the next how he uses you and why you would not gratify your sweet self with this goodly Sight 4. Your Villains are ever and anon checking me with my being convicted for two pretended Perjuries especially a Friend of yours in a certain Place where your Name is sometimes mentioned but not much to the Advantage of you or your Villanous Crew You being a Man of great Judgment and Conscience I ask you whether or no for such a Villain to be in a Conspiracy against the Life of the King with three Cousin-Germans at once or to have a Hand in or justifying the forging of a Seal to hold an Estate or suborning of Witnesses to swear that that was as false as any thing under the Sun could be true whos 's own dear Relation died upon the Spot with a false Oath in his Mouth ought not rather to have held his Tongue and let me alone and sat down with silence till he had cleared himself and Family in the first place The Fellow had once a Command but wanting Courage Conduct Honour and Honesty he was fairly dismissed If you are willing I suppose he is ready to serve you in a mean Capacity a Footman rather than fail being conscious in himself that his Reputation in the World will not engage him to a much greater Trust Nay Sir he may make a Priest if you please for I think he is too lewd to be a Layman I have more Questions to ask you but I will not give you the trouble now but ask you only how you do and how my Landlady and the little Cub have their Health I suppose you have kept a merry Christmass at St. Germains and I hope you will keep Christmass there or elsewhere abroad till you draw your last Breath I understand the French King takes much pleasure in your Company I do not envy his Happiness in the least and shall no more mourn for it than an old Friend of yours did for his Father's Death after he had cheated the old Gentleman of a fair Estate and left him four hundred Pounds per Annum as a sine Cura the better to enable him to drink Ale in his old Age He now and then bellows for you as loud as some Cattel do when they want Fodder with whom he hath had to do in his Life-time O had the Courage of his Hands kept pace with the Rhodomontades of his villanous Tongue for ought I know he and Sir John Fenwick might have done Wonders towards your changing the Air you live in I have seen him hugging that Traitor as the Devil hugg'd the Witch and being a dutiful obedient Child to his old Sire you would do well to send the Tiler's Son to learn of him But I hasten to your Charge and proceed to the twenty second Article which you will do well to consider Article XXII YOUR Brother and you were very industrious in misapplying of the Taxes and Subsidies given by Parliament When they gave Money for any one or more particular Uses it is well known that for the most part they were not answered to the great hazard of the Kingdom But here I must particularize 1. The Parliament in lieu of several Advantages the Crown made by which publick House-keeping was maintained in your Father's Reign to the Glory of the English Nation gave the Hereditary Excise and took those Advantages away by Act of Parliament who thought of nothing less than that the Publick Tables should have been kept up But you and your Brother having travelled abroad and having not been much troubled with the smell of Victuals when you were come home you began your Show with open House-keeping but it was so offensive to your tender Stomachs that it was laid aside judging your manner of living at Bruxels more sutable to the Constitutions of your Bodies And upon laying down of House-keeping you know what use the Hereditary Excise was put to against the Intent and Meaning of the Act of Parliament that settled it 2. The Customs were given by Parliament in a great measure for the Support of the Navy which is the Bulwark of England But how they were applied to that Use let all the World judg part of the Customs of England having been paid in Pensions and a great part for secret Services I am sure when the King had occasion either to repair or fit out a Fleet or build Ships a particular Tax was made for those Purposes 3. Your Brother was forced to borrow a great Sum of Money of the City nay several in the Year 1664 at which many stood in admiration how he should lie under such a necessity of Money 'T is true there was a great Army to be paid off and disbanded but for that the Convention had made a good Provision had it not been misapplied and he had the Excise settled on him valued at 500000 l. per Annum the Customs then valued at 600000 l. the Chimney-Money 150000 l. the Arrears of twelve Months Assessment commencing the 25th of December 1659 The Post-Office which was valued at 50000 l. per Annum and the Arrears of the Excise and new Imposts And in the second Session of the Long Parliament he had given him 1270000 l. and a Benevolence and 60000 l. to the poor Cavaleers to gratify them in some measure for drinking the King's Health and a farther Relief to the poor maimed Officers who had served your Father in the late Wars he wickedly raised against his People and also four intire Subsidies by the Laity and four by the Clergy besides the forfeited Estates of those that put your Father to death whether in England or Ireland Now seeing after all this your Brother was in Debt so soon after his Restoration can we conclude any otherwise than that you joined together to spend those Revenues Taxes c. in other ways than the Parliament intended Pray how much did you receive out of the Treasury for Secret Service to maintain a whole Regiment of Trapans from one end of the Kingdom to the other If there was such a necessity of trapanning why was not the Parliament moved for an Establishment to keep those Rogues that drew poor Men into Plots and then swore against them nay for hearing the Treason they themselves spake in constant pay But when the Parliament had given Money for the Honour and Safety of the Government you spent it upon these Men that disturbed its Peace and rendred it vile and contemptible And the Money given to fit out a Fleet was expended chiefly in rigging up a Fleet of Land Fire-ships a parcel of nasty Whores that were even the Scandal of their own Profession of Whoring as also the much admired Pimps and Bawds 4. You know the Parliament at Oxford in 1665 gave a mighty Tax of 2500000 l. by which we thought the War against the Dutch would have been carried on with great Vigour and Application the Money being given for that End and truly we did provide a
who being a free People hated such a standing Force Now why your dissembling Rascals should use this as an Argument I am yet to learn And as for that Objection that it would have destroyed the Monarchy by a Law and taken all sort of Power from the King and made him less than a Duke of Venice this was as false as could be for as I have said before so I must again that it is evident beyond Contradiction that the Bill of Exclusion could not prejudice the legal Monarchy which your Brother did enjoy with all the Rights and Powers that his Ancestors ever claim'd because many Acts of like nature have passed not only in England but in your quondam antient Kingdom of Scotland without danger of diversting the Monarchs of their legal Power The Preservation of a Government consists in and depends upon an exact Adherence to its Principles on which it was founded and the essential Principle of the English Monarchy being that well-proportioned Distribution of Powers whereby the Law at once provides for the Greatness of the Sovereign and the Safety of the People for this Reason our Ancestors have been more careful to preserve inviolable the Government than to favour any personal Pretences And in your Case we followed the Examples of other Nations I meet with none in Story so slavishly addicted to any Person or Family as to admit of a Prince who openly professed a Religion contrary to that established amongst them it would be easy to produce a Multitude of Examples of those who have rejected Princes for Reasons of far less Weight than the Difference of Religion and this without endangering the Monarch's Power or the Subject's Right therefore your Party talked like Fools when they said the Bill of Exclusion would have divested the King of his Power nothing could have made a King of England so much look like a Duke of Venice as one of the lowsy Expedients your Party proposed to the Houses of Parliament 7. Another Argument against the Bill of Exclusion was That it would have led the Parliament to attempt other great and considerable Changes and thereby endangered the whole Government and the Peace of the Nation Now what your Villains would have had the Nation to understand by this Change is worthy of Consideration Therefore first if by a Change they meant a Change of the Constitution of the Government let me tell you that Hell could never have forged a more villanous Lie than those wicked Wretches did that they might in conjunction with you instil such Thoughts into the Mind of the King as might effectually alienate his Soul from the Use of Parliaments It is evident even to these Hell-born Wretches that there was no Vote or Proposition in either of those Parliaments that could give any Ground for such a malicious Reflection and therefore in this Matter we that were Lookers-on might reasonably charge your Brother and you and your whole Party with a malicious Design against all Parliaments in thus arraigning the whole Body of the Nation upon those ill grounded and malicious Suggestions I am sure this did not become the Grandeur and Justice of Princes nor was agreeable to the Measures of Prudence and Wisdom by which you should have governed yourselves And now Sir I will give the true Reason why you thus delighted in these Men viz. your hating Parliaments being afraid they should have called you and them to account for your high Crimes and Misdemeanours by this Means together with the Inclinations of your dear Brother you so swayed him that you could never want Grounds to dissolve not only three such Parliaments but threescore if there had been Occasion In the second Place Sir If you and your Admirers had understood by attempting great and important Changes that the Parliament would have besought the King that you might no longer have the Government in your Hands that your villanous Conspirators should no longer preside in his Councils nor possess all the great Offices of Trust in the Kingdom that our Ports Garisons and Fleet should no longer be governed by those that were at your Devotion that Marks of Favour and Characters of Honour should no more be placed upon such as the Wisdom of the Nation had adjudged Favourers of Popery or Pensioners to the French King these I confess were great and important Changes such as became English Protestants to believe were designed by those Parliaments and would have been by any other Parliament your Brother should have called in his time and such as the People of England would have prayed for and left the Success to Almighty God who governs the Hearts of Kings and Princes Truly without these Changes the Bill of Exclusion would have signified little it might have provoked but not disabled your wicked Party Nay the Money the Nation must have paid for it would have been used to hasten your Return upon us 8. Another Argument used against the Bill of Exclusion was your great Grace and Favour for your Countrey and the Excellency of your Temper and Vertue Surely Sir if you had heard these Men magnify you for your excellent personal Qualifications you would have spit in their Faces and told them they lied for the Violence of your natural Temper was sufficiently known and your Vehemency in exalting the Prerogative in your Brother's Reign beyond its due Bounds and the Principles of your cursed Religion which carried you to all imaginable Excesses of Cruelty convinced all Mankind that there was a Necessity of excluding you rather than to leave you the Name and place the Power in a Protector for in good truth they must have looked upon it as the greatest Folly to have made such a Change in the Government which would have been a Means to destroy and not preserve the Government Sir they saw your Temper that you who was bred up in such Principles of Politicks as made you in love with Arbitrary Power and bigotted to that Religion which always propagates it self by Blood could never bear with such Shackles as would even disgust a Prince of the meekest Disposition this was your Temper and how it is amended since you placed your self at St. Germains I suppose your Followers can tell better than I. But what Regard and Favour you have born to this Nation was well seen from your first Return to England in 1660 to your leaving it in 1688. You engaged it in two wicked Wars with the Dutch and a third with France I would not have your Cattel low too much of your Grace and Favour but truly if you had any for this Nation you was pleased to conceal it except in two things in which you did England the most signal Service that ever Man did the one was destroying your Brother and the other your running away and if you will keep on the other Side of the small River that parts France from us we will forgive you all the Faults of your Life But notwithstanding all the Noise
hated Parliaments for your Father of ever-notorious Memory hated them and therefore tried Conclusions with Parliaments for 12 Years together 'T is true he did call that blessed Parliament in 1640 that would have redressed England's Grievances had they not been prevented by the factious Spirits of some whose Zeal was not according to Knowledg Dr. Gauden tells you that your Father call'd that Parliament in Novemb. 3. 1640. Not more by the Advice of others or by the Necessity of his own Affairs than by his own Choice and Inclination I could expect no better from a Baal's Priest than to begin with a Lie For what Man that lived in that Time knew not how the Case stood with Charles the First And besides if I had not Access to a King yet I could discover his Inclinations either by those that were about him and in favour with him or by the Currant of his Actions all which I say testified to the World your Father's strange aversness to a Parliament Those that were near him and most in favour with him were Courtiers and Rascally Prelats Vermin whose chief study was to find out how he stood inclined and to imitate him exactly and that which was his Will was their Doctrine concerning Parliaments and so it was with you But that I may proceed in some Method I shall shew 1. That Parliaments are the Right of the People 2. That they are an essential Part of the Government 3. That you hated them tho such and by consequence was an Enemy to the Government of England 1. That Parliaments are the Right of the People of England which they may claim in order to have their Grievances redressed the common Safety of the Nation provided for and their Religion Laws and Liberties secured For call to mind with delight if you can the wonderful Discovery and undeniable Confirmation of the Popish Plot which designed so much Ruin and Mischief to these Nations in all things both Civil and Sacred and the unanimous Sense and Censure of so many Parliaments upon it together with some Acts of Publick Justice upon many of the Traitors The Nation was not without hopes that since that cursed Design of introducing Popery and Slavery and the Murder of your Brother was discovered for the space of 30 Months at least some effectual Remedies should have been applied to prevent the Attempts of your Cut-throat Party upon us the better to secure the Religion and Government of the Nation and the Person of the King But by sad Experience we found that notwithstanding the vigorous endeavours of three Parliaments â—o provide proper and wholsome Laws to answer both Ends by your influencing a pack of Villains you and your Party were so prevalent as to stifle in the Birth those Righteous Endeavours of our Parliaments by many surprizing Prorogations and Dissolutions whereby the Fears and Dangers of the People daily encreased and the Spirits of you and your Party heightned to renew and multiply fresh Plots against the Religion Laws and Liberties of the Realm I will lay down some known Maxims that relate to a King and Parliament of England 1. You know the Kings of England can do nothing as Kings but what of Right they ought to do 2. The King can neither do wrong nor die 3. The King's Prerogative and the Subjects Liberty are determined by Law 4. The King has no Power but what the Law gives him and is called King from ruling well Rex à benè Regendo viz. according to Law and is only a King whilst he rules well but a Tyrant when he oppresses 5. That the Kings of England never appear more in their Glory and Majestick Sovereignty than in Parliaments 6. That the Prerogative of the Crown can do no wrong nor can it be a Warrant for so doing Now Sir having laid down some Truths relating to the Kings of England give me leave to lay before you some that relate to the Parliament 1. Then I say that the Parliament of England constitutes and gives a Being to the Government of England 2. A Parliament of England is to the Government what the Soul is to the Body which is only able to apprehend and understand the Symptoms of all Diseases threatning the Body Politick 3. A Parliament is the Bulwark of our Liberty the Boundary which keeps the People of England from the Inundation of Tyrannical Power and Government 4. Parliaments do make new and abrogate old Laws reform Grievances settle the Succession grant Subsidies and in a word may be called the Great Physician of the Kingdom From all which it appears if Parliaments are necessary in our Constitution that they must have their Times of Session and Continuation to provide Laws essentially needful for the being and well-being of the People and for redressing all Publick Grievances arising either for want of Laws or of undue execution of those in being or otherwise And sutable hereunto are those Provisions made by the Wisdom of our Forefathers as recorded by them both in the Common and Statute Law 1. Sir you was an excellent Man at the Common Law and so were your Gang at St. Germains and tho they have little occasion for it there yet I may refresh their Memories for having had so much leasure to study the Excellency of the French Religion and Government our Common Law may be forgotten by them Nay Rhyming Jack Carryl himself since the loss of his Estate may have resolved to forget the Law since he will not have so much occasion for it as he might have had if he had chosen Sussex instead of St. Germains and so may be at a loss to inform you I therefore give you a touch or so not that I pretend to cure the King 's Evil of the Common Law what it saith concerning Parliaments I pray Sir remember what old Coke saith one of your Grand-father's Judges who was a famous Lawyer and persecuted by him for you know what but never had the Courage to run away he tells us in one of his Law Books which your old Friend Jenner swears he never understood That the Common Law is founded in the immutable Law and Light of Nature agreeable to the Law of God requiring Order Government Subjection and Protection containing certain antient Vsages warranted by the Holy Scriptures and because given to all is therefore called Common Sir if you will send for your old Drudg Frank Withens I dare aver he cannot give you a better for his Life But you will say What is this to Parliaments Well Sir since this may pass the Understanding of your Dispensing Rogues I will tell you what he saith in his 9th Book in the Preface they are his own Words in the Book called the Mirror of Justice in which appears the whole Frame of the Antient Common Laws of this Realm from the Time of K. Arthur An. 516 till near the Conquest which treats also of the Officers as well as the Diversity and Distinction of the Courts of
had your spiritual Myrmidons throughout the Kingdom roaring from their Pulpits against the Proceedings of those Parliaments by the Instruction of some of their Superiours this by the help of new Matter the Court instructed them in lasted several years so that they were rather Court-Agents to carry on some design than Ministers of Christ and Stewards of the Mysteries of God But alas when the Tithe-pig began to squeak they turned their Discourses another way Truly Sir to give the pious Herd of your Ecclesiastical Swine their due they will do any thing to serve you if they can but enjoy their Swill and Grains poor Wretches I never met with any of them that would lose a Meal to save either King or Kingdom 8. You had your Rascals in the most publick Coffee-houses who spent their time chiefly in railing at Parliaments that they were unuseful and were bringing 40 and 41 again upon the Stage that they had a Design to ruin the King by giving no Money and starving his Servants nay Sir they were so insolent as to offer all Indignity to those Gentlemen that had served in any of those Parliaments for doing of which they were not only incouraged by your Grace and Favour in your Smiles but were also well rewarded The Particulars might be set down but I leave them to reply upon those that shall pretend to answer this or any part of it provided they put their Names to their Answer as I have done to this my Memorial otherwise I shall not take notice of any Scribler in your Party You have your Friend Sherridan one of your Devil's Brokers in Ireland and honest Togra Smith another excellent Partisan of yours nay you have a Set of Case-hardned Villains that would if they durst be barking at the Government the Rogues stand still for want of Business I pray give them orders to disprove any part of the truth of what I now write if you do you have a notorious Rogue the Quondam Bp. of Kilmore that walks in your Quondam Park of St. James's he is still a Malignant and hates our English Government you would do well to send for him for he would be a main Champion with you in the Case of governing by Parliaments The Sum of all which is this You may reflect upon the various ways you and your Party took to expose three Parliaments by which you shewed your self an Enemy of all English Parliaments and therefore we could not but judg who were the Men that would poison the People and change the Government even the Enemies of the Constitution and of those who endeavoured to preserve the old English Government Fourthly The unreasonableness of the ill usage of those Parliaments shews you an Enemy to Parliaments in general You cannot but remember what amaâ—â—ment seized every good Man to see two of the greatest Parliaments England ever knew dissolved within the space of three Months I confess the Kings of England have in a great measure been intrusted by the Kingdom with appointing the times of the Sitting and Dissolving of Parliaments but lest thro' defect of Age Experience or Understanding they should forget or mistake our Constitution or by Passion private Interest or the Influence of evil Counsellors be so far misled as not to assemble Parliaments when the publick Affairs require it or should declare them dissolved before the Ends of their Meeting were accomplished the Wisdom of our Forefathers has provided divers Laws both for holding Parliaments annually and oftner if need be and that they should not be put off till all the Bills were passed all Petitions answered and Grievances â—edressed But to be more particular with you I will ask you a few Questions which if any of your Teagues can answer me on your behalf they shall be my Counsellors I assure you if ever I come to be Duke of Modena 1. What Precedent can be produced for such a Dissolution amongst our antient Records in Parliament held in the times of our antient English Kings We are taught by the Writ of Summons that Parliaments are never called without the Advice of the Council and the usage of all Ages has never been to send them away without the same Advice Now if these Methods of calling and dismissing Parliaments were safe then not to pursue them was to expose the King to the Censures and Reflections of the whole Nation for an Action not only illegal and uncustomary but also very ungrateful to the People 2. Have not the Laws of the Land taken great care to make the King always dear to the People and to preserve his Person sacred in their Esteem by wisely preventing his appearing in any Action that may be unacceptable to them Now was the Dissolution of three Parliaments nay four in the compass of 26 Months acceptable to the People Ought you not then to have used your Interest with him to have acted according to the Laws and Customs of Parliaments which would have rendred you both acceptable to the People And had he given himself leasure to have had this debated in Council because then his Counsellors must have answered for their Advice you and your Brother had remained Honourable in the Eyes of the Nation and not have been judged guilty of such Orders as were not only irregular but also very illegal 3. Suppose you should say the King commanded it to be done and his Ministers were bound to obey and therefore are justified yet Sir let me tell you that the Ministers that advised and assisted in the Administration of Affairs could not justify an unlawful Action under Colour of the King's Commands since all his Commands contrary to Law were in themselves void which is the true reason of that old Maxim in the Law That the King can do no wrong a Maxim not only true in self but safe for a Prince and Subject too for certainly it was Nonsense in your Brother's Favourites to think of excusing their many Enormities under pretence of their Master's Command The truth is it was so unreasonable that the Privy Council was ignorant of the thing and surprised at it not being worthy to be trusted with it but the French Whore near St. James's House had the News of the Parliament's being to be dissolved two days before we knew of it at Oxford so that it was a Work of darkness concerted between Barillon and Portsmouth and the King resolved upon it by their Advice 4. Would it not have been unreasonable in your Brother and you to have dismissed the 12 Judges from sitting in Term-time and from going the several Circuits that Justice and Judgment might not be done Now that Parliaments should meet and sit for Redress of Grievances and making good and wholesome Laws by the same Sacred Tie whereby at his Coronation he obliged himself to let his Judges sit to distribute Justice every Term and in both the Seasons of the Year in their Circuits and to preserve inviolably all the Rights and Liberties of
Brother's Debts and the Parliament would give no Money Come Sir a word or two to the point in general and then I will descend to some Particulars 1. What would not the Parliament give Money to support the Alliances I 'll assure you they were a parcel of naughty Boys indeed to be so refractory I pray Sir with whom were those Alliances made with the Dutchess of Cleveland Alas pious chaste Lady she had been a Cast-whore for several Years the triple League between your Brother her Grace and Mother Knight had been broke for many Years and she had made a new Alliance with her good Confessor the Archbishop of Paris and had given him all she had for a Guaranty What Alliances then were they Were they new ones with the Dutchess of Portsmouth and Nell Waal Truly your Band of Pensioners had so often supplied their extraordinary Occasions that one would think they should not have asked any more and if they knew not when they had enough the Nation could tell them they had too much and wanted nothing but an Apartment at a convenient Mansion-house in Tuttle-fields and the civil Usage of that House once a Week or so as the Ladies of their Profession use to be serv'd as a just Reward of their Diligence in their Calling It may be Sir there were Alliances of another nature as with Barillon your old Friend that were to be supported Alas the Parliament knew full well that your Brother and you could not want a Supply for such Alliances and that rather than fail you might have got a new Bill to have passed Intituled An Act to enter into an actual War with France with which you might haâ—e beg'd Money of the French King as you did in 1678. It may be you will say They were Alliances your Brother had made for Preservation of the General Peace of Christendom You say well and it is a wonder since your Brother was graciously pleased to demand Money that he was not as graciously pleased to tell the Parliament what those Alliances were Surely Sir you did not expect a blind Obedience from that Eagle-ey'd Parliament to contribute to the Support of what they were wholly ignorant of or if they had had some Hints from the Court it would not have been amiss to have used them as civilly as your Band of Pensioners were and to have had those Alliances laid before them those humble Curs never parted with Money for the support of Leagues till acquainted with the Nature and Tendency of them And if the Alliances were not designed for the end pretended you might have asked Money with as good Success for the two Whores at the lower end of the matted Gallery both Mistress and Woman as for those Alliances Let me good Sir ask you one fair Question Did your Brother expect Money for these Alliances and nothing else and for once we will suppose Portsmouth and her Woman not to have had one Great no nor Fitz-Harrris so much as a Sop in the Pan tho he had a hopeful Plot upon the Stocks that deserved two but that it should be applied only for Alliances made to preserve the General Peace of Christendom truly then ought not the Parliament to consider well of the General Peace it self and its Influence upon our Affairs before they came to any Resolution or so much as to debate about it since you had a Tool in the Ministry that told us it was more fit for Meditation than Discourse nay he impudently said the Peace was but the effect of Despair and I think he was not much out in it but he might have been so honest as to have told us the true Cause of that Despair yet for all his Worship's Rhetorick the Nation learn'd by whose means they were reduced to so low a Thought of their Condition nay if that Loggerhead were alive I could tell him what Price you and your Brother demanded of the Fr. King for that noble and most Christian piece of Service In a word Sir we had no reason to simper upon the Business unless with the wrong side of our Mouths for we could not sing any Tune but that lamentable one of a bad Market we all knew the effect of this General Peace of Chistendom that it was the Dissolving the Confederacy against the French King the Enlarging his Dominions and his gaining time to refresh his Souldiers almost harassed out of their Lives by long Service the settling and composing the Minds of his Vassals at home increasing his Fleet and filling his Exchequer for new and greater Designs but your Rogues that were Pensioners to the French King grew impudent upon it and expected he might have a spare hour or so to assist you in ruining the Religion Laws and Liberties of England and to have fairly laid aside the use of Parliaments and broke them up as you would have done a Field-meeting in Scotland or a private Conventicle in England and treated them like Traitors and Villains and not like the great Assembly and Wisdom of the Nation Was it the Alliance your Brother had made with the States General Truly your Band of Pensioners had so stigmatized that that neither the first Westminster nor the oxford-Oxford-Parliament would foul their Fingers with it much less give any Money towards the Support of it for the Pensioners speaking modestly could not believe it tended to the safety of the Nation Truly I must look again and see what this new Alliance was and good Sir I beg your pardon it was a new Alliance with Spain and would they not give Money to support this Well let us then see how the Case stood in relation to it I confess Alliances to a Parliament make a very pretty noise and may be as diverting as ever old Hodg's Fiddle was to any of his Tory Gang. Indeed old England stood in need of some new Friends being so beset with Enemies abroad and with Pensioners to those Enemies at home but what shall I say to this Point When I view the Speech at the opening of that Parliament that sat down Octob. 21. 1680. there is nothing said of any new Ally except the poor Spaniard whose Affairs at that time thro' the Defects of his own Government and the villanous falseness of our Ministers were reduced to such Extremities that he might sooner have been a Burden to the Nation than a Help unless you let us judg that this Name of a new League was necessary to recommend our Ministers to a new Parliament and bubble our honest Country Gentlemen out of their Money for by it we were like to have trouble enough being to espouse without any Limitation all the Quarrels of the Spaniards tho in the Philippina Islands and the West-Indies or that he had drawn upon himself by any of his Barbarities there or elsewhere nay his difference with the Elector of Brandenburgh was not excepted tho all that Elector had done in Reprisals upon the Spanish Ships for a just Debt
King and Kingdom but if there was not Evidence truly then they had been acquitted with more Honour to themselves and Families than they acquired by sending home that Parliament Again Sir do but consider a little and set your own Mother-Wit at work and you will find that a Parliament may act as the great Council of the King and the Wisdom of the Nation I use your Brother 's own Phrase and when they saw Affairs ill administred and their Advice rejected the Course of Justice perverted the King's Counsels betrayed Grievances multiplied and the Government it self managed in a most weak and disorderly Manner who should they have charged the King No you will say he could do no Wrong Who then should they accuse but those that had the Administration of Affairs that had the King's Ear as the villanous Authors of those Evils that hung over our Heads And ought they not to have applied themselves to the King by humble Addresses to remove such Persons from his Presence and Councils for ever You may say they had no Testimony against them you know to the contrary but suppose they had not legal Proof yet you know to your woful Experience there were many things plain and evident even beyond the Testimony of Witnesses so that it was impossible as well as unnecessary to have had legal Proof What if it was your Brother's Pleasure to hear those Villains was it therefore unlawful for the Commons to conclude that all the Evils the Nation groaned under came from their wicked Advice and Counsel and then might they not represent those things to the Nation that it might appear they had not been negligent in making Inquisition after those Men who had been for several Years carrying on their wicked Designs with you and your Popish Party They imagined to secure themselves by whispering in the King's Ear What then must not a Parliament inquire into the Names of these Whisperers and tho they had not legal Proof to make these Men publick Examples yet they had so much Certainty of the Matter of Fact as was Ground enough to stigmatize them as Promoters of the French Interest and Enemies to the King and Kingdom Come Sir to be plain with you the People of England were highly interested in all those great Officers of State and as they were your Brother's Servants so they were Servants to the whole Kingdom therefore who should have detected the Treachery and Villany of those Servants but their Representatives in Parliament whose Business it was to represent all the Nation 's Grievances to the King Certainly such a Representation ought to have been esteemed by him worthy of Consideration and not to have treated them as having made illegal Votes but this you and your Brother made a Pretence for dissolving that Parliament and preferred your secret Counsels before the publick Council of the Kingdom In a word therefore to conclude this Head let me tell you in all Faithfulness that those Votes your Party was pleased to term strange and illegal were not so strange as honest and not illegal but very righteous The House of Commons had before addressed the King for their removal from his Person and Councils but he was graciously pleased to take no notice of their Addresses tho made with all Humility and Duty nay Sir he was so far from that that it was observed even by that House of Commons and many other sober Men that an Address from the Commons against any evil Man at Court was a fore-runner of his being preferred to a Place of greater Profit or Honour if not both it proved so thrice to that old Traitor Lauderdale and on the other hand if those three Parliaments had addressed on behalf of any Man he was sure to receive no Favour and came off very well if he was not mark'd out for some Vengeance Now I think it no Crime to tell you that your Brother ought not to have entertained any of those Vermin after they had a Blast of angry Breath from that or any other House of Commons for certainly if a House of Commons declar'd any number of Men Persons that put the King upon Arbitrary Counsels or Betrayers of the Interest of the Nation there needed no Process of Law and Legal Proof against them before they are dismissed tho it was but reasonable if they had proceeded against them in order to fine imprison or put them to death but to remove them from the King certainly the Advice and Opinion of the Nation by their Representatives was enough if not you would have allowed them time to act their Villany to the Hazard of the Government it self and till this was done with what face could your Brother expect Supplies from the Parliament Your Cattel at St. Germains can tell you there are some things so reasonable that they are above any written Law and will at all times have their Effect in despite of all Power on Earth whereof this was one so that from the whole Matter this Pretence of yours falls to the Ground with the others before named 8ly Your eighth Pretence was the Parliament's Behaviour in the Case of Fitz-Harris and this was rendered a very hanious Crime and just Cause hereby was given to your Brother and you to send that Parliament packing which accordingly after 8 days sitting was dissolved for no other reason but because the House of Commons impeached him of High Treason Truly Sir I 'll appeal to Jack Caryl or any of your ragged and outlawed Crew at St. Germains whether that House of Commons had not reason to judg the Treasons of that wretched Man of such a nature as to deserve Examination in full Parliament and the reason was as plain as the Sun at noon-day if you but remember that this Fitz-Harris was one of your own dear Religion and an Irish Teague and appeared to the House of Commons as made use of by you know who to set up a Counterfeit Protestant Conspiracy in order to stifle the Popish Plot and to destroy those worthy Patriots who had kept their Consciences chaste and had not bowed the Knee to Rome and France and betrayed the Interest of their Countrey for Preferments at Court There had been many such polite Designs on foot before a Particular of which you shall have in its proper place but they proved abortive but your principal Conspirators avoided the Discovery as others had the Punishment in what manner and by whose assistance the Nation was then very sensible but your Villains being warned by their ill Success in former Shams grew more cautious and therefore that this damnable Treason might not look like a Popish Design your Tools by your Appointment composed a Libel full of the most bitter Invectives against Popery and your sweet self this Libel carried as much Zeal for the Protestant Religion as ever your Declaration penn'd by your quondam Servant St. Coleman did and had as much concern for our Laws and Liberties as Portsmouth
those Parliaments were composed of Give me leave Sir to put this Question to you Suppose you had been found guilty of Treason by your Peers in Parliament or in any Court of Peers and the Case so plain that you had been condemned and executed for that Treason whether or no that Parliament or Court of Peers that had condemned you had been guilty of a Breach of their Allegiance and Murder This you cannot say then I must tell you that since whilst you were Duke of York you had made your self obnoxious to the Government in a lower degree why might not the same Authority proportion the Punishment and leave you your Life and debar you of the Succession This is to shew the Absurdity your Crew were guilty of in this Argument Now I will speak one Word by way of Answer Whereas your Conspirators did say the Bill of Exclusion was diametrically opposite to the Oath of Allegiance taken to your Brother and his Heirs no Man could bear Allegiance to two Persons at once nor could Allegiance be due to a Subject the Word Heirs obliges no Man till the Heir is in Possession of the Crown then the Obligation is fixed by virtue of the Oath made to his Predecessor Now Sir do but consider what Mischief your Party did to the Succession it self for the next Heir by their way of prating for by it they let loose your self from all the Restrictions and Penalties of human Laws so that you had no other Ties upon you not to snatch the Crown from off your Brother's Head than purely those of your own Conscience and what they were the Nation quickly saw 5. A fifth Argument you and your Conspirators used against the Bill of Exclusion was That it argued a Distrust of the Providence of God Now Sir was our Care to preserve the Protestant Religion a Mistrust of God's Providence and must those that were thus zealous be judged Men of little Faith God forbid 'T is true I cannot allow the least Evil to be done that Good may come of it but the Bill against you was justifiable by the Laws of God and the Constitution of the Government for Sir look back and consider how the Protestant Religion was first established here in England it was indeed by the mighty Hand of God influencing the publick Counsels of the Nation so that all imaginable Care was taken both by Prince and People to rescue themselves from the Romish Yoke and accordingly most excellent Laws were made against the Usurpation and Tyranny of the Bishop of Rome our noble Ancestors in those Days did not manifest a want of Zeal for their Religion with a lazy Pretence of trusting God's Providence but together with their Prayers to and Affiance in the great Jehovah joined the Acts of their own Duty without which they well knew they had no reason to expect a Blessing And a young Whipper-snapper a Friend of yours in a certain Coffee-house had prated at this rate till he was plentifully kickt for his Pains which was the best Way of answering such a Coxcomb that was not to be answered any other way 6. Another Argument against the Bill of Exclusion was this A standing Force would have been absolutely necessary to place and keep the Administration of the Government in Protestant Hands and the Monarchy it self would have been destroyed by a Law which was to have taken all sort of Power from the King and made him not so much as a Duke of Venice This I have heard your Brother talk but it was when he was drunk and this was the Talk of your Party drunk or sober truly they had little in their Discourses but Absurdity and Incoherence Sometimes they would say the Government and Succession to the Crown was of such Divine Right that nothing could lessen your Right nay some of them were so fulsome and nauseous as to talk of Acts of Parliament to banish you out of your own Dominions and to deprive you of your whole Power of Kingship after your being actually King but truly this nasty Cheat appeared so plain to the Parliament that one of your professed Vassals who had more Honour than the rest of your nonsensical Parasites was ashamed of it and openly renounced that self-contradicting Project which they had been so long contriving and thought they had so artificially disguised but tho it was so well-favouredly exposed in the House yet your Coxcombs thought the Nation might be deceived and therefore blusht not to offer it in their common Discourses in all Places and Companies but who they converted to the Cause I never was curious to inquire But Sir was a standing Force so necessary in case of your being excluded suppose it was nay I will go farther suppose a War had been necessary yet would it not have been a War justified by the Authority of Law and against a banished excluded Pretender There would have been no fear of its Consequence no true English Men could have joined with you or countenanced your Usurpation after such an Act and as for your Popish and French Adherents they would neither have been more angry nor more strong by the passing that Bill Truly Sir I must be plain and tell you that your being excluded when Duke of York would by no Means have necessitated a standing Army for the Preservation of the Government and Peace of the Kingdom the whole People of England would have been an Army for that Purpose and every Heart and Hand would have been prepared to maintain that so necessary and much desired Law for which those three Parliaments were so earnest with your Brother not only in pursuance of their own Judgments but by the Directions of those that sent them to remove so great a Grievance from the Nation as you then was and continued to be till you were graciously pleased to let us know that one pair of Heels was worth two pair of Hands Your notorious great Grand-mother was excluded by Act of Parliament yet Queen Elizabeth enjoyed the Crown with much Comfort and Peace for 44 Years and needed no standing Force to secure her from that pretty conditioned Gentlewoman's pretended Right Again a Word more to this standing Army I wonder that you and your Party should be so afraid of what you so eagerly desired nay some of them almost ventured a hanging to get one established If I am not much mistaken I have seen two Armies raised for no other Design than to bring in Popery and Slavery as was proved to the Shame of him that raised them and the first was as shamefully disbanded as it was impudently and against Law raised but the last Army you procured to be raised you and your Party were so unwilling to part with that two Acts were passed before we could get them disbanded And after your Brother had thrown off the use of Parliaments at your Instance he so increased the Number of his Guards that they became formidable to the People of England
Kingdom Nay the Government there did in a manner protect you from the Parliament in England that would have excluded you Nay Dr. Nasty-Gusts the then Bishop of Edinburgh found they had done the Business so well that he blest God the Parliament of Scotland had made such a happy Progress in reducing the Laws of Scotland to the Will of the King Now after all this Pother that was made about you pray how came it that you found no more Friends in Scotland Truly at one time I thought the Courtiers there would have pull'd out both their Eyes to have served you yet when you stood in need of them there were but few that appeared for you Truly poor Pilgarlick did stand and wonder at the thing and advising with a parcel of honest Fellows over a Dish of Coffee at a Coffee-house near the Old House out of which the Prince of Orange warned you to be gone without any more to do one of the Company was very frank in the Point and told the Company plainly that Fear and Interest were the two great Hinges on which the Actions of Mankind did turn and thereby insinuated that Fear made them stand for you against the Parliament of England and Interest made them be against you with K. William Well what then Truly I thought with my self that the Princes of this World ought to be vertuous to a very high degree and to have a Magazine of Assurance because their Favours are more acceptable than their Persons are beloved I confess Princes are in a fair way to be beloved when they put themselves in a Posture of doing much good and that Prince is sure of the Affections of his People who will endeavour with all sweetness to gain their Hearts I have therefore this one thing to say that if you had secured your Antient Kingdom of Scotland you might have done mighty things I pray Sir why did you not cultivate your natural Qualities in order to have secured you an Interest in that Kingdom Truly the Reason is plain because you had none about you but mercenary Rascals that ruined you by their Flatteries And did you not find your self in a most forlorn Solitude notwithstanding their Scots Caresses when you really stood in need of their help And should K. William have any of your Rogues about him I can not but think they would serve him as they did you leave him when he has most need of them 2. You having conversed in Scotland and the Bishops there hanging about you and giving you all the Scots Government could afford I pray resolve me what Religion those Rogues were of Certainly if they were Protestants they have shewed themselves to have as little Brains as your Worship for I find by their management of themselves whilst you afforded them your Gracious Presence as well as before and since you left us they neither understood the Interest of their Traiterous Hierarchy nor of Religion In a word one would think by the Current of their Actions they had been a parcel of Irish Teagues trick'd up with the Dress of a true Scots Clergy-man for they must surely be judg'd Sots to the highest Degree if ignorant of the Disgust they had caused in the People of that Kingdom by embracing your Gracious Declaration for Liberty of Conscience in favour of the villanous Popish Crew It may be you will say that to your own knowledg they were Protestants at the Bottom To this I answer That what either your Brother or you ever said weighed no more with me than if you had sworn Mary Queen of Scots had lived and died an honest true English Virgin But what is it to the Point what they were at the Bottom I am sure they and you were a parcel of Sowce-Crowns to think the Scots would long endure Popery and Arbitrary Power always to domineer over them Truly Experience hath taught us tho you and your villanous Scots Bishops were above such Teachings that the poor Scots wanted but a Leader of Resolution and Bravery and they had thrown off your Brother's Yoke and yours long before the Prince of Orange's coming Object You may say because they wrote to you and told you that the Enterprize of the Prince of Orange was a detestable Invasion therefore you judg'd them Protestants they also having been always against such things Answ It seems they were for Passive-Obedience and Non-resistance For I do not find that they or any of their Admirers stirred one step to serve you and you know that Gracious Doctrine has saved the Credit of many a Coward in the World and therefore your Brother and you promoted it with all the Zeal two such Babes of Grace could shew lest the true Protestant Interest should have storm'd Babylon and all the Hellish Crew she has nourished ever since your Restoration till this Day But they were pleased to say that the Glorious Enterprize of the Prince of Orange was a detestable Invasion What! did this bespeak them to be Protestants Well then let me tell you that your Great Ally might as well wear the Name and all the French Court and your villanous Party here at home for I believe they have said so ten thousand times But I do no more believe they were Protestants than I believe Old Hodg an honest Man or R. Ferguson to be without three false Quarters I pray Sir what did they do for the Protestant Interest We had seven Bishops good Lord went to the Tower and all for the sake of the Protestant Religion I was not a bit sorry nor should I have been if all the twenty six had gone upon the same Account tho they had lain by it as long as I and the rest of my fellow Prisoners did in the Kings-Bench for the Testimony of a good Conscience But what your English-Bishops did for the Interest of the Protestant Religion I will leave to better Pens but for your Scots Tools did they not by their Treachery and Lewdness render themselves the Abomination of the People 3. I pray let me ask you a third Question What was the Reason that notwithstanding the Advice of your Devilish Jesuits to the contrary you would not stay and see the joyful Sight the People of England saw and that after so many Divisions occasioned by your Brother's Reign and yours viz. Our King and the Parliament so happily united together You say you ventured your Life on behalf of the Nation and since your Grace and Favour was such as not to strike one Stroke to keep the Crown upon your Head you might have been so good-natur'd as to have staid and seen our King leaving his Interest to the management of his Parliament on purpose to take care of theirs and his and the Welfare of all Europe The King God bless him remitted Chimney-money and entirely threw himself upon the Affections of his People and you threw your self upon the Affection of the French King I pray try his Affection and let me know by
that in all probability might not attract that Envy that the preferring of Papists in several great Places of Trust had done yet that the same Ends might be more certainly and easily tho not so soon obtained Which brings me to Article XXVI IN order to strengthen the Popish and French Interest you were pleased to take to Wife the Daughter of the Duke of Modena whom you have and hold to this Day which was in it self a Scoundrel Match but that it might appear somewhat considerable the French King declared her an adopted Daughter of France and promised to give her a Portion sutable thereunto for her Father could not give her a Groat And whether he gave her a Portion or no at that time I cannot tell if he did not I suppose you will eat it out before you leave St. Germains Your Brother consented to the Match without much difficulty by a good Lord a Friend of yours who consummated the Marriage by the Royal Consent and Authority of your Brother according to the Form used amongst Princes as your good Protestant Brother was pleased to express it Before this precious Bit of Italian Flesh could arrive in England your Conspirators who advised this Marriage perceived that the 20th of October would come and that it might probably receive some Obstruction from the Parliament and that some other things were prepared against their meeting for the curbing your Rogues who were grown as observed to you in the First Part damnably Insolent for the Check the Test-Bill had given was far less than the Incouragement from this wicked Marriage And that a fatal Blow might be given to the Preparations of the then House of Commons in prejudice of your Conspirators you procured a Prorogation to the 27th of October 1673 whereby to put an End to that Session and all the Business unperfected in March 1671 3 should fall to the Ground But pray what was the Matter Why must some good Bills fall to the Ground that were so well prepared in March 1672 3 Why truly your Reasons for the Prorogation if I am not much out were these three 1. To prevent and remove from your Brother all Temptations to break the intended Marriage and the French Alliance the Parliament being like to use their utmost endeavour to hinder the Consummation of that Marriage which might render the Popish Religion and the French Alliance impregnable You know Sir that Cardinal Howard promoted the Match to serve the Catholicks and the Catholick Religion was your end too since you were converted to such a degree of Zeal that Coleman your Secretary knew not his Head from his Heels or whether he was awake or in a Dream and then to strengthen the Interest of the French King must be your design since his Interest and yours were so inseparably united that he that was your Enemy was an Enemy to his Interest and he that was an Enemy to his was to your Interest also Now what a wicked Parliament was it that would have separated such an Interest and oppose such a Religion in endeavouring to prevent so hopeful a Match whereby 1. The Folly 2. The Malice of you and your Party did appear 1. The Folly of your Party did appear for that Parliament did never fail to give Money whenever called for if they were but indifferently well used and the King was generally unwilling to let a Session go off without some Pocket-money for the modest Gentlewomen at Whitehall therefore your Partisans should rather have adjourned the Marriage than prorogued the Parliament who having notice of the Conspiracy which you had managed more like an Irish Teague than an English Statesman were very angry at the King's breach of his Word and Royal Promise made to them in March before Therefore notwithstanding the King's Speech Octob. 20. for a swinging Supply for carrying on the War against the Dutch the Parliament would vote nothing but an Address against this Match of yours with the Daughter of Modena for they considered the Nation was not able always to lie under the dispensation of parting with Money to secure the Popish Religion and French Interest And as a preparation to the Address you know they passed this Vote viz. This House taking into consideration the Condition of the Nation will not take into any further Debate or Consideration any Aid Supply or Charge upon the Subject before the time of the Payment of the eighteen Months Assesment granted by a late Act of Parliament intituled An Act for raising the Sum of 1238750 l. for the Supply of his Majesty's present Occasions be expired unless it shall appear that the obstinacy of the Dutch shall render it necessary nor before this Kingdom be effectually secured from the Danger of Popery and Popish Counsels and Counsellors and other present Grievances be redressed You having by your little Vermine given out with all Folly and Impudence that you stood in no need of a Parliament but to give Money by this Vote they were even with you who with your Crew were so nettled at their Vote that you were resolved to give them a remove from your Councils but that it might not seem altogether upon the account of denying Money you let the Parliament proceed and the Address was prepared with Reasons against this Match of yours which I have laid down in my first Part and therefore wave them now the Parliament being assured that this Marriage at that time was not so far concluded but that for Reasons of State it might be rejected as has been practised in divers Nations and even by the French themselves in several Examples as manifestly appears in the French Histories I having an Opportunity of discoursing about the Match the Jesuits condemned the Conduct of your Friends at St. James's in deferring it till the Session was so nigh and then putting the Parliament off whereas the Marriage ought rather to have been suspended till the Parliament had given Money and one Million well husbanded would have enabled your Brother to set up Arbitrary Power for the French King would have stood by him And further That your Counsellors had been too open in the steps they took in this Match and had too publickly boasted of the Advantage they should have by it both as to France and Religion and had too much undervalued the Parliament since you could not at that Time subsist without one 2. As your Party shewed their Folly so their Malice for as the King was unwilling to part without Money and also to quit the French Interest all the Grievances of the Nation must be postpon'd which were judged by you to be but Trifles if any difference did arise it was their Faults to insist on such small things therefore with Indignation you procured them to be prorogued that they might recollect themselves and basely comply with your wicked Designs of destroying the Dutch and advancing the Fr. Interest in this Match that they might for the future be of no use
they called in an Act that raised it An humble Tender to his Sacred Majesty of the Duty and Loyalty of his antient Kingdom of Scotland And as a Testimony of the same they did offer to the King 20000 Foot and 2000 Horse sufficiently armed with 40 days Provision to be ready upon the King 's call and in the same Act they declared that if the King should have farther Use and Occasion for their Service the Kingdom would be ready every Man between Sixty and Sixteen and hazard their Lives and Fortunes if called for by his Majesty for the Safety and Preservation of his Person Authority and Government Sure one would think you had given them some State Philtre to create in them such a slavish Loyalty and Love to your Brother's Person and Government 4. Nay they went a step farther to please your Brother and your self being resolved not to fall short in expressing their Loyalty and Affection to him therefore do but observe them in another Act of Parliament wherein they most dutifully and humbly recognize his Majesty's Prerogative Royal and declar'd in the said Act That the ordering and disposal of Trade with Foreign Nations and the laying Restraints and Impositions upon Foreign Imported Commodities did belong to his Majesty and his Successors as an undoubted Privilege and Prerogative of the Crown and that therefore they might do therein as they should judg fit for the good of the Kingdom 5. These People certainly were bewitch'd with the thing called Loyalty and made it appear to the World that they placed the Security of all their Interests more in their Confidence of the King's Goodness than the firmest Provision of the best Laws for tho in the Parliament held by your Father in Person in 1641 many Acts were signed by him for settling their Religion Properties and Liberties which the deepest Consideration and Maturity of Judgment imaginable grounded upon long and well-weighed Experience many and well-managed Treaties and the Mediation of England could afford and furnish yet because the Glory of those Laws appeared to these Blockheads to be stain'd by the remembrance of some previous Contentions wherein they thought themselves very infortunate by having your Father differ from them to please your Brother at one blow they repealed the whole Proceeding of that Parliament and all the Laws then and there made for the Preservation of Religion as aforesaid 6. Those whom God will destroy he delivers up to Madness first and s he did these People in evidencing an unparallel'd Submission to the King and a Resignation of all that was near and dear to them into his Hands for tho that Nation since its first Reformation from Popery did continually oppose Prelacy yet after they had destroyed it and enjoyed their Church under a Constitution and Ministry according to their Hearts desire in compliance with your Brother they parted with the Presbyterian Government and reestablished Episcopacy to the Amazement of most Men so acceptable was he to the Scots Parliament at that Time And for the carrying on your cursed Designs you know how your Brother made James Sharp Mr. Hamilton Mr. Farwell and another whose Name occurs not at present to renounce their Presbyterian Ordination who were made Deacons and Priests and then consecrated Bishops by the Bishop of Winchester and two others of that Gang and four Scots Prelates thus made the King fixed the Government of that Church by Arch-bishops and Bishops as in his Father's time in 1637 who had the same Authority derived to them as they had in your Grandfather's Reign so by Proclamation bearing date Sept. 6. 1661. the Presbyterian Government ceased to be to all Intents and Purposes and the Council suspended the Meeting of the Presbyteries till they had received Power not from Heaven but from the Arch-bishops and Bishops who were in a short Time to enter upon their Government To compleat this Work the Parliament in the 2d Session reinstated the Bishops in the exercise of their Functions and restored them to all their Privileges Dignities Possessions c. Now one would think this Compliance of the Nation should have obliged your Brother and you to have treated them in some measure sutable to their Loyalty and slavish Resignation of themselves Your great Instrument in carrying on this blessed Work of inslaving the Kingdom of Scotland in these particulars in order to your farther Designs was the Earl of Middleton the first High Commissioner after your Brother's return who was most violent in pursuing this Change but by his impetuous Violence in this mighty Work on which he much valued himself he rendered himself obnoxious and despising Lauderdale who took hold of some of his Miscarriages in a short Time he was unhorsed by him and Lauderdale procured the Commission of Lord High Commissioner for the Earl of Rothes by whom Middleton's Parliament was dissolved upon which Madam Van Harlot their new Church appeared in its proper Colours and being made Triumphant 't is well known what Pranks the Whore played what Tumults her Guides excited and what Tragedies her Reverend Clergy acted in your Brother's Reign Nay old Hodg was not so much as advised withal in the Case and every thing was carried on with that Fury that had not Sir Robert Murray come in to the Relief of the People who were on the very brink of Destruction they must have inevitably perished But Sir I will not dwell here any longer only tell you that Lauderdale was the third Lord High Commissioner of Scotland by whom a lamentable Scene of Rogueries were acted and by whom you made your blessed Steps to ruin that poor Nation 1. Your first Step to ruin Scotland was the making Middleton and Lauderdale so excessively great In truth to give the Beasts their due as the Scotish Nation was not able to bear their Greatness so neither they to bear their own You remember that before Lauderdale was Commissioner by reason of his being sole Secretary of State for that Nation and Court-minister he had the absolute Rule and disposing of the Affairs and Concerns of that Kingdom which gave great Offence to the Scots who in the particulars abovesaid had shewed themselves so abominably Loyal as to quit their Religion Laws and Liberties to please your Brother and you As for Middleton he was invested with such Powers that Lauderdale was jealous of his Greatness who seeing him exercise his Power to the utmost imagined there would be nothing for him to do and therefore as I said justled Middleton out by whose Greatness Scotland by Consent of Parliament delivered up all as if Hallifax himself had issued forth Quo Warranto's against their Franchises both as to Liberty and Religion and you having had enough of Middleton's prostituting himself to your Brother's Will and yours exit Middleton and enter Lauderdale a case-hardened Rogue a Villain fit for the Devil's Service to all Intents and Purposes who the more easily to compleat your wicked Designs you may remember did
Antient that no Record can give an Account of their beginning Upon my word I will tell you that a little Chastisement upon these Villains by a parcel of your Dragoons would have wrought a mighty Change upon them Therefore Sir since you have nothing else to do send for them you shall have every one of them that are above Ground and if they do not answer Expectation then hang 'em all and I do think they should be content For Passive-Obedience and Non-resistance and the Divine Right of Ignorance are so fixt in their Bones that nothing but a good dragooning Flux will fetch them out In a word Sir now it is easily known why your Brother in his Reign did not suffer Parliaments to meet and sit for those Ends for which a Parliament was at first constituted for such Rogues as I have mentioned used to teach him the same Doctrine that they taught you only with these different Effects which wrought more upon you than it did upon him For all the brave Notions they gave him of Prerogative and Absolute Power and the Excellency of the Romish Religion above all other Religions could neither give him Strength enough to get Old Catherine with Child nor Courage enough to run away Now the same Doctrine that your Lawyers Judges and Ministers of State taught you had these wonderful Influences upon you of getting a Child for us or shamming one upon us and running from us without the Aid and Assistance of an old English Parliament The Rogues were running after you it had been no great matter if he she or they had been hang'd that stopt them But the Vermin by this time are come to themselves and can tell you for a need that not to suffer Parliaments to sit to answer the great Ends for which they were instituted was and still is expresly contrary to the Common Law and so consequently of the Law of God as well as the Law of Nature and thereby Violence hath been by your Brother and you offered to the Government it self and an Infringement of the Peoplâ—â—â—ndamental Rights and Liberties We have in some measure made our selves â—â—â—aration for the Dammage done us but more of that in its proper place 2. We have laid before you what the Common Law saith concerning Parliaments therefore it will in the second place be convenient to observe what our Statute Law acquaints us withal concerning Parliaments I know you had a great Love to our Laws and therefore I suppose you have read them that when you come again you may make better use of them than you did before and not have the Courage to dispense with them as you did before Old Jenner thought a Wife and nine Children was an admirable Argument for the Dispensing Power and swears when you come again he will never set up for an Expounder of the Law any more he will rather turn Priest to put you into the way of gaining the Kingdom of Heaven since he expounded the Law in so learned a manner as to make you lose the Kingdom of England But to the Point The Statute Laws the Learned say are Acts of Parliament which are or ought to be only declaratory of the Common Law which as you have it told you is founded upon right Reason and Scripture and I think our Learned in the Law have told us That if any thing be enacted contrary thereunto it is null and void and of no Effect Certainly Jenner and the rest of the Dispensing Crew were bewitch'd in not telling you that any Dispensation against Law was in it self null and void But there was a Wife and nine Children in the Case and Law was not his Business Truly for all his hussing Speech to the President and Fellows of Magdalen College in Oxford he knew as little Law as your self that sent him down But since some of the Villains were ignorant of the Law and the rest of them that had some Law and no Honesty did not inform you I pray let me intreat your Patience and observe what I say to you There are several Statutes that require frequent meetings of Parliament agreeable to the Common Law 1. The first of which is 4 Edw. III. cap. 14. in these words Item it is accorded that a Parliament shall be holden every Year once or more often if need be Alas that good King never sent to the French King for leave to call a Parliament nor did he sell him a Session of Parliament for a small Spell of 300000 l. per Ann. it never entred into the old Judges Noddles in his Reign that Parliaments were to be held sooner or later oftner or seldomer as the King pleased no it was your Lambskin Crew you set up in Charles the 2d's Time that taught that Doctrine Nay there were a Set of Rogues in your Father's Time who favoured that Heresy in the Government that the meeting and sitting of Parliaments was at the Will and Pleasure of the King but your Rogues went a Note above Ela for they would have the Laws to be dispensed with or suspended when the gracious Pleasure of the King was such 2. I have another Statute Law in my green Bag that is at your Service it is 36 Edw. III. cap. 10. read it and if you do not put on your Dispensing Spectacles you will find the Law to speak these words Item For the Maintenance of the said Articles and Statutes and redressing of divers Mischiefs and Grievances which daily happen a Parliament shall be holden every Year as at another time it was ordained by a Statute What Statute good Sir I pray ask your Dispensing Judges let them look into their Law-Books not upon their Wives and nine Children nor 〈◊〉 durante bene placito Commissions and they will find this Statute of the 36th of that King has reference to the Statute of the 4th of the said King above-mentioned Well Sir what 's the English of all this Your Judges have told you what the French of it is already to your Cost Now it shall cost you nothing if we tell you the English of it viz. That a Parliament ought Annually to meet to support the Government and to redress Grievances happening in the interval of Parliaments that being the great End proposed in their said meeting Now for Parliaments to meet Annually and not be suffered to sit to answer the Ends but to be prorogued or dissolved as Gammer Carwell or Nell Waal should direct before they had finished their Work was and would be nothing but an eluding the Law and striking at the Foundation of the Government and rendring Parliaments altogether useless You know there is no great difference between having no Meat at all and having it in abundance without being suffered to eat so I think it is to no purpose to have frequent Parliaments and they not suffered to sit and do the Business of the Nation for which they were sent by the People as well as called by the King You
had got such a Trick in your Brother's Time to put off Parliaments that I doubt if we should try you once more and take in those durante bene placito Rogues you would never leave it off First you got one Session put off and a truly loyal Band of Pensioners dissolved then three Parliaments dissolved one upon the neck of another as you and Nell Waal pleased Now our Forefathers and our Antient Kings of England to prevent Arbitrary Power and such intolerable Mischiefs as these did heartily agree to have a Proclamation made in Westminster-Hall before the End of every Session not to dissolve the Parliament to get a Sum of French Money but to tell the People that all who had any Matter to present to the Parliament should bring it before such a Day for otherwise the Parliament should determine This was done in the Reigns of Hen. 4. Hen. 5. Hen. 6. So that you may see and so might that Villain Jefferies that the People were not to be eluded or disappointed by surprising Prorogations and Dissolutions to frustrate the great Ends of Parliament But Sir suppose all your Brother's Crew of Judges and Ministers of State nay I would allow him half a dozen Priests and Dr. Finch the Warden of All-Souls into the Bargain who is an excellent Preacher and Pimp to the Whore of Babylon and Arbitrary Power nay I will allow you to have the French Parliament held at New-Market in 1677 and suppose they should have roared with open Mouth and said there was no Record nor Statute upon Record extant concerning the sitting of Parliaments to redress Grievances What then And suppose Finch the last 29th of May had told such a Story as this in his loggerheaded Sermon where he applauded the eminent shining Vertues of Charles II above those of his Royal Father and yours his Chastity Integrity Peaceableness and the like and provided all he had said were true that Charles was a Man of those Vertues and that there were neither Common nor Statute Laws extant for the sitting of Parliaments yet by Warden Finch's leave it is more certain that Parliaments are to sit and redress Grievances by the Fundamental Laws of the Government than that his Father presented the Grand Seignior with a Pendulum Clock so small that the Grand Seignior hung it at his Ear as the Ladies here used to hang their Pendants at theirs It may be Sir you will ask what Reason I could have to believe the sitting of Parliaments for redress of Grievances was our Right by the Fundamental Law of England I tell you Sir why because the Government must be lame without it and a Prince and his villanous Ministers might have done what they pleased and their Wills might have been their Laws Your Brother and you bid fair for such a Government had your Friend Coleman's Advice been taken and had K. Charles signed his Declaration for dissolving the Parliament Coleman had not Jenner's Courage of running away and so the Declaration was not signed but to your great Comfort he was graciously left to dance a Christmass Gambrel at Tyburn for his great pains in the mighty Work your Brother your Self and he had upon your Hands Therefore my good Friend it was provided for in the very Essence and Constitution of the Government it self this we may if Frank Withens and the rest of your Crew will give leave call Common Law tho Jefferies once was pleased to call it a Common Where This notwithstanding the filthy Expression of that impudent Villain that had neither Law Manners nor Honesty but the Impudence of ten carted Whores is of as much Value if not more as any Statute and of which all our good Acts of Parliament and Magna Charta it self are but declaratory So that tho your Brother or any King else had been intrusted with the formal Part of summoning and pronouncing the Dissolution of Parliaments which is done by Writ yet the Laws that oblige the King as well as the People have determined when and how it is to be done This is enough to shew you that your Brother as King shared in the Sovereignty that was in the Parliament and that it was cut out to him by Law and not left at his Disposal I must therefore tell you that Thomas and Francis and the rest of the Bloodhounds and murdering Dispensing Judges were much out in point of Law when they told your Brother that Parliaments both as to Calling and Dissolving were at his Will and Pleasure 3. There is another Statute viz. 25 Edw. III. cap. 23. that was Law in your Brother's Reign which the Judges if they had been acquainted with the Law who truly except a few that had but little Honesty and were generally Strangers to the Law must have told him and you too did oblige him and you to suffer the Meeting and Sitting of Parliaments Therefore I make use of that Statute to prove that the Meeting and Sitting of Parliaments is the Fundamental Right and Privilege of the People of England This Statute Sir was called the Statute of Provisors and was made to prevent and cut off the Incroachments of the Bishops of Rome whose Usurpations in disposing of Benefices had occasioned intolerable Grievances In the Preamble of which Statute it is expressed as follows Whereupon the Commons have prayed our said Sovereign Lord the King That since the Right of the Crown of England and the Law of the Realm is such that upon the Mischiefs and Damage which happen to this Realm he ought and is bounden of the Accord of his said People in his Parliament thereof to make Remedy and Law in avoiding the Mischiefs and Damage which thereof cometh that it may please him thereupon to provide Remedy Our Sovereign Lord the King seeing the Mischiefs and Damage before-named and having regard to the said Statute made in the Time of his said Grandfather and to the Causes contained in the same which Statute holdeth always its Force and was never defeated or annulled in any Point and by so much is bound by his Oath to do the same to be kept as the Law of this Realm tho that by sufferance and negligence it hath since been attempted to the contrary and also having regard to the grievous Complaints made to him by his People in divers Parliaments holden heretofore willing to ordain Remedy for the great Damages and Mischiefs which have hapned and daily do happen by the said Cause c. by the Assent of the Great Men and Commonalty of his said Realm hath ordained and established Come Sir what say you to all this Where is your Holloway your Withens and your Walcots And where is Tom Jenner with his Sorrow in one Hand and his Grief in the other an ignorant Rascal like the rest of his Brethren Where is your Herbert your Heath and your Milton Some of them are gone to their Places but they lived long enough to enslave the People and those that yet live owe
a Debt for their Rogueries the Gallows groans for their perverting of Justice and Judgment Where are your murdering Judges of the West Some of them yet live They might without the Consent of a pair of Spectacles have seen and might without fear have told you they could not chuse but see what was contained in this Preamble now recited Were the Rogues ignorant Then why did not your Pemberton your Scroggs your Levins your Charlton and the rest of that Crew instruct your Brother and you what was contained and pointed at in this Preamble But alas they did not they were able enough but they had rascally durante bene placito Commissions that indisposed them to be plain and honest in that Affair they were more afraid of losing their Places than of being damn'd for not doing their Duties But since they had not the Honour Honesty and Conscience of upright Judges give me leave to be plain with you Therefore Sir observe 1. The intolerable Grievance and Burden occasioned by the illegal Incroachments of the See of Rome to which Yoke you and your Villains endeavour'd to reduce and subjugate these Kingdoms You fired our City and murdered our Friends you promoted Men of Villanous Principles and worse Morals to the Judgment-Seat and made them Vassals to your Will and Pleasure who if they complied not were reproachfully dismissed their Imployments and ruined if possible Nay if any of them attempted but to prosecute Popery alas they were not for your Turn for your Design was by them to revive that intolerable Grievance by incouraging the illegal Incroachments of the See of Rome 2. Observe the many Complaints the People had made who in those dark Times under Popery groan'd under such Burdens What Burdens I pray you under the Incroachments of the See of Rome Why truly in disposing of Benefices Ay it is a good Observation for the Pope would present none but such as should advance his usurped Power and Interest and if the People were so bold as to complain of these things were they not a parcel of Rebels and Traitors for their pains No they complain'd without being called or treated as such What Remedy had they A Parliament Now Sir had not we as much need of an Act of Provisors against you for in your Brother's Time how many of your Rogues were presented to the best Livings in the Realm at your Procurement and how many Villains were made Bishops by the Whores Cleveland and Portsmouth and the Pimps and Bawds at Court Did not we stand in need of Statutes of Provisors Name me one Man of these that were not to advance the Power and Interest of France and to wink at the Progress and Growth of Popery Had we not reason to complain Yes To whom to the King No he was engaged for Popery and the French Interest and Arbitrary Power as well as your self His Metropolitan Whores were Papists to please him or he one to please them Therefore to what purpose was it We had none to complain to but a Parliament and how you used them we have not forgot and how our Application to them was not only useless but dangerous is not unknown In a word Sir the Condition of the Complainants in the Time of Edw. III tho they lived in the dark Times of Popery were in a far better Condition than we were in your Brother's Reign for notwithstanding the Religion of Edw. III his Interest was his Peoples and therefore held frequent Parliaments to whom they might complain and from whom they might find Redress without being judged Traitors and Rebels to the Government 3. Observe the Endeavours used in vain by former Parliaments to redress the same and to bring their Laws in being to have their Force and Effect You know that when the Kings of England were wicked then to gain the Point they used to fly to Rome for Countenance and advance that usurped Power to the Prejudice of the People So it was with your Brother and you when you had a Design in hand to enslave the Nation then you set up the Power and Interest of France and none were to be preferred in our good Church but Villains that were case-hardned enough to join with your Brother and you in ravishing the Peoples Rights and Franchises Had we good Laws in being against Popery They were suspended Had we any good Laws against the growing Greatness of France Yes we got one poor Act of Parliament against France and that was eluded Nay now I think on 't we got an Act to enter into an actual War against France with which your Party did impudently beg Money from France We got a poor sorry Act for the Liberty of the Subject called the Habeas Corpus Act this was by you and your Villains evaded so that we were under a necessity of Complaining Those in the Time of Edw. III had redress we had none till we drove you and the French Interest and Popery out of the Kingdom 4. Observe the Acknowledgment of the King and Parliament that the Obligation to this Duty was upon the King who you know is entrusted by the Law to preserve the Peace and Liberties of the Realm and to rectify all Miscarriages in the Government Which is apparent 1. From the Right of the Crown obliging him to pass good Laws 2. There were good Laws committed to his Trust in full Force which he was to execute 3. There is the King's Oath to pass new Laws for the Peoples Safeguard which they should tender to him as well as to execute old Laws already made 4. From the Sense of the People exprest in their Complaints And 5. From the Mischief and Damage that would otherwise ensue and therefore it is said that by the Desire and Accord of his People he past this famous Law the Preamble of which I have recited to you in part 4. There is another Statute worthy of your Consideration and pretty much to the same purpose you will find it in the 2d of Rich. II. in N o 28. Also the Commons of England in Parliament desire that forasmuch as Petitions and Bills presented in Parliament by divers of the Commons could not heretofore have their respective Answers that therefore both their Petitions and Bills in this present Parliament as also all others which shall be presented in any future Parliament may have a Good and Gracious Answer and Remedy ordained thereupon before the departing of every Parliament and to this purpose a due Statute be ensealed or enacted at this present Parliament to be and remain in Force for all Times to come To which the King replied thus The King is pleased that all such Petitions delivered in Parliament of Things or Matters which cannot otherwise be determined a good and reasonable Answer shall be made and given before the departure of the Parliament This King you know left not a very good Name behind being drawn away from loving his People just as you and your Brother were
by a set of wicked Rogues yet before they had ravished this Prince and weaned him from his Peoples Love he made this excellent Law in which Sir you may observe 1. A Complaint of former Remisness their Bills afore-time have not been passed and their Grievances unredressed by unseasonably dissolving of Parliaments before their Laws could pass 2. That a Law might pass in that very Parliament to rectify that Abuse for the future And 3. that it should not pass for a Temporary Law but to last for ever being of such absolute Necessity that before Parliaments be dismissed Bills of Common Right might pass to which the then King Richard did freely agree 5. I have another Proof which is from that great Oracle of the Law the Chief Justice Coke in Institut 4. B. p. 11. asserting That Petitions may be truly preferred tho very many have been answered by the Law and Custom of Parliament before the end of the Parliament This that Great Lawyer delivers not as his own single Opinion but tells us that what he laid down in this Particular appeared in an Antient Treatise de modo tenendi Parliamentum in these words faithfully translated The Parliament ought not to be ended while any Petition dependeth undiscussed or at least to which a determinate Answer is not made And again That one Principle of calling Parliaments is for the redressing Grievances that daily happen Further yet concerning the departing of Parliaments It ought to be in such a manner saith Modus Tenendi demanded yea and publickly proclaimed in the Parliament and within the Palace of the Parliament whether there be any that hath delivered a Petition to the Parliament and hath not received answer thereto If there be none such it is to be supposed that every one is satisfied or else answered unto at the least so far forth as by the Law he may be This Custom was observed in after Ages as you heard before Once more and I have done Observe what this Great Judg saith concerning the Authority and Antiquity of this Antient Treatise called Modus tenendi Parliamentum which we often make use of in our Institutes Certain it is this Modus was rehearsed and declared before William I. called the Conqueror and by him approved for England upon which according to the Modus he held a Parliament for England as appears 21 Edw. 3. Fo. 60. Well Sir how do you by this time and how doth my old Mistress and the little Welch Gentleman Are you not satisfied of the Necessity of the Meeting and Sitting of Parliaments I pray call Tom Jenner and Frank Withens those two Rascals and all the Crew of Villains that misled your Brother and you or were misled by you for they were willing Vermin I confess to do what they were bid upon pain and peril of losing their Places And lest these Scoundrels should be too ignorant let us call in Old Pemberton that did several Jobs of Journey-work for your Brother and you he impudently tried Fitz-Harris tho he was impeached in Parliament which Scroggs would not undertake and he tried the Great and never-to-be forgotten Lord Russel and how he carried himself let the World judg I am sure my Ld Russel was murdered But I have heard Pemberton talk as like a Villain as any of the rest which was not because of his Ignorance I say let us summon them all that remain in the Land of the Living for the Devil hath not fetch'd them all yet and tho they are not prating upon the Bench yet the Rogues are getting a Penny at the Bar These Vermin I dare say with a little drubbing will aver that it is most certain these wholsome Laws are not only in full Agreement with the Common Law and declarative thereof but fully agree with the Oath and Office of our Kings who have that great Trust by the Law lodged with them for the Good and Benefit and not Hurt and Mischief of the People But if these Dunghil Rascals should be fullen because not imployed once more to oppress and murder the People under a Form and Colour of Law and refuse to satisfy you I will with that little Law I have propose these three things upon the whole of what has been said upon this fifth Head 1st These Laws are very sutable to the Office and Duty of a King and the End for which he was instituted by God himself who commands him to do Justice and Judgment to all especially the Oppressed but not deny them any request for their Relief Protection or Welfare It had not been below you to have obey'd the Laws as a Subject nor your Brother to have kept them as a King and had he relied more upon his Parliament than he did upon your Counsel and that of his wicked Ministry he might have liv'd to this Day But you and your Crew perswaded him he was above Laws and that the Statutes of the Realm signified nothing no longer than they would serve his Turn who therefore made no Conscience of the Sitting of Parliaments for redress of Grievances 2ly These Laws relating to Parliaments do also fully agree with the Coronation Oath your Brother took and solemnly made to his People viz. To grant fulfil and defend all rightful Laws which the Commons of the Realm shall chuse and to strengthen and maintain them to the utmost of his Power But Sir suppose any of the Learned in the Laws of the Realm should stand at your Elbow as Tom Jenner or Old Holloway or any of that Crew and tell you that your Brother did not take any such Oath To this I may say that if he did not the Nation had the more wrong but I never heard yet that any had the Impudence to deny it I confess when you shuffled on the Crown it was said some things were abated for which those concerned in that Ceremony ought to have been hanged 3ly Those Laws do also fully agree with Magna Charta it self which hath been confirmed to us by 40 Parliaments at least which saith We shall deny nor defer to no Man Justice and Right much less to the whole Parliament and Kingdom in denying and deferring to pass such necessary Bills the Necessities of the People call for Had Old Brown had but half the Honesty of an Irish Rapparee he would not have consented to your Brother's dropping of a Bill in the Year 1680 it was intituled An Act for repealing an Act of the 35th of Q. Elizabeth a good Bill to have preserved the Protestant Dissenters But your Party had some barbarous Murders and Outrages to commit and could not well go on with their Show unless such a Bill as that of Q. Elizabeth was in Force so that it might now and then aid and assist your everlasting Holy Cut-throats in their bloody Conspiracy against God and his Christ Object But you may say That your Brother and Father and several other Princes have otherwise practised by dissolving or proroguing Parliaments at
their Pleasures before Grievances were redressed and publick Bills of Common-Safety passed because to dissolve and prorogue at Pleasure is a Privilege which belongs to the Crown Answ This word Prorogue is but a new-fangled Business a thing brought up in latter Days but as for dissolving Parliaments at Pleasure that has been the Practice of our former wicked Kings by the Advice of their Roguish Ministers and Judges who laid aside all Law Honour Honesty and Conscience to prostitute themselves to the abominable Lust of a filthy Prince who designed nothing less than the Ruin of the Kingdom What your Father did I will not here concern my self but what your Brother did by your Procurement is my Province at this Time Your Brother when he held his French Parliament at New-Market in 1677 where most of the Rogues and Whores of the Court were present and your gracious Self waiting on him did much aggrandize himself by that Glorious Assembly Upon April 16. the Parliament at Westminster was adjourned till May 21. following Immediately upon the Recess the Duke of Crequi aâ—d that modest sober chaste Man of God the A. Bp of Rheims and Monsâ—eur Barillon and a Train of 3 or 400 Persons of all Qualities appear'd there so that the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of France with so many of their Commons made it look like an old-fashioned French Parliament And the Parliament at Westminster had been adjourned for their better Reception But what Address they made to the King or what Acts passed at that Noble Parliament I cannot tell they having not been yet published But I suppose they were these that follow 1. An Act for continuing his Majesty's Subjects in the Service of France 2. An Act for enabling the Dutchess of Cleveland to use the Arch-Bishop of Paris for her Father-Confessor c. 3. An Act to discharge her Grace from farther Attendance upon the King 4. An Act to constitute the French Gentlewoman to be Whore in her room and a Spy for the French King 5. An Act to enable Nell Waal to be Woman and Bawd in ordinary to the said French Gentlewoman and his Sacred Majesty 6. An Act to supply the Extraordinary Occasions of that Whore Portsmouth and her Woman Nell Waal 7. An Act to enable the Dutchess of Portsmouth in order to her Health to possess and enjoy a certain Apartment in a House-Royal called the Lock situate at the end of Kent-street and Nell to have the Reversion after her decease in case of Necessity 8. An Act for the further Supply of French-Money in order to enslave the Kingdom of 3000000 Livres per Annum 9. An Act for enabling James Duke of York to go on with his Conspirators in the Conspiracy against the Laws Liberties and Religion of the People of England and to demand the French King's Purse Credit and Interest for his Help and Assistance 10. An Act to invest Edward Coleman with the Sum of 20000 l. and a good Pension from the French King for his great Services done and to be done for the Catholick Religion and French Interest 11. An Act of Abolition of all Claims and Demands from the Subjects of France on Account of all Prizes made of the English at Sea since the Year 1674 till that Day and for the future 12. Act to supply the extraordinary Needs of the Pensioners at Westminster 13. An Act to continue the Sham-Alliance with the States-General of the Vnited-Provinces There were I suppose several Private Bills in favour of the Pimps Bawds and Whores that were not sworn in Ordinary but passed the Royal Assent as I may suppose because at that time all things between England and France moved with that punctual Regularity that it was like the Harmony of the Spheres so consonant with themselves tho I could not hear the Musick I pray Sir let us know in your next Declaration what other Secret Bills were passed in that August Assembly wherein the Affairs of Peace and War were transacted with the greatest Confidence and when good Boys they had done their Master's Business with your Brother's Aid and Help they were adjourned from New-Market to London where they dissolâ—ed themselves without your Brother's Prerogative to make way for the Westminster Parliament and so rubb'd off with all Demonstration of mutual Affection and Friendship Alas Sir these were Matters of that Import that they required all imaginable Expedition and Secresy and it would have been the highest Presumption for the poor Pensioners in the Westminster Parliament to have intermedled with them Alas if they had been admitted to end the Work it might have ended in their own Dissolution in order to a couragious running away You say by way of Objection Your Partisans made that which your Brother and other Kings did by their Prerogative Royal dissolve Parliaments before Grievances were redressed and necessary Bills past because things did not move with that punctual Regularity between your Brother and them that was between him and the French King I pray what was the Reason Had they not had Gratuities at the Charge of the Nation Or had the Dutchess of Portsmouth jilted them out of the French King's Blessing which the Duke of Crequi and the Arch-Bishop of Rheims brought them of 200000 Lewis d' Ores Who can tell what to say to these things It is no wonder then that Crew of Voters were grown resty and did not move regularly Well what then the Parliament must not sit till some State-Clockmaker had mended their Motions and made them go true the House then had some good Bills over which they roared only and then were sent Home by a blast of Prerogative-Breath Had your Brother any other Prerogative but what the Law gave him and what he was invested with at his Coronation If he had let us know it but for once I will grant he prorogued and dissolved Parliaments at his Pleasure to serve you and your Cut-throat Crew It doth not therefore follow that he had a Right so to do according to a Maxim I learned almost 30 Years since A facto ad jus non valet consequentia especially when such Prorogations and Dissolutions are against so many express and positive Laws such Principles of Common Right and Justice and so many particular Ties and Obligations to the contrary Your Brother might by the Advice of wicked Statesmen and villanous Judges pretend to a Prerogative the Law had given him of which nothing ever was known unless revealed by some French Maxims learned abroad in his Travels Yet such a Prerogative could not justify such Practices for if he had been invested with such Prerogatives by the Law yet the Law could give none to destroy it self and those it protects But Old Hodg and his Inferior Clergy may interpose and say Had not King Charles his Prerogative founded upon Law Who questions Sir but the Kings of England had their Prerogatives Yet observe what Old Bracton saith Pag. 487. That tho the Common Law allows many
Prerogatives to the King yet it allows none by which to hurt or prejudice any Therefore with the Learned in the Law I will assert That whatever Power or Prerogative your Brother had ought to have been used according to the true Intent of the Government that is to preserve the People and their Interest and not to hinder a Parliament in reforming Grievances and providing for the future Execution of the Laws and whenever he applied his Prerogative to frustrate these Ends by the Advice of you or any wicked Person it was a Violation of Right and the Breach of his Coronation Oath since he stood oblig'd to Pass or Confirm those Laws his People should chuse in the Time of his Reign 6. Your Brother and you had little or no regard to the Laws All the Cry of your Villains was Prerogative and nothing was indured that was according to Law Therefore Sir I will give you a Proof by Dr. Gauden's leave from the Words of your own Father who when in Prison began to recollect himseâ—f a little and gave your Brother this Advice when he should come to the Crown That Prerogative is best shewed and exercised in remitting rather than exacting the Rigour of the Laws there being nothing worse than Legal Tyranny nor would he have him entertain any Aversion or Dislike of Parliaments which in their Right Constitution with Freedom and Honour will never injure or diminish his Greatness but will rather be as interchangings of Love Loyalty and Confidence between a Prince and his People Surely Sir if the Reports and Opinions of the best Lawyers could not yet the Counsel of his Father the King or his Father in God might have wrought upon him and you But the Truth is in the Time of Richard II there were some Flaterers and Traitors that presumed in defiance of their Countries Rights to assert such a boundless Prerogative in the Kings of England as Chief Justice Tresillian and others advising him that he might dissolve Parliaments at Pleasure and that no Member should be called to Parliament nor any Act past in either House without his Approbation in the first place and that whoever did advise otherwise were Traitors But this Advice was no less fatal to himself than pernicious to his Prince To which let me add a Saying of your Grandfather in his Speech to his Parliament in 1609 in which he gives them Assurance That he never meant to govern by any other Law than the Law of the Land And tho it be disputed among them as if he intended to alter the Law and govern by the absolute Power of a King yet to put them out of doubt he tells them that all Kings who are not Tyrants or Perjured will bind themselves within the Limits of their Laws and they that perswade the contrary are Vipers and Pests both against them and the Commonwealth Thus Sir I have plainly proved that Parliaments are the Right of the People of England and that no King without the Breach of his Coronation-Oath can govern without them I come now to shew II. That they are the Essential Part of the Government Truly Sir I have had occasion to prove that as a necessary Consequence of the foresaid Right but something may be offered to prove this Point which will aggravate your Crime and the Villany of your Party in attempting to render this Essential Part of the Government useless Therefore Sir when you are at leisure consider with your self the Constitution of the Government which your Brother did wound and you attempted utterly to destroy but therein lost your self and this Government which would have been worth your keeping Take a View therefore of the Constitution of the English Government where the King is the Head from whom the Government it self receiveth its Life as he from the Law receiveth his Power He has the Care of the whole and it is his Interest to seek its Welfare The Strength of the Nation is his Strength and the Riches of the Nation his Riches The Glory and Honour of the Nation is his Glory and Honour So on the contrary when the Nation is weak he is weak if it be impoverished he is impoverished if it lose itss Honour and Glory he loses his likewise But lest Passion Mistakes Flatteries or the ill Designs of some about him should make him forsake his Zeal and follow a destructive imaginary Interest there is an Estate of Hereditary Nobility who are by Birthright the Kingdom 's Counsellors whose main Interest and Concern it is to keep the Ballance of the Government steady that the Favourites and great Officers exceed not their Bounds and oppress the People that Justice be duly administred and that all Parts of the Government be preserved intire yet even these may grow insolent a Disease to which great Men are liable or may by Offices Hopes of Preferment or other Accidents become as to the Majority of them rather the obsequious Flatterers of the Court than true Supporters of the Publick and English Interest Therefore the Excellency of our Government affords us another Estate of Men which are the Representatives of the Freeholders Cities Boroughs and Corporations of England who by the old Law were to be chosen yearly if not oftner whereby they perfectly gave the Sense of those that chose them and did the same as if the Electors were present coming so newly from them and so quickly returning to give account of their Fidelity under the Penalty of Shame and no further Trust Therefore Sir consider 1. If the Constitution of the House of Commons had been destroyed 't would have been impossible the Sense of the Nation and their Complaints and the Grievances of the People should have beer represented To what Estate of Men must we have had Recourse Must it have been to the Nobility It may be they might not have understood our Grievances being in a Sphere above the Rank of Common People And the House of Commons being the Constitution how could Money be raised to support the Government without them unless by a total Subversion of the whole Frame of our Constitution for by the Law the sole Power of giving Money remains in the House of Commons none being concerned in that but the Commons of England 2. Those that would overthrow the Constitution of the House of Commons will not stick to subvert that of the House of Lords who are so essential a Part of the Government that to part with them was to part with the second State which is the Wisdom and Counsel of the Nation to which their Birth Education and constant Imployment in every Parliament being the same fits and prepares them I have read of a House of Commons in the 2d Parliament of Mary I. that was brib'd to consent to the receiving and owning of the Pope's Power but I never yet heard of a House of Lords that were so bribed and the House of Lords in 1649 being voted useless the Commons run into so many
and had it not met with a mighty Blast you might by your supposed Prudence have ruined three mighty Kingdoms Now Sir if we grant you were endued with these mighty Vertues of Fortitude Temperance and Prudence yet we must say they were the absolute Hinges that open'd the Gates to Rome and France where Superstition ruled the Day Your moral Vertues were but lesser Lights that took their Light from that greater Orb above but how these moral Vertues did shine in you your old Friend Tom Jones if alive could plainly tell for he knew your Vertues very well even to his dying Day I must mind you of one thing more viz. your Oath of Alleâ—iance that you took to your Brother as your Sovereign Lord. Did you keep that Oath to him If you did surely the only Motive that prompted you was some Obligation you believed was in the Oath But pray tell me did not you Apostacy to the Church of Rome not only require a Renunciation of that Oath but also absolve you from the Ties of it Therefore I ask you again Could your Conspiracy with the French King against our Laws and Liberties consist with that Oath Or if you look'd upon your self released from it pray what Security could the Government have when you should come to the Crown that you would keep your Faith with an Heretical People that would not keep Faith and true Allegiance to your Brother who was of the same Religion with your self This Sir was your Morality of which your Party so much boasted And how the Exercise of these Vertues that were so used in the Drudgery of France and Rome could be consistent with an English Parliamentary Government I cannot tell Thus Sir the Consideration of your Nature and Temper in all these Respects shews you were a Person in whom it was impossible there could be any love for Parliaments Let your Party say what they will and boast of your Vertues till doomsday yet I must say that your Nature and Temper shewed you a Man of no good Morals your Conscience being ready at all times to transmigrate as you found occasion Those near you that understood the Pulse of your Opinion did not in the least doubt your Heart which whilst you profest to be a Protestant conveyed Symptoms of Inflammation against the Reformed Religion because it was not so ready to consume a Party of Men you hated according to a Maxim of your dearest Great Grandmother of notorious Memory Mary Queen of Scots to which purpose you zealously promoted about the time of your Brother's Restoration abundance of Church-Caterpillars that with the fiercest Wrath might devour those of the Reformed Religion nay how often did you fall upon these Vermin as not zealous enough in persecuting those that differed from them only in a few rascally Ceremonies not worthy of wiping a Porter's Breech by which means those base Creatures ruined several thousands of Families in the space of twenty odd Years and brought them to great want And for all the Pretences you ever made for Liberty of Conscience you used to discover to your Brother the Ardency of your Zeal against poor dissenting Protestants and the Moderate Church-men that they were the greatest Enemies against his Government and for no other Reason but because they would not part with their Religion as Christians nor their Liberties as English-Men but preserve both chast and inviolable that they might approve themselves Men of Uprightness before God and Man 2. Your Inclinations published you an Enemy of all Parliaments from your Usage of that very Parliament in which you had such a Band of Pensioners One would think you should never have parted with such a Parliament where you and your Villains had purchased such an Interest truly some of them were so fond to aid and abet the Destruction of the Nation that the Charges in their Elections were defrayed whatever they amounted to any some of them were so profligate that as they had no Estates so they had neither Conscience nor Honour but were such as you pick'd out as necessary Men whose Votes you most relied upon You procured Tables for many of them at Whitehall and Westminster and had them for their great Loyalty in their Votes received into Pension What vast Sums did they give a great part of which was by you obtained to carry on your wicked Designs and Purposes And what Sums did you obtain to carry on your first wicked War against the Dutch and to supply your extraordinary Occasions in the second How well they supplied the Necessities of the Court-Whores Pimps and Bawds is well known You no sooner demanded but they complied so that your Brother and you once thought your selves exceeding happy in a House of Commons notwithstanding the Exchequer was shut up and by a Proclamation that you procured the Crown was published a Baâ—krupt in the midst of so many Aids and Revenues given by them Yet what humble Slaves were these to you and your Interest that when you ought to have shared in the Publick Justice of the Nation due to Traitors they not only passed by all your Miscarriages but stood by you as far as they durst and tho your Sins cried aloud yet nothing moved them to call you to an account for them If your Brother asked they gave till even they themselves were near the point of becoming useless and their Pensions too in danger In recompence of this you aimed at their Dissolution and how you branded them in a certain Declaration drawn up by Coleman by your Privity which your Brother had promised to sign but not being a Slave to his Word did not is yet remembred In that Declaration you charge the House of Commons that had given your Brother such Testimonies of their Loyalty and Bounty with misconstruing all his Endeavours to preserve the Nation in Ease and Prosperity and against all Reason and Evidence represented them to the Nation as Arguments of Fear and Disquiet and that under pretence of securing Property and Religion they had demanded unreasonable things from the Crown to bring those Men that had so well served your Brother and you out of all Esteem with the Protestant Dissenters You declared them Enemies to Liberty of Conscience and to the Proceedings of the Government and that they made seditious Constructions of the same and many other Charges of a very high Nature especially for opposing your Match with Mrs. Modena your Italian Comrade Nay you charg'd them for being Enemies to the Church of England and therefore you laboured to the utmost to have them dissolved tho you well knew that if these poor Dogs were not in a Parliament they must be in a Prison If this were your usage of a Parliament in which you were so happy if we may believe the King's Message to the Commons Feb. 28. 1663. what can any Man judg from hence but this that if this Parliament could not please you none could This I think sufficiently demonstrates what
happy in his People and both secured by frequent Parliaments which therefore could never endanger your Brother's Crown Mistake not your self nor think that we could be cheated with that Nonsense for nothing could endanger his Crown but your advancing the Religion of Rome and the Arbitrary Power of France in England It was these things endanger'd your Brother's Government nothing else could but good Gentleman he was engaged with you in these things beyond recovery to the ruin of himself and the endangering of all our Laws and Liberties The Devil's Brokers did not join with you in dissolving the Long Parliament but cried out if that Parliament was dissolved the Church would fall but Sir I will say that for you you had as little regard for the Church as you could considering how the Rogues had espoused your Quarrel and thought that Passive-Obedience Nonresistance and the Divine Right of Succession would have been admirable Orvâ—etans against the Plague of Rebellion But why must this Church fall with the Pensioners Alas alas the poor distressed Church and the poor distressed Band of Pensioners For the latter they were a Parcel of matchless Villains and she Whore enough not to be in the Nation 's Interest but dissolved they were and what escaped the Jail were secured by the Friars those who had stood by the Interest of their Country were sent again and such a Set of Gentlemen as no King would have sent home in so ignominious a manner but your Brother at your procurement and being sent home you and your Party made it your Business to expose them 1. You had them exposed on your Stages in your rascally Play-houses by a Parcel of mercenary Rogues and Whores who you and your villanous Party set up to debauch the Nation and to ridicule the essential Parts of the Government as if the Votes and Debates of that August Assembly were to be ridiculed by such Vermine who were Tools you made use of in some part to do your Drudgery But stay it is not fit the Whores that are Stage-players should be reflected on left there should be a more severe Act made for cutting of Noses for a Parliament-Man you know had his Nose cut for speaking against that sort of Vermine but I will not be afraid to mention their contemptuous reproaching of Parliaments 2. You had Monsieur Barillon who managed the Intrigue of charging the principal leading Members of both Houses of those three Parliaments with being in a Conspiracy against your Brother and your self and this he and your Jesuits Priests and other Vermine contrived by Subornation and Perjury a Proceeding not unusual to some Persons and Courts all the Mischiefs Poisonings and Villanies in all the European Courts were owing chiefly to his and his Master 's most Christian Politicks he was used as a main Agent fit to expose three as great Parliaments as England ever knew to all the Courts of Christendom as a Confederacy of Men in a Plot to destroy the King and your self and as Enemies to Monarchy And what was this but to render Parliaments odious to all the Princes of Europe 3. Notwithstanding those three Parliaments had nothing before them but to secure the Government against the Depredations that Popery and Arbitrary Power would have made upon it and notwithstanding their great Duty to the King yet what a scandalous Declaration was emitted wherein the said Parliaments were most villanously treated as if they had aimed at nothing but the change of the Government This Declaration may be supposed to be drawn by that Villain the French Ambassador in his own Mother-Tongue because tho it was turned into English yet the French way of wording it shews there was a French Counsellor in the case which could be none but he who was the chief Counsellor your Brother and you used in the management of your Conspiracy yet it is but the Copy of your Grandfather's and Father's way of Proceeding which your Brother and you thought fit to use to asperse Parliaments you were all Friends alike to that Constitution of the English Government 4. It is very remarkable that your villanous Judges were instructed in their Circuits to spit their Venom against the Proceedings of the said Parliaments and in their respective Stations they were to let their Grand Juries know what reason the King had to dissolve them and how they recommended the King's most Gracious Declaration to their Consideration and what Converts they made I was never curious to inquire for I could not suppose but the Country knew the Men and their Character and under what necessity they lay to be Villains from the tenour of their illegal Commissions and that they must prostitute themselves to the Will of the Court or be dismissed from their Imployments but they chose rather to be Scandals to the Bench than to appear as so many Reproaches to their Professions at the Bar. Upon all which Considerations I cannot believe they ever made any farther Profelytes against the English Parliaments than a paltry Sheriff of a County or a villanous Grand Jury pack'd on purpose to draw up an Address of Thanks for the Court 's attempting to ruin the Government as established by Law 5. Since Sir the City of London could not be debauched but the eminent Merchants and Traders in it stood firm to their Laws and Liberties and to the Government of England by Parliaments so that you could not influence the Masters you took an unheard-of Course to debauch the Servants and Apprentices in their Morals and procured a Day of Feasting for them whâ—re they were incouraged to huzza it away against Parliaments and to reproach the Senators as a Herd of Men set upon the Destruction of the Government both in Church and State but it pleased God to open the Eyes of several of those young Gentlemen to see that this Feasting and Rioting was carried on by ill Men and that the dissolving of Parliaments was only to screen some publick Offenders from Justice and by degrees quitting themselves of that scandalous Congress in a year or two their Feasting fell to the ground 6. You imployed old Hodg your Buffoon in ordinary to write against the Proceedings of those Parliaments the Rogue by his Lies Equivocations and Prevarications did much Mischief having called in a parcel of little Priests who engaged themselves to rail at Parliaments and admire the Loyalty of old Hodg their Guide whose Observators were the Subjects of their Discourses every Lord's day nay they would scarce look upon a Sacramental Discourse the first Sunday in the Month to be well dish'd up unless some of Roger's Frippery was mingled with it so that the old Villain was not unsuccessful in his traiterous Papers which he published several times a week till God in his Mercy opened the Eyes of some of our Passive-Obedience-Puppies and let them see the Villain was aiming at Popery and destroying the Church of England notwithstanding his specious Pretences to defend it 7. You
the People is very evident Therefore Sir abruptly to dissolve Parliaments when nothing but the Legislative and united Wisdom of the Kingdom could relieve the Protestant Party from their just Fears or secure their Religion from its certain Dangers is very inconsistent with the great Trust reposed in your Brother and seems to express but little of that Love and Tenderness which the People of England might justly have expected from him 5. Would not the Constitution of Parliament as by the Laws and Customs of England established have been equally imperfect and destructive of it self had it been left to the Arbitrary Will of a wicked King whether he would summons a Parliament or had it been put into his Power to dismiss them at his pleasure or at the Pleasure of two rascally French Whores or a little scoundrel French Ambassador And therefore was not your Brother's dissolving the Parliaments at Westminster and Oxford by your procurement a most unreasonable thing 6. Was not the Kingdom so alarm'd at the Wickedness of your Brother in dissolving those Parliaments that Men began to be exceedingly concerned not knowing where it would end insomuch that your Brother was necessitated in a sneaking Declaration to let the Nation see he was conscious to himself that his Dissolution of those Parliaments stood in need of an Apology so that it was but at the best an Appeal from his Parliament to the People of England And if your Brother and you could not justify your Usage of these Parliaments because so destructive to the Liberty of the Subject what assurance did your two French Whores Portsmouth and Mazarine and Barillon give you and the rest of your Party that your Brother's Declaration shewing Reasons for such a Violation to our English Government would make the Nation in love with such Treatments of their Representatives For Sir could you think in your Conscience that the People of England did not see themselves hereby exposed to the restless Malice of their Enemies and resented it highly since they could not but be sensible of the languishing Condition of the three Kingdoms and that nothing but a Parliament could cure the Distempers with which we were infected by you and your Party both as to Religion and Morals And had they not with great Charge and Difficulty chosen three Parliaments on whom they placed their Hopes And those being suddenly dissolved could they believe your Brother or you designed any thing less than a total Subversion of the Government Come Sir sit down put on your Irish considering Cap and judg why since Ned Coleman's Protestant Declaration was so unhappily published before its time the Nation should not be as much alarmed at Barillon's Declaration in April 1681 as they were at Coleman's in 1678. And could you and your Irish Teagues imagine that one French Declaration should so soon succeed another nay could you without being confounded see your Servant Coleman's Original fairly drawn by the Advice of the French King's Confessor to bring in Popery and Slavery so much outdone by Barillon's Copy since you judged it could never be outdone by any Man whatever And since the former exposed you and your Brother as the worst of Men how could you expect the latter should not have the same effect upon the English Nation and put them into such a Ferment as to deal by you and your Party just as we did in 1688 7. Did not your Brother April 20. 1679 not only in Council but Parliament declare how sensible he was of the ill Posture of his Affairs and the great Jealousies and Dissatisfaction of his good Subjects whereby the Crown and Government was become too weak to preserve it self which proceeded from his use of a single Ministry and of private Advices and therefore professed his Resolution to lay them wholly aside for the future and to be advised by those able and worthy Persons whom he had chosen for his Council in all his weighty and important Affairs Now Sir consider was it not most unreasonable in you and your French Vermine to put the King upon such a manifest Violation of his Royal Word and Promise to the Nation But to put the Matter out of dispute Did not your Brother on that Choice of his Council tell the Parliament of his Resolution of meeting his People often in Parliament And who was it that changed his mind and made him alter those Gracious Purposes but you and your wicked Party Would you make us believe that your Brother could so soon forget his Promises or that upon the meeting of these Parliaments there were no weighty Matters to be debated 8. Did not you and your Party in prevailing with the King shew the World that your Cunning kept not pace with your Malice since by this wicked usage of our Representatives in those Parliaments you and your Cutthroats made your selves known tho you had secretly and cautiously given that wicked Advice to your Brother only to be protected from the publick Justice of the Nation But in time you discovered your selves and told your own Names when Case-hardned enough to pull off the Mask and let us see what you would be at But what Offence did you take at those Parliaments Surely it was because the repeated Treasons and traiterous Designs of you and your Conspirators rendred you obnoxious to them And did you not put the King upon dissolving those Parliaments thinking thereby not to have been judged the Authors of that villanous Counsel Alas good Sir you have so exposed your self in that Matter that you left your self and Party not only without Justification but without all pretence hereafter but thanks be to God I lived to see the Justice of the Nation take place upon you and some of your Party There are some yet lurking and basking themselves in good Imployments but I hope our King will rid himself of the Vermine in time I am confident Sir you may reflect upon these Considerations and pronounce your self guilty of this unreasonable Usage of three as great Parliaments as ever England saw Now how can we conclude otherwise than that you then was and still continue an Enemy to Parliaments Fifthly The ill Consequences attending the Dissolution of those three Parliaments are worthy your Consideration and that I may be brief herein take notice 1. What Divisions you and your Party caused amongst the People of England thereby you made such Breaches in Families that I fear are not made up to this day unless Death hath reconciled them this you did by the Advice of your Priests Jesuits and Popish Council at St. James's and the wicked Ministry at White-hall who rather than the People should not be divided took their several Copies by your Original and came in a most comfortable manner to your Assistance hoping to make the People rebel These Differences you nourished with all the Industry imaginable to the great Hazard of the whole Kingdom But Sir this was to betray us into the Hands of our
Popish Adversaries which they could not do but by inflaming the Differences between the Conforming and Non-conforming Protestants that we might not unite our Forces against the Common Enemy 2. You and your Party by this means weakened the Protestant Interest There can be nothing more plain than this for upon the Dissolution of the Oxford Parliament Swarms of Priests and Popish Conspirators returned home and fell to work to pervert the People to the Obedience and Communion of the See of Rome What Pensions then you got for some and Imployments for others and with what care you maintain'd their Interest and defended their Cause and Quarrel against those that pursued them for their many Treasons against the Government we all saw to our great Sorrow And what help was there since you and your Party had so much countenance from your Brother who was ingaged with you in the whole Popish Conspiracy saving that of his own Life 3. You procured a severe Persecution against Protestant Dissenters which you nor none of your rascally Crew durst do during the Session of Parliament but immediately upon their Dissolution you fell upon them either because they had occasioned the sending of good Men to Parliament or because they were zealous Assertors of the Protestant Religion against Popery and of our English Liberties against Slavery these were indeed high Crimes for which you and your Villains made them smart to the ruine of several thousand Families and had you continued somewhat longer in that glorious Adventure you might have made poor England a howling Wilderness tho when your Brother and you came home you found it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey Nay you had rather all should have run into Confusion than the Dissenters should not be ruined because they could not comply with a few Ceremonies for which your Party had no other Authority than a few Acts of Parliaments 4. You advanced Arbitrary Proceedings in Westminster-Hall where you had a Set of rognish Judges exactly of a size for that turn who had as much Impudence for the Court as they had had Dread of being called to Account in Parliament for all their Villanies And tho it was a standing Constitution that if any Man stood impeached by the Commons of England before the Lords in Parliament no inferiour Court could take Cognizance of that Cause or try him for that Treason in Westminster-Hall for which he stood impeached in Parliament which upon the Dissolution of the Oxford-Parliament was Fitz-Harris his Case yet for all this you found out your Pemberton your Jones and your Raymond that had Impudence enough to try the said Fitz-Harris and condemn him for alas good Men they were not to lose their Places for every small Peccadillo if it were to serve the Government especially to do a Job for you and your Crew 5. Upon the Dissolution of the 3 last Parliaments to alienate the King from his People you and your Party did industriously revive the Memory of the late unhappy Civil War between your Father and the Parliament which was your Brother's Interest as well as the Nation 's to have buried in oblivion the mentioning that unhappy War serv'd only to put us in mind of the sudden Dissolution of 3 Parliaments and the 12 years want of one and what the Villains had done in your Father's Reign and the better to colour your procuring the Dissolution of those three Parliaments you had your Parties abroad to asperse and brand the Members as being of the same Complexion with those that met Nov. 3. 1640 but none of your Cut-throats did ever mention the bloody Massacre in 1641 because begun and carried on by your Father's Command and for his Service But Sir let me tell you that none lived more peaceably under your Brother's Government than they who were engaged in that War on the Parliament's side therefore I cannot tell by what prudent Topick you went when you discourag'd those Men in their obedient living by such villanous Reflections and upbraided them with what the Law had pardoned and they had expiated by their Loyalty since supposing they had been Criminals which yet I think they were not But this is plain beyond all dispute that the Parliament that restored your Brother to his Throne and you to be a constant Plague to this Nation made an Act of Indemnity wherein many things were enacted which they judged necessary for the Settlement of the Nation they prohibited under a Penalty one Man's reproaching another with being concerned in that War for the space of three years after the Date of the said Act sure then they never intended Men should afterwards take the liberty to upbraid one another with it 6. Another ill Consequence of dissolving those three Parliaments was that by this means you made a way to succeed your Brother in the Government If those Parliaments had sat and their Counsels not been defeated by their unexpected Dissolutions you must have been disabled from ever inheriting the Imperial Crown of these Realms and it was plain those Whores and other Traitors that procured the Dissolution of those Parliaments aim'd at your coming to the Throne But Sir I think your Party should have shown so much Ingenuity and Candour as to have owned that all the People of England particularly those that were for your Exclusion were as zealous for Monarchy even in the Royal Line as any of your clamorous Bullies durst for their Ears be I am sure nothing so much endanger'd the legal Monarchy of England as your coming to the Crown which the Wisdom of the Nation foresaw and therefore that it might be preserved resolved to pass you by and let it descend to another Heir Nay Sir if you had continued James Duke of York I am sure you might have lived with more Honour and Comfort than you can propose by putting your Feet under the French King's Table but God having ordained you to be a Plague to us for our Sins I think you let us see what you aimed at in your four Years Tyranny There are some blind Puppies whose Eyes are not yet opened I could wish you had their Company at St. Germains being confident you would soon lick them open 7. Another Consequence of the Dissolution of those three Parliaments was the possessing the King of a Design carried on by the dissenting Party for his Destruction and to introduce a Democratical Power which they called a Common-wealth nay that you might hasten the Dissolution of the Oxford-Parliament you made use of this Lie for an Argument which your Brother was willing to believe that he might have some Pretence for quitting that way of Government There were two sorts of Persons charged 1. The Parliaments themselves 2. Those who stedfastly asserted the Power and Privileges of Parliaments the Protestant Religion and Liberties of the People in opposition to Popery and Slavery 1. These Parliaments were charged with a Design against his Majesty's Person and Government Now Sir let us
the best of my remembrance 't was in 1680 gave it a due Consideration nay they were so candid as to represent to the King how that important Place came to be in so miserable a Condition after so vast a Treasure consumed to make it useful and that nothing better could be expected of it since it consisted most of Papists and such as were Enemies to the Religion Laws and Liberties of England These Inconveniencies might have been redressed by your Brother had he so pleased and truly the Parliament advised him to it nay Sir you may put on your Spectacles and read the Address of Parliament November 1680 wherein they promised to assist him in the Defence of that Place if they might have a tolerable Security that any Supply for it should not be applied to augment the Strength of our Popish Adversaries and to increase our Dangers at home from that villanous Faction and could you with any reason blame them since they had to their Sorrow seen Money imployed contrary to those Ends for which given by your Band of Pensioners But above all the Popish Party's Insolencies and the Impudence of those that espoused the French Interest threatned the Nation with total Ruine at home and therefore they judged it not prudence to leave the Consideration of England to provide for Tangier it looking like securing one single Cabin whilst the whole Ship was on fire Therefore to conclude this Head let me ask you these plain Questions 1. Whether it could be judged consistent with the Wisdom of a Parliament that had seen the dismal Consequences of the Incouragement your Popish Party had received from your Brother and you to give Money to supply a Garison which was used to augment their Strength and increase the danger of the Nation and whether you would not have laughed as much at them for such a Compliance as you did at your Band of Pensioners for giving 1250000 l. for the King 's extraordinary Occasions in 1673 or for that vast Sum they gave for a War with France in 1678 2. Had you not several Regiments in pay besides the Guards in England which might be transported and maintained as cheap there as here and would it not have been more honourable for them to have been sent to Tangier to have beaten the Moors than to stay at home to beat their Landlords and Landladies in their Quarters 3. Had you not a Company of Popish Gentlemens Sons to be imployed in that Service whose Fathers were undone by the Supply they gave for maintaining Liberty of Conscience and the Dutch War in order to destroy the Protestant Religion all over Europe And could you and your Teagues think on any rational ground that ever a Protestant Parliament would give Money to preserve that Place which was nothing else but a Nursery of Popish Officers and Souldiers I believe your Popish young Gentlemen might want the Charity of those Imployments but the Parliament had a foresight of the fatal Consequences that would attend the placing their Bounty upon such Vermin who would have been ready to return home for those ends designed by you and your Council at St. James's 3. The Parliament would not part with Money for Paiment of the Debt of the Exchequer to the Bankers which your Crew urg'd did put your Brother out of a Possibility of supporting the Government This is the Charge and a heavy one too Now what was this Government that was to be supported but a parcel of nasty Whores Pimps Bawds Informers Suborners of Perjury Murderers and Thieves This was your Government in your Brother's days was it not Nay did he not consume more Money upon such Vermine in one year than would serve the Government of England ten Did the Credit of the Crown both at home and abroad depend upon Portsmouth's having 52000 l. Sterling a Year and Nel Waal for being Bawd in ordinary getting 30 or 40000 l. in Money and other Cattle of the same Profession being maintained in all manner of Luxury for no other merit but having had a hand in the ruin of the Nation No Sir the Credit of the Government did not depend thereupon the Parliaments did not settle Revenues nor give Taxes for such Ends but your Brother and you had advanced the Credit of the Government if you had sent such Vermin to Bridewel to have been set to work for their living as Whores ought to be and to have the Correction of the House all Titles of Honour to the contrary notwithstanding Come Sir to be plain with you the Honours of England are intrusted with the King but were never designed for such Vermin as Portsmouth that was but the Daughter of a poor French Fellow or a Bastard of some Body I name not who nor to have whole Families advanced for providing or pimping another Man's Wife to be a Whore Royal that has had no less to speak modestly than 20 Stallions to attend her besides your dear Brother of blessed Memory Sir it is certain notwithstanding the noise your Party made of your Brother's being thro' the Parliaments refusing to give Money put out of a Possibility to pay his Debts that he never would pay them which was his Resolution and therefore what Faith could be given to his Promises tho he knew the Honour of the Nation would suffer highly in his taking up his Brother of France's Custom of not being a Slave to his Word The truth is had the People always been to pay his Debts there might have been Taxes without end this Sir your Band of Pensioners well knew who therefore as mercenary as they were would never pay the Debt due to the Bankers and the last Westminster Parliament having so fair and fresh an Instance before their Eyes and their Ears filled with the daily Cries of the Widows and Orphans were obliged in duty to give a publick Caution to the People not to run again into the same Error because they judged all Securities of that Nature absolutely void and that no future Parliament could without breach of Trust repay that Money that was at first borrowed to prevent the sitting of a Parliament Thus I have gone through all the Particulars of the second Pretence that is that the Parliament would not supply your Brother with Money to support the Spanish Alliance preserve Tangier and to pay his Debts 3ly You had another Pretence for procuring those three Parliaments to be dissolved viz. two Votes that passed the Commons Jan. 7. 1680. 1. That whosoever should lend or cause to be lent by way of Advance any Money upon the Branches of the King's Revenue arising by way of Customs Excise and Hearth-money shall be adjudged the hinderer of the sitting of Parliaments and be responsible for the same 2. That whosoever should accept or buy any Tally or Anticipation upon any part of the King's Revenue or shall pay such Tally hereafter to be struck shall be adjudged to hinder the sitting of Parliaments and be responsible
therefore in Parliament Notwithstanding these Votes you had a Rogue that rose from a Kitchin-boy to possess as some say 14000 l. per annum of which he wronged the Nation having had the Opportunity to cheat three Governments and suck their Blood to whom the City of London ows much of her Misery he I say furnished your Brother with Money in contempt of these Votes but he has wiped his Mouth and hugs himself as if not one of the greatest Villains that ever England bore I leave him he was a Friend of yours and you have reason to remember him I remember the Votes very well and certainly they were justifiable to the whole Kingdom for consider a little did you take the Revenue to be disposed of at your Brother's pleasure Was it for his private use or the publick Good Sir the Revenue the Parliament had fixed was a publick not a private one your Brother was trusted with the disposing of part only and that not without the Advice of some of his great Ministers of State as a Secretary of State and the Lord Privy Seal for smaller Sums and for all great Paiments the Lord Chancellor Lord Keeper or Commissioners of the Great Seal were to have been added the other part of the Revenue was assigned to other Uses the Customs to the maintenance of the Navy The Maintenance of the Household the Tables at Court and Wages of the King's Servants were in our former Kings Reigns so established by Parliament that the Cofferer had his Money paid him out of the Exchequer under great Penalties to be inflicted for the neglect thereof and the House of Lords judged it a great part of their immediate Care It maintained the Dignity and Honour of the Government and contributed much to Love and good Understanding between the King and People no Countrey Farmer had Business at Court but he found those who bad him welcome and so had all Degrees therefore the King's Servants had justly the same Return wherever they came the outward Rooms of the House did not smell of Match nor was the Language of the Court Who goes there there used to be the Smell of better Hospitality this was plain even in your Father's time Besides Sir 't is well known that by the evil Counsel and Course your Brother and you took you made the Bankers of London and elsewhere become the very Bane of the Nation not only to the Gentleman and Farmer but I doubt to the Merchant too they raised and kept up the Interest of Money they drained the Country and bought Warrants so that your Brother paid 25 per Cent. for all his Expences You know the Revenue was in many of its Branches appropriated and provision made that they should not be alienated and if rascally Fellows that had decoyed into their Custody the ready Monies of Merchants Gentlemen and others did by the Strength of their Cash anticipate the Revenues of the Government who could have provided for the Nation Could any but a Parliament do it Now Sir it plainly follows that if your Brother had found out another way to supply his Wants than by Parliament the great hinge on which the Government turn'd was lost therefore what ground you and your Party had to make this a Pretence to put off those Parliaments especially the last Westminster-Parliament I cannot tell and how you could make them Criminals for these two Votes I leave to the Judgment even of your ragged Ministry at St. Germains 4ly A 4th Pretence you had for dissolving the Parliaments aforesaid was a Vote concerning Protestant Dissenters That the Prosecution of Protestant Dissenters upon the Penal Laws is at this time grievous to the Subject a weakning the Protestant Interest an Incouragement to Popery and dangerous to the Peace of the Kingdom This was the Vote of the Commons in the last Westminster-Parliament Truly Sir they could not but pass the Vote as their Opinion since they judged themselves invited to it by your Brother himself who had often wished whilst his Band of Pensioners sat that he might be able to exercise a Power of Dispensation in reference to Protestants who thro' the tenderness of a misguided Conscience did not conform to the Ceremonies Discipline and Government of the Church and promised he would make it his special Care to incline the Wisdom of the Parliament to concur with him in making an Act to that purpose But Sir I know your Party usually said that these Inclinations of the King lasted no longer than he had a Prospect of giving the Papists an equal Benefit of Toleration also I doubt it was too true and that they had that honourable Notion of the King from your sweet self but whether true or no I will not insist here but shall only mind you that your Brother after he parted with you did on the 6th of March in his Speech to the first Westminster-Parliament after the disbanding your small Officers express his Zeal not only for the Protestant Religion in general but for a Union amongst all sorts of Protestants and did he not command the then Tool of a Chancellor at the very same time to tell them that it was necessary to distinguish between Protestant and other Recusants between them that would destroy the whole Flock and those that wander from it I am much dispos'd to believe and that on good ground that your Brother was not sincere in the thing yet whatever his Heart was in the Case the following Parliament might justly incourage that Vote from the aforesaid Declarations You and your wicked Party especially your Church-Bums did attacque that last Westminster-Parliament as if that Vote relating to Protestant Dissenters was to shew that the Commons had in themselves a Power of suspending the Penal Laws established by the three States of the Realm who yet said it was a Power not to be allow'd in the King and caused to be cancelled all that he had done in relation to the ease of Dissenters from the Church of England and if the King had not Power to suspend the execution of the Penal Laws then had not they To this I answer 1. A few Years before that Parliament sat your wicked Ministers did remember that the whole Nation was justly alarm'd upon the King's assuming to himself by their Advice an arbitrary Power of suspending the Penal Laws upon this they thought it very popular to charge the House of Commons with an Usurpation on that Attempt Now Sir if they did by a Vote declare the Inconvenience of prosecuting Protestant Dissenters at that time or at any time hereafter I cannot see where the Crime was or of what Usurpation they stood guilty since they made the Vote for the very same Reason which your Brother had for expressing himself as he did in his foresaid Speech supposing his Heart had kept pace with his Tongue they had with great Trouble of Soul perceived that the Design of the Popish Party was not against any one Sort
Nell Waal or Barillon could have for their Lives Notwithstanding all this you may remember how it inveighed against the King with all the bitterness imaginable and incited all Men to rebel against him in order to destroy his Person and yours This Paper as villanous as it was against the King was by him Portsmouth and her Bawd Nell and Barillon ordered to be conveyed into the Pockets and Lodgings of several Noblemen Gentlemen and others that when they were seized and this found upon them they should be charged with Treason and Rebellion and the finding of this upon them should be a Proof of the same The Tool that was to carry on this Roguery was Fitz-Harris who was to be one of the Witnesses to swear this Conspiracy designed by the Protestants and your Conspirators had prepared the Business to be laid in Oxford-shire Buckingham-shire and Bark-shire that this Villany might not miscarry but be believed by the Juries that should be pack'd in those Counties in order to a speedy Justice upon the pretended Criminals But Sir as well laid as this Design was it proved to be a Brat of Popish Extraction and the Midwives were that Whore Portsmouth and trusty Nell her Bawd with whom you would have engaged in Person had not the Catholick Cause called for your Presence in Scotland but I suppose let who will believe it that you know nothing of the Business I shall prove you in it in its proper place Well then the nature of the Crime and the King your Brother Barillon and the two Strumpets aforenam'd being engaged in this piece of Villany and several great Persons being to be destroyed surely deserved an Inquiry which an Oxford-Jury neither could or would ever make for they it may be in the Multitude of their Mercies would have dealt with other Protestants as they did by poor Colledge whom they basely murdered to please your Brother and you That House of Commons as if endowed with a Prophetick Spirit unanimously agreed that none but the Parliament was capable of looking into the bottom of this Affair both in its Original and Tendency and the more zealous they were for that the more they saw the Zeal of the Judges and the inferiour Courts in Westminster-Hall abated in relation to the Popish Plot and its Discovery but heightned for you and your Party against the Protestants and that those Blood-hounds thirsted after their Blood that asserted the Laws and Liberties of England Truly to speak the best I can of those Judges they were much changed for the worse as appeared in the Trials of Wakeman Gascoyne and others that were in the Popish Conspiracy and in good truth Sir the Oxford House of Commons were the more jealous and could you blame them for when this Fitz-Harris was sensible of his Crime or at least of his Danger and had begun to tell Tales he was removed out of the Legal Custody of the Sheriffs and illegally committed close Prisoner to the Tower to the great astonishment of all sober Men. That Parliament therefore had no other way to have the Prosecution effectual and the Judgment according to the Laws of the Land and that Fitz-Harris should not lie under any hopes but by impeaching him for they well knew that no Pardon could stop their Sail tho it might the King's Now Sir consider how this Pretence of yours could justify the Dissolution of that Parliament 9thly The last Pretence I shall mention which you had for dissolving the three last Parliaments was their bringing in a Bill to exclude you and to render you incapable of inheriting the Imperial Crown of this Realm This was the best Pretence you and your Party could make for doing so wicked a thing so pernicious to the Peace of the Kingdom but if I destroy this Goliah I trust you will quit it and let it take its fate with the others There were many of your Party that used several Arguments against that Bill which I shall take notice of 1. The Conspirators did impudently assert that the Bill of Exclusion was unlawful and therefore in it self null and void especially since the King had declared against it Some of them were pretended Protestants and had been for some time educated in the University under a Parcel of High-church-Loggerheads they even they were tainted with this Notion that was fit for none but such as believed Transubstantiation Now Sir if it were against Law it must be against a written or an unwritten Law if it were against a written Law your Party should have named it which when they had done they should have named that Parliament that ever was bound up by any written Law if we take them in their Legislative Capacity as we must do in this Case and to declare that a Parliament is bound up by written Laws in their Legislative Capacity is both destructive and absurd 1. It was destructive the Parliament being the fundamental Court and Law of the Kingdom and ordained to make Laws and see them executed or to supply their Deficiency according to the present Exigency for Preservation of the Peace and Safety of the People which is universally in them but not so in particular Laws and Statutes which cannot provide against future Exigencies as the Law of Parliaments doth and therefore were not Limits to those Parliaments and it would have been farther destructive by depriving those Parliaments of half their Power at once whenever they should be circumscribed by written Laws in their Legislative Capacity which is a peculiar Property belonging only to inferiour Courts of Law and Justice but not to the Parliament of England which is the Supream Court but must have ceased to be so and have divested it self of that inherent and uncircumscribed Power which the Safety of the People comprehends and requires 2. It was absurd in the Conspirators to urge that the Bill of Exclusion was against Law and therefore null and void of it self for the Legislative Power of Parliament is to give Laws to England and not to receive any saving from the Nature and End of their own Constitution which as they give Parliaments a Being so the Parliaments make Laws for Preservation of themselves and the whole Kingdom they represent As for your unwritten Law it is to me like your unwritten Verities in the Church of Rome and the paltry Ceremonies of a Church that cannot be proved lawful either from the Command of Christ or the Practice of his Apostles if therefore by unwritten Law you mean Custom of Inheritance that 's against your Party by the Practices that have been both at home and abroad or if you mean the Equity of the thing then the Parliament in their Legislative Capacity were Judges of that or if you mean Prudence the Parliament being the Wisdom of the Nation are certainly Judges of that also From all which it undoubtedly follows that the Proposal of a Bill to exclude you from inheriting the Crown of this Realm was in it self
lawful because of the uncircumscribed Power of Parliaments in judging what is lawful and what is necessary for the Safety of the People by whom they are sent to Parliament for redress of Grievances which no written Law could provide against in an universal way So then it being lawful in it self to propose a Bill to exclude you from the Crown the doing it after your Brother had signified his Pleasure against the Bill could not make it against Law for I remember no Law written or unwritten that ever constituted him Lord of the Articles upon the Parliament which they were to debate and propose or not But what was his Will and Pleasure or the Pleasure of two or three Villains and Whores that joined with him in usurping such a Power altogether strange to our English Constitution of Parliament And I must tell you your Brother 's intolerable Stiffness in that Particular I cannot think was out of Kindness to you or from any suspicion he had of the Danger of the English Monarchy by such a Law but from the Influence of some ill Men engaged in the Conspiracy with you to destroy that Constitution who knowing your Brother's Inclination in that Particular as well as yours made it their Business to nourish in your Absence a Misunderstanding between him and the People whom you and he mortally hated justly fearing if he should ever have come to the due Temper of an English Monarch and to have a Sense of the Peoples Affection to him as the Father of the Kingdom he would have delivered up you and your Rogues who had infected him with that deadly Notion that the Interest of an English Parliament was not only distinct from but opposite to his Interest and Designs 2. Your Conspirators used to urge another Argument against the Bill of Exclusion no doubt your own first or they would never have presumed to use it so long till it was become thredbare viz. that the King could not comply with the House of Commons in it tho the Interest as well as the Desire of the People of England because it so nearly concerned him in point of Honour Justice and Conscience Your Brother and you were both Men of Honour Conscience and Justice of which you both made this Nation sensible Well since it was so let me argue upon the Topicks of Honour Justice and Conscience with you Had it not been honourable in your Brother to be true and faithful to his Word and Oath to keep and maintain the Religion and Laws established Nay Sir could any Man have thought it dishonourable in him to have loved the Safety and Welfare of his People and the true Religion established amongst them above the temporal Greatness of his Relations Was it not just in conjunction with his Parliament for his Peoples Safety to make use of a Power warranted by our English Laws and the Examples of former Ages Or where was his Justice that was the Father of his Country to expose his Children to ruin out of Fondness to a perverse Brother and to abandon the Religion Laws and Liberties of these Kingdoms which he was sworn to maintain and expose them to the Rage of you and your traiterous Jesuits who thought your selves in Conscience bound to subvert them Your Brother by his own might have remembered your Religion and what your Brother's Conscience was in relation to your Succession a cunning Man could scarce find out but if he had been a Protestant I might have asked what Conscience obliged him to ascend the Throne to overthrow the Protestant and set up the Popish Religion â—ir since your Brother insisted so much upon Honour Justice and Conscience I 'll say of him as I ought that he was a Papist yet I am sure he was bound in Honour Justice and Conscience to have preserved to the People of England their Religion Laws and Liberties and in conjunction with this Parliament to have secured them from being subverted by you and your Followers since withâ—â— much Duty and Affection they recalled him from a miserable Banishment attended with Poverty and Dishonour and chearfully placed him upon the Throne and enlarged his Revenue above what any of his Predecessors had enjoyed and gave him vaster Sums in 20 Years than had been given to all the Kings since William the Norman Where then was his Honour Conscience and Justice in leaving them to be destroyed by you It cannot be said he had therein more regard to the Government than to the Person that succeeded him seeing if he had passed the Bill of Exclusion he had no ways prejudiced the legal Monarchy which he did enjoy with all those Rights Prerogatives and Powers which his Ancestors did ever claim besides what he usurped against Law which yet the People quietly submitted to 3. A third Argument your Party used was That it was a hard Case that a Man should lose his Inheritance because of this or that Perswasion in Matters of Religion Truly Sir had your Case been only so I should have thought your Argument pretty strong but alas Popery was not in you and your Conspirators an innocent Perswasion of Men differing from others in religious Matters but a real Conspiracy against Christianity it self nor was this Inheritance your Cattel used to mention a bare Inheritance of a private Person without the Consideration of an Oâ—â—â—ce annexed to it which required you to be Par Officio I pray what did your Logger-heads mean when they made such a Noise about an Inheritance nothing less than a Government of three Kingdoms the Protection of several Nations the making of War and Peace for them the Preservation of their Religion the disposal of all publick Places and Revenues the Execution of all Laws with many other things of the greatest Importance Truly Sir these inconsiderate Persons were mightily out in their Claim for the three Parliaments had reason to look about them when they had reflected upon the Bloody Tenets of the Church of Rome and more particularly upon the hellish Conspiracy then discovered and at that Time carrying on with Vigour by your Popish and Popishly affected Traitors and finding you to be the avowed Head of this devillish Party could you with any Justice think they should not prevent as much as in them lay your being a Shepherd since you had declared your self a Wolf And since you were a Papist how could they believe you would ever appear in the Defence of the Protestant Religion I think this may suffice for this Argument 4. A fourth Argument against the Bill of Exclusion was the Oath of Allegiance taken to your Brother by the Parliament of England Truly I never heard the Argument from any but an Irish Man not but we had then Fools enow to invent such an Argument as we have at this Day to attempt your Restoration But their Arguments were as silly as their Plots and this is one of the most foolish Arguments could be used against such great and wise Assemblies as