Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	act_n	great_a	parliament_n	3,586	5	6.2777	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65948	Constantinus redivivus, or, A full account of the wonderful providences, and unparallell'd successes that have all along attended the glorious enterprises of the heroical prince, William the 3d, now King of Great Britain, &c. wherein are many curious passages relating to the intrigues of Lewis the 14th, &c. carried on here, and elsewhere, never printed before, &c. / by Mr. John Whittel ...	Whittel, John.	1693 (1693)	Wing W2040; ESTC R8794	75,261	226

Men of Sense of both Parties The hands to which were most of them Suborn'd and hired and the Hundreds and Thousands that were not Named set down with a Bold Stroke indefinitely Cum c. Though no where yet Existing but in Nubibus and which indeed though they pretended to have devoted their Lives and Fortunes to the service of their New Benefactor for the Gracious Liberty he had Granted them yet proved but Troops of Air in his time of Need the Main Body of the Dissenting Party Wisely Concurring with that of the Church to wish well to the Arms of the Prince of Orange and in Scotland doing indeed themselves the whole Work for him And though the Church-Party would not give their Consent to the taking off the Test and Penal Laws Yet he had some hopes they and especially the Major part of the Clergy among them would at least have gone such Lengths in Passive Obedience and compliance to Prerogative as to have been tamely submissive with the dispensing with them and not to have withstood the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience But when he found by that Acute Letter to a Dissenter and some other Writings Publisht on that occasion that they Disavowed all Complaisance with him in those Points that no Addresses of Thanks excepting one or two came from any of the Church of England Party upon the subject of that Declaration and that notwithstanding the many sham Addresses wherewith he sought to Delude himself and the World the Best and Wisest part of the Dissenters Rejected his Declaration as harbouring a Secret Snake in the Grass and Underhand sided with the Church of England in Disavowing any Liberty not Granted in Parliament He was extreamly Uneasie and many Projects were offer'd to him by his Cabinet Councellours to Ward the Mischiefs these ill symptoms Threaten'd and make himself obey'd According to some of these Advices to Revenge himself upon such of our Clergy as stood Tight to the Protestant and English Interests by the means of such of them as he thought would comply which still he imagin'd would be the Major part and to make them as his Jesuits phrased it To eat their own Dung by forcing them to Excert an Active or else to feel the smart of their own Passive Obedience the Principles of which he mistakingly fansied would have carried the Main-Body of the Clergy Just as great and extravagant lengths as some Tantivy-Court-Doctors among them at that time had laid out for them and have perswaded them that the same Absolute and Unlimitted Obedience was owing to the Bare Commands of the King as to the Acts of the Three Estates viz. King Lords and Commons in which alone is the fulness of Supream Legal Power and Authority and to which alone consequently the Orthodox Christian Duty of Absolute Active or Passive Obedience is due And that they were to submit as blindly and tamely to the King acting without or against LAW as by and with it and that Active or Passive Obedience was as much due to the King out of as in Parliament and to a Word of his an Order of Council or a Proclamation as to an Act of Parliament I say erroneously thinking that the Major part of our Churchmen were as much season'd with those Mistaken Notions of Passive Obedience c. as some Court-Doctours by ass'd then by the Jesuits and some of their Unthinking Followers seem'd to be He resolves to Administer to the whole Body of the Clergy such a Dose or Pill as should infallibly search and try the Temper of them all and therefore presently gives Order to all Ministers Pastours and Curates To Read Publickly in their Churches his Declaration for liberty of Conscience But finding that Contrary to his Expectation not onely Seven of our Principal and Right Reverend Bishops had the Zeal and Courage to Address him against that Declaration as Illegal and to Protest they could not Comply with his Commands in Reading it because against Law as well as their Consciences And that the Main-Body of the Clergy throughout the Kingdom influenc'd by their Noble Example Refused likewise to Read it and that in Nine thousand and some Hundreds of Parishes there are in England and Wales besides Collegiate-Churches and Chappels c. there were scarely 500 Clergy-Men in all that were weak and supple enough to Comply with his Orders in that Matter He and his Cabal were much inraged And yet at their Wits end what Measures to take How to Remedy so great an Evil and how to prosecute a whole Body of Men so considerable as that of the Clergy They had not long before that set up though contrary to an Express Act of Parliament a New High Commission thinking thereby to have awed the Clergy and have Disciplin'd them so as to have disposed them for a Ready Compliance with the Declaration that was to follow And which had they Complied Was to have been the Dead-doing-Stroke to the Churchof England By which High-Commission they Censured and Deprived the Right Worthy and Magnanimous Prelate the present Lord Bishop of London Notwithstanding his and his Noble Families great Merits towards the Crown and several other worthy Clergy Men Which Bold Attempts upon the Subjects Liberty and Prerogative of Parliament did not a little move all Orders and Ranks of Men in the Kingdom and rather made them far more stiff against all Compliance with the least Motions made towards taking away the Penal Laws and Test and with the Declaration for Liberty than any ways frightned or disposed them to it Which made the Popish Cabal tho they resolv'd to deal rigorously with the Addressing Bishops whom they committed to the Tower not dare to employ the Authority of their pretended Commission against them any more But rather to Impeach them at Law which when they were baffled in they signified such indiscreet Rage and Spite at their Disappointment that they could not forbear letting the whole Body of the Protestants throughout Great Britain c. see that from thenceforwards they were minded without seeking any more Umbella's or Disguises of Law and Justice to prosecute their Revenge by Main Force and by Military and Dragooning hands to effect what they could not do by their High-Commission or any courses at Law I need not mention their Practices in endeavouring to Poyson the Fountains that were to feed our Posterity by Erecting Popish Schools and Seminaries in divers places and by endeavouring to stuff our Vniversities with Roman Emissaries Nor the violences used towards those who withstood them As to those of Magdalen College and others because all those were but less matters in comparison of what they did afterwards to the Right Reverend the Bishops and were going to do to the rest of the Clergy and therefore shall only proceed to hint upon those other Extremities they openly in the face of the Sun at last were driving us upon And which even forc'd the whole Nation most Justly in its Necessary Defence after

related And besides the Broad-Signs he had given of making War upon Holland on pretence of their having Assisted the Duke of Monmouth and Argile and of some other New-started Complaints of the Dutch proceedings against our Merchants at Musilipatan c. and in the East-Indies whilst the Injuries done our People daily by the French about Hudson's Bay and elsewhere and in the Insults they daily received by the French Privateers and Men of War almost every where were passed by unregarded and without any redress And besides the particular threats he had made against the Illustrious Prince of Orange he had Dissolv'd that Parliament that had so zealously stood by him against the late D of Monmouth not only because they would not grant him a Fund of Money to maintain a Standing Army above the Regulated number of Guards and Garrisons in time of Peace Contrary to the Constitution of the Government But rather because forsooth they would not let them be Mann'd and Commanded by as many Popish and Foreign Officers and Commanders as he pleas'd to stuff them with After this he continued and put in as many Popish Commanders and Governours into his Army Ships and Garrisons And as many Popish Justices of Peace into all Towns Burroughs and Cities all over England as he could And in favour of that proceeding so contrary to Law and Justice orders his Judges to Declare a Dispensing Power to be one of his Royal Prerogatives in prejudice to the Privileges of the Two Houses and even of his own Power in Parliament And deals with all the Artifices imaginable with all Qualified Persons both Clergy and Laity of the Church of England to induce them to Consent to the Repealing of the Penal Laws and Test to the Countenancing of his Dispencing Power and the keeping up of his Standing Army and putting down the Militia and when he saw them averse to it though he had but just before most highly incens'd the Dissenting party by his MOST BLOODY and Severe Execution of so many Hundreds of them that had been engaged with Monmouth and Argile and though he knew them all bred up in an Inveterate Aversion to Monarchy Yet he most Impolitickly Quits his Best Friends that had Set the Crown upon his Head because they would not humour him in things visibly tending to his own overthrow or destruction as well as theirs And has recourse by Fawning and most Unkingly Mean and Abject Sollicitations to those very Dissenters whose BLOOD he was still REAKING with Thinking to do by them his Sworn Enemies what he could not get done by his Friends and weaken both them and the other Party with Divisions till he could reduce them both by his Third Growing party of English Scotch Irish and Foreign Papists to be his Absolute Slaves To this end he New-models over again those Corporations both he and his late Deceased Royal Brother had but lately Modell'd before and taking away all the Old Charters gives out New ones by which all true Church of England Men who stood for the Penal Laws and Test were ungratefully turn'd out and Dissenters and such as had been turn'd out before were intruded in their places Thinking thereby to have such a Packt Parliament as would take away those Laws and Destroy the Church of England by laying it open in Common and Defenceless and make Room for the Introducing of Popery and Despotick Power when it should be least apprehended He Granted out Commissions for the vexing and calling to Account those that in the former Reign though really set on by the Intrigues of himself and his own Party had vigorously executed the Laws then in force against Dissenters and that not so much out of Righting the Dissenters for the Exactions that had been made upon them Or Reimbursing them or the Crown for what was pretended to have been extorted from the one and detain'd from the other but meerly to raise New Animosities between the two Parties and make the Dissenters though but for their own Ends willing to be his Tools in the Absolute Destruction which he intended to both And to this end of his own Single Authority by virtue of the Dispencing Power he procured to be invested in him by Eleven Judges though in spight of the Unanimous Sense of Parliament sufficiently declared against it in the time of his Late Royal Brother King Charles the Second he gratifies them by a Declaration for Liberty of Conscience which some of them though they accepted with seeming Joy and Thankfulness and being no less skill'd in the Art of Dissimulation than his Confessor F. Petres and imagining it good policy to flatter him as he flattered them according to that common saying Fallere fallentem non est fraus thereby to find the easier Means to work their Revenge both upon him and the Monarchy and Established Church Yet the Major part of them received it rather with Silence than any apparent Consent or Applause and several of them like true Christians and brave Englishmen express'd plainly their dislike of it and Renounc'd such an Opportunity of expressing their Resentments against the Ancient and True Reformed Church of England by any proceeding that was like to prove such a Tool for the Erection of Popery Slavery and Arbitrary Power and rather began then to have better thoughts of the Establish'd Church here than ever before When they saw her Chief Members so stifly to stand up and Defend the Protestant Religion against the Mines as well as the open Attacks of Popery and Absolute Power and to refuse all manner of Accommodation with the Church of Rome or any Complaisance though to their then King that might any way evacuate the Law or put them under any Suspicion of their being capable to give up their Common Interest and saw well enough that it was the real Effect of the Intrigues of a Court-party influenc'd and biass'd by designing Popish Emissaries and not the Body of the Church of England that had rais'd against them those Severe Prosecutions under which they had smarted so much Yet some Mercenary Men were gain'd among them and to the no small surprise of the World the old Monthly Observator that had stuck so close to Prerogative as to forget almost the Interests of his Church was now laid aside And the late Mr. Henry Carr that had formerly Written the Packet from Rome and had in the most invidious and provoking manner imaginable exposed all the Intrigues of the Popish Agents and all the Actions and whole Conduct of that King when Duke of York and had serv'd as a Trumpet to the whole Party of the Exclusioners was now Courted and Brib'd to Blazon forth the Graciousness of the New Declaration for Liberty and to Write in Exchange for their Observator The like Proceedings were acted in Scotland where Despotick Power and Absolute Authority was Assum'd with a more Imperious Air and then were our Gazettes stuff'd with those many Fulsome Addresses that Nauseated all