Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	judge_n	king_n	law_n	5,155	5	5.2571	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30775	The plagiary exposed, or, An old answer to a newly revived calumny against the memory of King Charles I being a reply to a book intitled King Charles's case, formerly written by John Cook of Grays Inn, Barrister, and since copied out under the title of Collonel Ludlow's letter / written by Mr. Butler, the author of Hudibras.	Butler, Samuel, 1612-1680.	1691 (1691)	Wing B6327; ESTC R2421	17,467	26

Causes 't is most just for us to place the cause of the War where we find the first Breach of the Peace Now that the King was cleared of this all indifferent Men who had the unhappiness to be acquainted with the method of their own undoing can very well testifie And if the Parliament should deny it their own Votes would contradict them as well as their Actions for when they first raised Horse and Arms they pretended to do so because it appeared the King seduced by wicked Counsel intended to make Wa● against the Parliament whereby they confess he had not then done it and they had so little ground to make it appear he ever would that they were fain to usurp the right of his Cause to justifie their own And they say took Arms for the Defence of the King which if we grant it must follow they first made War against him for no body else ever did against whom they could possibly defend Him nor did their Actions in offering the first violence less declare who began the War when having an Army ready to invade him before he set up his Standard they both followed and set upon him as they did at Edge Hill Go as far as you can you will still find the Scots whose Quarrel the Parliament took up at the second Hand as well as they followed their Examples were the first beginners of all This being granted how the King could afterwards do less than he did I cannot understand First he was bound by the Law of Nature which you say is Legislative and hath a Suspensive Power over all Humane Laws to defend himself Secondly by his Coronation Oath which he took to keep the Peace and how could he do that but by his raising Power to suppress those who had already broken it Thirdly by the Laws of the Land which you say trusted him with the Power of the Sword and how could he preserve that Trust if he had sate still and suffered others not only to take it from him but to use it against him But it is most probable that he never intended it else he was very unwise to let them be before-hand with him in seising upon his Castles Magazines and Ships for which there can be no reason imagin'd but that he was loth to give them any occasion in securing them to suspect he did but intend a War And by all this I doubt not but it appears plain enough to all Rational Men that he was so far from being the cause of the War that he rather fell into it by avoiding it and that he avoided it so long till he was fain to take Arms at so great a disadvantage as he had almost as good have sate still and suffered And in this you have used the King with the same Justice the Christians received from Nero who having set Rome on fire himself a Sacrifice to his own wicked Genius laid the Odium of it on the Christians and put them to death for it But this way you found too fair and open for your purpose and therefore declined it for having proved his Intentions by his Desires and his Actions by his Intentions you attempt a more preposterous way yet to prove both by what might have been his Intentions And to this purpose you have the Confidence in spight of Sense to make Contingencies the final cause of Things And impollitick Accidental possible Inconveniences which all the Wit of Man can never avoid the intended Reasons of State As when you will have the King fight for the Militia only to command the Purse of the People for a Power to make Judges only to wrest the Laws to grant Pardons that publick spirited Men as you call them may be made away and the Murderers pardoned c. All which being Creatures of your own Fansie and Malice and no part of his Quarrel you are so far from proving he fought for that when you have strained your Abillity all you can say is but this in your own sense That he fought for a Power to do that which he never would do when it was in his Power But if you take this Liberty I cannot but think how you would bestir you self if you could but get your God as you have done your King before such an impartial High Court of Justice as this how would you charge him with his mis-government in Nature for which by the very same Logick you may prove he made us all Slaves in causing the Weaker to hold his Life at the pleasure of the Stronger that he set up a Sun to dazle our Eyes that we might not see and to kindle Feavers in our Veins made Fire to burn us Water to drown us and Air to poison us and then demand Justice against him all which you may easily do now you have the trick on 't for the very same Reason will serve again and with much more probability for 't is easier to prove that Men have been Burnt and Drowned and died of the Plague than to make it appear the King ever used your finer device to remove publick spirited Men or can you without extream Injustice suppose he ever would for 't is so much as very well known he highly favoured and advanced his greatest Opposers for such you mean I know whom he found owners of any eminent desert as he did the Earl of Strafford and the Attorny General Noy and for other honest Men as you will have them whom Frenzy or Sedition set against him by your own confession he did not suffer those black Stars very Strange ones to slit their Noses and crop their Ears But now I think of these honest publick spirited Men certainly some of them have not so good an opinion of the honesty of your publick Proceedings but they would willingly venture not only their Ears again if they had them but their Heads too in defiance of your most comprehensive piece of Justice whose Cause while you take upon you to plead against their consent as you have done your Honourable Clients the People you deserve in reason to be thrown over the Bar by your own Party for you but confess your own injustice while you acknowledge the publick honesty of those that most oppose it How solid or pertinent those Arguments of yours have been let any Man that is sober judge but you are resolved right or wrong they shall pass to let us know how easily he that has the unhappiness to be judged by his Enemies is found guilty of any thing they please to lay to his Charge and therefore satisfied with your own Evidence you proceed to sentence and condemn the King with much formality by the fundamental Laws of this Kingdom by the general Law of all Nations and the unanimous consent of all Rational Men in the World for imploying the Power of the Sword to the destruction of the People with which they intrusted him for their own protection How you got the consent of Rational

Argument not only against Reason but your Self as you do it at the first sally for after your fit of saving as over you bestow much pains to prove it one of the Fundamentals of Law That the King is not above the Law but the Law above the King and this you deraign as you call it so far that at length you say the King hath not by Law so much Power as a Justice of Peace to commit any Man to prison which you would never have done if you had considered from whom the Justice derives his Power or in whose Name his Warrants run else you may as well say a Man may give that which he hath not or prove the Moon hath more Light than the Sun because he cannot shine by night as the Moon doth But you needed not have strained so hard for this will serve you to no purpose but to prove that which was never denied by the King himself for if you had not a much worse Memory than Men of your Condition should have you could not so soon have forgotten that immediately after the reading of that Charge the King demanded of your High Court by what Law they could sit to judge Him as offering to submit if they could produce any but then silence or interruption were thought the best ways of confessing there was no such thing And when he undertook to shew them both Law and Reason too why they could not do it The Righteous President told him plainly he must have neither Law nor Reason which was certainly as you have it very finely the most comprehensive impartial and glorious Piece of Justice that ever was played on the Theater of England for what could any Court do more than rather condemn it self than injure Truth But you had better have left this whole Business of the Law out of your Appeal to all Rational Men who can make no use of it but against your self for if the Law be above the King much more is it above the Subject And if it be so heinous a Crime in a King to endeavor to set himself above Law it is much more heinous for Subjects to set themselves above King and Law both Thus like right Mountebanks you are fain to wound and poison your selves to cheat others who cannot but wonder at the confidence of your imposture that are not ashamed to magnifie the Power of the Law while you violate it and confess you set your selves really above the Law to condemn the King for but intending it And indeed Intentions and Designs are the most considerable part both of your Accusations and Proofs some of which you are fain to fetch a great way off as far as his Coronation Oath which you next say He or the Archbishops by his order emasculated and left out very material Words which the People shall choose which is most false for these Words were not left out but rendred with more sence which the Commonalty have and if you consider what they relate to Customs you will find you cannot without open injury interpret elegerit in the Latin Oath shall choose not hath chosen for if you will have consuetudines quas vulgas elegrit to mean Customs which are to be not only use which must be often repeated before it become a Custom but choice which necessarily preceeds use But suppose it were as you would have it I cannot see with what reason you can presume it to be a design to subvert the Laws since you know he had sworn to defend them before in the first Article of the Oath from which I wonder how you can suppose that so wise a Prince as you acknowledge him to be could be so irrational to believe himself absolute by this omission But you are not without further contradiction yet for if he were so prefidious a Violater of Oaths as you would have the World believe what reason had he to be so conscientious of taking them certainly he hath little cause to be nice what Oaths he takes that hath no regard what Oaths he breaks Nor can I possibly understand your other construction of his refusal to take the Oath as his Predecessors had done which you will have a design to refuse his assent to such good Laws rather than bad Ones as the Parliament should tender for besides the absurd conceipts that he must still like the bad better than the good if you consider what you say afterwards the charitable sence will appear by your own Words to be truest for you confess he gave his assent to any bad one else you had not been fain for want of such to accuse him of a few good ones as you do there which of these is most profitable let every rational Christian judge Your next Argument to prove the King's design to destroy the Law is thus ordered Those Knights that were by an old Statute to attend at the King's Coronation being promised by his Proclamation in regard of the Infection then spread through the Kingdom a Dispensation for their absence were after found at the Council Table no doubt by the procurement of some of your own Tribe where they pleading the Proclamation for their Indemnity were answered That the Law of the Land was above any Proclamation Your Conclusion is therefore The King had a design to subvert the Laws sure there is no Man in his Wits but would conclude the contrary such Arguments as these are much like the Ropes that Oaenus twisted only for Asses to devour But if this should fail you know you were provided for another not less substantial and that is his alteration of the Judges Commissions who heretofore had their Places granted to them during their Good Behaviour but he made them but during Pleasure of this you make a sad Business of a very evil imaginary Consequence but if you had considered before what you say presently after that the King and not the Judges is to be accountable for the injustice and oppression of the Government c. you would have found it very just that he should use his Pleasure in their dismission as well as choice For Men of your Profession that have lived long enough to be Judges are not such Puisnes in cunning to play their feats of Iniquity above-board and if they may sit still they can be proved to have misbehaved themselves the Prince that is to give account for all may sooner know he is abused than know how to help himself All the inconveniency which you can fansie possible to ensue it is only to such bad Judges as buy their Places of whose Condition and Loss you are very sensible as if they had too hard a Bargain of Injustice and believe they may have reason enough to give unjust Judgment rather than lose their Places and their Money too if they shall receive such intimation from the King But you forgot you self when you put this in your Appeal to all Rational Men for they will tell you this