Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	cause_n	die_v	life_n	5,447	5	4.5730	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A97031	Mr. Wallers speech in the House of Commons, on Tuesday the fourth of July, 1643. Being brought to the Barre, and having leave given him by the speaker, to say what hee could for himselfe, before they proceeded to expell him the House. Iuly 14. 1643. Imprimatur, John White.	Waller, Edmund, 1606-1687.	1643 (1643)	Wing W523; Thomason E60_11; ESTC R23547	3,499	8

Mr. Wallers SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS On TUESDAY the fourth of July 1643. Being brought to the Barre and having leave given him by the SPEAKER to say what hee could for himselfe before they proceeded to expell him the HOVSE July 14. 1643. Imprimatur John White LONDON Printed by G. Dexter Anne Dom. 1643. MR. VVALLERS SPEECH IN THE HOVSE of COMMONS On Tuesday the 4th of July 1643. Mr. SPEAKER I Acknowledge it a great mercy of God and a great favour from you that I am once more suffered to behold this Honourable Assembly I mean not to make use of it to say any thing in my own defence by Justification or denyall of what I have done I have already confessed enough to make me appeare worthy not onely to be put out of this House but out of the World too All my humble request to you is that if I seeme to you as unworthy to live as I doe to my selfe I may have the Honour to receive my death from your owne hands and not bee exposed to a Tryall by the Counsell of Warre what ever you shall thinke me worthy to suffer in a Parliamentary way is not like to finde stop any where else This Sir I hope you will be pleased for your owne sakes to grant me who am already so miserable that nothing can be added to my calamity but to be made the occasion of creating a President to your own disadvantage besides the right I may have to this consider I beseech you that the eyes of the world are upon you you governe in Chiefe and of you should expose your owne members to the punishment of others it will be thought that you either want Power or leisure to chastise them your selves nor ltt any man despise the ill consequence of such a President as this will be because hee seeth not presently the inconveniences which may ensue you have many Armies on Foote and it is uncertaine how long you may have occasion to use them Souldiers and Commanders though I know well they of the Parliaments Armie excell no lesle in modesty then they doe in Courage are generally of a Nature ready to pretend to the utmost power of this kind which they conceive to be due to them and may be too apt upon any occasion of discontent to make use of such a President as this In this very Parliament you have not bin without some tast of the experience hereof it is now somewhat more than two yeares since you had an Army in the North paid and directed by your selves and yet you may be pleased to remember they was a considerable number of Officers in that Army which joined in a Petition or Remonstrance to his House taking notice of what some of the Members had said as they supposed to their disadvantage ●nd did little lesse than require them of you 't is true there had bin some tampering with them but what has happened at one time may wisely be thought posible to fall out againe at another Sir I presume but to point you out the danger if it be not just I know you will not doe me the wrong to expose me to this triall if it be just your Army may another time require the same justice of you in their owne behalfe against some other Member who perhaps you would be lesse willing to part with Necessity has of late forced you into untrodden paths and in such a case as this where you have no president of your own you may not do amisse to look abroad upon others States and Senates which exercises the Supreame Power as you now doe here I dare confidently say you shall find none either Antient or Moderne which ever exposed any of their owne order to be tryed for his life by the Officers of their Armies abroad for what he did while he resided among them in the Senate Among the Romans the Practice was so contrary that some inferiour Officers in their Army farre from the City having been sentenced by their Generall or Commanderm chief as deserving death by their Discipline of neverthelesse because they were Senators appealed thither and the cause has received a new hearing in the Senate Not to use more words to perswade you to take heed that you wound not your selves thorough my sides in violating the Priviledges belonging to your own persons I shall humbly desire you to consider likewise the nature of my offence not but that I should be much ashamed to say any thing in diminution thereof God knowes 't is horrid enough for the evill it might have occasioned but if you look near it it may perhaps appear to be rather a Civill then a Martiall crime and so to have Title to a Triall at the Common Law of the Land there may justly be some difference put between me and others in this businesse I have had nothing to doe with the other Army or any intention to begin the offer of violence to any body It was only a civill pretence to that which I then foolishly conceived to he the right of the subject I humbly refer it to your considerations and to your consciences I know you will take care not to shed the blood of Warre in Peace that blood by the law of Warre which hath a right to be tryed by the Law of Peace For so much as concernes my selfe and my part in this businesse If I were worthy to have any thing spoken or patiently heard in my behalfe this might truly be said that I made not this businesse but found it t was in other mens hands long before it was brought to me and when it came I extended it not but restrained it For the Propositions of lecting in part of the Kings Army or offering violence to the Members of this House I ever disallowed and utterly rejected them What it was that moved me to entertaine discourse of this businesse so farre as I did I will tell you ingeniously and that rather as a warning for others than that it make any thing For my selfe it was onely impatience of the inconveniences of the present Warre looking on things with a carnall eye and not minding that which chiefly if not onely ought to have been considered the inestimable value of the Cause you have in hand the Cause of God and of Religion and the necessities you are forced on for the maintenance of the same as a just punishment for this neglect it pleased God to desert and suffer me with a fatall blindnesse to be led on and ingaged in such Counsells as were wholy disproportioned to the rest of my life These Sir my owne Conscience tells me was the cause of my life These Sir my owne Conscience tells me was the cause of my failing and not malice or any ill habit of minde or disposition toward the Common-wealth or to the Parliament for from whence should I have it If you looke on my Birth you will not finde it in my blood I am of a Stock which hath borne you better fruite if you looke on my education it hath been almost from my child-hood in this House and among the best sort of men and for the whole practice of my life till this time if an other were to speake for me he might reasonably say that neither my actions out of Parliament nor my expressions in it have savoured of distrust or malice to the Liberties of the People or Priviledges of Parliament Thus Sir I have set before your eyes both my person and my case wherein I shall make no such defence by denying or extenuating any thing I have done as ordinary Delinquents doe my addresse to you and all my Plea shall onely be such as Children use to their Parents I have offended I confesle it I never did any thing like it before it is a passage unsuitable to the whole course of my life beside and for the time to come as God that can bring light out of darkenesse and hath made this businesse in the event usefull to you so also hath he to me you have by it made an happy discovery of your Enemies and God of my selfe and the evill principles I walke by so that if you looke either on what I have been heretofore or what I now am and by Gods grace assisting me shall alwayes continue to bee you may perhaps thinke me fit to bee an example of your compassion and clemency Sir I shall no sooner leave you but my life will depend on your breath and not that alone but the subsistence of some that are more innocent I might therfore shew you my Children whom the rigour of your Justice would make compleat Orphanes being already Motherlesse I might shew you a Family wherin there are some unworthy to have their share in that marke of Infamy which now threaten us But somthing there is which if I could shew you would move you more then all this it is my Heart which abhorres what I have done more and is more severe to it selfe then the severest Judge can be A heart Mr. Speaker so awakened by this affliction and so intirely devoted to the Cause you maintain that I earnestly desire of God to incline you so to dispose of me whether for life or for death as may most conduce to the advancement therof Sir not to trouble you any longer if I dye I shall dye praying for you if I live I shall live serving you and render you backe the use and imployment of all those dayes you shall adde to my life After this having withdrawn himselfe he was called in againe and being by the Speaker required therto gave them an exact account how he came first to the knowledge of this businesse as also what Lords were acquainted therwith or had engaged themselves therin FINIS