parcel of Mercenary Pensioners he in the next place falls foul upon the Clergy for publishing this Declaration like an Excommunication in all Churches But if they the Ministers erred in the things they judged rightly in the choice of the persons who were to publish it Blind Obedience was requisite where such unjustifiable things were imposed and that could be no where so intire as amongst those Clergy-men whose preferment depended upon it Yes without doubt ten thousand Clergy-men did expect to be preferred presently for this piece of blind Obedience Yet he is at it again in the next page a Set of Presbyterian Clergy would not have been so tame Well but this would not have done tho If the Paper which was to be read in the Desk had not been so suitable to the Doctrine which some of them had often declared in the Pulpit Then it did not go against their Consciences It did not become them to inquire whether they had sufficient Authority for what they did since the Printer calls it the Kings Declaration No Where or of whom should they have enquired And it being Printed by the Kings Printer with his Majesties Royal Arms before it and sent them by their Ordinaries the Bishops they had no reason to question whether it were the Kings or no. And there was as little reason that they should concern themselves Whether they might not one day be called to an account for publishing it They had reason to trust that his Majesty who commanded them to do it would protect them in their blind Obedience And as for his Law-Quirks whether what his Majesty singly Ordered when he sate in Council and came forth without the Stamp of the Great Seal gave them a sufficient warrant to read in publickly These things never entered into their heads Well but Sir tho those same Clergy-men driven on by Ambition might act in this without fear or shame and think as little of a Parliament as the Court Favourites who took care to dissolve that at Oxford before they durst tell us the faults of that at Westminister Tho it might be so as you say yet the Shoal of Addressors that came in to thank his Majesty for that Declaration they had more light and Sir if you be resolved to call all these Ministers all these Clergy-men all these Addressors to an account in the next Parliament pray for cold weather and long days and another Parliament that may sit for ever if it please or you may happen to want time to go through with so pious and good a work But Sir tho the Ministers durst not discover the faults of the Westminster Parliament till they had taken care to dissolve that Oxford his Majesty in his Speech there did Which he began thus The unwarrantable proceedings of the last House of Commons were the occasion of my parting with the last Parliament For I who will never use Arbitrary Government my self am resolved not to suffer it in others I am unwilling to mention particulars because I am desirous to forget faults c. So that you may see if you please that the Oxford Parliament was told in general the faults of that which preceded in order to their avoiding them if they could have made that good use of his Majesties Advice which will render them the less excusable to all the world So now we come to that Parliament at Oxford which saith the Declaration was assembled as soon as that was dissolved and saith my Author might have added Dissolved as soon as Assembled the Ministers having imployed the People forty days in chusing Knights and Burgesses to be sent home in Right with a Declaration after them as if they had been called together only to be affronted As to the People if their Knights and Burgesses came back sooner than they expected they had reason to thank themselves who had twice before sent up the same men and as you observed before the people do not change suddenly so neither doth the Court but doth as certainly send back a Parliament that will not be governed as the People send them And the People were overjoyed too to see them again for when they went out they had told them they never expected to come back again So that so speedy and safe a return was as welcome to them that sent them as could be imagined As for the Knights and Burgesses themselves they had fair warning given them by his Majesty before-hand and if they would affront either Him or the Upper House they did it at their apperil and it was well they scaped so well as to be sent home with a Declaration after them My Author acknowledgeth that his Majesty failed not to give good Advice unto them who were called together to Advise him And so many I might say all our former Princes have done before his Majesty and commanded them too not to meddle with such and such things yea and punished private Members sometimes for doing otherwise The Lord Keeper in the 35 year of Queen Elizabeths Reign spoke thus to the Commons It is her Majesties pleasure the time be not spent in devising and enacting new Laws the number of which are so great already that it rather burtheneth than easeth the Subject c. And whereas heretofore it hath been used that many have delighted themselves in long Orations full of Verbosity and vain Ostentations more than in speaking things of substance the time that is precious would not be thus spent And in the same Parliament the Lord Keeper upon the usual demands by the New Speaker said thus To your three demands the Queen answereth Liberty of Speech is granted you c. but you must know what priviledge you have not to speak every one what he listeth or what cometh in his brain to utter but your priviledge is to say Yea or No. Wherefore Mr. Speaker her Majesties pleasure is that if you perceive any Idle Heads which will not stick to hazard their own Estates which will meddle with Reforming of the Church and transforming of the Commonwealth and do exhibit any Bills to that purpose that you receive them not until they be viewed and considered of by those whom it is fitter should consider of such things and can better judge of them To your persons all priviledge is granted with this Caveat that under colour of this Priviledge no mans ill doings or not performing of Duties be covered and protected The last free Access is also granted to her Majesties Person so that it be upon urgent and weighty causes and at times convenient and when her Majesty may be at leisure from other important causes of the Realm Now let what his Majesty said at Oxford be compared with this and let any man tell me whether the Parliament deserved any commendation from my Author for their having so much respect to the King as not particularly to complain of the great invasion that was made
upon their Liberty of Proposing and Debating Laws by his telling them before-hand what things they should meddle with and what things no reason they could offer should persuade him to consent unto In that very Parliament I have mentioned Mr. Peter Wentworth and Sir Henry Bromley delivered a Petition unto the Lord Keeper therein desiring the Lords of the Vpper House to be suppliants with them of the Lower House unto her Majesty for entailing the Succession to the Crown whereof a Bill was already drawn Her Majesty was highly displeased therewith after she knew it as a matter contrary to her former streight Commandment and charged the Council to call the Parties before them Sir Thomas Henage presently sent for them and after speech with them commanded them to forbear coming to the Parliament and not to go out from their Lodgings The next day being Sunday Mr. Peter Wentworth was sent prisoner to the Tower Sir Henry Bromley one Mr. Richard Stephens and Mr. Welch the other Knight for Worcestershire were sent to the Fleet. And Sir Walter Rauleigh tells us Wentworth died in the Tower tho this Motion was but supposed dangerous to the Queens Estate Yet here was no express Command against it but only a general Command which I have recited neither doth it appear that any disherison of any right Heir to the Crown was intended And in this very Parliament one Mr. Morris Attourney of the Court of Wards bringing in a Bill against the abuses of the Bishops as he pretended in Lawless Inquisitions injurious Subscriptions and binding Absolution he was the next day sent for to Court and committed unto Sir John Fortescues Keeping And upon both these the Queen sent this Message to the House by their Speaker It is in me and my power to call Parliaments and it is in my power to end and determine the same it is in my power to Assent or Dissent to any thing done in Parliament The Calling of this Parliament was only that the Majesty of God might be more religiously served and those that neglected this Service might be compelled by some sharper means to a more due Obedience and a more true service of God than there hath been hitherto used And further that the safety of her Majesties Person and of this Realm might be by all means provided for against our great Enemies the Pope and the King of Spain Her Majesties most excellent pleasure being then delivered unto us by the Lord Keeper it was not meant we should meddle with Matters of State or in Causes Ecclesiastical for so her Majesty termed them she wondered that any would be of so high Commandment to attempt I use her own words a thing contrary to that which she had so expresly forbidden wherefore with this she was highly displeased And in all her Reign after durst no man attempt to meddle with either of these things Now I have taken the pains to transcribe all this out of the transactions of her Reign rather than of any other because she was never accused of affecting Arbitrary Government or Popery but was beloved of all her Subjects whilst she lived and her Memory is and ever will be had in honour by all English men and she ought to be a pattern for all her Successors And now let us hear our modest Vindicator But every man must be moved to hear it charged upon them as an unpardonable disobedience that they did not obsequiously sub mit to that irregular command of not touching on the business of the Succession Shall two or three unknown Minions take upon them like the Lords of the Articles of Scotland to prescribe unto an English Parliament what things they shall treat of Do they intend to have Parliaments inter instrumenta servitutis as the Romans had Kings in our Country This would quickly be if what was then attempted had succeeded and should be so pursued hereafter that Parliaments should be directed what they are to meddle with and threatned if they do any other thing For the loss of Liberty of freedom of Debate in Parliament will soon and certainly be followed by a general loss of Liberty This is the right temper and Spirit of a good Common-wealth man thus did your Fathers talk in the days of his Majesties Father till Priviledge of Parliament had eat up all the Prerogatives of the Crown and the Liberties of the Subjects and delivered us over to slavery poverty and confusion so that the Tyrannical Arbitrary bloudy Government of Oliver Cromwel was thought a blessing to the Nation in comparison of these Parliamentary Instruments of slavery and their Legions which I hope this Generation will so well remember as never to set it up or suffer it to be set up more in my days My Author having told us in the next place That the King ought to divest himself of all private inclinations and force his own affections to yield unto the Publick Concernments and therefore his Parliaments ought to inform him impartially of that which tends to the good of those they represent without regard of personal passions and might worthily be blamed if they did not believe that he would forgo them all for the safety of his People Concludes That therefore if in it self it was lawful to propose a Bill for Excluding the Duke of York from the Crown the doing it after such an unwarrantable signification of his pleasure would not make it otherwise To which I reply that Parliaments as Subjects are more bound to comply with the natural and reasonable Affections and Passions of their Princes than Princes are in the same Circumstances with those of their Subjects And that in this case his Majesties own Personal safety and interest was wrapt up in that of his Brother for if he might be Excluded another might be Deposed on the same pretence as Coleman said truly enough And tho it should be granted that Parliaments ought to inform Princes yet it is certain they ought not to force them they had informed the King in the two former Parliaments what they thought of this Affair and his Majesty had rejected their Advice and in the beginning of this Parliament at Oxford had told them That what he had formerly and so often declared touching the Succession he could not depart from And after all this for them to enter again upon it in the very first place looked like an intended force And then tho the thing were lawful in it self it may be thought unreasonable thus to pursue it and Queen Elizabeth would have made them have felt the Effects of her resentment for presuming to be of so high Commandment if she had been in his Majesties place In the next place we are told his Majesties unusual stiffness upon this occasion begins to be suspected not to proceed from fondness to his Brother much less from any thoughts of danger to the English Monarchy by such a Law but from the influence of some few
Reasons of a King to have the less weight because he graciously offers them to the Judgment of his People Sure I am sometimes God Almighty is pleased to do it who only hath a right to command our absolute submission upon the account of his infinite both Wisdom and Soveraignty So that to suspect the want of of an Apology on no other grounds than a mans willingness to satisfie the World of the justice of a mans Cause and the reasonableness of his Actions is a perverseness to which common Knaves do seldom arrive the Heroes of Villany do not often rise to that pitch of Brutality without the help of Malmsbury Philosophy And I am persuaded that our Author would have spared this Cavil against his Majesties Declaration if he had before-hand considered that in natural consequence he charges not only the King but also the Three Estates with so many deliberate Acts of folly and injustice as there are Acts of Parliament containing the reasons of Enacting so or so If a Princes Actions are indeed unjustifiable if they are opposite to the Inclinations and apparently destructive of the Interests of his Subjects it will be very difficult for the most eloquent or insinuating Declaration to make them in love with such things And if they be none of all these if a Crafty man may but comment upon them and by Ifs and An ds insinuate into the heads of the Common People that he takes them for such it is possible all the Eloquence in the World may not be powerful enough to bring them into their right wits again but yet this may fail too sometimes And therefore they did certainly undertake no easie task in pretending to persuade men who see themselves exposed to the restless malice of their Enemies who observe the languishing condition of the Nation and that nothing but a Parliament can provide remedies for the great Evils which they feel and fear that two several Parliaments upon whom they had placed all their hopes were so suddenly broken out of kindness to them or with any regard to their advantage No I suppose no body was so silly as to undertake such an impossible task but there was another sort of men who had looked better into things and care was to be taken of them to confirm them and a third sort that were not yet well resolved what to think of things and they were to be directed and assisted and it was not impossible the Declaration might have a good effect upon them as indeed it had as for those that had placed all their hopes upon the two last Parliaments and were pleased with all they did there was neither hopes nor design of working that Miracle upon them but they were to be left to time to be cured And in the interim I would advise them to study Colemans Declaration of which my Author saith fine things which I care not to transcribe But should this Declaration be suffered to go abroad any longer under the Royal Name yet it will never be thought to have proceeded from his Majesties Inclination or Judgment but to be gained from him by the Artifices of the same ill men who not being content to have prevailed with him to dissolve two Paliaments only to protect them from Publick Justice do now hope to excuse themselves from being thought the Authors of that Counsel by making him openly to avow it But they have discovered themselves to the Kingdom and have told their Names when they number amongst the great Crimes of the House of Commons their having declared divers Eminent Persons to be Ememies to the King and Kingdom So his Majesties Inclination and Judgment being kindly absolved from the guilt of this Declaration of purpose to abate the Esteem it ought to have And seeing it is not possible to keep it within doors and that some may think the worse of it because there was a sham Declaration found among Colemans Papers as you know there was a sham Plot in the Meal-Tub and yet there may be others that are real The next Inquiry or rather Hue and Cry is after the Authors and those he thinks he hath found by the passage he cites out of the Declaration those Eminent Persons or some of them must needs out of Revenge and Fear be the Authors of this Pestilent Declaration His Reason is this None could be offended at the Proceedings of the Parliaments but they who were obnoxious none could be concerned to vindicate the Dissolution but they who advised it But is my Author sure of that that never a man in the Nation was offended at their proceedings but such as were obnoxious to them I am of another mind and so is all the world now Is it impossible for any man to be concerned to vindicate the Actions of a Prince but they that advise him What pitiful Sophistry this is But were no men obnoxious to the proceedings of these Parliaments but these eminent men May not it be some of those Subjects who were by Arbitrary Orders taken into Custody for matters that had no relation to Priviledges of Parliament They are mentioned before the Eminent Persons tho of a Meaner degree If I be not mistaken some Members too were very disgracefully Expelled the House Might not some of them have a hand in it We are assured a little lower that the Writer was of another Nation from this Gallicism It was a matter extremely sensible to us So that this Gentleman is suspitious it is but a Translation of a French Copy and the rather because Monsieur Barillon the French Embassadour read it to a Gentleman three days before it was communicated to the Privy Council if his intelligence did not deceive him So here is fair Scope left to find or suspect at least other Authors besides the Eminent Persons other Advisers besides those that were obnoxious For I suppose Monsieur Barillon doth not fear a House of Commons And as for this and other Gallicisms that may occur they are not to be wondred at in an Age that generally understands the French Tongue in a Court where almost all the Great men speak it in a Prince who hath lived in France and is descended of a French Mother And the wonder is not so prodigious neither that the French Embassadour should get a transcript of a Paper intended to be published to the whole Nation two or three days before it was read in Council These things make a great noise to ignorant people whilst I am persuaded this Gentleman smiled to think how finely he was deluding them But be these things as they will the Eminent Persons must expect to answer it And our Author thinks they cannot blame him or his Party for hoping one day to see justice done upon such Counsellours And that the Commons had reason for their Vote when they declared those Eminent Persons who manage things at this rate Enemies to the King and Kingdom and Promoters
retain we have found our selves not so Candidly dealt with as we have deserved and that there are unquiet and restless spirits who without abating any of their own distemper in recompence of the Moderation they find in us continue their bitterness against the Church and endeavour to raise Jealousies of us and to lessen our reputation by their reproaches as if we were not true to the Professions we have made and in order thereunto they have very unseasonably caused to be printed published and dispersed throughout the Kingdom a Declaration heretofore printed in our Name during the time of our being in Scotland of which we shall say no more than that the Circumstances by which we were enforced to sign that Declaration are enough known to the World that the worthiest greatest part of that Nation did even then detest and abhor the ill usage of us in that particular when the same Tyranny was exercised there by the power of a few ill men which at that time had spread it self over this Kingdom and therefore we had no reason to expect that we should at this Season when we are doing all we can to wipe out the memory of all that hath been done amiss by other men and we thank God have wiped it out of our own remembrance have been our self assaulted with these Reproaches which we will likewise forget Since the Printing that Declaration several seditious Pamphlets and Queries have been published and scattered abroad to infuse dislike and Jealousies into the hearts of the People and of the ARMY and some who ought rather to have repented the former mischief they have wrought than to have endeavoured to improve it have had the hardiness to publish that the Doctrine of the Church against which no man with whom we have conferred hath excepted ought to be reformed as well as the Discipline This over-passionate and turbulent way of proceeding and the impatience we find in many for some speedy determination in these matters whereby the minds of men may be composed and the peace of the Church established hath prevailed with us to invert the Method we had proposed to our Self and even in order to the better calling and composing of a Synod which the present Jealousies will hardly agree upon by the Assistance of Gods blessed Spirit which we daily invoke and supplicate to give some determination Our self to the matters in difference untill such a Synod may be called as may without prejudice or passion give us such further assistance towards a perfect union of Affections as well as submission to Authority as is necessary And we are the rather induced to take this upon us by finding upon the full Conferences we have had with Learned men of several Persuasions that the mischiefs under which both Church and State do at present suffer do not result from any formed Doctrine or Conclusion which either Party maintains or avows but from the Passion and Appetite and Interest of particular persons who contract greater prejudices to each other from those Affections than would naturally rise from their Opinions and those distempers must be in some degree allayed before the meeting in a Synod can be attended with better success than their meeting in other places and their discourses in Pulpits have hitherto been and till all thoughts of victory are laid aside the humble and necessary thoughts for the vindication of Truth cannot be enough entertained We must for the honour of all those of either persuasion with whom we have conferred declare that the profession and desires of all for the advancement of Piety and true Godliness are the same their professions of zeal for the peace of the Church the same of affection and duty for us the same They all approve Episcopacy they all approve a set Form of Liturgy they all disapprove and dislike the sin of Sacriledge and the Alienation of the Revenue of the Church and if upon these excellent foundations in submission to which there is such a harmony of affections any superstructures should be raised to the shaking those foundations and to the contracting and lessening the blessed gift of Charity which is a vital part of Religion we shall think Our Self very unfortunate and even suspect that we are defective in that Administration of Government with which God hath entrusted us Page 18. of this Declaration His Majesty did again renew what he had formerly said in his Declaration from Breda for the liberty of tender Consciences c. and declared if any have been disturbed in that kind since Our Arrival here it hath not proceeded from any Direon of ours His Majecty saith in the fifth page of this Declaration The Presbyterians did only desire modestly such alterations in Episcopacy and the Liturgy as without shaking foundations might best allay the present distempers which the indisposition of the time and the tenderness of some mens Consciences had contracted for the better doing whereof we did intend upon our first Arrival in this Kingdom to call a Synod of Divines as the most proper Expedient to provide a proper Remedy for all those differences and dissatisfactions which had or should arise c. In the next Spring a Commission was Issued out under the Great Seal to several Episcopal and dissenting Divines to review and correct if they should see cause the Book of Prayer and to make such alterations in it as should be thought fit instead of which the Dissenting Divines rejected the whole Book and published a new one So that this meeting which was designed chiefly in favour of the Dissenters discovered the falshood of all their Oyly pretences and shewed they were neither for Liturgies or Episcopacy They had also made a strong Party in the Army of which an account hath been given already So that the Parliament seeing there was no peace to be had as long as these men might do what they listed and pervert the People and incence them against the Government passed the Act of Uniformity to Commence from St. Bartholomew 1662. During all this time his Majesty notwithstanding their ill usage of him mentioned in the last Declaration I cited continued so courteous to these firy men as to excuse it to the Parliament March 1. 1661. in these words Gentlemen I hear you are very zealous for the Church and very solicitous and even jealous that there is not Expedition enough used in that Affair and I thank you for it since I presume it proceeds from a good root of Piety and Devotion but I must tell you I have the worst luck in the world if after all the reproaches of being a Papist whilst I was abroad I am suspected of being a Presbyterian now I am come home I know you will not take it unkindly if I tell you I am as zealous for the Church of England as any of you can be and am enough acquainted with the Enemies of it on all sides that I am as much
had been but for half an hour he would not have consented to it because of the ill consequences it might have hereafter the Militia being wholly in the Crown c. Now I believe it would be difficult for my Author to make and prove the like instance in any of our former Princes And in the first of the short Westminster Parliaments his Majesty passed the Act for the better securing of the Liberty of the Subject and for preventing imprisonment beyond Seas to which an honourable Person adds The Act against quartering of Souldiers upon the Subject and saith his Majesty might have had many Millions for these Acts if he had insisted on a bargain or known how to distinguish between his own private Interest and that of the Subject or the truckling way of Bartering when the good of his People was concerned And in the last short-lived Westminster Parliament his Majesty passed the Act against Importation of Irish Cattel for no other visible cause but because both Houses had passed it tho it tended to the Diminution of his Revenue And now let us see how gratefully our Author treats him for all these Royal and Prince-like Favours Therefore the Favorites did little consult his Majesties Honour when they bring him in solemnly declaring to his Subjects that his intentions were as far as would have consisted with the very Being of the Government to have complied with any thing that could have been proposed to him to accomplish those Ends he had mentioned which were the satisfying the desires of his Subjects and securing them against all their just fears when they are not able to produce an instance wherein they suffered him to comply in any one thing Whatever the House of Commons Addressed for was certainly denied tho it was only for that reason and there was no surer way of Intituling ones self to the favour of the Court than to receive a Censure from the representative body of the People As to the Addresses made by the House of Commons alone they were many of them such as his Majesty could not comply with without great mischief to himself or them that had exprest the greatest Zeal for his Service and when for that case only they seemed to be persecuted it would have been very impolitick in his Majesty tho he had been his own man and not under the dominion of the Favorites as it seems he was to have yielded to the Commons against them But cannot the Favorites instance wherein they suffered his Majesty to comply in any one thing with the House of Commons Did not his Majesty at their single request Pardon a great many Informers against the Plotters Did he not pardon B. Harris too his 500 l. Fine and Imprisonment which he had incurred by Printing disloyal and seditious Pamphlets Did not his Majesty upon their Address discharge all the Protestant Dissenters who were then under prosecution upon several Penal Statutes without paying Fees as far as it could be done according to Law and promise also to recommend them to the Judges There might many other instances be given of moneys issued out of persons taken care for and the like upon the single request of the Commons so that I cannot but wonder where my Authors modesty was when he pressed the Favorites to give one instance of his Majesties compliance with the House of Commons But his Majesty and the Court were kind to all that received any Censure from the representative body of the People They might thank themselves for that who bestowed their Censures so freely on men that had deserved very well of his Majesty and the Government and yet I believe there may be some instances given of men whom they Censured or imprisoned that have not been mightily advanced since by the Court but let us examine those few particular Examples my Author hath marked out Let it for the present be admitted saith my Author that some of the things desired by that Parliament were exorbitant and because we will put the objection as strong as is possible inconsistent with the very being of the Government yet at least some of their Petitions were more reasonable Doubtless there was some such which therefore were freely granted by his Majesty as I have proved The Government might have subsisted though the Gentlemen put out of the Commission of the Peace for their zealous acting against the Papists had been restored And so might the Protestant Religion by Law established be preserved without the assistance of these zealous Gentlemen and therefore his Majesty was not to be instructed by these Representatives whom he should imploy as Justices of the Peace especially after they had discovered so much kindness for the Dissenters who have something an odd Notion of Papists and Popery Nor would a final Dissolution of all things have ensued tho Sir George Jefferies had been removed out of all Publick Offices or my Lord Hallifax himself from his Majesties Presence and Councils The first of these Sir George Jefferies was then Recorder of London and was prosecuted by a part of the City for that he by traducing and obstructing Petitioning for the sitting of that Parliament had betrayed the Rights of the Subject Now that Gentleman opposed them as many others did in obedience to his Majesties Proclamation and the Laws of the Land and it was a little unreasonable that his Majesty should joyn with the Commons to ruine him though it could be made out that his Majesties Proclamation was illegal and that there were a mistake also in the point of Law My Lord Hallifax was prosecuted only for opposing the Bill for disinheriting the Duke of York in the House of Lords and no fault whatsoever laid to his charge Now he being a Member of that House it had been very unreasonable for his Majesty to have punished him for using his own just and legal freedom in a case especially wherein his Majesty had declared his own resolution so very often before Now Sir tho these two Persons are not essentially necessary to the preservation of the Government yet it is absolutely so that his Majesty do not give up those that have faithfully and legally served him in their proper Stations either to please the People or their Representatives without a legal trial and a just defence We may all remember what the Consequences of his Majesties Fathers giving up the Earl of Strafford in the beginning of the late troubles were and I hope I shall never live to see that sort of compliance reacted again Had the Statute of 35. Eliz. which had justly slept for Eighty years and of late unreasonably revived been repealed surely the Government might still have been safe And though the Fanaticks perhaps had not deserved so well as that in favour to them his Majesty should have passed that Bill yet since the Repeal might hereafter be of great use to those of the Church of England in case of a Popish
could not hurt the Church of England therefore the Dissenters were to be caressed and cherished that they in a small time might be in a capacity to do it And now if these were not good reasons for the Vote let any impartial man that is any but a Church of England man judge In the midst of such Circumstances was there not cause to think an Union of all Protestants necessary and could they have any just grounds to believe that the Dissenters whilst they lay under the pressures of severe Laws should with such Alacrity and Courage as was requisite undertake the defence of a Country where they were so ill treated Whether this question relates to the French King and the Papists or the Duke and the Civil and Military Officers may be a question and therefore it must be so answered As to the first there was all the reason in the world that they should joyn heartily with the Government against the Papists and French for they could not hope to mend their condition by falling into their hands who they knew would treat them with other manner of severities than those they met with from the Laws if they did not know this any of the French Protestants that fled over 〈◊〉 England might have informed them sufficiently Nâ—w of evils the least is to be chosen and tho their conâ—â—tion had not been equal to their desires yet it had been a madness to have made it worse by delivering up themselves and their Country into the hands of the French and Papists But if it relates to the Duke and the Civil and Military Officers then I hope he will excuse me if I do not think it fit to have another Union of Protestants of that sort again A long and sad Experience had shewed how vain the endeavours of former Parliaments had been to force us to be all of one Opinion and therefore the House of Commons resolved to take a sure way to make us all of one Affection This was the very reason of the Declaration of Liberty of Conscience But how unlike that course was to prevail the Nation had sufficient experience in a few years And Sir I can assure you it is above the power of a House of Commons to unite those men in Affection who differ not only in Opinion but Practice too in matters of Religion For these reasons my Author saith this Vote was made in order to a repeal of them by a Bill to be brought in and presently he grows Pettish and tells us None but a Frenchman could have the confidence to declaim against a proceeding so regular and Parliamentary as this Your humble Servant Sir I pray be a little pacified you may possibly be mistaken as well as another man but would I believe take it a little unkindly to be called Monsieur presently They very first Vote they made that day was this Resolved That whosoever advised his Majesty to Prorogue this Parliament to any other purpose than in order to the passing of a Bill for the Exclusion of James Duke of York is a betrayer of the King the Protestant Religion and of the Kingdom of England a promoter of the French interest and a Pensioner to France So they knew they were to be Prorogued that very day and as the Story goes made more than ordinary haste to pass these Votes Now it was impossible that a Bill should be brought in much less passed in that Session which was to end before night and therefore this was not nor could not be the cause of that Vote and all your little Queries founded upon this supposition are silly and impertinent There was not the least direction or signification to the judges which might give any occasion for the reflection which follows in the Declaration The due and impartial execution of the Laws is the unquestionable duty of the Judges and we hope they will always remember that duty so well as not to necessitate a House of Commons to do theirs by calling them to account for making private instructions the Rule of their judgments and acting as men who have more regard to their Places than their Oaths So the Dissenters may see they are mistaken when they think the Judges or Justices may forbear executing the Laws against them upon the score of this Vote But tho the Judges are sworn to execute all Laws yet there is no obligation upon any man to inform against another No Sir Is not every Grand-Jury man every Constable and Churchwarden sworn to Present the breakers of our Laws as well as the Judges are to punish them And as for the next Conundrams of yours the comparing a parcel of Laws made within twenty years to those Antiquated ones about Caps and Bows and Arrows and killing of Lambs and Calves and your business of Empson and Dudley they are such stuff as a man of half your understanding would have been ashamed to have mensioned in a good cause In the next place my Author acquaints us what are the causes usually of disusing Laws alterations of the Circumstances whereupon a Law was made or if it be against the genious of a People or have effects contrary to the intents of the Maker none of which can be said in this case Nor is that true which follows that the quiet safety or trade of our Nation hath been promoted by the not executing of these Laws as any man may know that can remember but ten years backward And therefore notwithstanding the Vote of the Commons the Judges may act wisely and honestly if they should encourage Informers or quicken Juries by strict and severe Charges For the due and impartial execution of the Laws is the unquestionable duty of the Judges according to my Author and therefore I will hope they shall not be accounted Knaves or Fools for doing their unquestionable duty But then my Author hath another quarrel with the Ministers and that was for numbring this Vote amongst the causes of the Dissolution of that Parliament when the Black Rod was at the door of the House to require them to attend his Majesty at the very time when it was made Well suppose we should grant that this was not one of those Votes that occasioned the Prerogation it not being then made when that was resolved on yet it might occasion their Dissolution which hapned some time after And was not this an excellent time to make Votes for the bringing in of Bills for the Repeal of Laws when the Black Rod was at the door to call the House to a Prorogation After a little anger against the Ministers for arraigning one of the Three Estates in the face of the World for usurping power over the Laws imprisoning their fellow Subjects Arbitrarily exposing the Kingdom to the greatest dangers and indeavouring to deprive the King of all possibility of supporting the Government the man hath forgot how often he hath arraigned the Long Loyal Parliament for a
a man sit there twenty years yet he shall be allowed to know no more of them the day after he is turned out than I do The Declaration mentions one sort of men who are fond of their old beloved Commonwealth Principles and others are aangry at being disappointed in designs they had to accomplish their own ambition and greatness Surely says my Author if they know any such persons the only way to have prevented the mischiefs which they pretend to fear from them had been to have discovered them and suffered the Parliament to sit to provide against the evils they would bring upon the Nation by prosecuting them I cannot but fancy my Author smiled to himself when he made this pleasant Proposition In the next place my Author gives us a description of men of Commonwealth Principles he tells us They are men Passionately devoted to the publick good and to the common service of their Country who believe that Kings were instituted for the good of the People and Government ordained for the sake of those that are to be governed and therefore complain or grieve when it is used to contrary ends and that wise and honest men will be proud to be ranked in this number Now as favourably as he hath drawn it I assure him I for my part am none of the number for tho I know that if there were no People there could hardly have been Kings and that one main end of Government was the good of those that are to be governed yet I believe that God Almighty had some respect for Princes and Governours and did not design only the good of the People but their good too and tho I can grieve yet I am not apt to complain when things go amiss My Author in the next place spends a great deal of learning to prove That the word Commonwealth signifies the common good in which sense it hath been used by all good Authors c. Now this I will yield him with all my hearts that till one thousand six hundred and forty all the World thought that a good Commonwealth man and a good Subject were terms that might be promiscuously and indifferently used but the Author cannot be ignorant that not long after the word Commonwealth was so wholly appropriated to an odious Democracy by the Rebels of the late times whose usurped Seal and Coyn bore the Image and Superscription of the Beast that it is no ways likely it should ever recover its Primitive signification And I dare assure him that many of the English Nation will never be pleased to find in Parliament such men as have so great a kindness for the word as implies a hankering after the thing it has obtained to signifie But if the Declaration says my Vindicator would intimate that there had been any design of setting up a Democratical Government in opposition to our Legal Monarchy it is a Calumny just of a piece with the other thing which the Penners of the Declaration have vented in order to the laying upon others the blame of a design to overthrow the Government which only belongs to themselves Now Sir This is not the first time that his Majesty hath complained of a parcel of men who had such a design and if you please we will inquire a little into the reason of it That there was in the Nation a great number of men that had imbibed a Notion that all other kinds of Governments but what had something of the Democratical form in them without a single Person were Arbitrary and Tyrannical I suppose will not be denied that these men did not all of them expire when his Majesty landed from Breda is very probable but his Majesty being setled and all things running quite contrary to their Interest as you have told us may appear by comparing the Parliaments that were sent up in 1640. and 1660. these men were forced to seem more loyal than they were that they might one day appear what they were Now Sir it is not to be expected they should openly declare for the Commonwealth of England and desire Charles Stuart to march off and give them their right when blessed be God they have neither Men nor Money to back such an insolence with but yet we may be allowed to guess at their Designs by their Actions and if that may be allowed the Penners of the Declaration were not the only men that thought there was then and is now some Democratical or Commonwealth designs against the very Monarchy driving on and you must excuse me if I say the Calumny lies at your doors get rid of it as well as you can It is strange how this word should so change its significacation with us in twenty years All Monarchies in the world that are not purely Barbarous and Tyrannical have ever been called Commonwealths c. Sir I will grant more than that that all without exception have by some men been so stiled and produced good Authors for it But yet we that had so lately like to have been ruined by the word and men that were fond of it shall ever have reason to hate them and it and a less space of years than twenty such as passed betwixt 40. and 60. might be allowed to render a word hateful which in strict propriety signifies the Publick Affairs of a People managed by many with equal Authority I could easily answer all you have brought to defend the word but the case being plain I will not trouble my self or my Reader and therefore if you have no other Argument to prove men guilty of a fondness to Arbitrary Power than their aversion for this word I shall never go about to contend with you No man can have a greater Veneration for Parliaments than I have but then who are they that have disordered things to that height they lately were You say the Ministers are the men whom you represent as you use to do with bitter reflections on his Majesty and not the Parliament others say it was such men as your self and the case hath been by both Parties referred to the People and they have by thousands given their Verdicts against those their Representatives which to me is a strong Argument the case is not so difficult as you pretend for I do not conceive it possible to delude so great a part of the People into an abhorrence of their own Representatives without their having given them just cause And if we look about us we shall find these who design a change on either hand fomenting a misunderstanding between the King his Parliament and People whilst persons who love the Legal Monarchy both out of Choice and Conscience are they who desire the frequent and successful meetings of the great Council of the Nation Sir if you durst have spoken your mind plainly I might possibly have thought this the only honest passage in this whole Book but as it now stands it is to me apparent
that you would not let your Conscience in this passage give your Passion in all the rest the lie Now if I might interpret your meaning I should guess it to be this They that on the one hand pretend to maintain the Legal Monarchy but do really intend to advance it into an absolute form without any dependence upon Parliaments and they who pretend the same thing but design to throw off the Monarchy and put the whole Power into the hands of the People i. e. the Commonwealth Party are the men that have brought things into the disorder they are now in Whilst they who love the Legal Monarchy both out of Choice and Conscience amongst which persons I will subscribe my name when occasion requires are they who desire the frequent and successful meetings of the Great Coucil Now Sir here seems to be a little Justice in this for as it were a high and flagrant piece of injustice to say that all that made up the House of Commons in the two last Parliaments designed to ruine the Monarchy and set up another Parliamentary Commonwealth of England So it is the same notorious and base injustice in you to traduce the Ministers in general as you do throughout the whole Pamphlet when as it is apparent enough first That his Majesty never did intend to set up one Dram of Arbitrary Government Secondly That it is not possible for the Ministers to do it without his consent Thirdly That it is scarce possible for him and them to do it if they had designed to do it till there hath been another War Fourthly That never any considerable person or number of persons amongst the Ministers did ever yet make one step towards it For all those Acts that have been so basely traduced are fairly defensible Those that look worst the Transactions about 1671. and 72. not excepted one of which you your self have excused viz. the Postponing of all Payments to the Bankers out of the Exchequer And the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience though you stile it an Arbitrary Power assumed to suspend Penal Laws and say the whole Nation was justly alarmed upon it yet I believe should his Majesty do the same thing over again those that now make the greatest noise against Arbitrary Power without cause would willingly enough accept of it And yet there is no reason that the present Ministers should bear the blame of these things when they that promoted them are now Sir in your Interests And Sir that the meetings of the Great Council may be successful as well as frequent one of these things must be that either the People change the Members of the Lower House or that those Members change their Methods of Proceeding and till this be done these meetings how frequent soever can never be successful For if things be carried in the next Convention as they were in the late Parliaments neither can the King neither will the Nation endure it and for all our Threats you will find when you come to bring it into Act such difficulties as I car not to foretel tho I can foresee them As for the other sort of Peevish men of whom the Declaration gives us warning who are angry at the disappointment of their Ambitious Designs If these words are intended to reflect on those men of Honour and Conscience who being qualified for the highest imployments of State have either left or refused or be removed from them because they would not accept ro retain them at the Price of selling their Country and inslaving Posterity and who are content to sacrifice their Safety as well as their Interest for the Publick and expose themselves to the malice of the men in power and to the daily Plots Perjuries and Subornations of the Papists I say if these are the Ambitious Men spoken of the People will have consideration for what they say and therefore it will be wisdom to give such men as these no occasion to say they intend to lay aside the use of Parliaments This your Appeal to the People hath spoiled all the fine things you had said before for supposing all the rest had been true as it is notoriously false yet this making the People the Judges is a kind of attempt to separate them from their Governours and exasperate them against the Government from whence must spring as great inconveniences as those you pretend to avoid and therefore had I been one of these men I would never have appealed to them but to God and my own Conscience and have sate still till he had pronounced the Sentence in this World or that which is to come You know Sir the People are not able to examine any thing but being once put into a rage by such specious Harangues as these are rush into disorder and confusion and take all that endeavour to quiet them for Enemies and Papists and so the guilty escape and then innocent are cut in pieces And besides all this never was any disorder in a Government rectified by the People but by a greater and more fatal disorder as we had experience in the late times and very often before But let the Event be what it will you are resolved to stir up the People to the utmost to revenge your case upon the Government and to that purpose insinuate there is a design to lay aside the use of Parliaments as if you should have said Stand to your Arms Gentlemen against these Ministers for as they have laid us aside men of Honour and Conscience because we would not sell our Country and enslave Posterity so the next thing to be done is the laying aside Parliaments and you are the men that must by your consideration of us prevent this great mischief This was pretty well but the next is excellent In good earnest the behaviour of the Ministers of late gives but too just occasions to say that the use of Parliaments is already laid aside for tho the King has own'd in so many of his Speeches and Declarations the great Danger of the Kingdom and the necessity of the aid and counsel of Parliaments he hath nevertheless been prevailed upon to dissolve four in the space of twenty six months without making provision by their Advice suitable to our dangers or wants My Author was sensible that the People might think that the former hint proceeded from Passion or was not serious or at least the danger was not eminent and he comes now nearer to them and tells them in good earnest they had but too just occasions to say that Parliaments were already laid aside as to any use of them and he proved it too Four had been dissolved in twenty six months but three of them were called in that time And this is an odd sort of laying them aside to call as many in twenty six months as heretofore have been called in so many years Well but there was no provision made by their Advice suitable to our Dangers