A Defence OF THE CHARTER AND MUNICIPAL RIGHTS OF THE City of London AND THE RIGHTS of other Municipal Cities and Towns of ENGLAND Directed to the Citizens of LONDON By THOMAS HVNT Si populus vult decipi decipiatur London Printed and are to be sold by Richard Baldwin near the Black Bull in the Old-bailey THE greatest EMPIRES and Monarchs in the World as well as Republicks have erected and by their Authorities supported municipal Cities That is to say they have either allowed or given Authority by their Charters and Imperial Rescripts to great Towns to choose their own Officers and Magistrates and to govern themselves by their own Laws so that their Laws were not contrary to the publick Laws of the Soveraign Authority They well knew by this means that great Collective Bodies of their People would be governed more equally and virtuously which would redound to the honour of the Monarch for in that all powers have been continued by him with firm approbation and good liking or derived from him The wise and just administration of such powers and authorities by this means better secured and provided for would commend his Government and give him the hearts of his People and likewise make him a Prince of better and more virtuous Subjects For it is hardly possible that Mankind should miscarry in their own hands It is impossible that there should be such a defection in the communities of men from Wisdom and Virtue that they should not acknowledge honour and prefer them in whomsoever they are found and observed and choose such men into Office that are most conspicuous amongst them by such endowments or at least such as have not disgraced themselves by their vices and folly If by a less heedful choice now and then by inadvertency or surprise a less worthy man is chosen into Office They soon espy their mistake and the mischiefs they suffer under such a Magistrate makes them more curious in their after-choice and gives the succeeding Officer an advantage of making himself more honourable by correcting the evils the negligence of a bad Magistrate had occasioned They found by experience that Governours appointed by the Court were ordinarily Oppressers sought not the Peoples good but their own gain and advantage for that they had no dependance upon the people but on the favour of the Court where no complaint could be heard against them They received no trust from the People nor were promoted by their esteem they consequently were apt to behave themselves as if they owed them no duty and little valued their opinion What can be expected in such Governours but insolency and oppression and an addictedness to serve their Court-Patron beyond what they owe to their Princes pleasure Law is neglected which is the publick will and pleasure of the Prince and they govern themselves by the Secret whispers of the Courtier that prefers them Princes that were most absolute did take themselves bound to govern by such measures that were most expedient to procure the publique weal. They therefore governed by Laws and for the Honor of their high Authority they would not transgress them they governed by Laws that were well advised Councels from which they would not depart and not by Extemporary resolves They knew that nothing did more conduce to the happiness of the people than to have the aptest men appointed to all Offices they did not trust themselves nor their Courtiers nominations or recommendations to make Magistrates in great Cities but committed the choice of them to the people and also gave Towns and Cities power and authority to make orders and rules for the better governing of themselves agreeable to the publick Laws These powers constitute municipal Cities which have been always favoured by the best of Princes The suppressing of Corporations and Communities hath disgraced the Memory of bad Princes so bad that to name them would be a reproach to the best of Kings it hath been practised by Usurpers and Conquerors the better to subdue Countries to their pleasure The Colledges Societies of Rome were a second time put down by Julius Caesar when he got to be perpetual Dictator and was about to ravish the Roman liberty but were by Augustus when he had assured the Government to himself by express Edict restored The Roman suppressed the free Cities in Macedonia when they first Conquered it Mummius their Consul in Greece when Conquered concilia omnia Achaiae Nationum Phocensium Boetorum aut in alia parte Greciae delevit as Livy tells us But after they had submitted to the Romans Antiqua cuique Genti concilia restituta sunt their Cities were restored to their Governments Strabo But after this we are very unfortunate that whilst we enjoy a Prince that hath assured us he will govern by Law that no right or liberties shall be invaded a Prince that wants no Power that is not by unquestionable right and Law established upon him any pretence should be found from our unhappy divisions to make it seem convenient for maintaining the publick peace that all Officers and Magistrates in Corporations must be made at the Courtiers nomination and that too precariously and the Succession such only as shall be by them approved But whatever specious shew of convenience they may have in our present Divisions which have arisen and have been blown up since the Discovery of the Popish Plot by the Conspirators themselves yet when we consider that by this new Form of Corporations it will be in the Power of a Popish Successor to put the Government of all corporated Towns in England into the hands of Papists This project appears to have such a direct tendency and is so certain and infallible a course to extirpate the reformed Religion established by Law That upon a due consideration had of this unavoidable consequence of these Councels His Majesty will retract them we doubt not who hath solemnly declared he will support the Protestant Religion established by Law And punish those officious persons who have to the Scandal of His Majesties Government by force or fraud surrender'd their old Charters to the purpose to submit to such like unheard of modes of incorporation that are not onely inconsistent with the Ends of a Corporation at present but threaten us with an immediate overthrow of the Protestant Religion in case of a Popish Successor It would be a sad Issue of the Discovery of the Popish Plot if after the several endeavors and overt Agreements to consent to Laws for disabling him to change our Religion There should in so short a time after that such a Power be given from our selves as will more effectually enable him to extirpate the reformed Religion than any Law that could be made for preventing thereof could possible thereto disable him To what a madness and phrensy hath our heats and animosities brought us That one party of Protestants should practise to get the Government over another part in such sort and manner as
will infallibly bring up the Papists into all Governments in Cities and Corporation Towns and in consequence thereof give us at the next Turn a Parliament of Papists and Red-coats But this is not all for I know there are many that have no concern for Gods Religion that have no other Religion but Loyalty and believe the onely Diety is Earthly power and Soveraign Authority Yet such have some conscience that the antient Government ought to continue and that attempts to change it are criminal in the Advisers I shall therefore add that this new Mode of incorporating Cities and Towns doth ipso facto change the Government For that one of the three States an essential part of the Government which is made up of the Representatives of the People and ought to be chosen by the People will by this means have five Sixths parts of such Representatives upon the matter of the Courts nomination and not of the Peoples choice What will be the consequence of such a Parliament I leave all considering men sadly to weigh and ponder and whether this is not a change of the Government let the Advisers thereof in time resolve themselves Amongst Plutarchs Apothegmas I find this saying of Dionysius the Tyrant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is the Laws of a City may be wronged but the Laws of nature cannot be violated the nature of things will not change at pleasure the continuing of the old name doth not continue the old constitution after an essential change Res nolunt decipi Nor will the Nation contentedly see the Government changed we retain Loyalty enough to prevent it and our loyalty is strengthned with our concern for our Religion and a National interest against Popery Our Enemies know that they can never prevail and bring their design of changing our Religion to effect Without first changing the Government and the present constitution of Parliaments To make the Nation therefore obedient to their design we are to have a Parliament of their nomination by this new mode of incorporating Towns Dr. Bradys President fol. 249. of writs directed to the Sheriffe to Summon one Knight for a County and one Citizen for a City named in the writ in 27 E. 3. which appears by the record it self not to be a Summons to Parliament is not of weight enough to make it downright lawful for the King to name who shall be of the House of Commons Obliquandi sunt sinus by this side-wind they may gain the point But to prepare the People for admitting this illusion to pass upon them our latest Parliaments are to be disgrac't A Cabal takes upon themselves to Censure and arraign their proceedings and expose them to the Nation under what misrepresentations they please because they would not be confin'd to their Will and pleasure whereas every mans loyalty certainly is to be measured by his agreeableness to their projects They endeavour to make the Nation believe that a convention of the best bred Gentlemen in England of the greatest fortunes do not understand the interest of the King and Kingdom nor are so faithful to it as a few men got together by chance that are accumulating honors and making their fortunes by notable projects upon the Government Tho unhappy they are that they have not yet made themselves conspicuous either for their Wisdom or Virtue But whatever that great Assembly resolves in any matters That by the Laws and Customs of Parliament fall under their deliberation tho Kings have the liberty of dissenting as they have likewise a liberty of dissenting from the Kings desires for no Law can be made without them and they who have the Power to give moneys can deny it when askt it is a Crime to Censure and blame them And a Crime of a high nature it must needs be in any Subject of this Government for that it tends to the destruction of the Government it self But endeavours to lay them aside is Treason against the King his Crown and Dignity for that it will make him a very mean King or turn him into a Wicked and Miserable Tyrant And therefore our best Kings have always had a high Regard to their Parliaments and if it be a Crime to dishonor the King it is so likewise to disgrace Parliaments And he is a dolt or a Papist and a Traytor to the Government that doth not thus conclude and determine If it be a Scandalum Magnatum to reproach a mean Judge for erring and mistaking in his Office It is insufferable that a vile Pamphleteer should revile the States of the Realm for the exercise of their high and uncontroulable Authority such insolencies against the Government ought not to be respited untill doomsday or the Sitting of a Parliament But ought immediatly to be prosecuted by every man that loves his Country and the publick peace to condigne punishment But if these arts should prevail to bring about a change in our Government as they cannot sure in the Reign of our present gracious King who hath given us assurance in his publick declarations against such fears yet our Enemies know that their numbers are not visibly great And they can have no hopes of subduing the Nation to their Religion by their own numbers and by their own proper strength They have therefore engaged a party of Protestants to their assistance by raising in them apprehensions of a party of Protestants which they call dissenters as dangerous to the Government and the Church of England against whom therefore they ought in every thing to be contrary Many Protestants they have thus abused and divided from the true intrest of the Church of England and have engaged them in courses that tend to her destruction under the pretext of their being contrary to her Enemies the dissenters They are taught to hate a Presbyterian as a Jesuit or to have as much kindness for a Jesuit as a Presbyterian which will better serve the purpose of an Observator This Frace-maker and Scaramuchi to the vain youth of the nation is ever enterchanging the Characters of men disguising truth with colours of falshood pleasantly deceiving you with the shiftings and turns of his inept Wit and making himself merry with the abuse confounding things of the most separate nature to embroyle us to do us into confusion and to make the Nations Tragedy If the Church of England had not been divided by these Arts and mingled with her Enemies the Church of England united would have been able to have defended her self against all the Power of the Popish Faction if it were much stronger than it is and by an easy Temperament have in time cur'd the frowardness of the Dissenters and accommodated the Schism that the Papists the irreconcileable Enemyes of our Religion at first occasion'd and at present by these Methods manage and improve to its Destruction The Division that our Enemys have made amongst you for this purpose is that which opposeth your Charter and the continuance of your
3. Numb 5. the like was done by the very Writ of Summons of Parliament 21 E. 3. part 2. Dors Memb. 9. and in open Parliament 37 Ed. 3. Rot. Parl. N. 2. The Divines that have no care how to prevent the impendent Evils will allow us at least Prayers and Tears Sure then then they ought to give us leave to petition the Throne and shed the Tears of Suppliants at the Foot-stool of His Majesty When they encourage men in their importunities to God Almighty by remembring the Parable that our Saviour used to that purpose of the unjust Judge that neither feared God nor reverenced man and yet did right to the Widow at her importunity sure they do allow petitioning his Vicegerent We cannot believe they pray in secret to God Almighty unless they will petition His Majesty openly for putting a stop to the incursions of Popery upon us Our Enemies the Papists cannot inwardly condemn our Petitions as unlawful tho' they are afraid of them for that they may possibly obtain to prevent their Design A bloody Assassinate and Cut-throat is not made more cruel by the wailings and passionate beseechings of the innocent Man for his Life Though they give the Villain some trouble and make it more uneasy to him to do the feat by the regrets which he suffers from his Humanity awakened by Pity moving intreaties and expostulations But it is suspected you are like to have little success in your intentions to destroy the Charter in Course of Law to which you are perversly acted by your displeasure against the Dissenters and others whom you causlesly hate and unreasonably oppose for their sake And therefore you have proceeded by the way of fact and have procured that the great Offices of the City are executed by Men not duly thereto chosen for the bringing this about you have used such bad arts as would quite destroy your credit and shut you out of all Commerce if they were practised in your private dealings in your Trades and Occupations If you seriously reflect and consider the methods that have been used for that purpose and will allow the same Rule which is observed by you in your private transactions and trade for publick affairs and administration of publick rights which are in their nature Sacred of a publick concern the violation of them more hurtful scandalous and criminal and in this your Consideration also will lay aside your factious animosities against the other party to which you have furiously made your selves opposite you will be herein self condemn'd I will not remember the particulars of fact they are fresh in your memory and your own thoughts if any thing must make you wise and recover your understandings But by this Course you have Evacuated your Charter in fact and have already Officers of a Forreign nomination You have given trouble and disgrace to the Old Sheriffs that were duly chosen to their Office and acquitted themselves faithful to the Rights of the Charter not only depriv'd them of the reward that is due to a faithful and strenuous discharge of so difficult an Office but blame them and reproach them and for their good deed sake go about to deprive the City of a free choice of such Officers for the time to come Who will be most gratifyed by these proceedings with little recollection you may easily conclude They haue already condemned the Charter and City and have executed the Magistrates in Effigie upon the Stage in a Play called the Duke of Guise frequently acted and applauded intended most certainly to provoke the rabble into tumults and disorder The Roman Priest had no success God be thanked when he animated the People not to suffer these same Sheriffs to be carried through the City to the Tower Prisoners Now the Poet hath undertaken for them being kicked three or four times a Week about the Stage to the Gallows infamously rogued and rascalled to try what he can do toward making the Charter forfeitable by some extravagancy and disorder of the People which the Authority of the best governed Cities have not been able to prevent sometimes under far less provocations But this ought not to move the Citizens when he hath so malitiously and mischievously represented the King and the Kings Son nay and his favorite the Duke too to whom he gives the worst strokes of his unlucky fancy He puts the King under the person of H. 3d. of France who appeared in the head of the Parisian Massacre The Kings Son under the person of the Duke of Guise who concerted it with the Queen Mother of France and was slain in that very place by the righteous judgment of God where he and the Queen Mother had first contrived it The Duke of Guise ought to have represented a great Prince that had inserved to some most detestable Villany to please the rage or lust of a Tyrant Such great Courtiers have been often sacrificed to appease the furies of the Tyrants guilty conscience to expiate for his Sin and to attone the People Besides that a Tyrant naturally stands in fear of Ministers of mighty wickedness he is always obnoxious to them he is a slave to them as long as they live they remember him of his guilt and awe him These wicked Slaves become most imperious masters They drag him to greater evils for their own impunity than they first perpetrated for his pleasure and their own ambition But such are best given up to publick Justice But by no means to be assassinated Untill this age never before was an assassination invited commended and encouraged upon a publick Theatre It is no wonder that Trimmers so they call men of some moderation of that party displease them For they seem to have Designs for which it behoves them to know their men they must be perfectly wicked or perfectly deceived of the Catiline make bold and without understanding that can adhere to men that publiquely profess Murthers and applaud the Design Caius Caesar to give unto Caesar the things that are Caesars was in the Catiline Conspiracy and then the word was he that is not with us is against us for the instruments of wickedness must be men that are resolute and forward and without consideration or they will deceive the design and relent when they enterprize But when he was made Dictator and had some pretences and a probability by means less wicked and mischievous to arrive at the Government his words was he that is not against us is with us But to Pompey only it belonged and to his cause or the like cause to the Defenders of antient established Governments of the English Monarchy and Liberties to say they that are not with us are against us in internecino bello in attacks upon Government medii pro hostibus habentur neutral men are Tray-tors and assist by their indifferency to the Destruction of the Government As many as applaud this play ought to be put under sureties of the peace and yet not one
municipal rights and in this you of that Division do minister to their Design As many as are for destroying the Charter are for no Parliament or for the new designed Constitution of Parliaments have more hatred against the Dissenters than Zeal against Popery Their Loyalty is Slavery their Religion the Princes pleasure They are not for a legal Defence of their Religion but abandon it to neglect mock us with Prayers and Tears and expose us to Martyrdom plead for a Popish Successor and are forward advocates against their Religion Lives and Liberty invite Tyranny call for Persecution seem fond of Fire and Faggot Some of little understanding among you that thus behave your selves are excusable as misguided by som of your Ministers who are in good earnest begging Preferments Dignitys and Benefices for themselves by offering and betraying up our Church to a voluntary Martyrdom But these good men and merciful do not intend to singe a Finger of their own It is enough for them to commend Martyrdom The Honor they do thereby to the Christian Religion doth deserve they should be exempted It is too much in all reason both to do and suffer and to exhibit both active and passive obedience It is wonderful that that cause that could not yet draw one professed Popish Priest to write for it tho' so much it is for their interest to have it defended because it is not by any colour of reason to be defended they can be any thing it seems but Fools for their Religion and they will not so disgrace it It is a wonder that that cause hath found Writers and Preachers for it of our Protestant Divines But the Roman Priests have our Church in Derision certainly for the sake of the dishonesty weakness or folly of these men The most fitting return to these men is a scornful silence or rather to note them with ignominy for undertaking what the Roman Priests are asham'd of That which is too hard for the Learning and Wit of the Roman Clergy to manage with any Advantage to their Design some of our Church-men have undertaken without any moderate Talent of either to their own shame dishonor to our Church nay she is like to perish dishonorably by this means and her destruction is to come from her self Besides the dishonesty of such an undertaking is notorious in our Ministers The Priests of the Popish Religion in France did not write against the Exclusion of the King of Navarre from the Crown of France Id quamcunque decet maxime quod maxime est suum Most certainly therefore it doth not become a Protestant Minister to tye his People to the Stake to kindle the Papists Fires and to be their Hang-men and Executioners To be Sollicitors for the Abolition of that Religion they profess and are bound to teach and propagate But such men as these have helpt to make the Division of those Men that are against Charters and Governments of municipal Cityes and Towns which are the greatest defences against Popery more numerous But to make the Number less and to sift you to the Bran I pray reflect a little For you cannot be ignorant of their devices for the subverting of our antient Government that Popery may steal in upon us and surprize us which hath been in this last Age by various Methods of wickedness compassed But all their devices have been hitherto defeated and frustrated The City hath recovered out of the ashes to which the Popish Fires reduced it Armies have been disdanded and their Plot against the Kings life detected and brought into noon day-light declared prosecuted and punished by that very Parliament that the Popish Conspirators attempted to corrupt to betray our Government But that they could never obtain from that Parliament though obliquely it gave them many Assistances That Parliament was a Parliament of famous Loyalty Yet they disbanded Armies and never legitimated the Guards detected the Papists firing the City opposed an alliance with France addressed for a War impeached obnoxious Ministers D L. E D. c. kept the purse of the Nation opposed general indulgence and the destruction thereby intended by the Conspirators of the Church of England the Bulwark of the Protestant Religion and declared the Popish Plot. Against this Parliament they could never have objected the mischiefs of that in forty one If there was no other reason therefore for dissolving that Parliament our Conspirators had from this end only sufficient reason to get it dissolved Dissolve them they might disgrace them with such imputations they could not But the subsequent Parliaments though consisting principally of the same members prosecuting the same design acting by the same measures and in the same methods for the preservation of our Government and Religion Though with some accession of zeal which the inveterate evil growing more bold audacious and enterprizing did occasion and require are therefore charged with designs upon the Government and of all the Evils that followed forty one again to be Acted over upon this Nation And by this trick and the deceivableness of mankind they have brought it about that the Conspirators themselves have gotten the reputation with some abused men of the truly Loyal even for their having Parliaments in contempt And those that are truly so are charged for men factious and seditious and of the forty one leaven for that they esteem Parliaments to be part of the Government Parliaments themselves made odious or at least not desirable and the true Government at least suspended and ready to be abolished or made quite another thing under the old name for the better subverting with some colour our antient Government and the English Liberty But whatever is pretended the last Parliaments had no greater fault than this viz. That they did make some overtur's for reducing the Schismes and making the terms of the Communion of our Church receptive of the dissenters least they should joyn with the Papists against her for such an indulgence as would quite destroy our Church and is utterly inconsistent with any national Church whatsoever this would have rendred the Popish conspiracy desperate Since that a greater hatred hath been rais'd against the dissenters And it is brought about that some Churchmen are grown angry therefore with Parliaments and are become willing they should be laid aside as not friendly to their order and it is no wonder if they have seduc'd some of you of less consideration to joyn with them in such sentiments Heavy things are laid to the charge of the Dissenters at present though it is not long since they embraced them and since that time they are not a jot the worse save that they have shewed themselves steadily averse to Popery and that they are not to be bribed off by any assurance of a common Indulgence The Dissenters are represented and exposed as Enemies to the Church of England for which the Conspirators have undoubtedly an unfeigned kindness if you will believe them they get them persecuted