that which Truth and a sad experience may hereafter tel them when they cannot find a remedy for it That the Laws and Courts of Justice they world now over-turn are those Lawes and Courts which by a long-experience and universal reason and consent of our Fore-Fathers have thorough many ages and generations descended and come unto us as a common Birth-right and Inheritance will if rightly examined and inspected appear to be deduced from no worse original or authority than the Decalogue or Ten Commandements themselves and the reason and equity of many of those other Laws which God himself in Mount Sinai commanded Moses to declare unto the people That the Law of England is Ipsissima ratio right reason it self From which and the right use and practice thereof if they that shall make it their business to accuse our Laws and reasonable Customs and Courses of Courts of Justice shall but abstruct and take out of all the causless complaints are made against it which ought to be done by those will judge aright of it all that happeneth by the ignorance or weakness of men in making of their Contracts and Assurances one with another The cavils and strange subtilties of those that would deceive oppress or take advantage by it The making of Wills and Conveyances by ignorant persons unfit placing of words in them and want of coherence or signification which do not seldom beget contradictions or perplexities of the sense or meaning of the parties their holding hard to advantages gotten by a mistake of words or parties to create a right or title where there should be none Wresting of Laws to their own purposes Self-conceited false or frivolous Suggestions in their motions or desires to the Courts Reiteration and succession of pretences and strange allegations not at first discernable by the Lawyers or Judges themselves Hasty and wilfull commencing of Suites upon small or no advice at all Ravelling and perplexing of their own Causes Eluding or striving to over-reach the Laws or strain them beyond their intentions Ignorance or wilfulnesse in managing of their Causes and the frowardness or unquietness of their own spirits in coursing one another through all the Courts of Law at Westminster Hall by severall Tryals and Verdicts bringing writs of Error upon them out of the Common Pleas into the Vpper Bench thence to the Exchequer Chamber to be heard by all the Judges of England Thence to the Parliament though they pay great and several costs to their adversaries discontinuing of writs of Error or abatement of them by the death or instance of some of the parties bringing their Bills and Crosse Bills in Chancery getting Orders upon Orders Decrees upon Decrees Rehearings Reviews or Dismissions Entitling the State afterwards to what they sued or vexed one another for Appeals from the Country Committees to Haberdashers Hall from thence to the Committee of Indempnity Thence to the Committee of Obstructions from thence to the Committee of Petitions for grievances And from thence to the Parliament again and if they be rejected or cannot be heard in one Parliament Try another and another and as many as they can live to sollicite their multiplying of needlesse and frivolous Actions obstinate and willfull endeavours in trying all they can to overpower or woorie their Adversaries never acquiescing in the Judgement of their own Lawiers or of any Court as long as any wit or invention of any other Lawier who cannot alwayes see through his Clients unjust pretences can but shew them the way to further vexations The Necessity which lies upon Judges and Courts to keep Rules Orders which may not be broken to help particular Cases Miscarriage of Causes by mispleadings Incertainties in the Plaintiffs or Defendants own Actions or instructions Their hiding or concealing truths Their not agreeing or right Stating of matters of fact misapplications of good Laws remedies to ill purposes deceit delay of one another in references weaknesse of Arbitrators and Awards deceit or ignorance of Sollicitors a race of people was not allowed or heard of in the Law about 100 years agoe but where Noblemen had and reteined them in their houses as menial servants too many of which of late have been broken and busie Trades-men or such as scarcely know the names of a book of law or to spell write or read Their champerty maintenance and ambodextry some knowing and honest Sollicitors excepted taking mony before hand of their Clients and never giving an Accompt for it mistakings or wilfulnesse of Juries want of evidences intricacy of causes Errors or misinterpretation as mistake the of Judges Ignorance malice or self ends of those that speak ill of them and the difficulties which sometimes do lie upon the wisest and most honest of men in discerning between truth and falshood and dividing betwixt them and distinguish as our Fore-Fathers and the wisdome of former ages used to do betwixt the right use and the abuse of them between particular mischiefs and general inconveniences betwixt the Inconveniences which some one Law may sometimes bring upon a few particular men and the good it brings to one hundred thousand others at the same time and allow but that which was never yet denyed to all the Lawes of the world an impossibility of foreseeing preventing or remedying of all things which the wickednesse of the hearts of men or their devices may lay in their way there will not be enough left to prove them to be corrupt in their foundations Take away and lay at the doors of those that ought to bear it the selling or mortgaging of lands Twice or Thrice over the Counterfeiting and putting to the Seals and hands of parties and witnesses forgeries and taking out and putting in of words into deeds or evidences strange and unheard-of combinations practices Witchcrafts and Sorceries putting of dead mens hands to Wills moulding hiring of false witnesses and Suborning or packing or laying of Iuries which are the Actions of the parties themselves to compasse and bring to passe their own wicked purposes and not of the Lawiers Let it be but considered that if there happen in an age some unreconcilable Suits wherein some contentious spirits have for many years together chased and vexed one another
out of one Action into another almost to their utter undoing There have been in every year of those many years many thousands of causes as may be demonstrated to any that will call for a proof of it dispatched put to an end by the Courts of Law at Westninster or in the Circuits that a multitude of People Actions and businesses more than formerly in a Time of more Deceit Falshood Perjuries Secret and cunning combinations and breaches of Trust than ever were may make an increase multiplicity of Suits and yet the Lawiers who in an age have not a common Barretor amongst them be as innocent as the Physicians who are not accused for much practise in a time of Pestilence or when there are store of Epidemical diseases there will be no cause to say that the Law is endlesse Let it be but considered that the greater part of established Fees in the Courts of justice are lesse than what the most common Artificers do take for their labour and as for any which exceed that rate are but that which was allowed one Hundred years agoe when the rate and price of Cloths and Victuals was not one in three so much as it is now that the Attorneys 3 s. 4 d. fee and the Lawiers 10 s. fee would then have bought 3 times more than what may be now for it That the Gentry have since raised their rents two parts in Three the Farmers the price of their Corn and Cattel and the Citizens their Commodities and servants and workmen raised their wages yet the Lawiers except some eminent and great practisers who take but the Free will offering of those that give them the greater Fees to take the greater care of their businesse have but the same Fees were formerly taken by them That the Lawiers who had no worse a name auntiently given to their profession by the most Civilized Nations of Europe than Sacerdotes justttiae the Ministers of Justice and had so right an esteem in our former Parliaments as by several Acts of Parliament made upon several and successive necessities of the People in 2 Edward 3 cap. 2. 14. Edward 3 cap. 16. 34. Edward 3. cap. 1. and 20. Richard 2. cap. 10. It was specially provided that none but men learned in the Law should be made Justices of Assize and Goal delivery and that there should be in every County men learned in the Law made Justices of the peace And in all their Actions either at home in their Counties or at London in the Terms are known to be men of Godlinesse Sobriety and learning and compared with any other profession or part of the People to have fewer men of vice or ignominie amongst them than any other profession Let it be but considered that the Law as it may be demonstrated if an accompt were kept as some Physitians do of their consultations and Cures or as the People of the Bath do of some that are cured in every year doth in every year recover and get in many Thousands of men debts redresse their Injuries preserve their rights secure their estates rescue and take some Innocent mens lives and estates out of the jawes of death or oppression support the hand of Justice and is as eyes and ears unto it puts her Judgement in the right way when it was sometimes allmost carried off ormislead into a wrong and hath kept us and our forefathers in a greater safety certainty of it than Roman Legions could have done and Ten greatet Armyes than we now bear the charge of That in the determination or adjudging of every Action or Suit in Law or Equity one of the parties is discontented and one of them most commonly faulty or much mistaken in the grounds of that Contest Actions of Debt or of other natures where the Plaintiff will not give time and the Defendant only stands out a Suit to gain it only excepted and do all they can to lay the fault upon the Law when it should be charged upon themselves And that the difficulty in the case before Solomon betwixt the true Mother of the Child and the false could not be charged upon any defects of the Hebrew Laws or the Professors thereof but the wickednesse and false pretences of her that had no right to it and that every discontent and every Complaint is not just because the partie thinks it to be so There will be as little cause to say that the practice of the Law as to the Law it self or to the Lawiers is a grievance or that they are worse than Ten Thousand Devils as that Tenterden Steeple is the cause of Goodwyne Sands For most of the things complained of in the Law if impartially and knowingly examined will appear to be neither from the Law or by the Law it Self or of the Essence Nature or Intention of it but meerly proceeding from the people and their own misuse or abuse of them which being not evill in themselves but commanding good things to be done and forbidding evil are no more to be charged with the faults which the people themselves Commit in abusing of them than that great Luminary and comfort of Mankind the Sun can be said to be the cause of darknesse or ill influences because in his journey or execution of his Office he is sometimes orecharg'd with Foggs ill vapours or exhalations from the Earth which he would disperse or carry away or meets with so many Clouds interpositions and Shadows of the Earth Conjunctions of Planets or Malevolent Aspects than the necessary arts of Physick and Chirurgery are to be blamed for the many Errors and mischiefs are done by Montebanks or confident and credulous women that have no skill in them than wine and women for the General abuses of them or Religion and the Sacred Scriptures because the world hath of late been troubled with so many Heresies and Schisms proceeding from the mis-interpretation of the one and practice of the other and may the better be understood and believed to be thus Innocent when those that not long agoe could run to Westminster and cry for justice against the Earl of Strafford but for at most an endeavour to subvert the Laws and cryed out they could have no Trading or subsistence if his head were not taken off cannot now give us a reason why those very Laws and the Courts that administred them should not now be as good as they were then Or why the Old Chancery and Court hands which being made out of Saxon letters or Characters before any Friers or Monks ever came into England have through so many generations come down to us and given such a legibility duration and continuance to all our records as they may yet be plainly seen and read for 7 or 8 hundred years past should be more inconvenient Popish Antichristian than the Secretary other Mungrel and Scrible dashed hands made out of the Roman and Italian which will not as it begins to appear already
above Forty Shillings but that the people were so frequently enforced for want of Justice to remove their causes to the higher Courts how many very many Complaints and grievances there would have been if this way had been stopped or taken from them as is now desired Or whether the people of England did any wrong to themselves in passing by those little Courts where the Steward was most commonly ignorant and the Suitors which were the Judges a great deal more and were sure enough to meet with ignorance injustice or oppression and if the cause were like to go well with them to have it removed upon any pretences of their adversaries to come to the Superiour Courts where they should be out of the danger of Appeals and could not want Justice when they sought it nor protection in the seeking of it Or whether they did not better to seek for Justice at the Well-head and Fountain of Justice where they could not doubt of the skil and honesty of their Judges and the assistance of able Lawiers to plead for them or to have their Actions tryed before some of the same Judges in their own Counties at the Assizes and might be dispatched sooner and with lesse trouble and charges to both parties than they could at a Second or Third hand by removing their Actions from the Hundred Court to the Countie Court and from thence to Westminster The Common use or allowance of which more approved and convenient way if the reason of it had lain hid or concealed had been enough to tell us and all after ages the benefit and good which the people had by it as well as that of making bread with Wheat instead of acorns or wearing cloaths instead of going naked when the ignorance of our older fore-fathers allowed them no better or the peoples leaving some Market Town to talk only of their Charter whilst their own conveniences carries them to a better For that must needs be out of all danger of error or inconvenience which hath had so long an experimented constant allowance when there was not heretofore any Petition in Parliament or to any the former Supreme Authorities against it and when a general use or convenience not for one but for many ages successively hath brought it into a custom and universal approbation And should be now of a greater price then to be exchanged for all those and more grievances which heretofore filled our former Parliaments with Complaints against the Countie Courts Sheriffs Turnes and Hundred Courts for the Cryes of the poor and indigent and their many smotherd oppressions could not always reach thither will not only be raised up again and restored to the people with interest by these new establishments but far exceed them and be like so many Councels of the Marches in every Countie But they that have ingaged their Fancies to put so great a disturbance upon the people might in a repentance of it go quietly back again into their own Trades do no tthink all this enough unlesse some augmentation be laid to the peoples grievances by annexing of a power or Jurisdiction of equity to every or many of these little Courts which may bring up a Brigade of Inconveniences as a reserve to the former CHAP. IX That the annexing of a Jurisdiction or power of equity to every or many of those new little Courts will much increase the Peoples grievances and turn that little Lawwhich shall be left into a course of arhitrariness FOr the annexing of the equitable part of the jurisdiction of Chancery to the Courts or courses of Common Law when they shall be again established as some would have it in their proposals or regulation of the Law will by giving every judge at Law a power of equity make a cause that would be begun and brought to hearing and an end in two Terms continue Six or Seaven and by a long and tedious course of examining and crosse examining of Witnesses be ten times more chargeable to the people and when there is not now one in every hundred causes at Law that go after to Chancery and might be fewer if there were more Conscience in men and the Rules of the Court better observed make every single cause a double one and a Suit in Chancery as well as at Common-Law when it needs not put the Judges at Law who before were so tyed up to their Oaths and a prescript Rule of Law as to weep over their own Sons and nearest relations rather than to deviate or Swerve from the Text or Rule of Law into too great a liberty of exposition or arbitrarinesse Or if the equity of every cause should be put to the Jurors give us Twelve men of equity or Chancellors in every cause will hardly be brought to understand it but be so puzled in the finding out of it as it will hardly or if at all very tediously be drawn from them if the matter of equity shall be left to the Judges alone there will be little need of the Jury if the Jury alone as little of the Judge such an intermingling or uniting of the power of equity with the power of Law can produce no better effect then to make every one to begin or make his Suit or action would otherwise have been ended in a short course of Law in a long examination of circumstances of equity or way of Chancery and render the equitable or arbitrary part of those Courts so Superior and predominant to the legal as in a short time it will alter or take away the force and power of it For the Judge will have a double power and Capacity to take which Hand he will and to judge according to this or that Circumstance which he shall like best the Law will be then fast and loose at pleasure and will not be as it is now Lex a Ligando nor Lex a Legendo but so incertain and inconstant as to alter or dissolve it self into an equity of this or that circumstance which can lay the fastest hold upon it or the Iudge and be so much at the exposition or command of the Iudges who were wont to be commanded by the Laws as every thing they would have must be turned into an equity Which the wisdom of our Parliaments and Laws were so far from suffering as they would not suffer the Chancery to meddle with matters of Law and the people in former ages so jealous of it as they petitioned in former Parliaments that judgements should not be given in causes of Law but by process at Law and that they might not appear in Chancery upon Sub poenas or writs of quibusdam certis de causis when there was remedy at Law and was the cause that the Chancery hath heretofore and to this time kept themselves to their constant course of allowing Demurrers and discharging such causes as might be relieved at Law For if it were formerly a grievance for the Chancery to determine matters at Law
them see what is to ask Stones instead of Bread or Serpents instead of Fishes should give them the misery which they demand of them and contribute which cannot be easily imagined so much to their unruly desires as to let them fling off their old Laws like an unusefull or too long a worn garment It will be no hard matter without the help of Lilly and his College of Astrologers to foresee what besides the many mischiefs and inconveniences before recited must be endured and gone through in the interim and foretell what will become of it for suppose it to be done and that we see the old man put into his Cradle again or Adam into his Apron of fig-leaves the event will come up as close as a Conclusion to good Premises that such young Committees or new model Courts will in time creep into the method and manner of the old all that was reason in one case or cause will be made use of and made a precedent in another The wiser and most able men will be followed pleadings and allegations will be by the Committee or Judges themselves ordered to be with Certainties or Method The Court or Committee will more willingly hear those that can save them a labour by speaking more short and pertinently than the parties themselves and the parties themselves will rather desire men of skill and such as know the usage and orders of the Courts and Committees to speak for them than to adventure to do it themselves when their interest may beget a passion and disturbance and hinder them from the right managing and ordering of their own businesse abuses and misdoings of those that attend those Courts or Committees will from time to time require new orders and officers to prevent them For in this manner in all probabilitie and without doubt those most venerable and usefull Courts at Westminster came by degrees and small beginnings through the Course and care of so many ages to the perfection is now to be seen in them cannot be denied by those that shall without the Spectacles of ignorance or partiallity but equally and judiciously look upon them But if any shall doubt of this necessity of the Laws falling again into their own Chanel after a Series or long course of inconveniences to the people and some ages spent in bewailing the losse of their former happinesse Let them see but what hath been done but in three or four years space in the Committee of Sequestrations at Haberdashers Hall who from a Committee of seven Commissioners with a Clark or Register to attend them can now use the benefit of a Bar to admit Lawiers and such as know the use of their Committee to plead before them order some things to be done by the Clarks and officers in an ordinary Course and other things not to order and have the use of an Examiner Remembrancer and Assistant Counsel of the Court can refer causes have an Auditor an Attorney or Sollicitor General mark sign and seal their orders or warrants whereby they may not be counterfeited order men to take Copies of their own Petitions and leave the originals to file affidavits and reports and that none shall be heard without bringing the last order or a Copie thereof under the Registers hands Turn the way of Petitions as is now lately done into a way of Motions have under Clarks in several distributions of imployment Door-keepers Messengers or Serjeants to commit and imprison men for not obeying their orders order and allow of Fees to be taken by their Officers appoint certain days and times for several sorts of businesse and have their vacations or intermissions in which Committee or Court now a breeding although every man hath a liberty of pleading or speaking in his own cause yet because he that was never there before may hurt or mischief or perplex his own businesse or go a longer way about for want of the knowledge of the ways or courses there holden or what is fit to be asked or is usually or ordinarily granted most men that have to do with them are so unwilling to be without the help of Lawiers or those that can instruct them as they make use of Sollicitors and those that are not Lawiers to move and plead for them insomuch as little Mr. Kirk formerly a Clark of the Committee of the imdempnity and Captain Smith formerly a Tradesman do constantly appear and plead at that Bar in their black Caps with great bundles of Breviars and papers as if they were grave professors and Serjeants at Law So as it may be ringhtly enough concluded that until there shall be which God forbid a prohibition against all reason the Laws which are but right reason cannot be totally taken away or if they shall receive a change from the old right way of reason to a new and round about way of it there will be a necessity of making use of them again for the people and the reason that hath heretofore guided them can no more be kept from the same paths they have troad in all this while or some other made very near or like unto them than they will be from all manner of reasoning or use of their natural Logick though the art of Logick should be forbidden to be used or the use of medicines though that most necessary art and profession of Physick be banished out of this Common-wealth for which they that shall thus propose the casting away of the old Laws and Rules of reason will at the best get no more thanks of the Major part of the people than a Physician shall have of his patient for putting him out of a competency of health into an absolute sicknesse and leave him after many years troublesome course of Physick and dyet to find his way if he can again into his former condition But lest these that thus trouble themselves to bring trouble upon a whole Nation as well as themselves should so over esteem that which they intend to put in the room of our good old Laws and Customes as to think no losse or ruine so great but may be recompensed by what they offer instead of it It will not be amisse to examine by the rule of right reason and what hath happened formerly and what is like to come by such proposals if they should be granted and how far those kind of new ways may amount to a happinesse of the Nation CHAP. VII That the erecting of so many new Courts as are proposed or the cutting and translating the great Courts at Westminster into so many little Jurisdictions will besides the before-mentioned Inconveniences not only be very prejudicial to the State but to the people THe cantoning or cutting of the Courts at Westminster Hall into so many County Courts or parts as some have proposed will if there should be but a standing Court in every County except London and Middlesex make almost as many great Courts in England and Wales besides those carkases of Courts
to put the Sword again into the Scabbard when it is drawn but very much conduces to keep it from comming out again and is in the ordinary execution thereof at this time trusted out into lesse than twelve hands in the ordinary Courts of Law at Westminster will by these proposals upon very small security be trusted and put into the hands of Two Hundred and Fifty men more who will want that wisdom as well as estates which the other have to make them responsal whereby the Supreme power of the Nation may by its being too much divided and diffused into such lesser bodies come to want that strength and intireness it hath formerly had and enjoyed in the several succession of Kings for almost One Thousand years together by keeping their residence in the chief Citie or part of the Nation As David and the Kings of Juda did at Jerusalem and as all other Kings and Estates do in other Nations with their chief Courts of Justice about them where the pulse contents and discontents of the People from all parts of the body Politicque may be felt whither all their Complaints or principal businesse might Circulate and come and passe to and fro like the blood from all parts of the Body to the Heart and from thence back again to all parts of the Body and whither the Common sense did from time to time bring in its Intelligence to the great Counsel which was holden in the Brayn for preservation of the Heart as wel as every part of the body They that heretofore could with one expence and charges prosecute a suit at Law at Westminster and at the same time attend the Parliament or their Committees the Council of State the Exchequer or Committee of revenue and the motions and designs of their adversaries who it may be had bills in Chancery or actions in some other Court of Westminster depending against them at the same time and do many other businesses whilst they remained there meet and confer with Friends or Foreiners or people of all parts of the Nation could make bargains and dispose of Children and have the help or assistance in their Suits at Law of the ablest most eminent Lawiers in their several Innes of Court or Stations must now perhaps goe to the Shire Town as a Plaintiff or Defendant at Law and to London for his other businesse be content with such Lawiers only in his own Country as are there resident when it may be there are none eminent or very able to be had there or be inforced to procure such as are to come at great rates one hundred or Two hundred miles at a time from the places where they inhabit and that Country and many a more distressed Client want them in the mean time Such a multitude of Courts will throw many men especially such as have great dealing and multitude of businesse with men of many Counties into so many journeys and perplexities as they shall never be at leisure from attending one Court or other whereas now one man that hath occasion to prosecute Actions of debt against one Hundred Debtors living in 20 Counties dispersed over the whole Nation doth his businesse without Travelling or sending any further than to London Streightens and gives men no time to provide their evidence or Witnesses and puts the Lawiers as well as their Clients by so much attendance at so many several Courts into a continual attendance or Travelling from one Shire to another and will not a little distract mens affairs to have an Action at one and the same time to be tryed or called upon at London Cornwall Barwick and Pembroke Shire where they should be personally at every one of them and can be but at one and must be in a continual unquietnesse and trouble when all the year shall be as a continual Term or time of controversie and when they shall be enforced to neglect their affairs of Husbandry and Harvest to travel and tire themselves through all the lines of the Circumference when they might have a shorter way to and from the Centre which by the intermission of Terms and Vacations and the known and convenient times of Assizes when the Terms were ended was by the Laws now in being sufficiently prevented But these are not like to be all the inconveniences neither for if the Courts of Westminster shall besides the Two and Fifty County Courts to be taken out of them be cut into lesser pieces by giving cognisance of pleas of Actions of Trespasse Battery and the like and of Actions of debt under 40 shillings as some would have it there will then be as many smaller Courts as will make us up above 2600 Courts the Judges whereof will look to be paid as well as the Judges of the other Courts for the neglect of their own businesse to take care of other mens and if they should have but 50 l. per annum a peece for standing salaries will make a yearly charge to the State of above Sixty Five Thousand pounds per annum or if they shall be prohibited their taking of Fees will grow carelesse and nnwilling to be troubled pretend to be sick or absent when they are not or half hear causes or like some of the Midlesex or Suburbian Justices take a great deal more in Fees and Incomes than that would come to and doe as little for it as they use to doe in matters of Breach of this Peace or petty Brawls which is to bind them over to the Sessions and take their Fees for it and for those causes which they shall adventure to determine beget in a year more appeals than there shall be Justices of the peace which in a year but after the rate of 2600 petty Courts or more but 40 Times appealed from every one of them will yeeld to the people above One Hundred Thousand appeals which may cost them no small mony time to maintain and bring to a hearing and by such double and treble agitations discovery of Titles and evidence and half hearing of their causes make their contentions grow as endlesse as their Charges CHAP. VIII That it will not only raise up again those old grievances which were formerly the cause of disusing or restraining the Sheriffs Turns County Courts Court Barons and Hundred Courts and such like petty Jurisdictions but far exceed them BUt surely they that thus erre for want of knowledge and do too much build upon their own ignorance would if they knew the reasons that accompany our Laws not be so forward to goe back again into those evils which our Auncestors and the care of former Parliaments did bring us out of nor take that to be a new and better way is but a going back again into them and a reviving of old grievances We shall therefore shew them what they were let them see they are very like unto that they are now so willing to establish amongst us The Courts called Hundreds Wapentakes the