Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	king_n	people_n	see_v	2,763	5	3.6476	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46377	A just and modest vindication of His Royal Highness the Duke of York in observations upon a late revived pamphlet, intituled, A word without doors, wherein the reasons and arguments of that author, are considered and examined.		1680 (1680)	Wing J1222; ESTC R16770	11,050	16

Land the very highest offence nay the very attempt or design of such a thing in the judgment of Law worthy the highest punishments for as it is true that by the permission of God several Nations have pitcht upon several Governments so it is as true that when they are once setled be they what they will they must be obeyed and complied with Now then in England the Government is in Kings Hereditarily who though they can make no Laws there 's the peoples happiness yet can none be made without them there 's the Princes Prerogative nor can any thing though past both Houses without such Assent have the force and effect of a Law The King's breath like the Almighties once quickens and gives life to that which before was but a dead Form If then the KING be as I think no man dares question it our Lawful and Rightful Sovereign it is no hard matter to find out His Right Heir who is not I think disabled by any Law yet in being to succeed for any cause whatsoever unless the Heir should prove to be a Natural and so uncapable of governing If any offence should disable a Right Heir surely it should be Treason yet though such an Heir were convicted and attainted of Treason if betwixt the Attainder and Execution the King should dye the Attainder ipso facto eo instante is reversed in judgment of Law and such would become King de jure facto so that I think we are in this agreed That a Right Heir to the Crown of England may be set aside concurrentibus his qui in jure requiruntur and those he tells us are the Governor and the governed There is then a possibility of doing it lawfully there is one way and but one and as I allow it were not unlawful if it were so done so he must allow me that till that be done it is and always will be unlawful and perhaps even after that severe for there are no doubt several very worthy persons who possess large Estates in Church-lands which may by Act of Parliament be took from them yet would they think it hard measure if they should and yet it is strange men should think that hard measure and injustice if done to them which themselves think most fit and reasonable to offer to others And surely His ROYAL HIGHNESS has every whit as good Right and Title to the Crown should the KING dye without Issue as those worthy persons can possibly have to their Inheritances If there be any difference it is this That the DUKE's Right is much more ancient than theirs who can Claim from as many hundred years as they can generations and much more I have often observed with scorn and indignation the inclination of most men to speak evil of Dignities even such whose desperate Fortunes render them uncapable of sustaining a loss have an ill word for the Duke make more against him in some mens judgments than all his Personal Services his Quality Right of Blood his Brother's Virtues his Father's Memory and Merit and a Rightful Title from above 600 years can do for him But come we now to the second thing the Argument he uses And first let us observe that the thing he endeavors to prove is That it is lawful to disinherit a Prince if the general good of the People require it To which I have but two words to say that is That if he mean he may be disinherited by the consent of KING and People we have allow'd it before if he mean otherwise he argues against that which he himself has set down before as a Principle but what and how far does he extend the word Prince to an Heir apparent only For it may as well include a Prince Reigning who by his Rule might be deposed and removed when ever the giddy-headed multitude should fansie it to be for their good and who shall tell them it is not so if they believe it Who shall persuade or rather convince the multitude that they are in the wrong it were a less task to repeat Hercules labors This then is a dangerous Position and may be of infinite ill consequence nor does it excuse him to say he lays the power in the Governor that is the King as well as in the people that are governed and that therefore the King can be in no danger for the People was ever but too apt to forget the first part of his Maxim and to exercise their own power to the prejudice of the Governor and that this has been practised and in our memory we have all too great and sad cause to remember One of his Arguments is That the same people at different times have had different Forms of Government and this is true but I do not see what that makes for him For if those different Forms of Government were brought in by a full consent of all persons concerned it has been agreed before if otherwise that such things have been done is no Argument that they were justly and lawfully done He does not shew that the Authors of such change did well in so doing though God might make use of their Evils to work good out of for if he be pleased for the correction of the Prince or punishment of the People to suffer Princes to be removed and others to be placed in their rooms either by the Factions of the Nobility or Rebellion of the People in all such cases the judgment of God who hath power to give and to take away Kingdoms is most just yet the Ministry of Men who execute God's judgments without Commission is sinful and damnable God doth but turn and use Mens unrighteous Acts to the performance of his righteous Decrees The Jews he says had once no Kings and they would have Kings and had What then Did they do well to alter the Government No surely though the secret purpose of God's Eternal Decrees were served and compast by that change yet the desire of alteration was in them a sin and a great one which no man can doubt that has read Samuel's Story Is it not wheat harvest to day I will call upon the Lord and he shall send thunder and rain that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great which ye have done in the sight of the Lord in asking you a King And again the People confess in altering the Government they had sinned for presently upon the Thunder and Rain they tremble and cry out to Samuel That he should pray for his servants to the Lord his God that they died not for they had added unto all their sins the evil to ask for a King so that though he makes use of their asking a King as an Argument for his asserting the Lawfulness of altering Governments when the People require it I do think that God himself declares that it was a sin in them and yet they thought they did for the best and that the general good of all it is

the Kingdom which was at last preserved by a Parliament restoring all to right and declaring young Henry Successor which Stephen was forced to join in to the Exclusion of his Son and had it not been better never to have wrong'd him than for your own sakes to be forced to do him right And these are our Author's Examples which how much they make for his purpose whether they are of sufficient authority to determine so great and so important a matter as a Right to a Crown I leave to the judgment of every impartial Reader The thing he first desires to have granted is the lawfulness of altering Government by the King Lords and Commons and that was never a question as I know or have heard yet whether ignorantly or designedly I know not He mentions no Presidents save that of the Spaniard onely to that purpose the rest are ill Presidents of Princes injuriously and causlesly disinherited by the States onely and not by King and States out of which a reflecting spirit might conclude That though he colour his design with the specious title of King Lords and Commons yet that he would gladly persuade the people that they alone may do it because by many ill Examples it appears they have done so and this we might have more reason to believe for that in his 8th page he says Thus did the Parliament dispose of the Crown in those days so that the authority and assent of the King is but for fashion-sake Now though it appears that either he has set down a Maxim never questioned and therefore not to be proved in laying such power in the King and His two Houses or else disguised another which with all his Examples he has not made out so that I might very well end here I yet do think it not amiss to set down some Examples of as good Authority I am sure and nothing less to the purpose of the other side to prove That how though a people stir and torment themselves never so much God who neither can do nor will suffer wrong has still brought things about and either made right take place again or if for hidden causes he has suffer'd them for a time has yet at last by heavy judgments convinced the world that he does not approve all that he permits and that he will surely be avenged on them who injure even the Divine Majesty by stamping their own wicked deeds with a pretended approbation from Heaven Begin we with the greatest Man that perhaps ever lived Julius Caesar one to whom the State was as much bound to as any man one attended with continual and wonderful success whil'st he obey'd the Government he was born under no sooner had he alter'd that scarce warm in his ill gotten Empire while he was yet imagining those vast Enterprises of compassing the world with his Armies met the reward of his unjustice in that very place and from those very men where and with whom he had all the reason in the world to think himself most secure If ever people had or could have cause to remove a Prince sure the Romans might have done Nero yet what vengeance follow'd him that serv'd them in it Galba how sad and sudden was his destruction the Histories of that great people do sufficiently inform us Innumerable are the Examples abroad but let us see at home The Conqueror himself though he died possest of the Crown which he had won was yet for the many alterations he made in the Church and State so perplext at his death and had so strange a sense of it that he durst not bequeath it to any of his children believing that divine vengeance would follow them for his Crimes and so it did as we shall shew anon and yet who if a Conqueror may not who then shall venture upon Innovations His Sons for the wrong done to Robert their elder Brother or rather Henry for William had it from his Father escaped not justice from Heaven and dyed a violent death And no less evident was that justice when a King must disinherit his own beloved Son and join with a Parliament to acknowledge and pay a young Boy his Right to which natural affection and thirst of Empire must give way The Parliament at the request of Henry afterwards the 4th of that name deposed Richard the 2d and what was Henry's and that Kingdoms reward a life in continual jeopardy always fearing always troubled continually in War Rebellions great and frequent that shook the very Crown of his Head and by whom did Heaven do this by those very men who had lifted him to the top of his ambition and power with the forfeiture of their duty and conscience making them also to perish in the action giving them the reward of Traytors for their first villany But ere we leave this Prince I shall observe what opinion he himself had of his Right though he had an Act of Parliament joined with his nearness of blood for 't however living he carried it at the approach of death he begins to question whether he had done well that is whether the people of England could remove his Cousin and give him the Crown and owns his just doubt to his Son with grief and no doubt with much concern and perplexity of mind Now though he dyed in his Bed and his Son after him yet was his Sons life short the first part filled with follies and the latter with troubles in the very entrance upon the Throne hardly escaping a violent death which however reacht his Son after him who was the visible unfortunate Object of God's justice for the sins of his Grandfather for being full of virtue goodness and piety we cannot imagine his own sins pulled on his head so many judgments a long and miserable life despised and neglected at home conquer'd and thrust out of all abroad still in War because he loved Peace always a loser in every thing unfortunate and those losses coming upon him by degrees till from one to another like Job's calamities the last save his own was the loss of his Sons life more than once deposed twice imprisoned and at last murdered The Parliament impowered Henry the 8th to appoint a Successor by will if he had no Issue by his third Wife by the same power his two Daughters were disinherited yet God in due time made way for both and what was the end of those men who by a Will of Edward the 6th would have set them aside yet had they much colour for so doing for they had been so already by Act of Parliament past 228. of Henry the 8th which Act was indeed repealed by a subsequent 35 of the same King but the latter Act was full of Proviso's Conditions and Limitations and the Interest and Estate of the two Princesses in the Crown made subject to the last Will of that King or his Letters Patents add to this that the colourable pretence of saving Religion which same to necessitate their actions and therefore if it not justifie might at least help to palliate and excuse them Their end was violent Northumberland and his Party fell by the Sword because they would not know and follow the waies of Peace and Right and what was unhappy though most just with them perisht the Lady Jane Grey and her Husband who had no other fault but that of too great an obedience to their Father's wills and pleasures and in the punishment of that most excellent Princess surely God taught the world that not even the glorious pretence of Religion which must needs and did perish when the right Heir gotten though strengthened by a disinheriting Act of Parliament and the Will of a just departed Monarch could justifie their Rebellion Many more presidents I could cite but I shall conclude with this one the Restauration of our present Soveraign which by how much more it was the wonderful effect of an immediate providence not assisted by the arm of flesh so much more it is remarkable to prove our purpose and our position which we laid down a little before That whatever a people may do God will do justice and right to them that suffer wrong The latter part of our Author's Book being an Answer to a Pamplet I never saw I can say nothing to and now if we must end we will do it with a line of his own Book which he sets down as a false but we as a true Principle That Monarchy is of Divine Right and that Princes in England succeed by nature and generation only and not by authority admission or approbation of the people For further Information I refer the Reader to Sir Robert Philmer's Political Discourses And now before I conclude I would have no man to think that I do in all this design to lessen or disparage the Authority of a Parliament I have for those two Houses the highest veneration imaginable and own them joyned with Majesty to be my lawful Governours Nor would I have any man believe that I ether profess or affect the 〈◊〉 Catholick Religion There 's no man does more ardently desire to see the same Religion now establisht by Law continued and secured to us and our posterity together with the King's Person and the establisht Government than my self and it is that which will be worthy of the cares and pains of a Parliament to provide for by the most effectual means alwaies provided they be such as may neither disparage the grave wisdom nor swerve from the High Justice of that great and August Assembly for surely a good end must be compast by like means else all is naught there being nothing more sure than that the unlawful means corrupt and destroy that good end which they lead to and this is that which a Parliament may and I hope will look to when they sit which no doubt they had long since done if by the unreasonable malice of some and mistaken measures of others fears and jealousies had not been carried and fomented to that degree that the interest of our King and his People seemed not to be the same it ever was and I trust ever shall be a good understanding betwixt both Which that it may be increas'd and for ever continue ought to be the prayer of every good English man FINIS