Secondly I 'll shew that this their confounded principle of perfect Confusion is not only against the Fundamental Law of the Land but against the sense of every Law that ever was made in it Every preamble of an Act and that of every Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty It is no Stat. if the King assent not 12. H. 7. 20. H. 8. by and with the CONSENT of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons in the present Parliament Assembled And then let any sober person Judge where lies the Soveraignty would it be suffer'd to be thus exprest were they not satisfy'd they were not all Soveraigns or if they were ought it not according to this Rebel and Republican run We the King Lords and Commons Enact but I 'll let him know how and what the Libertine would again have that Enacting part of an Act of Parliament to be tho the Politick Knave fear'd it was too soon yet to declare plainly for an Usurpation viz. Be it Enacted and ordained An Act. March 1657. Vid. Act of Oblivion 51 by his Highness the Lord Protector Or the Parliament of England having had good Experience of the Affection of the people to this present Government by their ready Assistance in the defence there of against Charles Stewart Son of the Late Tyrant and his Forces invading this Nation do Enact c. That our Kings in the time of the Saxons Danes and some part of the Normans had more absolute Power over their Subjects than some of their Successors since himself can't deny the Charter of Liberties being made but in the Reign of Henry the Third and when the People had less of Priviledges the Kings must be supposed to have had more of Praerogative therefore we shall examine only what and where the Supremacy is at present and where the Laws of the Land not the Will of the Prince do place it In the Parliament that was held at York in Edward the Seconds time The Rebellious Barons that 15. Ed. 2. had violently extorted what Concessions they pleas'd from the Crown in His like those in the three foregoing Reigns when they seal'd almost each Confirmation of their Charter in Blood were all censured and condemn'd and the encroaching Ordinances they made in those Times all repeal'd Because says the Statute The Kings Royal Power Great Stat. Roll. 26. H. 3. to Ed. 3. 1. Ric. 3. Exact Abridg fol. 112. was restrain'd against the Greatness of his Seigniory Royal contrary to the State of the Crown and that by Subjects Provisions over the Power Royal of the Ancestors of our Lord the King Troubles and Wars came upon the Realm I look upon this as an absolute Acknowledgment of a Royal Power which is sure the same with his Soveraign sufficiently distinguisht here from the Parliaments or the Peoples co-ordinate Supremacy for those condemn'd Ordinances were lookt upon as Usurpations upon the Kings Supremacy which they call the Power Royal of his Ancestors and not as our Author would have too of the Sovereign power of Lords and Commons At the Convention of the three Estates first of Richard the Third where 1. R. 3. the Parliament call themselves so themselves expound also what is meant by it And say it is the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons of this Land assembled in present Parliament so that we have here the whole three States besides the King owning themselves such without assuming to themselves a Soveraign power recognizing the Right of Richard and acknowledging him the Sovereign And tho I shall for ever condemn as well as all Ages will their allowing his Usurpation a Right which was an absolute wrong yet this is an undeniable Argument that then they did not make their King Co-ordinate with themselves made themselves declared themselves three States without him and acknowledged their King the Sovereign and Supream That Act that punisht appeals to Rome with a premunire in Henry the Eighâ—h's time gives this Reason why 24. H. 8. none should be made to the Pope nor out of the Kingdom because the King alone was only the supream head in it It tells us expressly That England is an Empire that the King the Supream Head has the Dignity and Royal Estate of the Emperial Crown unto whom a body Politick divided into Terms and Names of Spirituality and Temporality been bounden owe next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power Preheminence Authority Prerogative and Jurisdiction Here his Body Politick is devided into Spiritual and Temporal here he is called the supreme Head and here I think is a full Recognition of his sole Sovereignty And 't is strange that what a Parliament did in Opposition to Popery should be so zealously contradicted by such Sycophants that pretend so much to oppose it In the next place he tells us of an error he lay under that he thought our Commonalty had not formally assembled in Parliament before Henry the Thirds time but of that now is fully Page 103. convinc'd by the Labours of some learned Lawyers whom he names and lets them know too how much they are obliged to him for the Honor But I suppose he reads but one sort of Books and that such as suit with his Humor and Sedition and of that Nature he can meet with Variety for I dare avow that within the space of six years all that ever was or can be said against the best of Governnent our own all that was or ever will be rak't up for justifying a Rebellion and restoring a Republick from falsifyed Roll and Record from perverted History and Matter of Fact by Pens virulent and Factious with all the Art and Industry and whatever thought could invent for its Ruine and Destruction has been Printed and Publisht such an Universal Conspiration of Men of several Faculties each assisting with what was his Excellency his Talent in Treason which seemed to be the Task-Master of the Town and Monopolizer of Trades But our Politician might return to his old Opinion again did he but consult other Authors I believe as learned Antiquarians I am sure more Loyal Subjects who can shew him that the Saxons Councils call'd the Witena Gemotes had in them no Commons That the Conqueror call'd none of them to his great Councils none in those of his two Sons that succeeded nor none in any of the Parliaments down to Henry the Third my Lord Coke tells us of the Coke first Institutes Lib. 2d C. 10. T. Burgage Names this Parliament had before the Conquest as Sinoth Michel or Witena Gemote which he says implyed the Great Court or Meeting of the King and all his Wise Men And also sometimes of the King with his Council of his Bishops Nobles and the Wisest of the People and unless from the wisest of the People and all his Wise Men they can make up an House of Commons I am sure
that was his least Relyance for as little 1. H. 4. 12. 52. Vid. Dr. B. p. 25. as he makes of his claim from Henry the Third it is apparent from some Rolls of Parliament that he challenged the Realm upon that account and the Lords were interrogated what they thought of that claim upon which without delay they consented he should Reign and as another Evidence of his Right to Rule shewed them the Seal of King Richard as a Signification of his Will that he should succeed him but that which for ought I see he lay his greatest weight upon was but what all Vsurpers must most relie on the Sword and he himself assures them just after the Sermon was ended at the time they consented to be his Subjects that he would take no advantage against any Man's Estate as coming in by Conquest and Conquest is one of the first claims he puts in at his Coronation and as Haward Haward p. 98. Baker p. 15 is relates it in his Life not the least mention of his being elected is there mingled with his Claim But neither did the success of a prosperous Wickedness Countenance this Usurpation for he was soon made sensible that a Crown seldom sits easie on that Head where it has so little Right to sit and indeed before it could be well setled his Lords conspired against him at Westminster set up Maudlin the Counterfeit send to the King of France for assistance Glendour stirrs up the Welsh to rebel the Nobility fell from him drew up the following Articles against himself viz. for having Articl'd himself against his Sovereign for having falsified his Oath in medling with the Kingdom and the Crown for taking Arms against his King Imprisoning Murdering Him that he unjustly kept the Crown from the Earl of March to whom of Right it belonged and vowed the Restoration of Him and His Destruction and our Author now shall know these too are Articles Vid. Baker 1â—1 as well deserving to be read and one thing more that deserves as much Observation that this his good Peoples Election was the prime Principal Cause of losing of Millions of Lives and an Notwithstanding all these claims Speed says he at his Death owned he had no Right to the Crown Speed Lib. 9. Chap. 14. Philip De. Comines which wrote then says to his Remembrance 80. of Blood Royal dy'd If they long for the draught of Slaughter and Blood that followed this their Election of the Line of Lancaster then look upon the lamentable List at the end of Trussel Ocean of Blood here entred that Line of Lancaster that had almost left the Nation Childless the Nobility and Gentry that escap'd the Sword were still by the prevailing Party chopt off or gibbited and in the space of about thirty year and somewhat upwards they dreined more Blood in England then e're was spent in the Conquest of France or would have been spilt had it been again attempted and that too never have been lost by their Henry the Sixth had it not been for an altered Succession and an injured Heir and the Bloody Consequences of a debarr'd Right And now at last he is forc't to allow an instance of a Prince that succeeded without the least shadow of Election and that in Henry the Fifth to whom himself owns they swore Allegiance without staying for his being declared we are obliged to him for this fair Concession but this Kindness is only because he finds it as clear as a Postulatum in the Mathematicks beyond his own Impudence to contradict but however he must malitiously observe that it was a thing strange and without President and why so because his Polidore tells him such an extraordinary Kindness was never shown to any King before 't is strange that his Italian should understand more of our own Government than all our own English Authors 't is no wonder sure if he that was a Stranger to our Affairs should Write as strangely of it and make our Mighty Monarchs of Britain no more then some petty Prince of his own Italy and as Elective as their Duke of Venice But this perverse Gentleman shall know it was not without President and that by several Instances And first Richard the First presently on his Fathers Death without staying for their suffrages seised on his Father's Treasure was girt with the Sword of the Dutchy of Normandy took fealty both of Clergy and Lay and exercised all the Authority that Sovereign power cou'd allow before he came to be recogniz'd by their Suffrages or to his Coronation Vide Daniel 2. Hoveden's Account that he gives of King John's coming to the Crown which as some Writers say is the best extant says they swore Fealty to him when he was out of England without mentioning any thing of preceding Election and he had his better Title his Brothers Army then in the field by which he cou'd have made himself soon their King had they not been so ready to receive him 3. Upon the Death of Henry the 3d. the States Assembled at the New-Temple and proclaimed his Son Edward King when they knew not whether he was living or dead swear Daniel Fealty to him and cause a New-Seal to be made Here sure are some presidents of Allegiance before their Election unless he 'll make Declaring or Proclaiming to be so and then in Gods Name in that sense let them as he contends for be Elected for I think all will allow they are proclaim'd But suppose on the death of a Predecessor there was no convention of any of the Nobility Vid 4 part In Stit. 46. and Jenkins Lex Terrae p. 7. or Commonalty for Parliaments they then can have no Existence when the Breath is gone that gave them Being as all other Communitys are de facto dissolv'd If I say there were none met to Declare or Proclaim his Successor must the common Maxim be contradicted and the King dye too for want of their Popular Breath to give him Life or do our Laws admit that this interval between his Predecessors expiration and the proclaiming or crowning his Successor shall be call'd an Interregnum they know the Constitutions of our Government admit no more of this than an Exclusion They know that immediately by Descent King James was declar'd to be completely and absolutely King and that by all the Judges 1 Jacobi Watson Clark Vid also Calvins Case Cokes Rept part 7. of the Kingdom I know the Kings Successor is always immediately proclaim'd upon his death and that perhaps is more for the proceedings of judicial Processes and that Writs may presently run in his name But were such a Proclamation obstructed I am satisfi'd he commenc'd an absolute King upon the very Minute of his Predecessors Expiration and if the Law Maxim won't allow an Haeres viventis there can be no Heir at all if he begin not to be so presently upon his Predecessors Death and for an Evidence of Fact as
wrong but here those several alterations were all caus'd to be made for the securing of a Lineal â—egitimate and lawful Successor to the Throne for as a Reverend Author says the King Lamented that he should leave Bishp Godwins Histo H. 8. p. 37. the Kingdom to a Woman whose Birth was â—estionable and he willing to settle the Kingdom on his LAWFUL Issue and for this reason he got the 25th to pass against his Daughter Mary And the very Preamble of the Act tells us that it was for the Surety of Title and Succession and Lawful Inheritance Three years are scarce past till the 28 of his Reign repeals almost all that the 25 had Enacted their Protestant Queen Elizabeth made as well as the Popish Mary plain Bastard and tho our prejudic'd Author may make the same Vid. Pulton Stat. matter right and wrong as he stands affected he must think this his powerfuâ— Parliament dealt a little hard with thâ— latter whose Mother was never divorc't but from her Life and she paâ— off for a spurious Off-Spring only upoâ— the pretended suggestions of Anne Boleyn unknown impediments confess 't sine to Canterbury But whatever they were the Canons of the Church tho born bâ—fore Marriage and since after the verâ— Laws of the Land did make her Legitâ—mate But however this greater piece ofâ— justice to this good Protestant Queeâ— which they 'l say now proceeds from the Kings putting the Parlament In 's 31 as incontinency was made impediment in the first Anns Case they declared the suant of concupiscence an Impediment in the 2ds and only upon his sending some of his Lords to the lower house the Lady Cleves was unlawful too Vid Stow p. 581. Baker 288. Stat. 35. H. 8. upon too much Power wâ— palliated all along with the pretence of providing a Legitimâ—â—â— Lawful Successor and so the cleâ—â— Reverse and Contradiction of thâ— proceedings of our late Patrioâ— to whose Privileges those sort presidents were apply'd for those Parliamentary In the 33 the Parliament petition'd to him whom they knew it would please for the Attainder of Kat. Howard his 5th Queen Powers seculded but Bastards to make room for Heirs Lawful and Legitimate with us an Issue truly Legitimate should have been EXCLUDED for the setting up of a SPURIOUS ONE But then at last comes the 35th of his Reign and that like a Gunpowder Plot in the Cellars blows up all the former foundations of the whole House both the two former Stat. for Disabling Illegitimating are null voy'd repeal'd the LADY MARY Sister Elizabeth in those seven years suffered my Lord Bacons transmutation of Bodys and were turned all into new matter and what was Spurious Illegitimate and in Capable with the single Charm of be it enacted was become truly Lawful Lineal Heir of the Crown and Capacitated to succeed in an HEREDITARY DISCENT and so far from Invading the Prerogative so full of giving were the bountiful Parliaments of those times that they Impower their too Powerful Prince to dispose of his Crown by Letters Pattents or an Arbitrary Testamentary disposition an Oblation I think his present Majesty might esteem too great to be accepted who knows his Successor to be the Crown 's Heir scarce his own much less the PARLIAMENTS Edward the Sixth upon his Fathers death succeeded an Heir Lineal Legal and Testamentary yet the first thing this Author observes upon him is the greatest falsehood viz. That he took upon him a power what surely no King ever had to dispose of his Crown by Will When in the very Preceeding president his own Father by his Will manifested he had the Power and left it him by his last But his he 'll say was a Power given him by Parliament But that is not so plain neither both from the Preamble and the purport of both the dissonant Acts of 28 and 35. for the designs of both were only for the settling the Succession and then upon supposition of the failure of Issue from those upon whom it was setled they fairly leave it to his last Will or his Letters Pattents but supposing this Liberty had not been allow'd can he imagin that a King that had got them to alter the succession at his pleasure in his Life time would not upon the failure of the Limited Heirs have dispos'd of it by Will at his death but that none but this Edward of our Kings took this power upon him is utterly false from these several instances First the very first King of his name in the Saxon succession left it so to his Son to succeed And Athelstan Malmsbury Lib. 2. c. 6. fol. 27. Jussu patris in Testamento Athelstonus in Regen acclamatâ—â— est whom above this Gentleman recommended to the City of London for a Mon. and Illegitimate against the sense and silence of all Historians was declar'd King by the Command and last Will of his Father Edward the elder in the Reign of the Danes Canutus did the same bequeath'd Norway to Swain his eldest and England to his youngest Son and for the Norman Succession the very first King and who had the most right to do so from the Sword left to Rufus the right but of an Heir Testamentary tho followed by his Son Henry the first And Richard that had less reason so to do for his Daughter Maud by the Law of the Land would have been his Heir without the Legacy and so would to the latter his Nephew Arthur and tho both were by Rebellion rejected yet still sure their right remain'd But for this Edward the 6th disposing it by Will it was not only against the Customary Discent of the Realm in a right blood but of an Express Entail in several Acts of Parliaments I am so far of this Authors opinion that I believe it was no way warrantable but never the sooner for his Parliaments settlement had it not been at last upon the right Heirs for tho those Princes of ours heretofore took upon them to leave Successors by Will they still nominated those that by Blood were to succeed without such a Nomination so that the bequest was more matter of Form then Adoption only to let the Subjects know whom they look't upon to have the right of Succession rather than to superadd any thing of more right and that 's the reason or ought to be that we properly call the next in Blood the Kings Successor but the Crowns Heir 'T is a little prodigious Paradox to me that it must be such a receiv'd Maxim that a Parliament can do no wrong and that in plain Terms they tell us it can do any thing mollifying it only with an Exception that they can't make a Man a Woman yet that they bid pretty fair for too in these Presidents of Harry the 8th when they made Bastard Females of those that were Legitimate and then Legitimis'd again the same Bastards and 't is as mighty a Miracle to men unprejudic'd that our Parliament Patriots
Liberties and will not that neither with our Licentious Libertines be allowed for Law Is not all the Military power both by Sea and Land declared the undoubted Right of His present Majesty and that by particular ‖ 13. Car. 2 d. Chap 6. Vid. the same repeated 14. Car 2. c. 3. Act in his own Reign does not the very preamble of it seem to provide against this very Proposition of such a Parliament or a Plato when it tells us expresly that all Forts and places of Strength is and ever was by the Laws of England the Kings undoubted Right and of all his Royal Predecessors and that neither both or either Houses can or ought to pretend to the same and declares that all the late Principles and Practices that assumed the same were all Rebellious And could some of our Mutinous Members embrace such Propositions from the Press that presumed to tell them they had of late made two such Impertinent Acts in the House †Plato p. 239. 240. 277. Acts invading the Subjects Property Acts betraying the Liberties of that very People they represent In short and that in his own Words Acts that empower the Prince to invade the Government with Force Acts to destroy and ruin the State hindering the Execution of the Laws and the preventing our Happiness and Settlement had they had but the least Reverence for their own Constitution and that Honorable Assembly wherein they sate sure there would have been some Ordered and Resolved for the sifting out such a Pen-man and sentencing such Papers to the Hangman and the Flames what can be the result of this to sober Sense or Common Reason that such Villanous Authors should appear in publick at such a Session of Parliament to Censure and Arraign the very Acts of their former Representatives but that they thought themselves secure from any Violent Prosecution from those that then were sitting and that it was not the Constitution it self of that most Honorable Assembly the Seditious Sycophants were so Zealous for but only the present Persons its Constituent Members they so much admired The last the Tenth of those pretty Proposals that deserves particular Animadversion for several of them Symbolize with one another and so are by a general asserting of the Kings Supremacy sufficiently refuted is the Parliaments Right to the making Peers the prettiest Paradox that the Abundance of Sedition with the want of Sense could suggest I have heard the Laws declare the King to be the Fountain of Honor as well as Justice but the Commons I think as they are no Court of Judicature so were never yet known to be concerned in the making Lords The King whom only our ‖ 3. Ed. 3. 19. Law declares to have no Peer is sure the only Person that can make Peers has not this Power been unquestionably in the Prince ever since these Realms had one to Rule was not the Title of Baron in Edward the First 's Time confined expresly to such only as by the Kings Writ were sommoned to sit in Parliament And even when there was an Innovation in this Point In †11. Rich. 2 d. Richard the Second's Tumultuous Time this Power was then not taken from the King till they took away his Crown did not he take upon him to confer the Peerage and as the first President per his Letters Patents And Beauchamp Baron of Kederminster the First of that Creation did the Parliament ever pretend to make Peers but when the Body had rebelled against the Head and rejected their Prince But the Creation of Honors might well then be inverted when the State it self was turned Topsie It was then I confess they denyed their King too not only the conferring of Honors for the future but passed an * 4 Feb. 1651. Scob. Col. pag. 178. Act for Voiding all Titles Dignities and Precedencies already given by him But this was done to extinguish the very Remains of Royalty that there might not be left behind him the meer marks the Gracious Dispensations of the very Favor of a King the inveterate Villains labouring with their Monarch to Murder his very Memory And sure none of the Nobility have great Reason to relie upon Parliaments for the maintaining of their Old Honor or creating New for the Privilege of their Peerage or the making Peers when the very First thing that they did when they had got the Power was an †Vid. vote Journal 6. Feb. 1648. Vid. Hist independ pag. 15. perfect Diurnal p. 1250. Ordered and Resolved that the House of Peers was useless dangerous and ought to be Abolisht And all the Kindness their Lordships could be allowed was to be capable of being elected into the Lower House and what an Honourable House of Lords was afterward Establisht even by those that had purged away the Peerage may be seen in the Persons of those that Usurper put up afterward for Peers But under the Name the Notion of that other House when they granted that power of their Nomination to that Arch Rebel which they but so lately denyed their Lawful King why we had there then †See the List of their Lordships in Dugd. view pag. 454. Lords of no quality no worth little Land and less Learning Mr. Hewsons Lordship that Honest Cobler Sir Thomas Pride's Lordship Knight and Dray-man My Lord James Berry Black-Smith My Lord Barksted the Bodkin-Seller and the Cant of their Counterfeit Cromwell their Creator might well tell them from the Text not many Nobl's not many wise were called but a Creation according to the very Notion of the Schools An House like that of the World too out of nothing framed by Him that had Himself * Vid. Engagement and Protectors Oath Sworn to be true to the Government without founded in the Perjury of him that made them Peers and of Persons that would have disgrac'd a Pillory Persons prefer'd for their little Honesty little Quality little Sense Persons whose Lands and Possessions could only qualifie them to be Noble by being purchased with the Blood of our best Nobility Lastly Persons that were only samed for their Villanies Mighty but in Mischief making it an House indeed not of Peers but Correction which the very Law tells us must be made up of Beggars and Malefactors This Gentlemen was the Peerage produced †Their 19th Proposition to the King at York by a Parliament's Rebellion to make Peers of which it was too the most natural Result for that very Act upon a Just Judgment would have Tainted all their Blood but they provided here for the purpose Persons that defied superseded the Work of an Attaindure Persons whose Blood even Treason could not more Corrupt This Gentlemen was the product of that most preposterous Inversion when the * The First Feb. 6. 1648. Commons could make Lords and their Kings House of Peers with their very Titles and Honors ‖ The Second 4. Feb. 51. Abolisht by an House of Commons
ensued a discovered Assassination of their Soveraign and was there no danger of a Parliament no sign of a Protestant Plot Only because the King did not leave Whitehall and go down to Hampton Court because there was no Essex in the Field as well as the Plot no King secured at Oxford as well as in the Isle of Wight that there was no High-Court erected at Westminster but only a better expedient found out at the Rye If these are Arguments to render an House of Commons unsuspected and a Plot of the Protestants unimaginable if because here are perfect Parallels of Proceedings as even as if drawn with a Compass Mathematical and which according to their proper Definition I could draw to infinity yet still there must be presumed a great Disparity between the Subversion of the Government that was actually compast and the Destruction of it now that was so lately intended If there be the least Difference between what led to the last setting up an Usurper an Arch-Rebel in the Throne and these late Machinations of Hell to retrieve the same Usurpation bating but the Providence that interposed against its Accomplishment Then will I own what this Villanous Author will have taken for granted That those that have the least Suspicion of any sort of Parliaments are the greatest Villains that a Plot of Protestants proved by Confession is still a Paradox and that my self deserve what he has merited a PILLORY The Pages that he spends in declaiming against trifling Wit supersedes all answer and Animadversion which himself has prevented in being Impertinently Witty upon the very thing he condemns The stress of his Ingenuity is even strained in the very declaiming against it And Settle has not so much answer'd Himself as Hunt here his own Harangue That Gentleman sate down a while for his second Thoughts but this preposterous Prigg sets himself in his own glass at the same time a Contradiction to his own Writings His * pag. 39. Observations upon the perjuries as he calls them of the Popish Priests that dy'd is so severe that the absolute Argument of their Guilt is drawn from their very denial and their equivocations he suspects from those very dispensations they renounc'd to dying words certainly such an inhumanity is hard which unless he had reveal'd Assurance by Christians must be blamed I confess there is not a Criminal of our latter Conspiracy I will declare Guilty beyond his own Confession and then there is not one that dyed but whom I can well think Guilty His next †pag. 59. Observation that is worth Ours Is that upon the Legislative Power and there he makes each of the two Houses to have as much of it as the King and that I deny with better Reason than he can assert that the two Houses are concurrent in their Assents that Bills be preferr'd to be made Laws I 'll willingly grant 't is my Interest 't is my Birth-Right But that which I look upon to be truly Legislative is the Sanction of the Law and that still lies in the breast of our Sovereign If Mr. Hunt that in many places is truly Pedantick will rub up his Priscian the Grammatical Etymology will make it but Legem ferre and then I believe his House of Commons will be most Legislative 't is their Duty their Privilege rather to bring and offer up all Bills fit for Laws and the King still I hope will have his Negative in passing them the Commons pray petition to have them past and that implies a consent Superiour to be required that can absolutely refuse ‖ Vid. quel Impositions le Roy poit grant sans Parlm Roll. Abr. 171. Le Roy poit Charge le sujet lo◠per benefit del Sujet sans Parl. 1. H. 4. 14. Roll. 2d Abr. 171. Les Commons Priont was wont to be a Form Croke 2d part 37. the King can with out Parliament charge the Subject where 't is thought for their Benefit and allowed to dispence with a Statute that concerns his own resolv'd by all the Justices the King by himself might make Orders and Laws for the regulating Church Government in the Clergy and deprive them if they did not obey 22. Ed. 3. says the King makes the Laws by the Assent of the Lords and Commons and so in truth does every Act that is made and every clause in it * Bract. Lib. 1. C. 2. Bracton says the Laws of England by the Kings Authority enjoyn a thing to be done or forbid the doing These are Arguments that our King sure has somewhat more than a bare Concurrence in the Legislative If not he must be co-ordinate and then we have three Kings which is what they would have and then as well may three hundred I love my Liberty better than our Author who has forfeited his yet I remember when too much freedom made us all Slaves The Extent of the Legislative Power is great but then I hope 't is no greater than the King shall be graciously pleased to grant it shall extend And then I hope it must be allowed that Equity and Justice must always determine the Royal Sanction too which cannot of it self make all things Equal and Just should it stamp a Le Roy vult at the same time upon Acts inconsistent and contradictory upon such as were against the Law of Nature and all Reason such would be de facto void 'T is hard to be imagined such Error and Ignorance in so wise an Assembly but what has but bare possibility in Argument must still be supposed but that it has actually been done will I prove possitively and not with some of their illogical Inferrences suggest that a thing must be so only from a bare possibility of Being Be it therefore enacted by the Kings most excellent Majesty and by the Lords and Commons in this present Parliament Assembled 't was then first those that were by special Act since declared Traytors made their King * Lords Spiritual Lords Temporal and Com. the three Estates Cook 4. Inst of Par. the very first Leaf and Line and won't they believe their own Oracle co-ordinate assumed to themselves so much of the Legislative that they left out the Fundamental form by and with the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons that the said Earl of ‖ Strafford's Bill of Attainder Strafford be adjudged and attainted of high Treason provided that no Judge or Judges shall adjudge or interpret any Act or thing to be Treason then as he or they should or ought to have done before the making of this Act as if this Act had never been made This piece of Paradox the Contradiction to Common Law Common Sense and Reason had all the Consents all the Concurrences that could if possible have made it truly Law and even his unhappy Majesties forc'd extorted Complyance But will any Creature that is barely distinguish'd from a Brute that can only offer at the mere privilege of his
on whom it was Entailed before and with his 35th reinstated them both again and that both in Birth and Tail And lastly that of Queen Mary's Entail was by a biggoted House of Commons that brought in that very Popery they now so much and so vainly fear and were like to have Entailed their Religion and Laws to the Vassalage of Rome as well as the Crown to the Heirs of Spain And is this thy Loyalty Seditious Sycophant this thy Religion to bring us presidents for Rebellion from Acts of Parliament and the Statutes of Apostates for the Establishing Popery The ‖ 13. Eliz. 13. of Elizabeth is such an one too as none but a †Hunt's Postscript page 51. Defier of Sense could have design'd for Application It is apparent that it was a Design to Secure the Crown to Her the Right Heir and that tho by an Indirect means An Act which she doubted her self whether with all her Parliament she could pass but was assured all her Subjects would like it when it was done upon a double Design to Secure her Title against the Pope and the Pretensions of the Queen of Scots * Cambd. vit Eliz. Cambden the best Account of her Life makes it a Trick of Leicester's ‖ Besides had he Consulted other Books before he writ his own by what appears by Keeble Stat. that very Act is expir'd of no Force and so he has made himself a Knave in Fact as well as Fool in Application but let them Lye for it for once and raze the Sacred Truth of History and Record which the Law makes Felony even in their own sense it was enacted for securing a Lineal Descent to those that they thought the Right Heir But theirs would have been a Disinheriting of one they knew to be so It is Prodigiously strange to me that those that contend so much for this Parliamentary Power over the Succession of the Crown that this Judge Advocate for the Parliament * Postscript p. 71 72. Hunt himself that tells us plainly 't is not establisht by any Divine Right but is governed according to the presumed Will of the People that these Sycophants do not consider they do the greatest Disservice to that Honorable Assembly put the greatest abuse upon that Ancient and truly venerable Constitution they give the Lye to several Acts of Parliament made in the best of times and make those Legislators the worst of Villains or the greatest Fools or in his own phraseology Wicked Impious Sacrilegious for have not they in several Reigns by Special Act recognized even a Divine Right as well as an Hereditary In the first of ‖ 1. Ed. 4. Rot. p. n. 9 10 c. Edward did they not declare that their Soveraigns Title to the Crown was by Gods Law and the Law of Nature Did they not even to a Tyrant a Murderer one fit only to be the Peoples Creature whom no Nature or God did design for the Throne Did they not resolve his Right to be both by God and Nature ‖ Exact Abridg. fol. 713. Rot. R. 3. Tell me was it thought so Divine so natural so Sacred THEN even in the worst of Men and must it be impious Sacriligious in the best of Princes Did not their best of * 1. Elz. c. 3. Queens receive her Crown with a Recognition of it's Descent to be by the Laws of God And lastly look upon that of King †1. Jac. c. 1. James where with unspeakable Joy they acknowledge he Reign'd by the Laws of God And as * Posts p. 87. new as he calls the Doctrine for five hundred year agon both by Divines and Lawyers it was allowed of and maintained ‖ Gervasius Doroberbensis Coll. 133. 30. Gervase the Monk tells us it is manifest the Kings of England are obliged to none but GOD and †Bracton l. 4. c. 24. Sect. 5. Bracton that lived and wrote in the same Reign of Henry tells us their King was then only under God and will neither Law nor Gospel History Ancient and Modern Rolls Acts and Acknowledgements of Parliaments themselves satisfy them that they have nothing to do with the * Dr. Burnet tells us H. 8. declared upon a dispute about Ecclesiastical Immunity very warmly that by the Ordinance of God he was King Hist Reform l. 1. pt 1. fol. 17. Either the Dr. lyes or Harry the 8th or this Doctrine is not so new but 200. year old SUCCESSION Never could any Person that had not Proclaimed open War with Reason and broke all Truce with Sense suggest as he does that the difference between the Descent of the Crown and that of a Private Estate are Reasons for altering the Succession which is one of the best Arguments for it's being Vnalterable Does not the Law provide that but one Daughter shall succeed to the Crown and that for the Preservation of the Monarchy which must be but of one and no Co-partners of a Kingdom And so also the Son of a Second Venter to prevent the want of Succession shall be admitted to the Throne when he shall be Excluded an Estate His fancy of the Royal Families being Extinct and that then the Majesty of the People commences was long since the pretty conceit of Will. Pryn too In which they tell us as Pryn's Parl. right c. I 've told them before just as much as an old Aphorism When the Sky falls and spoil another good Proverb that No man dyes without an Heir But suppose what can be may be Would not all this mighty Constitution of Parliament be gone too when there was no Successor of a King to Summon it His * Postscr pag. 73. Majesty of the People might set up another Policy of Government they think if it pleased But would not their Majesty of the People find it more agreeable to Divine Institution to agree upon the same Government in another person in an Extremity for would it not be more agreable even to their own Interest to prefer that under which they had enjoyed so long such an Experienced Happiness since the Almighty does not Reveal himself as he did of old to Moses and the Prophets and bid them arise and Anoint him a King over his Israel But as Mr. Hunt's private Estates tho I know not with what equity a mere Fiction in Law robs a man of so much Realty are frequently recovered with fine at Common Law against the Right Heirs he won't pretend therefore sure a Parliament shall a Kingdom and a Crown against a Royal Successor His own Reason for it is the best Refutation for I say too the Crown is ‖ Postscr l. p. 72. Governed by other Rules than a private Estate and the Romans who were Governed by those Civil Sanctions that have since the whole World tho by those they had a Dominion over their Issues Heirs and Estates yet those will not grant even to Kings the power of Disenheriting their own
they are positive sure 't is Impudence as well as Capital perhaps to oppose And yet we see these Gentlemen of so little Law to Labour so much in a dispute that is only to be decided by it what Authority is the singular assertion of a Republican or a * pag. 21. Plato Redivivus that the House of Commons is the only part of the old Constitution of Parliament that is left us or the single sense of ‖ Tryal p. 23. §. 2. Mr. Sidney that the Senate of England is above its Soveraign against the form of the very first Act of State that remains upon Record the very †Magn. Chart. 9. H. 3. know ye that we of our mere will have given c. Chart. Forest 9. H. 3. begins also with a we will Stat. Hiber 14. H. 3. only a mere Order of the King to the Son of Maurice his Judge there the words we command you Witness my self Note that was even concerning Free-hold and a Case of Co-parcenary The Stat. Bisex 21. H. 3. tho concerning pleading and Common Law but an Order of the King to his Judges for the words are we ordain and Command you Stat. Assiza 51. H. 3. The King to whom all these shall come greeting de scacc the King Commandeth Charter these Democraticks adore against the form of the following one of the Forest and Consult but the Style of the Statute Book and all the Antient Acts down to Richard the Second and you 'll find not so much as one but what expressly points out in its Enacting part the sole power of the Soveraign by which it was Enacted all in these repeated Expressions of Absolute Majesty We the Kings of England of our free will have given and granted it is our Royal Will and Pleasure the King Commands the Kings Wills our Lord the King has establisht the Lord the King hath ordain'd And most of them made in the manner of Edicts or Proclamations as in the Margin will appear and tho 't is thought now such a piece of Illegality to be concluded by an Order of Council and even his Majesties late command for the Continuance of the Tunnage and the Resolution of the Judges about that part of the Excise which expir'd has by some of our murmurers been repin'd at tho by all Loyal ones it was as chearfully assented to and as punctually paid yet they shall see that the People heretofore paid such a deference even to an Edict of the Prince that they nearly rely'd as much upon it as the Romans did upon their Imperial Institutions who as I before shew'd lookt upon it as a crime like to Sacrilege but to disobey And this will appear from an †31. Hen. 8. c. 8. Stat. Mert. 6. The King our Lord providing hath made these Acts 2d Inst p. 101. Westm 1. 3. Ed. 1. 1. The King willeth and commandeth Stat. Gavelet even of altering the writ which they say can't be done but in Parliament Enacted by the King and his Justices 10. E. 2. Stat. E. 3. several say we will we ordain so also several R. 2. Act of Parliament in Henry the Eighth's time which provided H. 8 that the Princes Proclamations should not be contemned by such obstinate Persons and oppos'd by the willfullness of froward Subjects that don't consider what a King by his Royal Power may do and all that disobey'd were to be punisht according to the Penalty exprest in the Proclamation and if any should depart the Realm to decline answering for his Contumacy and Contempt he was to be adjudg'd a Traytor and tho the Statute limited it to such as did not extend to the Prejudice of Inheritance Liberties or Life yet the King was left the Judge Whether they were Prejudicial or not and these Kings Edicts by this very Act were by particular Clause made as binding as if they had been all Acts of Parliaments and that it may not be said to be an Inconsiderate and Vnadvised deed of the Parliament to give the King such a Power tho 't is hard to say so of a Senate whom the * Coke 4. Inst c. 1. Parl. writ that convokes them says they are call'd to deliberate To avoid that imputation I must tell them it was very Solemnly a Second time Confirm'd again within three †34. H. 8. c. 25. years after and by that Power given to nine of the Kings Council to give Judgment against all Offenders of the former and tho this was repeal'd in the following Reign of King ‖ 1. Ed. 4. c. 12. Edward a Minor and almost a Child A time wherein notwithstanding there is such a woe denounc'd against a People that have such a King the Subjects seldom fail of Invading something of the Prerogative yet still we see â—ho the Law be not now in force plain matter of Fact that there was once such a Law that our Kings Proclamations were once by express words of the Statute made as valid as the very Act of State it self that made them so that the Judicial Power of the Prince was heretofore less limited and that their Libels Plato Rediv lye as well as their lewd Tongues when they tell us and would have us believe That none but our late King as tell as the present ever pretended to so â—uch of Prerogative or had more allow'd â—â—em by the Laws And let any one but leisurably examine as I have particularly the several Acts of each King's Reign and he 'll find that from this Richard the Second to whose time the Stile of the Statutes as you see was in a manner absolutely Majestick down to King Charles the Martyr That the form 1. H. 4. H. 5. H. 6. Ed. 4. Rich. 3. even all those are pen'd in such Words as will exclude the Commons from being Co-ordinate and so much concerned in the Legislative as these popular Advocates have pretended to persuade us their People are for even they all run either in this form The * King with the Advice and Assent of his Lords Spiritual Then begins the other 1. H. 7. H. 8. Ed. 6. Q. Mar. Q. El. Jac. 1. and Temporal at the special Instance and Request of the Commons or The King by and with the Assent of his Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons and as if the past Parliaments themselves would have provided againsâ— the Seditious Sophistry of a future Age which they could hardly be thought to foresee since it savors so much of almost unimaginable Nonsense and Sedition aâ— if our Ancestors had feared least some of their profligate posterity seduceâ— with the Corruptions of a Rebellionâ— Age should impose upon the Prerogative of the Crown with any such Subâ—â— Insinuation of their King 's making be Wil. Pryn's Power of Parliam one of the three States and by Consequence conclude as they actually did that the two being greater than him alone could be his Judges and their own Soveraign's Superiors why to
laboured to prevent an Vsurpation and provided for the right Heir who succeeded in his paternal Inheritance before arrived even to the Romans civil age of Puberty 14. And the malicious Perverter might as well say as great a stress as you 'll find afterwards he truly does upon Richard the thirds Butchery and Usurpation the breaking of the Laws of God and Man for a Crown All the difference is Here were only two Nephews for a while debarred there Butchered and shall such bloody Miscreants pass upon the World for credible Authors who for robbing of a Divine-right can cite you Murder and for the breaking of our Humane Laws the blackest Crime in the Declogue And since this Antimonarchical Zealot has shown himself thus elaborately studious to rake every musty Record of those Reigns for a Rebellious remark give me leave only from the same times to make this last and Loyal Observation where Providence seemed to shew it self remarkably concerned for its crowned Head and that in the subsequent Judgment upon the Proto-Martyrdom of the Saxon Edward as well as what we suffered since for our Martyr'd Charles tho there 't was only for anticipating a right by blood but ours a bloody Usurpation of those that had no right at all Ethelred's passage to his Reign was but before his time and the Almighty's yet the Government suffered for it as many Pangs till it quite miscarried within fifty years the new Monarchy fell quite asunder rent and torn by two several Conquests He himself meets with the Defection of all his Nobility forc't to raise his Danegelt and his Subjects into Rebellion by it prepared his Navies only to be shattered with a tempest or consumed with Fire both Elements and Heaven it self seemed to conspire But because he came to the Kingdom by ill means arose Civil Wars p. 86. to make him Miserable Famine and Mortality were the dismal attendants of his Wars the Depredations of Invaders would not allow peace the Reign that begun in a Murder ended in a Massacre The incensed Danes soon invade him the perjured Edric falsely forsakes him he languishes a long time as well he might under Guilt and Misfortune and to put the only period to his days Miseries and Kingdom together Vid. Daniel p. 13. Dies You see how little success this Author met with among the Saxons Sovereigns for altering Succession how much of Imposture his Reader may there meet with in him and you shall as soon see he deals as disingeniously with the Danes And here thorough his double diligence this Parliament Historiographer has not omitted an Argument for his purpose much of the same strength as those that he has used viz. That Knute was no kin to Edmund or Ethelred And the Dane no way related to the Line of the Saxon that is the poor conquered England was not Cosin German to Denmark the Conqueror and yet the Title of the latter was preferred and their King acknowledged ours I can't conceive what necessity of Relation an Invader needs to the poor Prince he Invades and whether that be not a pretty sort of an Argument for altering Succession to say the Kingdom was Conquered Swayn had before cut out a fine Title for his Son with the Sword The North West and some of the South part of England had submitted frightned with his revengeful Cruelties which their own had provoked Canute himself after his Fathers Death lands as soon at Sandwich with a Navy of two hundred gave our English a great overthrow possest himself of what Swayn had before harassed the West and because the Nobility favoured only whom they feared and set him up in Competition for the Crown whom they could not keep down from being a Competitor ergo therefore the Succession must not run in the right Line and why because here it did not if more absur'd Inferences can be drawn from matter of Fact or greater Solecisms from Historical Observation I 'le forfeit all the little Right I have to Reason and with an Implicit Faith believe the Legend for a Bible and his History for the Revelations But yet this Prince though by Conquest and Composition he got half the Kingdom and upon Edmunds Death the whole foresaw what Power the pleas of Right and Succession might have for animating an Interest in the defence of the poor injured Heirs and therefore took all the ways to ingratiate himself with his wavering People his young and unexperienced Subjects and all manner of means for preventing the Lawful Heirs for attempting for their Right sticking at neither Murder Malice and Treachery and in order to the first he made a shew of governing with more Justice then he conquered and took mildness for the best means of his Establishment and to let the Nation know he designed only to subdue them sends away his Mercenaries ships away his Navy and for a popular Specimen of an Heroick Kindness to the memory of the Saxons he succeeded as a Satisfaction to their injured Dust prefers Edricks perjured Head to the highest place on the City Gate and with that Expedient reconciled himself at once to his own promise deserved Justice and the Peoples favour and yet for securing himself from any danger from the Lawful Heirs so politickly Cruel that all the Royal Blood felt of his Injustice sent the two Sons of his late Co-partner in the Kingdom to be murdered abroad and got his Brother to be butchered at home such an experienced truth is it that Powers usurpt Successions altered like the blackest Villanies can only be Justifyed and defended by committing more At his Death 't is true he disposed of his Crowns by Testamentary Bequest and well he might when there was so little known for Kingdoms of Feudatory Law and private Estates then far from being entailed yet in that very Legacy you can observe what Power the Consideration had with him of Right and Blood for he leaves his own Paternal Dominions Norway to his Eldest son Swayn and to his Youngest Hardicanute his conquered England considering his Mothers Blood which was Emma Wife to the late King Ethelred might as indeed it did give him some precedency to his middle Brother Harold the one having somewhat of Saxon in him the other all Dane especially if he was as some say Illegitimate tho' Baker calls him an Elder Brother by a former Wife so that upon the whole the Contest that rose about the Succession was but whether he had Right and when at last Harald was preferred 't was upon the Resolution of his being Legitimate so that here his own Inference contradicts the end for which 't was brought and instead of altering the discent shows they industriously contended to keep it in the right Channel and allowing they were mistaken in their Opinions of his Birth the Lords to make amends for their error streight on his Death fetch home Hardicanute who dying without Issue the Right of Blood prevailed again and the Saxon entred in Edward the
the Politician and for the Injury he did all along to the Right-Blood Providence seemed to bring upon his head his own and sent that sort of an Usurper too to the Grave with the fate of Tyrants not with a common dry Death but in his own Gore and he that had held the Scepter but with a pretended Right by this disastrous Death gave an opportnnity to a perfect Intruder that had none at all Henry the first who being in new Forrest when his Brother was killed did not stay long to consider the disaster or to get the Carcass Coacht home instead of Carted but rides to Winchester seizes the Treasure and that soon helpt him to put on the Crown The Purple Robes soon followed those Golden Regalia and the Power absolutely Usurpt will irresistibly force a Coronation Florence of Worst but tho Crown'd as he was a good Author say who liv'd and wrote then as great men then sent for Robert promised him his Right and as resolutely stood by him too and well they might when he had been debarred his Birth-right once before and besides the Right of Blood had refused his Assignation his early Pension and had compounded for his own Kingdom which he had so much Title to without the Composition But Mat. Paris tells us in the first Lines of this Kings Life that the Nobility Magnates Angliae ignorabant quid actum esset de Roberto duce Normannorum An. 1100. were utterly Ignorant what was become of this Robert Duke of Normandy but that when he sent privately to them in England Letters alledging his being first Born and that for that very Reason he declared the Right of the Kingdom belong'd to him assoon as they heard those Allegations of his unanswerable Right promised him their best advice and to lend him their Assistance which they did too and Robert came over forc't his Brother to a Composition for 3000 Marks yearly and at least made the Vsurper but a Tributary King and all the Argument out of this Reign that our Elector here fetches for his making Ibid. p. 46. Fidele Consilium pariter Auxilium promiserunt our English Monarch a King of Poland is this Usurpers courting the great Council to confirm it to his Son but so would a Cromwell the Parliament for the Succession of his Son Richard and sure such Creatures have need to anticipate all sorts of security for their Sons Succession that have gotten all their Right by Anticipation of anothers or absolute wrong but the parallel holds still between that antient Usurper and the more Modern I mentioned they both felt their Consciences prickt in their unjust obtaining of a Mat. Paris 1106. sentiens Conscientiam Cauteriatam Judicium Dei formidare c. Kingdom they both feared the Judgments of the Almighty both as unhappy in their designed Heirs one born to be Drowned the other to be a Fool and as their Fame stunk above Ground so did both their Bodies before they went under and Paris tells us the first committed Murder after he was Dead and poysoned his Doctor before they could get him down into the Dust tho he smartly observes this was the last Ultimus fuit ex illis quos Rex Henricus occidit An. 1136. among the many this good King Henry had destroyed The last remark I shall make on this Mans Reign is but what this malicious Historian has made very Remarkable and that is from an Author that he cites for saying that this Robert had discovered too much of the Cruelty of Disposition of his averseness to the English Nation and his proneness to revenge and this Character must be most Emphatically markt out that they might not miss of his meaning another Duke a Prince to whose Valour and Conduct the Wretch ows his Freedom from a Forreign Yoke and the Nation her safety and security and so far does his malice transport the Sot that he falsifies for it the very Latin he translates Perversus contrarius et Innaturalis He makes cruelty of Disposition and for Proneness to Vid. H. de Knyght C. 8. 2374. revenge not one Syllable in the whole Citation and then besides the words of the Author he cites are the same verbatim which this Henry the first used against his Brother when he makes a Speech to his Nobles to make him odious from whom this Author I believe borrowed it and 't is as meer revgene Vid Paris 1107. ful malice to the Duke of York as that against Robert the Duke It is here evident that this Gentlemans Principles and Perswasions are clearly Democratical and writ with a perfect design to please the People as plain as if the rabble beast the Monster Mobile were seen fawning upon this KEEPER of their LIBERTIES and you saw the Sycophant spitting in its mouth his Papers are the very Picture of this piece and the Representation of Rebellion with a Pen. The next that Mounts the Throne is STEPHEN and the little Right tho some Relation he had to the Crown to be sure won't be past by when this Author for the sake of his sinking Cause has caught at every Plank to hold up her Head in that desperate Condition and where he could not meet the least solid substantial Argument graspt at every empty Shadow And truly here he tells us that STEPHEN acknowledg'd his Election in the very Words of a Charter from the People and Pag. 4. so would any man that had no better Title and tho I shall condemn his Usurpation can allow of his Politicks in letting them know how much he was beholden to them and yet that People were strong enough to pull off his Crown too which his own hands rather Stow says he was repulsed by them of Dover shut out by them of Canterbury and unjustly took upon him the Crown of England had put on for as Bradshaw told the King The People of England had constituted them a Court when that unanswerable Martyr observed not half their Consents did concur or were askt so also in this Case many of the Nobility most of the Commonalty lookt upon it as a manifest Usurpation and those whose Concurrence he had were but an handful of his Friends and at his Coronation had but three Bishops few of the Nobility and not one Abbot and also as Historians observe those very Malembs Baker perjur'd Prelates and Lords came many of them to an ill-end or else to worse Calamities before their life was ended And the revengeful Cruelties of the Scot lookt somewhat like a Judgment for their Perjury when they spar'd neither the Gray-Hair for whom Reverence might plead nor the Tender-Infant for whom its Innocence but Butchered the one in their Beds the other on their Mothers Breasts the Barbarity of Mat. Paris in ultionem Imperatricis cui idem Rex Fidelitatem juraverat An. 1138. those avengers is as horribly describ'd in Mat. Paris But agen I cannot see why he was
â—rthurum Haeredem â—am legiâ—imum si â—ine haerede moreretur Paris in vit R. this Princes Care he took in appointing his Nephew Arthur to Succeed him tho he had a Brother of his own to whom he had shown a liberal largess of his Love when he began to Reign in bestowing on him no less than half a dozen Earldoms a good part of his Kingdom Certainly this Earl John was nearer to him in Blood and Affection and then what cou'd move him to this Testamentary Disposition but the more nearness of the other to the Kingdom and the Crown But in spight of all Adoption and Right JOHN as great an Usurper as any laid hold of the Scepter and held it too only as some of our Tenures in Law by primer occupancy he had his Brothers Army in the field and that was then enough to have made a King of a Cromwel an Hewson a Brewer or a Cobler Vid. Dan. p. 108. Baker Stow say Arthur actually did homage to France as King of England powerful Arms that silence any Law But still the Nobility were for maintaining the Right of Succession in Arthur and as they call'd it the usual Custom of Inheritance most of his Provinces in France stood firm to him and so did the King of it and had Fortune favor'd him upon whom for the most part it frowns the Justest pretender he had not been made a Prisoner to his Uncle to whom he was a King and been murder'd by him after the Siege of Mirabel But the Barons rebellious Insurrection soon aveng'd the Barbarous Butchery and but bloody consequences here too attended the Debar'd Right He is forsaken of all his People and the French Kings Son a perfect Forreigner invited in for a King and his end at the last as unnatural as the death he gave to his Nephew And here upon the Coronation of this intruding King John the factious Historian rehearses the Clause of Hubert the Bishop of Canterbury's Speech that declar'd the right to the Crown to consist only in the Election of the People but disingenuously omits the very reason of the self same Prelate who when he was pincht with the Interrogatory why he would preach up such pernicious Principles own'd it more a Design of Policy than the Sense of his Soul But to give him a perfect Vid. Paris Edit Lon. vita John Rowland for his Oliver he will find in the Life of Richard the Second a better Bishop making of a more Divine Speech and asserting the Right of Succession more strenuously than ever this designing Metropolitan was able to confute But that worthy Prelates Doctrine did no way countenance our Authors seditious Observations and so directly different from his Huberts Vid. Baker Trussel vita Rich. II. Bishop Carlisle's Speech Harangue that he might well pass it by without reading and which must certainly have baffl'd him into Blushes to have read Henry the Third a Prince too young to know his Right much less to be able himself to take Possession of it was presently upon his Fathers Death Crown'd King Certainly upon the Consideration of his Hereditary Right or the Testamentary Donation of his Father whom Paris says he appointed M. Paris vit Joha ad finem primogenitum suum regni constituens Haeredem his Heir as his First-born made the Kingdom swear Fidelity to him sent his Mandatory Letter under the Authority of his Great-Seal to the Sheriff's of the Counties to the Keepers of his Castles that they shou'd all be intent upon the Business and upon his death they show'd themselves as ready to perform it and what can the most factious Regnumque Angliae illi jurare fecit Literas cum sigillo suo munitas advice-comites castellanos direxit ut singuli essent intendentes idem M. P. princip vit Hen. 3. sic Defuncto Johanne convenerunt ut Henricum exaltarent Pen make more of this than an Acknowledgment of Hereditary Right especially when the same Author in the beginning of the young Kings Reign says they only came together to Exalt him to the Throne of his Father and not one word of their Suffrages or Election therefore what could not be proved from matter of Fact must be suggested with an Innuendo and because the good Earl Marshal in a perswasive Speech exhorted them to adhere to their lawful Sovereign it imply'd the Consent of the People requir'd if such an Assent shall make the Kingdom Elective 't will be hard to proveany Hereditary for all people that do not actually Rebel and Oppose must in that sense be said to Consent and Elect and when ever our Kings are Crown'd 't is so far with the Consent of the people that they do not interrupt the Coronation But can he prove in any of his pretended Elections much less here that ever in England they balloted for the Crown or drew Lots for the Kingdom that they had ever any certain number of Electors as in Germany or carried it by Majority of suffrages as in Poland ' tho I believe some of them would make no more of his Majesty than a Bourrough Representative or a County Knight and Scarce allow him the Freedom of a Pole But with what face can he urge it Stow says only he was Crown'd by Common consent p. 175. here when the whole drift of Pembrokes Oration was only to satisfy them the Succession belong'd to the Son and that the French Usurper Lewis would be the ruin of the Realm which Speech was so effectual too that several of the Principal of the Barons notwithstanding that open hatred to his Father in spight of Obligation of an Oath to Lewis they still thought their Loyalty and Allegiance more obliging and revolt from the French-man till all at last deserted of all he abjures his claim and the Kingdom together After he had been first routed by Land at Lincoln by Pembroke the Protector and his fresh supplys at Sea near Dover by Hubert the Governour And the bold Speech of that stout Vid Matt. Paris who told him that if his Master was dead he had left Sons and Daughters alive Souldiers to this powerful Prince when he demanded Dover on the Death of King John was a better Evidence what sense the people had of a Lawful Succession than he from the Marshals can evince that he succeeded by Election and against the Laws of Descent and all that he can pertinently draw from the Protectors Oration is that an Infant King did not speak for himself But if ought be a blot in his Succession 't is what this praejudiced Historian I am sure does not care to Hit and that is the weakness of his Fathers Title that forc't him to strenghten his Sons with a Donation And Elenor the Sister of his Cousen Arthur who had a Stronger right did not dye in five and twenty years after he Paris 1241. In clausurâ Diuturna Carceris sub arcta Custodiae
Romulus ordein'd an 100 Senators which grew to 300 in Fortescues time there were just so many in our House of Commons Fortescue C. 18. fol. 40. Coke 4 Inst C. 1. And had we therefore then no King their number is greater now and must therefore our Monarch be less themselves can do so that should it be allow'd what is contrary to some of the very Express Words of our formention'd Historians that Romulus was not an absolute Prince yet still here is still matter and Evidence enough to make him a Monarch and the Government of Rome Monarchical which surely Contradicts his extravagant Assertion That it was a Democracy unless he can reconcile the Contradiction of Sole Soveraignty with the Government of a numerous Senate Another of his pretty Paradoxes is that all Empire is founded in Dominion and Property and that must be understood too of a Propriety in Lands so that where a Prince has not a foot of Land he can't have twelve Inches of Power a Position that would confine some Princes Authorities in the Dimension of a Span notwithstanding Kings are said to have such long Arms but pray let this positive Politician tell me How it comes to pass that the Property of an owners Land is so inconsistent with the Prerogative of a Prince over those very Lands that he owns or why those that have the greatest Interest in this his property must presently have the greatest Portion too of Power and Property in the Government that is only to contract his Absurdity why the Peasant that has two Acres of Land and the Prince that has but one should not presently be prefer'd to be the Prince and the Prince Condescend to be the Peasant The Question might be soon answer'd with another Quere Why this King cannot be as well Born an Heir to the Crown as his Countryman to the Cottage tho the latter commonly has Land about it when perhaps a Crown may have none For certainly according to his Position a King must have but an Insignificant Power that has not a Foot of Crown-lands and then to have it to any purpose to extend his Empire over all his Subjects the Hereditary Lands of the Crown must by his own Rule necessarily make up more Acres then all the Kingdom besides and as he observes that within this 200 years the Estates of our greatest Nobility by the Luxury Page 37. of their Prodigal Ancestors being got into the hands of Mechanicks or meaner Gentry by his own Platonick Dogma these Plebeians must have the Power and Aurity of our Nobles that is a Rich Commoner must presently run up into the House of Lords and a Lord perhaps less wealthy descen'd into their lower-House for they must allow their Lyes more power in our House of Peers they being a Court of Judicature which the other can't pretend too The Disorders Confusions and Revolutions of Government thâ—t would ensue from the placing this Empire and Power only in Dominion and Property which according to his own extravagant Position I think may be better render'd Demesn would be altogether as Great as those absur'd Consequences of this Foolish Maxim are truly ridiculous for we must necessarily have new Governours as often as a new Demesn All Lands are mediately or immediately held of the King as Soveraign Lord. Eliz. 498. Ass 1 18. could be acquir'd for meaner Persons must have greater share too in Publick Administration's assoon as they grow mightier in possessions But besides this simple suggestion as full of Folly as it is carries in it's self as much Faction too it is but another Invention of setting our Parliament again above our King and the making him according to their old Latin Aphorism Greater than a single Representative and less than all the Body Major singulis minor Universis Collective for he thinks it may be possible the King may have a greater portion of Land than any single Subject but I am sure it can never be that he should have more than all but this Sir Politick Ramble has wander'd so much in the wide World that his Wits are a straggling too so full of Forreign Governments that he has forgot the Constitutions of his own Is it not a receiv'd Maxim in our Law that there is no Lands in England but what is held mediately Vid. Eliz. 498. Ass 1. 18. or immediately from the King that are in the hands of Subjects does not himself know we have nothing of an Allodium here as some Contend they have in Normandy and France tho they too are by some of our best Civilians Duck. de Authoritate Lib. 1. c. 6 contradicted and as great many Eminent Lawyers of their own tell us that the Feudatory Laws do obtain and are in force through all the Provinces of France too so that their Lands are there held also still of some superiour Lords and he knows that our greatest Estate here in Fee is not properly free but held mediately or immediately of the King or Donor to whom it may revert and 't is our King alone as our Laws still acknowlege that has his Demesn his Dominion free and holds of none but God and our Lord Cook tells us whom this Gentleman may Credit as having in Vid. Cook 1. Inst C. 1. Predium Domini Regis est dominium directum cujus nullus Author est nisi Deus some things been no great Friend to the Monarchy as well as himself yet that Eminent Oracle tells us that no Subject here has a direct Dominion properly but only a profitable one not much better perhaps than the Civilians usufructuaries and what becomes now of this Gentlemans the peoples Power Empire founded in Dominion and Demesne must the King have the less Power over his Tenants only because they hold the more and can't he have a right of Soveraignty over the Persons and Estates of his Subjects without Injuring them or their property or must his Subjects according to this unheard of Paradox as this their Property grows greater encroach the further upon his Power and Praerogative none but our Elect Saints must shortly set up for our Governours and I know this Factious States-man can't but favour his Friends Anabaptists and Quakers his absurrd Politicks here Extraordinarily suit with some of their mad extravagant Principles he lets them know Empire is founded in Dominion and they thank him kind Souls and tell him Dominion is founded in Grace Two or Three whole Leaves the Copious Page 98 99 100. Author has alotted for the service of the Church and Clergy and there we find the Devil of a Re-publick has so possest the Politician that he openly declares against God and Religion and his Atheistical Paracelsus that confirms his Brother Brown's Aphorism to be none of his Vulgar Error that 't is thought their Profession to be so I mean the Doctor in his Dialogue interrogates his Matchiavel what he thinks of our Clergy why truly 't is answer'd
He could wish that there never had been any page 98. the Christian Religion would have done much better without He presumes much it seems upon his own Divinity but if that be no founder then his Politicks either of them is enough to send him to the Devil and on he goes in a tedious railing against the Frauds and Rogueries of our Church when 't was Romish all impertinently apply'd to the present that is now so much reform'd But would not the most refractory He call's ours a mungrel Church from it's Innovation he means of Ceremonies Jew take this Snarling Cur for a Mungrel Christian that libels that only Church that maintains the Gospel in it's greatest purity and as a wise Prince well observ'd the most reform'd in the whole Christian World And 't is no wonder now that such irreligious Impostors who have so little veneration for the Church should broach such pernicious Doctrines against our State to which after so long and preliminary Impertinence that half the piece is made a Preface the Courteous Traveller is at last arriv'd And first he begins with their old Factious assertion that the Soveraign power of England is in King Lords and Commons making his Majesty but one of their three States we all know when this pernicious principle was first set a foot what it terminated in BLOOD and that in the Destruction of the best of Governments with the best of Kings we quickly saw when once they had made their Prince Co-ordinate they soon set up their own Supremacy and then assoon made him none at all Did this prophetick Daemon foresee from his Astrological Judgments that his House of Commons were drawing another Scheam of Rebellion and that they had prepar'd a draught of a second Covenant not only for making our King Co-ordinate but Leveling the Monarchy with the Ground yet 't was convincing enough to me before that the broaching of the very same principles did as really design the same subversion of the State this Plot might as well have been seen in 80. when this Author and as great Incendiaries appear'd in publick and so popular and well might a late House of Commons animadvert on our Judges for suppressing such Seditious Libels which were so Zealously kind and impudently bold as to set up their Supremacy it had been ingratitude not to stand by those Villains that for their sakes had forfeited their Necks This very same Principle of the Subjects Soveraignty was Printed and publish't in 43. preparatory for the Covenant which the Commons had then call'd for out of Scotland and up rises this Ghost again in 81. as if even then it had heard for Spirits are very Intelligent of an Association talk't off in Parliament but I 'll tell him in short why the Soveraign Power of England is not in King Lords and Commons because King Lords and Commons are not all Soveraigns may not our Monarchy be call'd Mixt in Opposition to its being Absolute and Tyrannical without making it a meer Hotch-potch that if our King will have any thing of his right of a Soveraign power he must put it in Medley with that of his Subject as our Sisters are oblig'd in Co-parcenary But tho he take his Treasonable Maxim for Reason and Truth without shewing the least Law or Reason I shall shew him from all of them that it is both Irrational Illegal and a Lye First 'T is against Reason to Imagin there can be three such Powers Co-ordinate to make up one Soveraignty and that our King can at the same time pass for a Monarch for Soveraignty is inseparable from a King and that 's the Reason without doubt we promiscuously call him our King or Soveraign The King calls them Adjourns Dissolves them at his pleasure and this long Practices prov'd from the Chronicles of our Land and its Fundamental Law Speed 645. 4. Inst 27. 2. and if our Lords and Commons will assume it they may ee'n take the Crown too we saw how the participation of a Soveraign power tho it was but in a shadow and that by him that had a better pretence for the Soveraignty then all the Common Subjects can have by being the Crowns Heir was like to have unhinged the very Monarchy it self in the Reign of Henry the Second and rais'd such Commotions in the State till it was almost overturn'd And I am sure we have found and felt that this Co-ordinacy of their three States terminated at last like the participation of that Co-parcenary Prince into an insolent demanding of the whole and what they had made but half the Kings they soon made all the People's until the Government was quite run of the hooks and the Nation engaged in an unhappy War and a down-right Rebellion Does not the very Etymon of Monarchy it self express the sole Soveraignty of that Government they would make so preposterously Mixt and even Archon alone which was the next Titular Appellation the Loyal Athenians gave to the Son and Successor of their Matchless Codrus only because they thought Medon that no Succeeding Prince could deserve the Title of Tyrannus which they made to terminate with him only because they presum'd his goodness surpast imitation Tyrant then was not apply'd as some of our Inveterate Traytors have Sidney whose very Motto Manus haec inimica Tyrannis done it since in it's Corrupted sense tho to the most merciful King for a Tarquin or Caligula yet even this word Archon without addition of Sole that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that has since succeeded to make it Monarch was then an Absolute Government of one amongst the Athenians and continued so in the same Family for a long Season till at last by popular encroachments it was made Annual and this Contender for this Co-ordinate power of the People has expos'd his Damnable designs so plainly to his Disputants that his own Conscience and Soul up-brai'd him for the Villany and makes his Venetian interrupt him for making an English Monarch but a Duke of Venice tho the Doctor the Pontaeus of the Page 114. people that sucks up all the Poyson of Rebellion like that of Toads only for the Tryal of his Skill and then thinks to cheat the Devil with an Antidote He politickly opines however that he has made him too Absolute if ever there were a medley of more Malitious Villains met to Libel a Government I 'll forfeit my Page 105. Neck too it as well as they Heaven and Hell must be reconcil'd which without a Recantation will be so for their Confusion before these their Contradictory defamations can be made consistent But in this the Politick Rebels agree to secure an Odium upon our Monarchy in both extreams and making the most opposite Objections serve for one and the same purpose it 's absoluteness and Tyranny must make it all Bug-bear formidable frightful at the same time that their holding the Reins shall render it all Hobby-Horse Ridiculous and Contemptible
Liege Lord I am sure this was making over their Faith to a Foreigner and many may think it as much to bee condemned as that of their King his Crown to a Saracen especially when that by some Historians is doubted but their falsehood's confirmed by all Then was our England like to have been truly France which they now but so vainly Fear In the next place he is pleased to grant the Militia to be in his Majesty's Power But 't is only until such a sort of Rebels have strength enough to take it out for he tells us the Militia being Page 116. given but for an Execution of the Law if it be mis-imployed by him to subvert it 't is a Violation of the Trust and making that power unlawful in the Execution And that which shall violate this Trust has he reduced to three of the most Villanous Instances that the most Excrable Rebel could invent or the most bloody Miscreant conceive the Murder of three Kings by their Barbarous and Rebellious Subjects And in all three their strength and Militia were first taken away and then their Lives first he tels us Edward the second forfeited his Executive Power of the Militia In misapplying his revenue to Courtiers and Ibid. Sycopkants Richard the Second for preferring Worthless People to the greatest places And Charles the First in the Case of Ship Money can now the most virulent Democraticks hug such a piece without Horrour at its Inhumanity or the vilest of the Faction preserve it from the Flames can those popular Parliamentarians and the most mutinous of all our murmering Members of whom my self have known some that could Countenance this very Book can they here defend insinuated Treason when Stanley Stanley's Case H. 7. dyed for a more Innocent Innuendo but if Faction has forc't from their Souls the poor remains of Reason will Humane Nature permit such precedents to prevail that terminated in the miserable Murder of as many Monarchs 'T is remarkable and 't is what I remember these very Papers were Publish'd near about one of their late Sessions wherein they were nibbling again at the Milittia and could so merciless a Miscreant be put in the pocket of a Member of Parliament much less then into his Heart and drop from his unadvised Lips can those that come to give their consent for the making Laws be thus Ignorant of those that are already made has not the Military power for above this 500 years been absolutely in the Crown and almost by their Parliament it self declared so in every Reign was it ever taken out but when they took away the Life of their King too was ever his Head protected from Violence when this the Guard of his Crown was gone or can any Hand long sway the Scepter when it wants the Protection of the Sword 1st Edward 3d. Chap 3. The King 1 Edward 3. 1 C. 3. willeth that no man be charged to Arm himself otherwise than he was wont in the time of his Progenitors Kings of England In H. 7. declared by Stat. All 2 Hen. 7. Subjects of the Realm bound to assist the King in his Wars Queen Mary 4. 5. Mary and all her Progenitors acknowledged to have the Power to appoint Commissioners This Commission was in force Rot par 5. H. 4. n. 24. repealed by this 4. and 5. of P. M. but this repealing Stat. is again repealed Jacob. 1. and so of force in this King now as well as when they deny'd it to his Father 2. Ed. 6. 2. C. 2d Cook 2. Inst 30. Car. 2. C. 6. to Muster her Subjects and array as many as they shall think fit The Subjects holding by Serjeantry heretofore all along to serve their Sovereigns in War in the Realm and a particular Act obliging them to go within or without with their King He and only He has the ordering of all the Forts and Holds Ports and Havens of the Kingdom confirmed to this very King and Cook tells us no Subject can build any Fortress Desensible Cook Litt. p. 5. And since some of our late Members of the lower House were so tickled with this Authors soothing them with the Kings Executive Power of War forfeitable I 'll tell them of an Act expressly made in some Sense against their Assuming it and for another Reason too because some mutinous Heads would argue to my Knowledge for their Members comming armed to the Parliament at Oxford and which was actually done too by Colledge and his Crew It was made in Edward the First 's time 7. Ed. 1. and expressly declares that in all Parliaments Treatises and other Assemblies every Man should come without Force and Armour and of this the King acquainted the Justices of the Bench and moreover that the Parliament at Westminster had declared that to us belonged straightly to defend Force of Armour and all other Force against our Peace at all times when it shall please us and the Judges were ordered to get it read in the Court and enroll'd And now can it with common Reason or Sense be suggested that the letting Favourites have some of the Treasures of the Kingdom or Courtiers as he calls it the Revenue or the preferring of such Persons as they shall think Worthless and Wicked which with such Villains as himself are commonly the most deserving that this shall be a sufficient violating as he terms it of a Kings Trust to the forfeiture of his Power of putting the Laws in Execution with which the common consent of almost all the Laws and all Ages have invested their King as an absolute Inherent singular Right of the Crown Certainly such an Opinion is as extravagant as Treasonable and could enter into the Head of nothing but a Madman the Heart of none but a Traytor Next we meet with another Assertion as false as Hell and then its clear contrary nothing but the God of Heaven is more True He tells us after having hardly allowed His Majesty a Negative Voice at least as such an Insignificant one as not to be made use of That Plat. Pag. 124. 't is certain nothing but denials of Parliamentary requests produced the Baron's Wars and our last dismal Combustions when I 'll demonstrate to him as plain as a Proposition in Euclid that nothing but their too gracious and unhappy Concessions to their perfidious and ungrateful Subjects made those mighty Monarchs miscarry read but any of our Histories tho pen'd by the most prejudiced and those that ware at best but moderately Popular of our first Civil Wars The Barons Daniel that speaks most commonly as much as the Peoples Daniel 53. H. 3d. Case will bear tells us his thoughts of those unhappy Dissentions that neither side got but Misery and Vexation We see that notwithstanding as often as their Charter and Liberties were confirm'd notwithstanding all the Concessions of those two yielding Monarchs still more was demanded The Charter in Henry K. John Henry 3. the
Book he begins to rout it entirely when he comes up with the Body to the Battle and the Rear there he tells us plainly the Sweetness the profitableness of a Common-wealth that only 't is not to be set up during these Circumstances that is Plato page 221. p. 234. p. 236. Making Leagues absolutely in the King 19. Ed. 4. 239. 249. 252. 't is too soon to Rebel yet and he has found out better expedients the King has too much Power the Presidents of John and Henry the Third are trumpt up again for being Compell'd to give it away the Murder of Edward and Richard the Second at least the Deposition of which that is an absolute Consequence is two or three times again Recommended for Instruction and now he tells the Parliament plainly what Branches of the Praerogative they must insist upon Power of making War and Peace Treaties and Allyances which the Kings wicked Ministers have made Destructive to the Interest of our English Nation You have here the best of Kings in effect tho apply'd to the Courtiers of which I think he must be the Chief resembl'd to the very Rebel that Vsurpt upon his Crown as if it were design'd by him as well as a Cromwel that had no right to maintain himself in the Throne but the Power of the Sword to Crave aid from FRANCE Plat. 239. to keep Vnder his People of ENGLAND The Militia must be granted them because out of Parliament or Session it being in his hand they cannot raise the County Bands nor those of the City to Guard themselves that some trusty Members whom if the King pleases may take care of his Houshold that a Parliament meet of Course at a certain Day at Plat. p. 249. the usual place without Writ or Summons and that because Peers depend so much upon the will of their Prince for Creation they should never be made but by Act of Parliament I appeal to the most Plat. 252. moderate mild Soul Living whether any single Line of all this absolute Treason has not of late almost since the Publication of this Damnable piece been endeavour'd to be put in Execution was not the Haereditary Discent struck at in the Duke was not the Militia offer'd at in some of their Votes Frequency of Parliaments which would have been as good as without intermission Clamour'd for in some of their Speeches the Nomination of some of the Officers of Power by the People And lastly was it not agreed to meet without Writ and Summons when the Major part of Members were to be conven'd after Dissolution and can any still say that an alteration of the Government was never design'd by those that were then so busily concern'd and when some of the most popular and Active have been since Actually Convicted for the Compassing all this by the Blood of their King which they dispair'd of obtaining from his Le Roy vult But 't is to be hop'd that the God of Heaven who has brought to Light the Darkness even of Hell has so much illuminated Peoples understanding as well as Eyes that the next Assembly that shall constitute this Politick Body truly Honourable adsolutely Necessary in it's Constitution will be such as will transcend what has been one of their best Presidents An healing one and that of those wounds such Daemons and Doctors have scarifi'd instead of clos'd and with a merited Vote Condemn such Devils to their own Element the Fire that have so Seditiously set three Kingdoms in a Flame But tho this refin'd Statesman this polisht piece of the most accomplisht Treason may perhaps value himself upon the Product and Invention of his own Villany proud of the being reputed a witty Republican whose greatest Glory here is to be at the best but an Ingenious Rebel yet his very Reputation tho it be but in his Roguery must sink too When you consider what I shall soon satisfy any sober Person in any Soul that has but so much Sense as to distinguish an Author from a Plagiary a Man of Honesty from a Thief that even the very Notions and Principles he Prints for the establishing this Government were formerly Publisht and proposed by the very Villains that actually subverted it not one Expedient in all his Politicks but what was by sad Experience the very Propositions of declar'd Traytors The Blessed Wit would rob the Records of an old Rebellion and that only to put in for an Inventor of a new the worst of Felons and in Forreign parts punisht as the greatest that Steals his Fellow from the Gibbet His Book has not only borrowed all from Harrington I 'll allow it him with all my Heart and that Oceanae by what follows you may find A Parallel between the Propositions sent the late King by the Rebel Parliament and the Rebellious Proposals of our Plato Redivivus PARLIAMENT'S PLATO'S 1. That all the Kings Privy Council great Officers and Ministers of State may be put out excepting such as the Parliament shall approve and to assign them an Oath 1. His Majesties Power to nominate and appoint as he pleases all the Officers of the Kingdom one of the Powers in the Crown that hinder the Execution of the Laws Plat. p. 239. why may we not begin by removing all his Majesties present Council by Parliament Page 232. 2. That all Affairs of State be managed by the Parliament except such Matters as are by them transferred to their Privy Council 2. That his Majesty exercise the Four great Magnalia of Government with the consent of Four several Councils appointed for that end the Councils to be named in Parliament Page 240 241. 3. That all great Officers of the Kingdom be chosen by Parliaments and their Approbation 3. That the Election of the great Officers be by those Councils and those Councils to be chosen by the Parliament p. 258 259. 4. If any place fall void in the Interval of Parliament the Major part of this Council to chuse one to be confirmed at the next Session of Parliament 4. Preserving to themselves the Approbation of the great Officers as Chancellor Judges Generals of the Army p. ibid. 5. To reform Church Government as the Parliament shall advise to concur with the People in depriving the Bishops of their Votes 5. That the Clergy quatenus such had and will have a share in the Sovereignty and Inferiour Courts in their own Power called Ecclesiastical this is and will ever be a Solaecism in Government p. 178. 6. Marriages and Allyances to be concluded in Parliament 6. The Kings absolute Power of making War and Peace Treatises and Allyances one of the Powers in the Crown that hinder our Happiness and Settlemene p. 327. 7. To settle the Militia as the Parliament have ordered it 7. The Kings disposing and ordering the Militia one of the Powers in the Crown that hinders our Happiness p. 239. 8. All Forts and Castles to be in the disposal of the Parliament 8. The King
a plain puny Doeg and all this at a time the Government stood firm upon its Foundations and the best of Basis its Fundamental Law to what an height of exalted Insolence was the very Soul of Sedition then aspired to to suffer such a Serpent to see the Light that hist at the sight of a Soveraign and spit its Venom in the very Face of Majesty And whatever Recommendation this virulent Republican gives us of the Venetian Justice he would find sufficient severity sublim'd Cruelty instead of Law distributed to such daring Offenders as should offer at a Monarchy there tho but a mixt and of which they seem to have some necessitated resemblance in their constant creating of a Duke as if there were yet some remains of Royalty left which they could not extirpate and like Nature it self whom all the Art of Man can never expel the Libeller would not be long then without an Halter the Jealous State would soon send Vid. Resiquiae Wotton Foscarino 's case him the sight of his Sin and Sentence together and that by the Hands of his Hangman and some little Gondula to Ferry him to the deep No Magna Charta no Petition of Right no privilege of a Tryal of Peers or even a Plea allowed to the Prisoner and whom with a Praevious Sentence too they many times dispatch assoon as seiz'd And shall a Monarchy here founded upon Kingly Government has been the usage of the Land beyon'd History it self the Common Law is but Common usage Plowd Comment p. 195 Le Commen Ley n'est que Commen use its Fundamental Law and that for fifteen hundred years be invaded with impunity by the Pen of every virulent Villain each Factious Fellow that can but handle the Feather of a Goose I confess when they were arriv'd here to their Acme of Transcendent Villany when Vice had fixt her Pillars here and that in an Ocean too but of Blood when they had washt their Hands even in Insuperable Wickedness and shed that of their Prince when by a Barbarous Rebellion they had subverted the best of Civil Governments our Monarchy and establisht their own Anarchy a Common Wealth 2. part of the Inst fol. 496. Kings Praerogative is part of the Law of England then they might well be so bold as to write their Panegyricks upon their own Usurpation when they were to be paid for it by the Powers instead of Punshment Then they might tell us as indeed they did that the greatest of Crimes was the committing of High Treason against the Majesty of the People That the Romans gave us good Presidents for Rebellion Mâ—rc Pol. Num. 107. in the turning out of their Tarquins and the Government together that Caesar Usurpt upon the power of the People Marius and Sylla on the Jurisdiction of the Senate Pisistratus turned Tyrant at Athens and Agathocles in Sicily that Cosmus was the first Founder of a Merc. Pol. Jun. 17. 52. Dukedom and a fatal Foe to Florence that Castruccio made himself the Lord of all Luca and oppressed the Liberty of all the Freeborn Subjects of the Land that all our Kings from him they called the Conqueror to the Scottish Tyrant were but the same sort of Usurpers upon the power of the People All this with much more Execrable Treason was Printed Publish'd and Posted through the Kingdom with Approbation of Parliament and which we shall in its proper place represent in its own blackness black as Hell it self the seat of such Seditious Souls full of Anarchy and Confusion But why we should now have so lately left us such daring desparadoes to retrieve to us the same Doctrine to tell Plato us that Affairs of State must be managed by a Parliamentary that is in their own Phraseology a meer popular Power could proceed certainly from nothing but the deepest the most dangerous Corruption of the Times from the desperate Condition of a Goverment ready to be undermined by Treachery Plot and Machination brought so low that it did not dare to defend it self and its boldest Assertors so far frightened into a dishonest and imprudent sort of Diffidence as to distrust the strength of their own Cause and that was evident too from the sad servile Complyance of some fearful Souls otherwise well affected that seemed to give up their Government like a Game lost that had rather sink then swim against the Tyde But for a more direct Answer to this Proposition we shall shew that Affairs of State must be managed by our Monarch that matter of Fact has prov'd it by Prescription that it is our Kings Prerogative by the Lands Law and his unquestionable Right by the force of Reason For the first 't is evident from History that for above 600. years near a thousand before the Conquest we had Kings that had an Absolute and Soveraign sway over their Subjects as appears from the Gildas B. who was born Anno 493. most Antient Writer of our British History it is apparent that all our Monarchs Britains Saxons and Danes exercis'd unlimited Jurisdiction without having their Affairs Govern'd by any estabisht Council much less a Parliament and that to be prov'd beyond Contradiction from the several Authors that Lived Wrote and were Eye These were Nennius a Monk of Bangor who liv'd An. 620. Bede a Saxon who wrot in their Heptarchy dy'd in the 733. Asserius Menev. who writ the Acts of King Alfred Colemannus Ang. who liv'd in the time of the Danes and Harold the first Vortiger the British King on his own Head call'd in the Saxon without his Subjects consent Egbert an absolute Monarch of the Saxons over all the Isle Canutus as absolute among the Danes call'd only his Convention of Nobles at Oxford about 1017. Witnesses of the manner and Constitution of their Government and then sure must be suppos'd to understand that to which they were Subjected from those good Authorities can be easily gather'd that the power of Peace and War was always in the Prince that they were Govern'd by him Arbitrarily and at his Will that he call'd what Councils of whom when and where he pleased so far from being Limited that the most popular Parliamentarians would be loth his present Majesty should prescribe to such an Absoluteness and which nothing but the kind Concessions of some of his Predecessors to their Clamourous Subjects has given from the Crown and dispens'd with that power and right enjoy'd by their Royal Ancestors 'T is strange and unaccountable that those which stretch their Wit and Invention for this power of Parliament and run through all the Mazes of Musty Records for the proving it so Ancient yet will not allow that of their King so long a standing and which after all their fruitless Labour lost proves at last nothing but the Council of their King those Noble and Wise-men he would please to Assemble their Gemotes the name of that most Ancient Assembly implying nothing more as appears
Cook 4. Inst C. 2. Evil Counselling of their King invented very cunningly this popular Opinion to preserve themselves and please the Rabble they had so much enraged And could after so many Centuries after so long a series of time the Principles even of their execrated Enemies by themselves too be put into practice and what is worse still shall the sad effects that succeeded the practising it so lately encourage our Seditious Libellers for its Reimpression if this most Rebellious Nonsense must re-obtain all their declaratory Statute the determin'd Treasons of their good King †25. Ed. 3. Edward may pass for a pretty piece of Impertinence they may do as once they truly did they may Fight Shoot at Imprison Butcher the Natural Body the Person of their Soveraign and tell us the Laws designed them only for Traytors when they could destroy him in his politick The same Laws make it Treason to compass his Queens Death or Eldest Sons and must it be meant of their Monarchs being Married in his politick Capacity as well as murdered or of his Heirs that shall be born by pure political Conception they might e'n set up their Common-wealth then if these were to be the Successors to the Crown But yet with the same sort of silly Sophistry that they would separate the Kings natural Capacity from his political did the same Seditious Rebels as I remember make their own personal Relation to a politick Body Inseparable Rebellious Lumps of Contradiction shall not your Soveraigns sacred Person be preserved by that Power and Authority derived even from the Almighty and whose very Text tells us touch not mine Anointed and yet could your selves plead it as a Bar to Treason because perpetrated under a political Denomination and a Relation only to that Lower House of Commons that was then only an incorporated Body of Rebels and Regicides and this was told us by that Miscreant * Vid. Tryal of the Regicides page 50. Harrison the most profligate the vilest the most virulent of all the Faction concerned in that bloody Villany the MVRDER OF A KING the silly Sot had it infused by his Councel as Senseless as Seditious That it was an Act of the Parliament of England and so no particular Members questionable for what was done by the Body I confess the good excluded Members and the bubbl'd Presbyterian Senate would not allow it for a Parliamentaty Process and why because themselves did not sit in it and truly upon that unexpected and most blessed Revolution might â—hugg themselves and shrink up in a silent Joy that they were kept out And I cannot but smile to see * Vid. Ibid pag. 52. two or three sit upon the Bench and upbraiding the Prisoner for pulling them out of the Parliament and making themselves none †This was pleaded too by Carew p. 76. Treasonable words sworn against Scot. spoken in Parliament he pleads Priviledges of the House for speaking Treason tho 't is expressly declared not pleadable no not so much as for the breach of the Peace 17. Ed. 4. Rot. Parliament N. 39. Persons whom Policy had only placed there when the poor Prince was forc't to compound with a party for a Crown forc'd to prefer those that had â—dethroned his Father before only the better to settle himself in it and to compass more easily the punishment of those that murdered him after Persons and a great one too that I could name that have serv'd him as ungratefully since and been as deservedly rejected Persons that had his late Majesty's Arms been but as Victorious as his Cause was good had been as much liable to the Laws and their Crimes as Capital for fighting him in the Field with an Ordinance of the House as those that brought him to the Scaffold and Butchered him on the Block from the time that their Tumults forc'd him to fly from their Houses they were no more a Parliament than those were afterward that pulled them out and it lookt a little loathsome to see some sit a simpering and saying all Acts must be past by the King who themselves once had helpt Tryal of the Regicides pag. 52â— to pass many without and they could no more justify themselves had it been but their turn to be brought to Justice by their Memberships political Referrences to the two Houses then the Criminal at the Bar by his Relation to the Rump I have their own Authority for it their very * Answer of the Commons to the Scots Com. that the King had forfeited the executing the Duties of his Place and therefore could not be left to go where he pleased Anno. 1646. Imprint Lond. p. 20. Houses Act that they declared designed and actually made their King a Prisoner For they told the perfidious Scot that his denying their Propositions and what were those but Expedients to destroy Him had debar'd him of his Liberty and that they verifyed too when they had got their poor purchase at Holdenby in a usage of their Prince with a restraint that would have been Cruelty to a Peasant and which even his very Murderers enlarged when their Joyce took him from his Jaylers And I am sure 't is provided that to Imprison him till He assent to Proposals shall be * Parliam Roll. Num. 7. Lex Consuâ—tudo Parl. 25. Ed. 3. El. 1 Jac. High-Treason by particular Act as well as to Murder him is made so by the 25. And whatever the Mildness of ‖ H. postsc p. 89. Mr. Hunt the Moderator of Rebellion would have this Mystery of Iniquity would not have it so much as remembered it was these his own darling Daemagogues whom he defends and adores and that even for †Ibid p. 11. Restorers who script him in his politick Capacity anticipated his Murder and then left his naked Person to be persued by the * Salmasiuâ— has the same sort of simile page 3â—3 defensio Regia Wolves that worried it they had turned their House into a Shambles and that of Slaughter and were the Butchers the less Bloody that only bound Him and left to their Boys the cutting of his Throat yet this Barbarity must be defended this extenuated by them and the help of their Hunts and such Advocates the guilt not to devolve to each Individual Member because an Act of an Aggregated House But base Caitiffs to use even the very * Hunt page 94. Lawyers own Language your selves know that a politick Body may be guilty of a most political Treason and tho the †21. Ed. 4. 13 14. and noted Calvin's Case Laws tell us it has no Life or Soul and so can't suffer yet it s constituent Members may lose both be Hang'd and Damn'd in their proper Persons and that for committing it too against such another political Constitution It would otherwise be a fine Plea for Corporators that have been many times Defendants in the Case when their King has been Plaintiff And
for five hundred years before the Conquest and for above two hundred after Bishops and Abbots made up the best part of those petty Parliaments and that so long before these Contenders for their excludeing them their suffrages ever sate in that Assembly as part of the Senate And that antient piece that tells us of the ‖ Modus tenend Parl. manner of holding Parliaments tells us too that such Ecclesiasticks were always summoned Seditious Souls let those that are to take Care of them too have the same Subjects Liberty you so much Labour for Let Bishops be allowed their Birth-Right as well as your Lay-Lord-ships too your †Vid. Magna Charta the 1st thing in the first Chap. Articuli cleri Vid. Cook Com. on both 2. Inst Magna Charta was made for the Loyal Bishops as well as the Rebellious Barons and that expressly declares the Church shall enjoy all her Rights inviolate and tells us as plainly one of them was to sit in Parliament your selves know a discontented * Stratford Arch-bishop Ed. 3. Canterbury and I hope you 'll side with him because he was so claim'd for four hundred years agon his Privilege of Peerage in Opposition to His Prince petitioned for his Right and protested against the wrong for fifteen hundred years for so long our Monarchs can be Chronicl'd can in every Reign the Clergies being concerned in Parliament be proved upon Record and may they with the Monarchy last that with its Christianity commenc'd They seemed always to sympathize in their very sufferings never to cease but by consent and Bishops were never excluded from their Votes but when their King himself had never a voice The Sixth pernicious Principle they propose is for Marriages Alliances Treatises for War and Peace to be put in the power of the two Houses And shall the meanest Subjects be Mightier than their Soveraign Not allow'd the Marrying his Issue when where and to whom he pleases That the Parliament has presumed to intermeddle with this undoubted Prerogative of the Soveraign since the Birth-Right of the poorest Subject can no more be denyed then that the two Houses have also actually Rebell'd too but they never pretended to make Matches for their Monarch but when they were as ready to make War too There was somewhat of that Mutinous Ferment got among the Members in the latter end of King * James's his Reign who tho they mightily 19. Jacob. 1621. soothed their Soveraign with some Inconsiderable subsidies for the recovery of the Palatinate so small that notwithstanding the Preparation for War the poor Prince was forc'd to pursue Peace and to tell the Men at Westminster so much too that he intended to compass the Palatinate with an Allyance with Spain which he was not like to obtain from the smallness of their Subsidy and Aid But tho the Commons did not care much for the maintaining the War they were as much startled with this seeming tendance to Peace they knew their Prince poor and therefore thought that the time to show the Subject bold and so began the Puritan Party to represent in a Remonstrance Popery Power Prerogative and their Averseness forsooth to the Spanish-Match The pious Prince tho none of the boldest to resist an invading People yet took the Courage to tell them they took too much upon themselves very warmly forbad them farther to meddle with his Government ‖ Dudgdale's short View 21. and deep Affairs of State and particularly with the Match of his Son with the Daughter of Spain And this account they 'll surely Credit since it comes from an * Rusworth Col. p. 40. Author a partial and popular Advocate for this power of Parliament And did not the Commons intermeddling with an other Spanish Match of Queen Mary's send their Memberships into the Country to mind their own Business and were presently Dissolv'd for meddling so much with their Soveraign's And this I hope will be as †Burnet's Abridgm 236. Authentick since it comes from an Author that has had the Thanks of the House But this Disposal of the Kings of his own Children and the Marrying them to what Princes he pleases has such an absolute Relation to the making Leagues and Allyances that the Laws which have declared the latter to be solely in the Soveraign are as Declaratory that the other is so too and this power of the Prince of making War and Peace Leagues and Allyances is so settled in him by the Laws of the Land that till they are subverted it can never be taken out In Henry the Fifth's Time a Prince under whose Courage and Conduct the Nation I think was as Flourishing at Home as it was formidable Abroad A Prince that kept a good Sway over his Subjects and wanted nothing to the making him a good Monarch but a better Title though his Expensive War in France cost his People a great deal of Money as well as Blood yet they were far from being animated into an Invading this part of Prerogative but declared as appears by the Law of his Time that to their King belonged only to make Leagues with Foreign Princes and so fully does this Fundamental Law of the Land place this power in the Prince that it absolutely excludes all the Pretences of the People for it tells us ‖ 2. H. 5. c. 6. expressly that if all the Subjects of England should break ‖ 22. Edw. 4. Fitz. Jurisd a League made with a Foreign Prince if without the King's Consent it shall still hold and not be broken And must the Laws of our own as well as those of all Nations be subverted for the setting up a Supremacy of the People which both declare is absolutely in the King The Seventh Proposal about the Militia is the most Impudent because it has been the most confuted of any by Reason and baffled above all parts of the Prerogative Establisht by Law History tells us ever since Chronicle can Compute and that is for almost Fifteen Hundred Years that the Power of the Sword was ever in him that sway'd the Scepter and Statute tells us even the very First * Magna Charta that was ever reckoned among Acts of Parliament That if the King lead or send his Subject to do him Service in his Wars that he shall be freed from such other Services as Castle-guard and the like so that you see that extorted Instrument the result of a REBELLION reserved this piece of Prerogative of the Soveraigns Sole Right That the Members of the two Houses should have the Management of the Militia was undertaken to be proved too by that Plague of the Press Pryn himself who proceeds upon his own false Principle and Premises which he beggs and then may well draw from them a Conclusion of an absolute Lye for he takes it for granted that by the Kingdoms Suffrages they made their King and then he could not as he says have this * Pryn's Parliam
of the Duke of Mayne that had imposed on them a Council of State too the Tyrannous Assembly conven'd by Conspiraors was confusedly Dissolv'd in as much Distraction and Disorder And the recovered Nation return'd to their Lawful Lord. And did not our own late lamentable Distraction Commence in the Reign of King James and put all in Combustion in Charles the First did not Rebellion in Car. 1. they first practise upon his Necessities to which themselves had reduced him and then remonstrated against such Acts as were the very effect of his Necessity encumber'd with a War or rather betrayed into a breach they would not suffer the * Vid. even Rushw Coll. p. 40. Father to make Peace and then denyed the Son the supplies of War A Parliament is summoned too here and that serves him just as the two preceding Ones did their Soveraign with Remonstrances of Oppressions For this the petition of Right was granted them as Gracious an Act as that of the great Charter but nothing could serve unless like that too 't was sealed in Blood and for that they began by Degrees to be so Tumultuous till this Prince was forc'd to fly his Capital City and that also as in the others prov'd the Head to the Rebellion that succeeded upon their ‖ Exact Coll. p. 123. 21. Mart. Petition the War was first began And Hotham sent to surprize Hull as in the two former were Verdun and Dover and now was all in Arms and Blood which ended at last too in that of their King The Scots called in here as in the former the French and Spaniard the People enslaved by those that set up for their Protectors The Council of State set up here as well as in France and the ruin'd Realms never at rest till they had returned to that Soveraignty from which they revolted It is sad even to see the least thing * Plot in Carol 2d now that looks like a prelude to such a sort of Tragedy The clamors of Sedition still the same Parliaments that are Assembled to redress them ‖ Vid. com Remonstrances 79. 80. Remonstrating against Grievances they never yet felt Subjects †Proceeding Old-Bayly Associating against their Prince for his Preservation the draught the Scheam and abstract of the Baron's Combination The French League the Scotch Covenant so far from an Abhorrence of either as to pitch upon a Compound of all three Designs discovered and detected for the seising of strong Holds the * Rouse's Tryal Tower instead of an Hull and the ‖ Sydney's Tryal Scot invited once more to pass the Tweed for a better booty The Treason of such Practices is never the less because the Providence was so great as to prevent its Execution Had that not interposed the Parallel Lines I am sure would have led us on further but all their draught beyond it must have been Blood A Comparison between the Demands of our English Barons and the Desires of the French Leaguers from whence they have copyed as Counterparts The Propositions of our Parliament and the Proposals of Plato English Barons French Leaguers 1. That the King hath wronged the publick State by taking into his private Election the Justice Chancellor and Treasurer and require that they be chosen by the common Council of the Realm Parl. Tent. 22. H. 3. 1. That the Disposals of Places of Office and Trust in the Kingdom be in the Leaguers vid. Henry the 3d. of France's Answer to their Manifesto who told them 't was against the Prerogative of all his Predecessors 2. That it be ordained that 24 of the most grave and discreet Peers be chosen by the Parliament as Conservators of the Kingdom Baker pag. 8. Ann. D. 1238. Regn. H. 3. 22. 2. That the number of their Kings Council should be limited to 24. D'avila pag. 341. our Propositions were not to exceed 25. or under 15. 3. That those Conservators be sworn of his Majesties Council and all Strangers removed from it 3. The City of Paris set up a Council of 16. of themselves whil'st their Kings was to admit Persons whom they should chuse 4. That two Justices of the Kings-Bench two Barons of the Exchequer and one Justice for the Jews be likewise chosen by the Parliament ibid. 4. These sixteen so managed the Judges of their King upon a Presumption of their favoring their Soveraign that they got three of them strangl'd without process 5. They brought with them Consciences full of Error and Schism against the Laws and the Canons false Prophets fomenting Heresies against the Vicars of Christ Mat. West pag. 332. 5. That there should be a Reformation in the Church and no Hugonots favored 6. They would not have this Henry the 3d's Daughter marryed to Alexander King of the Scots and for a long time would give him no aid which at last with much ado they did 6. That his Allyance and Truce with the King of Navar was against the Interest of his Subjects 7. At Lewes they took upon them so much of the Militia that they made their Prince a Prisoner 7. That the strength of Provence be put in the hands of the Duke D'Aumarle or such others as they should nominate 8. The 24. to dispose of the King's Castles and no Peace till all the Forts and Castles be delivered to the keeping of the Barons 8. Leaguers seiz'd upon the King's City Castles and strong Holds D'avila pag. 328. 9. His Councellors elected by the Parliament allowed him such a pitance for his Houshold that they starv'd him out of his Palace M. Par. 807. 9. That the Kingdom could not be safe so long as the King was environed with Non confiding Persons 10. They chose their own Peers called the Peeres Douze 10. That they might have the Disposal of all Honor vid. their King's Answer to their Manifesto This Parliament of those Rebellious Barons my Lord Cook that had as much Veneration as any Man for that Honorable Assembly called the * Parl. Insanum Cook 's Insti part 3. p. 2. mad Parliament the reverse of that of Edward the 3d. which he calls the ‖ 50. Ed. 3. 4. Inst p. 2. good one And I am sure the Propositions of that in 41 would have made the Learned Lawyer had he lived to see them proposed pronounced that Senate as distracted too as that Oxford one of Henry the 3d 's but it may suffice that special †12. Car. 2. Cap. 12. Act since supposed them in their Witts in declaring them what was worse TRAITORS CHAP. III. Remarks upon Mr. Hunt 's Postscript THIS Disingenuous Author with his Hypocritical Apology for the Church of England has just done her as much Mischief as that of Bishop Jewels sincere one did her Good That pious Prelate with his unanswerable Arguments had defended her against all the powers of the Pope and this with his Argument which he Answers himself has made her all Popish Never did an Hypocrite
the Word Country that was I believe as well as he antecedent to the King but must it be inferred because the Land was once without Kings therefore now no Kings must govern the Land For the Conclusion is as absurd to say That therefore the People have the Legislative and their Prince no Negative they do not consider the result of such rash Inferences which return upon themselves more stronger in the rebound and that even upon their tenderest places which they can hardly suffer to be touched Kings and Lords did a long time meet in Parliament before Commons in that Convention were so much as thought of and therefore must none now be convened The Papists proudly tell us their Religion was long before Luther and must we not now profess our Protestant Religion Another of the same Nature and as much Nonsense is * Ibid. this They infer from the possibility of the King 's dying without Heir and the Government returning to the People who then would be the Sole Legislators That therefore they must have much now of the present Legislative and be at least Co-ordinate that have a possibility of being Supream The Supposition sounds somewhat like the Song of the Children When all the Land is Paper c. Tho it spoils another good Proverb That no Man dyes without an Heir but the silly Souls do not consider that by the same Solecism and Supposititious Reason not a Subject has a Right to a Foot of His Land For the Law says All that is in England belongs to the King as ‖ 12. H. 7. 20. Coke 1. Inst p. 1. Lord which if the owners dye without Heirs must escheat to the Crown and sure 't is as possible for any Subject to dye without Heirs as his Soveraign when the †25. Ed. 3. Treason to destroy the Heir of the Crown Law has taken special Care for them and then 't is but turning their possibility of a Right into an actual one and they will be the most obliging Subjects to the Crown that bring such Arguments against it Another of * Pryn his Treatise ibid. Pryn's pretty Paradoxes is the very same with ‖ Postscript pag. 51. Hunt's impudent Assertion I may with Modesty call it so since himself says he dares to be so bold to assert it It is that our Kings anciently always consented to Bills offered for the publick good and the Postscript that never any Bill was lost or wanted the Royal Assent promoted by the GENERAL DESIRES of the People That Bills have been rejected they 'll find upon Record and in the Journals of almost every Session and whatever is presented in Parliament must be supposed the Desires of the People who Sit themselves there in Representative but the mistaken Gentleman meant it of the Bill of Exclusion to be the Peoples General Desire but that at last he finds a Lye too and that the Generality have for the most part protested against it in Addresses declaring more the Sense of a People than a prevailing Party in an House of Commons when the best part of the Nation too the Lords did not concur But did not in * Vid. Camb. vit Eliz. 106. Edocta fuit quantum emineat a successore designato periculum Queen Elizabeth's Time and that even so lately the Parliament and even every Individual in the Nation desire her to declare her Successor I am sure with greater Sollicitation and a more general Unanimity than they could be said to desire that Exclusion of the present King's did not the two Houses offer her four subsidy Bills upon that very Consideration and she as resolutely reject both And could the refusing to shew even a Kindness to her next Successor upon the importunity of all her People with Money in their Hands be less resented And shall the King for declaring only against a Bill that was never tendered him for declining to concur in this deepest Injury to his own BROTHER and Heir and to pleasure those only that denyed to part with a Penny be reproached and condemned so much more Did not the Parliament tender to King James three several subsidies to break of the Match with Spain and the Treaty of the Palatinate and he refuse tho tempted with what is seldom the Subjects Bait Money How many Bills of Rebellion did the Mutinous Members and that in the Name of all the People prefer in their Propositions to our Martyred Soveraign to which the poor Prince prefer'd the most Ignominious Death rather than condescend with his Veult or Avisera * Hunt's Phraseology pag. 94. Base Caitiff forgive but your own Billings-Gate should these neither have wanted the Royal Assent because offered in the name of all the People of England and as the general Desire of the Subject if that Suggestion must have extorted his Assent then mighty Miscreant he must have past an Act for his own Tryal Sign'd a Warrant for his Murder for in that name he was Arraign'd †Vide Bradsh K. Tryal in that name he was Sentenc'd and in that he dyed Poor prejudic'd Soul whose discontent and Transport makes his own Maxims undermine the very Cause he would defend Is then this general desire of the People such an absolute infallible Determination of Matters of Religion and Descent of the Crown the very only points he labours for that if their Desires be but promoted put up in a Parliamentary way by Bill or Petition it must presently oblige the Royal Assent Be it so base Creatures your own Arguments as basely betray your own Religion your own Arguments well help truly to subvert that which you seek to Establish with such a furious but false Zeal for ought I know the Protestant Religion had been so setled in its Infancy in its first efforts of Reformation in the Reign of him that was the first Defender of our Faith that it could never have been so often interrupted with a succeeding Persecution had but Henry the Eighth refused the Bill of the * 31 H. 8. Six Articles prest upon him by both Houses this was Judged a just and necessary Bill from Hunt's General desire of the People but had it not been better had it not saved the Blood perhaps of all the mighty Book of Martyrs had the sturdy Prince rejected this as he did many other general Desires It was this Royal Assent alone which would to God it had been wanting and this Sycophant would have wish'd so too did he really love the Reliligion he so falsely labors for It was the Le Roy vult the result of the Peoples importunity that then establish'd that Religion by a Law which had it been but then neglected that which our Zealots make such fearful clamor at standing upon its last Legs had quite languish'd dropt into the Grave and been buryed in the Ruins and Rubbish of its own Religious Houses they demolish'd For in the latter end of his Reign so enraged did he seem
the fourth of this Edward was made more for this King's Satisfaction than the desires of the People and that from the sequel you 'll see they were not then clamoring for frequency of Parliaments when they were to pay for it too and have their Treasure exhausted with their Blood in frequent Wars He had drawn the Scots upon his back who in the War like their Old Parents the Picts were always ready to invade us at home when ever we attempted any thing abroad He had before him France in the Front to whom he was ready to give Battle And he perhaps presuming his Subjects might be loth to be convened for subsidies so often as such Exigencies must require might prudently get them to oblige him for such an Annual Convention which they must the better bear with when the result of their own Act and none of the stretch of his Prerogative 'T is true the 36. of his Reign is more expressive of the Reasons for which they should be called i. e. for the redressing of Mischiefs and Grievances but 't is evident that piece of popularity was more for the tickling their Hearts and then they might be soon brought to turn out their Purses and those he wanted then too tho in peace having begun to beautifie and enlarge his Castle of Windsor his best Delight as well as the place of his Birth And his soothed Subjects seconded it with such singular kindness that about that time such a three years subsidy was granted as they resolved should be no president for the * 36. Ed. 3. cap. 11. time to come and these Suggestions I submit to the light of any others Reason for the Politicks of that Old State can't be expected to be clear in History since even in Matters of Fact in many things 't is dark And such sort of Suggestions seem to sound and salve the Case much better than that forced Solution upon the very Letter of the Law their if need be or if there be Occasion For I am satisfied the Design of those Statutes was to determine their King tho' I doubt of their Force and that those Conditional Expressions must be Relative to their Antecedent Words more or oftner and so must be meant only of their being called inclusively more frequently within the Term. To leave now this learned Lunatick this distemper'd Body of Law and consider him under another Denomination that of a Divine and zealously discussing with a Rage unbecoming the calmness he professes as well as the Character of such a Profession the Damnable Doctrine as he would plainly prove it of the King 's Divine Right for he makes it the most * page 60 69 70 86 87 88 89. Mischievous Opinion the most Schismatical the Destroyer of every Man 's Right the Betrayer of the Government Monstrous Extravagant Papal Opinion Treacherous Impious Sacrilegious Destructive of Peace Pregnant with Wars produced our own Civil one and what is worse Plague and Famine and a Crucifying of Christ afresh A Black charge indeed for a poor Criminal that at first sight seems so White and Innocent He should have made it a Trojan Horse too for once for he has made the Belly of it big enough to hold an Army of Men or a Legion of Devils If this be the Judges manner of Trying his King 's Right he would have made a worse Chief Justice for deciding the Subjects I have heard of some Sycophants that have prov'd Wolves in Sheeps cloathing but here the Cautionary Text is turned inside out too and somewhat of the Lamb drest all in the grisly Garment of the Wolf And 't is like they had their Dogs ready to worry it too before they would discover the cheat I am sure if they won't allow this Doctrine to be Religious 't is so far from being Romish that it is utterly inconsistent with their Religion for the Doctrine of their Church attributes all the Divinity that it can to the Pope that presides in it makes him not only Infallible but supream over Kings and Princes and sure they may allow that those Romanists are as much concerned for the Popes Supremacy as Mr. Hunt for the Peoples for His Holiness has the help of Saint Peter to prove his Divine Right from his Succession to his Person and See tho he can't from His * His 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pet. 2. 13. Text. When whatever they would gather from that Apostle the Lawyers Popelings have nothing left to shew for theirs unless the very Charter and Grant of their King yet tho this Doctrine be as far from Rome as they think the Romanist from Heaven tho their Writers with Hunts own Brutish Rage have run it down tho it be so directly destructive of the Papal power still has this preposterous piece of paradox made it Popish and treated it almost in the same Language the †Fox Vol. 3. p. 515. zealous Prelate did their Romish Church and ‖ Vid. Dissenters sayings all the dangerous Dissenters do our own Wolves Thieves Enemies of Christ Brood of Antichrist Babylonish Beast Devilish Drab sink of Sodom Seat of Satan It is a pretty way of Confutation indeed in the very beginning of an Argument to beg the Question He takes it for granted from the Text of Saint Peter that Kings are but an Ordinance of man and then stoutly concludes that it is impossible that any that is of Man's appointment can ever be of God's Ordination to be presumptively baffled recommend me to such a Disputant And with that supposititious Triumph does as some think a Jesuit's Book de Jure Magistratuum enter the List full of Victory even before the Battle and this perverted Text in one of his Editions is turned into the Laurel and Lemma to Crown the forehead of that Impudent piece This is made the Goliah of those Philistins who not with their bulk alone but with the very Letter of the Bible and the Book of Life can defie the Living God for such a Construction upon Saint Peter by common sense can never be put for place this power of Ordaining Kings once in the Power of SVBJECTS and all the World can never hinder THEM from being too the SVPREAM POWER Was not this very Text actually turn'd up for the Supream Authority of the Parliament of England and was that too meant by St. Peter when in the very next Line he calls the King Supream Seditious Dolts do not make the Bible contradict it self tho your Books do does not this very Text take almost an expressive care to prevent even with providence such a silly construction and give a signal Signification where this Supremacy resides viz. in the King But to give these well read Rebels rope enough and let them stretch their Treasonable Positions as they ought their Necks I 'll plead for them and in that which can be their only Reply viz. That this Supremacy must be understood only to be in these Kings after they are
runs all in the sole Wil of the King Charter it self their Act of Liberty they so much Labour in that not the meanest Subject can be Try'd or Judg'd unless it be by his Peers Equals much less so mighty a Monarch that has none and a Fortiori then with lesser Reason by those that are his own Subjects so far from being his Peers or Equals that they are together his Inferiors which has made me think many times these preposterous Asserters of so much Nonsense these Seditious Defenders of those Liberties they never understood did apprehend by the word Pares in the Law not the common Acceptation of it in the Latin but only the abused Application of it of our own English only to our House of Lords And conclude the King might be Judg'd by those we commonly call PEERS because they sit in that Honorable House and at the same to be Judg'd according to Magna Charta that all Judgements be per pares But does not each Dunce and every Dolt understand that the very Letter of the Law looks after this only that every Person be tryed at the least by those that are of his own Condition and that in the Legal Acceptation of the Word every Commoner of the Lower House nay every one of their Electors is as much a Peer as the greatest Person of the House of Lords In short they must put some such silly Seditious Exposition upon the plainest Letter when they pretend to Judge their King or else from the very Law of their own Liberty they labor in allow that their King has no Judges In that Act against Appeals that was enacted in the time of Henry the 8th 24. H. 8. c. 12. the very Parliament upon whom the People and even these Republicans so much depend tells us even in the very Letter of that Law That it is Manifest from Authentick History and Chronicle That the Realm of England is an Empire That its Crown is an Imperial one That therefore their King is furnish'd by the goodness of Almighty God with an intire Power and Prerogative to render and yield Justice to all manner of Folk in all Causes and Contentions This by solemn Act is declared of their King this Excludes the People from Judging of themselves much more their Soveraigns This the Resolution of a popular Parliament they would make even the Supream and this by them resolved even in Opposition to that Popery these Panick Fools so much and so vainly fear Do not the Books the best Declarations of the Law let us understand that which they against the Resolutions of all the Law it self would so foolishly maintain that it was resolved in Edward the 4th's time That the King cannot be said to do any wrong and then surely can't be Judg'd by his very People for doing it when impossible to be done and was not this the Sense of †Vid. 1. Ed. 5. fol. 2. all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of Si Le Roy moy disseisit pur ceo que Le Roy en le ley ne poit moy disseisir il né serrá appell disseisor mes jeo sue mis a petition à Roy. 4. Ed. 4. 25. 13. the Law in Edward the 4th's time that because the Soveraign could not be said to injure any Subject therefore the Law never looks upon him as a disseisor a disposesser of any Man 's Right and all the remedy it will allow you is only Plaint and Petition Does not my Lord Coke himself that in several places is none of the greatest Assertor of the Right of the Soveraign fairly tell us * Coke Comon West 1. 2. Inst p. 158. least it should be vainly fear'd they should reflect upon the King 's own Misgovernment all the fault should rest upon the Officers and Ministers of his Justice Does it not appear from the ‖ Stat. to pursue suggestious 37. E. 3. c. 18. 38. Ed. 3. c. 9. Statutes of Edward the third that notwithstanding the strict Provision of the Charter for the Tryal by Peers that the King was still look'd upon as a Judge with his Council and Officers to receive Plaints and decide Suggestions and tho that and the subsequent of the next year provide against false ones yet it confirms still the power of the King to hear and determine them whether false or true Have they not heretofore answered touching Freehold even before their King and Council and a Parliament Parl. Glocester 2. Ric. 2. only Petition'd their Soveraign with all Submission that the Subject might not be summon'd for the future by a Chancery Writ or Privy Seal to such an Appearance but this they 'll say was the result of the Soveraigns Usurpations upon the Laws of the Land of a King Richard the 2d That did deserve to be deposed Brief History of Succession p. 7. as well as the Articles of his Depositions to be read †Plato Rediviv p. 116. 234. a King that forfeited the executive Power of his Militia for prefering worthless People and was himself of little worth or as the most Licentious and Lewdest Libel of a longer date has it †a King that found Fuel for his Lust in all Lewd and uncivil Courses Now tho March Needham Merc. Polit n. 65. Sept 4. 1651. we have the Authority of the best of our Historians for the good Qualities of this Excellent tho but an unhappy Prince and who could never have fell so unfortunately had his Subjects served him more faithfully tho Mr. Hollinshed Hollinshed 3d. Vol. Chron. F. 508. N. 50. tells us never any Prince was more unthankfully used never Commons in greater wealth never Nobles more cherish'd or the Church less wrong'd and as Mr. How has it in Beauty Bounty How 's Annals p. 277. and Liberality he surpassed all his Predecessors and Baker the best among our Moderns says there were aparent in him a great many good Inclinations that he was only abused in his Youth but if he had been Guilty afterward in his riper Age of some proceedings these Republicans had reason to reproach I am sure he was Innocent of those foolish Innuendo's those false and frivolous Accusations for which they rejected him viz. for unworthiness and insufficiency Vid. Trussel in vit R. 2. when he never appear'd in all his Reign more worthy of the Government than at the very time they deposed him for being unworthy to Govern But whatever were the vices of that Prince with which our virulent Antimonarchists would blast and blemish his Memory yet we see from the President that is cited the Sense of his Subjects Parl. Glocest did not then savor so much of Sedition as insolently to demand it for their Privilege and Birth-right which without doubt they might have pretended to call so as much as any of those the Commons have since several times so
prevent these very Rebels and Republicans in such Factious Inferences did they for two hundred years agon in the first of Richard the Third Resolve what was â—â—gnified by the three Estates of the Realm for say they That is to say the Lords Exact Abridgem Fol. 117. p. 1. H. 3. â—piritual Temporal and Commons and even long since that much more lately out in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in that Act of Recognition of her Right where they endeavor to advance her Royalty as much as possible they can and â—â— make the Crown of this Realm as much Imperial there they tell her 'T is WEE your Majesties most faithful and Keeble Stat. 1. El. C. 3. and does not their own Oracle tell them so L. Coke 4 Inst C. 1. Parliam Obedient Subjects that represent the THREE ESTATES of your Realm of England and therefore in King James and Charles the First 's time â—hen the Commons began to be mutiâ—ous and encroach upon the Crown â—hen they having with the help of their â—â—merous Lawyers which were once by â—articular Act excluded the House and H. 6. if less had State in it perhaps it might have been once less Rebellious too those Gentlemen knowing too well the weight â—f Words and what Construction and Sense Sedition and Sophistry can deduct 4. Inst Stat. de Bigamis concordatum per Justiciarios 2. Inst ibid. Stat. West 2. 13. Ed. 1. Dominus Rex in Parlia mento suo Statuta edidit 2. Inst 331. Stat. Circumspectâ— agatis 13. Ed. 1. begius Rex talibus Judicibus Salutem and tho some would not have it an Act of Parliament my Lord Coke says 't is prov'd so by the Books and other Acts 2. Iust page 487. from a single Syllable I am confident it was they contriv'd the Matter and Method so as to foist in the Factious form of this Be it enacted by the King Lords and Commons for that is the General Stile of the Enactive part of most of the Statutes of those Times and this was most agreeable with their mighty Notion of his Majesties making but up one of the THREE that so they might the better conclude from the very Letter of their own Laws That the TWO States which the Law it self implyed now to be Co-ordinate must be mightier and have a Power over their King whom the same Laws confest to be but ONE and the Reason why the forms of their Bill and the draught of the Lawyers and the Lower-House might be past into Act without any Alteration or Amendments of this Clause was I believe from a want of Apprehension that there ever could be such designing Knaves as to put it in to that Intention or such Factious Fools as to have inferred from it the Commons Co-ordinacy For the Nobility and Loyal Gentry that have commonly the more Honesty for having the less Law cannot be presumed so soon to comprehend what Construction can be drawn from the Letter of it by the laborious cavil of a Litigious Lawyer or a cunning Knave and therefore we find that those Acts are the least controverted that have the fewest Words and that among all the multiplicity of Expressions that at present is provided by themselves that have commonly the drawing of our Statutes themselves also still discover as many Objections against it to furnish them with an Argument for the Merits of any Cause and the Defence of the Right of their Clyent at the same time they are satisfied he is in the wrong And for those Enacting forms of our Statutes whatsoever Sense some may think these Suggestions of mine may want That some Seditious Persons got most of them to run in so low so popular a Stile in the latter end of King James and Charles the first 's time such as Enacted only by the Authority of the Parliament 21. Jâ—â—â— by the Kings Majâ—sty Lords and 6. Car. p. 1. C. 1â— 12. Car. 2. C. â—5 Staâ— 2. 13. Car. 2d Commons yet upon the Restauration of Charles the Second the Words With the consent of the Lords and Commons were again reviv'd and afterward 13 14. Car. 2. C. 10. 19. Car. 2. 8. 25. Car. 2. C. 1. 25. Car. C. 9. they bring it into this old agen With the Advice and Assent of Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons according to the form of Richard the 3d. and Queen Elizabeth that resolv'd them to be the THREE STATES and this runs on through all the Acts of his Reign and even in several of them the Commons humbly beseech the King that it may be so enacted I thought it necessary to bring home Buchanan and his Disciples in Scotland maintain'd the same Doctrine of the King 's Co-ordinacy and therefore their Acts in the Rebellion too ran in the Name of the three States But when the King was returned to his Crowu and they to their Obedience the old form was retrieved The King with advice and consent of to our present tho most profligate time as much Acknowledgement as possible I could of my Kings Prerogative from the Laws of our Land and the very Statutes themselves because that some great Advocates for the power of the People some times pretend to plead for them too from Acts of Parliaments tho I think in this last lewd and Libellous Contest against the Crown that lasted for about five year in that Lustrum of Treason there was but one that was so laboriously Seditious so eminently popular as to endeavour to prove the Peoples Supremacy from Rolls and Records and Acts of State and for that recommend me to the good Author of the Right of the Commons Asserted tho I should rather approve of such an undertaking when endeavored to be done from the tracing the dark and obscure tracts of Antiquity and the Authority of a Selden than the single Assertion of a Sidney and the mere Maxims of some Modern Democraticks that have no other Foundation for their Establishments than the new Notions of their Rebellious Authors and that ipse dixit of such Seditious Dogmatists But I am satisfied too that this Gentleman who has laboured so much in vindicating the Commons Antiquity and their constituting an essential part of our Saxon Parliaments did design in it much more an Opposition of our Antient Monarchy and the Prerogative of the Crown than a mere clearing the dark foot-steps of our Old Chronicle and a real defence of Matter of Fact and the Truth And this is too clearly to be prov'd from the pestilent Pen-man's P-tyts own Papers that were publish'd at such a time when there was no great need of such an Asserting the Commons Right when themselves were more likely to have Usurp'd upon the Crown and as Mr. Sidney and his Associates would have it made themselves and the People Judges of their own wrong For to see such a task undertaken at a time when we are since satisfied such dangerous designs were a-foot looks only like a particular
as repugnant to our Nature as that praeternatural Coition of Matter for have we not all the Laws of our Land on our side and that besides Sense and Reason to whose determin'd sanctions even those themselves must submit for I look upon our Argumentative reasoning in such matters to be somewhat like Belief which all our Learned in the Metaphysicks will allow to determine it self upon demonstration and Commences knowledg'd and a science and so must our Positions at last in the Politicks no longer pass for indifferent Notions or disputable Opinions when they come once to be ratified by some supream Establishment or unquestionable Authority for as the result of demonstration is some Theorem or Postulate that requires our assent so are the Sanctions of the Supream power some Statutes or Laws that Command our Obedience as the one is prov'd so the other Enacted and let any one Judge from the several we have cited or any single Act themselves can cite whether all and every one do not expressly assert or absolutely imply the Soveraign so far from being the Servant of the Subject or the Peoples Creature that they many times maintain him to be ‖ 16. R. 2. c. 5. under none but God and in all places acknowledge him above all the People and is not the absurdity on their side and a Contradiction even in Terms when they contend for the contrary And as that Author of the Right of the Magistrate and the like writings of the most Eminent Republicans led on and seduc'd Mr. S. in some Points so has also his predecessor or Co-eval for I think they liv'd in an Age W. Pryn imposed upon him in others and I am sorry to â—ee Mr. S. that valu'd himself upon his parts â—o rely upon that which that pest of the â—ress plac'd so much confidence in and that are the words of * Deum Legem Parliamentum Bracton where he says as Mr. S. would have it God the Law and the Parliament are the Kings three Superiors But even Pryn himself the perverter of all that was not for his purpose does not deal so disingeniously as this Gentleman in the Case for he recites it more Exactly as it is in Bracton which is the Kings Court instead of the Parliament which in the time that Antient Author writ very probably consisted only of his prelates and Lords so that if granted them Pryn's Commons and Mr. S. his People of England â—re not comprehended in the words of â—hat old writer and then besides it is the opinion of some that those words the Laws and the Kings Courts were not originally in the writings of that Loyal Lawyer who in several other places of his works carries up the Divine Right of his King and that absolute Power of his Prince as high as any of the most Modern whom ‖ Postscript Mr. Hunt has represented and libell'd as first introducers of this new Notion this dangerous and damnable Doctrine for that grave Judge for above 4 or 5 hundred years agon told us our †Hen. the 3d's time Bracton lib. 4. cap. 24. § 5. Rex sub nullo nisi tantum Deo and l. 5. tract 3. non habet superiorem nisi Deum satis habet ad paenam quod DeuÌ„ expectat ultorem King was under none but God that he had none above him but God and that he had God alone for his Avenger and it seems some what Improbable a person of his Loyalty and Judgment should not only detract from the Supremacy of his Soveraign which he seems so much to maintain but also in direct opposition to what himself had asserted and besides were they the sense as well as the words of that Author they are only true as I have before shown when they are taken collectively in a complicated Sentence and so seems a sort of Sophistry which the Logical heads call a fallacy in Composition But yet from that does Mr. S. conclude That the power is Originally in the People and so by Consequence in the Parliament only as they are their Representatives For my part I cannot Imagine thâ—â— Gentleman's large Treatise to be any thinâ— else but a Voluminous Collection of aâ—â— the Rebellious Arguments that were publisht in our late War for as in this little fiftieth part of it as he professes it to be Paper at his Execution there is not one new Notion but whâ—â— â—â— to a Syllable the same with the Papers â—â— Pryn and the Merc. Politicus out of â—e Author of the Treatise of Monarchy â—s he made a shift to borrow or else â— chance very harmoniously to agree â— the pernicious Position That our â—onarchy is not only Limited and Mixt for that wont content them alone but that this Limitation has oblig'd the Sovereign to be Subject to the Judgment and Determination of Parliament for says that more Antient Antimonarchist this Limitation Treatise of Monarchy p. 12. being from some body else and the â—ower confer'd by the publick Society in â—he Original Constitution of the Government and then he bethinks himself that Kings too may Limit themselves afterward by their own Grants and Concessions which he is pleased to call a Secondary â—â—iginal Constitution i. e. if my little â—â—nse will let me Comprehend the saying â— a Politician that has none at all someâ—hat like a Figure in Speech the Country-man calls his Bull us'd when the Speaker can't express himself Intelligibly A Secondary Original sounds not much unlike the Nonsense of an Original Coâ—y or a second first yet from this senseâ—â—ss Sophistry it must be concluded that â—e Soveraign being limited by this Original Constitution or as they call it Aâ—ter Condiscent and Secondary Origâ—nal what then therefore every Maâ— Conscience must acquit or Condemâ— p. 17 18. Imperium etsilatissime ex lege Regia propter August latum pateret certis tamen limitibus desinitum de jure magist p. 29. the Acts of his Governour and even man has a Power of Judging the Illegâ—â— deeds of his Monarch And so Mr. S. â—â— almost the same Language As a man hâ— is Subject to the People that made hiâ— a King That he receiv'd the Crown upon condition and That performance is â—â— be exacted and the Parliament Judgeâ— of the Particular Cases arising thereuâ—on I cannot but observe to this Geâ—tleman upon this who was always such â— great admirer of the ‖ So the Roman Senate when Augustus was not so much as present freed him from all obligations Romans Commoâ—-wealth what I hinted before was thâ— Sense of the very Romans when according to their own Notion of Original Monarchy the People of that Commoâ—-wealth first conferr'd their Power â—â— Government upon a single Soveraign why their very Laws tell us That noâ—withstanding those Contracts and Limitations of which there were very likeâ— some exprest even in that their very Câ—lebrated and Glorious * The Lex Regia princeps legibus solutus
time of the Priesthood too with which they then alone made the Monarchy mixt and of this even * Justin l. 16. 36. Justin can tell us in one of his Books And for making their Monarchy more Divine did Romulus and Numa the Founder of their Religion as well as of Rome Officiate in it sometimes too So much did the Fathers of old prefer Monarchy to a Popular Government that Sir Walter Rawleigh Praestat regem Tyrannum habere quam nullum p. 182. tells us of the saying of St. Chrysostom that recommended even a Tyrant before no King at all and that is seconded with a Sentence of Tacitus who tells us If the Prince be never so Tacit. Lib. 1. Praestat sub malo principe esse quam nullo wicked yet still better than none And for that of a Commonwealth it was as bravely said by Agesilaus to a Citizen of Sparta discoursing about Government That such a one as a common Cobler would disdain in his House and Family was very unfit to Govern a Kingdom In short all the Presidents that Mr. Sidney has given us of the Romans driving out their Tarquins of the French rejecting the Race of Pharamond of the Revolt of the Low-Countries from Spain of the Scots killing James the Third and Deposing Queen Mary are all absolute Rebellions were ever Recorded so in History and will be Condemned for such by all Ages He should have mention'd for once too the murder of our Martyr'd Sovereign for to be sure he had the same sense of that upon which he was to have sate But if any thing can recommend their Commonwealth it must be only this That it cannot be so soon dispatch'd it being a Monster with many Heads to which Nero's Wish would not be so cruel That it had but one neck to be cut off at a blow The clamour this Republican made against Monarchs in general was whatever he suggests appli'd to our own in particular when he tells in the very same Page of the Page 23. Power of the People of England and though he exclaims and all others do against this Arbitrary Power of Kings 't is certain themselves would make the People as Arbitrary The Question is not whether there shall be an Arbitrary Power but the Dispute is who shall have it there never was nor ever can be a People govern'd without a Power of making Laws and that Power so long as consonant to reason must be Arbitrary for to make Laws by Laws is Nonsense These Republicans by confession would fix it in many and the Multitude in Aristocracy 't is fix'd in a few and therefore in a Monarchy must be setl'd in ONE CHAP. VI. Remarks upon their Plots and Conspiracies AND now that they may not think I have foully Libell'd them in a Misrepresentation of the dangerous Principles of their Republicans I 'll be so fair as to prove upon them too the natural product of their own Notions and that is the Plots of the same Villains assoon as they have been pleas'd to set up for Rebels And these will appear from Chronicle and History the Records of Time and the best Tryers of Truth these will not be falsified with Reflection but be founded upon matter of Fact And of these this will fall in our way as the first About the Year 1559 there was promoted in France a Plot and Conspiracy against their King and that founded upon the same pretext so many of ours have been of late in England that is Religion but truly fomented by what has been always the spring the very fountain of Blood and Rebellion discontent and disgust toward the Government For upon the death of Henry the Second and the Succession of Francis his eldest Son to the Throne the Princes of the House of Bourbon thinking themselves neglected and despised thrust out of Office and Employment at Court and finding the Family of the Guises still prefer'd whom they always as mortally hated resolved to revenge themselves upon the Crown that is to turn Rebels Of these Vendosme and Conde were the principal Engagers and drew in the two Castillions the * Gasper de Collign Mr. D' Andelot Admiral and his Brother who for the removal of the Duke De Montmorency their relation from that Court to which he had prefer'd them were as full also of resentment against the Crown as those that came to engage them with an invitation to invade it and after all their several seditious Assemblies after all the many Meetings they had made after all the Treasonable Consultations they had held no design was look'd upon by them more likely to prove effectual than the making themselves Head of the Hugenots And so hot were they upon this Project the pursuit of another kind of Holy War that among our modern Crusadoes has been nothing else but a Religious Rebellion that notwithstanding the coldness of the King of Navarr they drew in most of the Protesting part of France to be truly Rebels for the sake of their Seducers while they made them believe they had only engag'd themselves to fight for the Religion of those they had so wickedly seduc'd And so conducing then were the principles of a Republick to a Rebellious Plot that one †Alias Godfry de la Bar. Renaudie that was forc'd to turn Renegado to his Country for Misdemeanors committed in it and fled to Geneva as a Sanctuary for Sedition after he had lurk'd there like a concealed Criminal abroad upon his Return sets up for an open Rebellion at Home after he had layn so long in the lake the sink of Democracy you may be sure was well instructed how to resist a Monarch He soon blows the coals that could easily keep up the Blood of the warm Princes that was already set so well a boyling Him they pitch upon as the fittest tool to work out their design and in my conscience coming from that Common-wealth the Statsemen judged not amiss when they took him for an able Artist With his help and their own it went so far that Moneys Men and Amunition was provided and a Petition drawn for a Toleration of Religion though indeed but a Treacherous veil to cover their Intended Treason which was to seize upon the Young King upon his denyal of what they knew he would not grant surprize the Queen that still opposed them and put the Guises to the Sword whom she favoured But the Court being advised of the Conspiracy had retired to the Castle of Amboise and so far did they prosecute their Plot that their Petitioners were admitted into it though their Arm'd Accomplices that were without were compelled to fight for their Lives which Renaudie with the rest of the Ring-leaders of them lost and the Rabble to save theirs was forc'd to fly * To renew another about the end of this unhappy War were publisht those Treasonable Tracts De jure Magist Brutus his Vindiciae With another as pernicious a piece
have wisht a Fellow that had the Misfortune which he call'd Happiness to carry War and Confusion wherever he went We had several Protestants of our own Nation fled from a real Persecution of ou◠Zealous Queen to * Vid. Troubles at Frankfort Edit Ann. Dom. 1642. Frankfort a Town in Germany and there lived quietly with submission toward the Supream Magistrate till this Geneva Gentleman no sooner arrived but he sets all i◠Combustiom is accused of High Treason toward the Emperor for comparing him in Print ‖ Sanderson's History of King James p. 15. in some of Mr. Sidney's Similitudes to a Tarquin Nero Caligula for which he was forc'd to fly the Town and Post away to what could only bear with as well as breed such Vermin the Lake or their Commonwealth of Italy About the Year 1558 the Queen Regent of Scotland when the Reformation was but in the beginning as a special Act of Favour for so it must be call'd because then not only contrary to her own Religion but the Law of the Land allow'd the Congregators which were Conventiclers then too as well as now because the general Worship establisht was not theirs the Bible in their own Language But they no way contented with an Act of Grace from the Crown and Instigated by this Incendiary this Scandal of the Reformation Knox that had taught them they might Demand with their Swords what was deny'd them by Law fell a reviling her even for such a signal favour and when she sent for some of the more furious of the Faction they came all attended with a multitude of Favourites and Force that for her Preservation she was compell'd to Command them to depart And the best of Governors might well fear the worst from such an audacious Assembly but this was so much the more offensive to them only because they were Commanded to offend her less that they throng'd into her Privy Chamber threatned her with their Arms till she was constrained to pleasure them against Law And as they then menac'd a Force so they afterward made it good with as much violence for away they went pulling down Monasteries and * St. Andrew's Scone Sterling Edenburg c. Spotswood pag. 123 124. Churches and seconding their Sedition with what could only succeed it Sacrilege that is from Traytors to their Soveraign to be Rebels to their God And this by that Sanctified Beast that invited them to debase themselves to Brutes to be divested of Humanity was call'd a Purging of the Temple as if our Saviour Christ had countenanced an Extirpation of the Religion of some Christians But though the Queen at last granted them the free and publick exercise of their Religion though at last she only begg'd the private use of her own that was by such Seditious Subjects thought a boon too great to be begg'd by their Soveraign they Protest against it Preach against it Print against it and Assault her House of Worship break the Wax Candles with the Windows of her Chappel force their Queen Regent to fly to Dunbar and then as fairly Depos'd her for being fled though at the same time they profest against her Deposition And if we 'll believe a Loyal and Learned * Sanderson p. 31. Author they proceeded so far in their petulant piece of Reformation that they Religiously Reform'd the very Petticoats of the Queen and the Ladies of the Court which they look'd upon as too fine for the plainness or simplicity of the Kirk How near our present Pretenders that have taken Arms for the Protestant Religion will tread in the steps of their Reforming Predecessors must be Collected from the Precedents they give us of their being but Implacable Republicans especially when we have nothing now to be Reform'd unless what they deny'd to the Grandmother of our present Soveraign that their King himself shall not be indulg'd to exercise by himself the Religion he professes at the same time he Protests to defend all his Subjects in the establish'd Profession of theirs The Actions of the late Rebel Scot of the last Age they say squinted like their Argyle that headed them working one way when they profest to design another and they might have had as much reason to distrust the Promises of his late Declaration the Sincerity of his Son that succeeded him even in a Rebellion In the Year 1565 when the Queen of Scots was married to Henry Stewart Lord Darnly The Rebel-Lords instigated from the Preachings and Principles of this Knox the Ferguson of his Age who rail'd at the Government and reflected upon the King be took themselves to Arms and brake into open Rebellion Lord Darnly upon this Match being proclaim'd King marcht against the Rebels who fled into England and though through Intercession this Rebellious Business was Reconcil'd yet within two Years after the King was barbarously Butcher'd and Dispatcht but by whom because their Historians do not agree in it can be only best determined by Conjecture and must probably lye at their Doors that could Rebel against their Sovereign in an open War and then sure as likely to set upon Him in a secret Assassination especially when their Principles instructed them in both and their Preachers had made the Murder of their King an Oblation to their God And besides when they rebell'd also against Bothwell the Queens second Husband too as well as the first whom they forc'd to fly into Denmark seiz'd on the forsaken Queen secur'd her in an * Isle of Lochlevin Island compell'd her to resign her Crown and if we 'll credit an Authentick * Sanders History of K. James pag. 52. Historian were not so well satisfied with her Resignation of her Sovereignty but that they consulted too to deprive her of her Life and very likely to have prevented her loving Cousin Elizabeth in England Upon the same Principles the same Seditious Daemocraticks proceeded against her Son and Successor that was afterward our own Sovereign K. James then a young Prince about 12 Years old whom they †Vid. Spotwoods Hist p. 323 324. seiz'd at Ruthen carried in Triumph and Constraint to Edenburgh from which he was forc'd to contrive an Escape which he made by the Means of Collonel Stewart a Captain of his Guards but shortly afterward * An. 1503. incited by the Seditious Insinuations of their Geneva Principles brought them home fresh hot and reeking with Blood and Rebellion by one Melvill that had come from thence but a few years before to supply not only Knox's stock of treasonable Positions but to succeed him in his Place of an implacable Incendiary his Predecessor expiring a Year or two before he came over by this Factious Fellow 's and his Associates Seducements did I say shortly after the Earl of Gowry conspire against the King and break out into an open Rebellion which he deservedly suffered for with the loss of his Head Then is this succeeded by Bothwells Rebellion who had contriv'd
Northumberland and Durham and prey upon those Counties they had promised to protect while the Parliament at London will not give their King leave or the Citizens lend a penny for opposing those that came to pull him out of his Throne At the Treaty of Rippon they quarrel with their King for calling them Rebels that had invaded his Realm the Commissioners of the Scots conspire with the English who then fall upon Impeaching his Privy Counsellers and the unfortunate Strafford suffers first because so ready to Impeach some of them and they make that Treason in a Subject against the King which was heard known and commanded by the Soveraign Then follows Lawd a Loyal Learned Prelate and that only for defending his Church from Faction and Folly As they posted the Straffordians and repair'd in Tumults to their King for the Head of that Minister of State so Pennington with his pack of Aprentices petition'd against the Bishops and the Pillars of the Church Then Starchamber must down High Commission be abolisht Forest bounds limited yet all too little to please when the Irish Rebellion followed to which the Scots had led the Dance no Moneys to be levied in England for suppressing it till the King had disclaim'd his power of Pressing Soulders and so disarm'd himself that is he was not to fight for his defence till they had disabl'd him for Victory They quarrel with him because he would not divide among them the Lands of the Irish before they were quell'd and subdued at the same time they had quite incapacitated him to Conquer and Subdue them Then Acts must be past for Annual Triennial and at last perpetual Parliaments And whereas the Law says The King never Dies they made themselves all Dictators more Immortal They were summon'd in November and by the time that they had sate to May they had made of a Mighty Monarch a meer precarious Prince And in August following supposing he had sufficiently oblig'd the most Seditious Subjects which I think he might Imagine when he had made himself no King he sets out for Scotland to satisfie them as much there while the Senate of Sedition that he left to sit behind him resolv'd it self into a sort of Committee of Conspiracy and that of almost the whole House made a Cabal among themselves to to cast off the Monarchy which the Knaves foresaw could not be done but by the Sword and therefore cunningly agreed to second one another for the putting the Kingdom into a posture of Defence against those dangers abroad which they themseves should think fit to feign and fancy at home To carry on their Plot against the Bishops they put in all probability that lewd Leighton upon writing of his Plea which was Bring out those Enemies and slay them before him to smite those Hazaels under the fifth Rib For which in the Starchamber he was Fin'd and Imprison'd but for his Sufferings and the Dedication of his Book to the Commons they Vote him Ten thousand pound Upon the Kings return from his Northern Expedition which was to procure Peace only with a shew of War they having had a competent time for Combination and Plot were arriv'd to that exalted Impudence that notwithstanding he was received with Acclamations from all the common People of the Kingdom the People whom they were bound to represent the welcome from his Parliament was to present him with Remonstrances and Petitions which against his very express order they Printed and Publisht of such sort of Grievances that sufficiently declared they were griev'd at nothing more than his being their King They put upon his Account the thirty thousand pounds they had pay'd the Scots for Invading England that is they gave them the Moneys for Fighting of their King and then would have had the King paid his own Subjects for having against him so bravely Fought They should for once too have made him responsible and his Majesty their Debtor for the two hundred thousand pounds they paid the same Fellows at Newark to be gone whom with their thirty thousand pounds they had invited in before They should have made the King pay for his own purchase and answerable for the Price the Parliament had set upon his Head This seem'd such an unconscionable sort of Impudence that their hearts must needs have been Brass and seer'd as well as their Foreheads in offering it An Impudence that none but such an Assembly were capable of Impudence the Diana of these Beasts of Ephesus the Goddess of all such designing Democraticks * Aude aliquid brevibus Gyaris carcere dignum si vis esse aliquid Juvenal Satyr that to be somewhat in the true sense of the Satyrist must defie a Dungeon These their Petitions they seconded with Tumult and Insurection sent the Justices of Peace to the Tower only for endeavouring to suppress these Forerunners of a Civil War when they had taken the Liberty to Impeach some of the King 's best Subjects for Traytors yet deny'd their Soveraign to demand their Members that had committed High Treason About the twenty eighth of January 1641 they humbly desire the Soveraignty and their Petition that BEGUN Most Gracious Soveraign ENDED only in this Make us your Lords for they 1st demand the Tower of London 2ly All other Forts 3ly The Militia and they should have put in the Crown too The stupid Sots had not the sense to consider or else the resolv'd blindness that they would not see that those that have the power of the Army must be no longer Subjects but the Supream power The King you may be sure was not very willing to make himself none and might well deny the deposing of himself tho' he after consented even to this for a time but what he would not grant with an Act they seiz'd with an Ordinance and though they took the Militia which was none of theirs by Force and Arms yet Voted against their King's Commission of Array that was settled upon him by Law they force him to fly to the Field and then Vote it a Deserting the Parliament they necessitate him to set up his Standard at Nottingham and then call it a Levying War they Impeach nine Lords for following their King and yet had so much nonsense as to call them Delinquents which the * Vid. Com. Lit. 1 Inst p. 26. B. For adherency to the Kings Enemy without the Realm the Delinquent to be attainted of High Treason Law says none are but what adhere to his Enemies they send out their General fight their King and after various events of War force him to fly to the perjur'd Scot to whom they had paid an hundred thousand pounds to come in and were glad to give two to get out and for that they got the King into the bargain An Act of the Scot that was compounded of all the sublimated Vices that the Register of Sins or Catalogue of Villanies can afford feigned Religion forc'd Hypocrisie Falshood Folly
Covetousness Cowardize Perjury and Treason for upon his refusal to Sign their Proposals they tell him the defence of his Person in the Covenant must be understood only as it relates to the safety of the Kingdom and upon the English profering them the Moneys they wou'd prettily perswade him that the promise their Army made him for his preservation could not be kept because the Souldiers and the Army were different things and the Army might promise what the Souldiers might refuse and were unwilling to perform But this purchase of their double Perjury was punisht with as much perfidiousness their Army got into their hands for nothing the poor Prince the Parliament thought they paid for too dear And as that Seditious Senate fought their Soveraign in the Name of King and Parliament so now the Souldiers of Fairfax set themselves to fight the Senate for the sake forsooth of the Parliament and Army Good God! Just Heavens that could visit such Vipers such Villains in the same villany they committed and make such Seditious Hypocrites suffer by as much Treason and Hypocrisie Their Agitators menace the King with Death and Deposition they make him their Prisoner move in the House their non-addresses make it Treason to confer with their King set up an Ordinance for his Tryal and there Sentence that against which Treason could only be committed as a Traytor to the State And here then With what face can the Faction justify such a Barbarous Rebellion or accuse their King for the beginning of the War Yet such a sort of Seditious Democraticks does our Land afford * Vid. Tryal p. 26. Sidney says Such a general revolt of the Subjects cannot be call'd a Rebellion And †Plato Redivivus p. 167. Plato Our Parliament never did as they pretended make War upon the King Till such persuasions are rooted up out of their Rebellious hearts as well as they are in them no Prince under the Heavens can protect himself from such resolute Rebels as will destroy all Subjection in the World and make the blackest Treason our own Civil War but a prudential act of State and even of Loyalty it self the * Ibid. rescuing the King only out of those Mens hands that led him from his Parliament But do not they tell us even by his own concession in one of their Votes That it was the King that was seduc'd and must it not be the King too that they would reduce and by what means why therefore they say they take up Arms and did they design to command their Bullets and Ball not to meddle with the King that was only seduc'd but only to take off the evill Counsellors that were his Seducers I confess could they have promis'd his Majesty so much he might have took them for good Gunners but must still have believ'd them bad Subjects that would have put it to the venture But with this Gentleman it seems it was a sort of proclaimed War of the King 's to take that * Ibid. unfortunate resolution of seizing the five Members Most Factious Fool did the King rebell against his Subjects only when he came to seize actual Rebels whom himself desired only to be Try'd for Treason and that of the deepest dye for inviting in a Forreign Foe the Scots must not the Parliament without the King be the Supream power if the King can be said to Rebel against the Parliament but this Republican that expresly makes them * Ibid. 168. Co-ordinate may as well call them Supream for these Gentlemen paid off the King for his unfortunate resolution and declare that his coming to their House was High Treason And well might the King shift for himself when they had made his Majesty reside in the House of Commons Prethee for thy senses sake who levy'd War first those that seiz'd upon the King's Forts Magazines Towns Ships and Revenues levy'd Soldiers or the King that had nothing of Military left him but the power and not a single Company of Horse or Foot that he had rais'd It was the twentieth of October 1641. they brought the Trainbands into the Palace Yard to protect themselves thousand that is to terrify their King It was the eighth of January 1641. that forty thousand of the Inhabitants of London put themselves in Arms to fight fifteen hundred of the King's Horse that were to come and surprize the City the one were actually Arm'd the other never came or design'd to come They rigg out the Navy on March the 2d the King's Militia is seiz'd and new Lieutenants set by their Ordinance the fifth of March 1641. and on the twenty third of April they deny'd him entrance into his own Garrison at Hull the tenth of May the Citizens are Mustering twelve thousand Men in Finsbury Fields the King does not summon his Yorkshire Gentlemen till the twelfth of May did not grant out his Commission of Array till the twentieth of June when they had sent out their Orders and Proposals for Men and Horse Money and Arms the tenth did not set up his Standard at Nottingham till after the twelfth of August when their Parliament had rais'd their Army the seventh of July And this Vote of their King 's being seduc'd by wicked Counsel from which this Sediious Daemagogue would infer the King clared to them War before was made on the twentieth of May which was after they had seiz'd his Forts and Militia his Shipping and Navy and Muster'd their Citizens in the Field And a Month before the King sent out his Commissions of Array and above two Months before his Standard was set up That this is exactly truth Consult even the Exact Collection And whether this Seditious assertion be not a Devilish lye but your own Breast And as they begun this War of Weapons in their House so they did that of Words too and invading the Prerogative before the least breach of Priviledge One * Vid. Baker p. 435. A. D. 1625. Turner a Physician under a pretence of reflecting on Buckingham abuses the best of Kings Cook amongst other Invectives says openly It was better to dye by a Forreign Foe than be destroyed at home These were but preludes to the Liberty the licentious Villains took afterward when Martin declared to the House * So Plâ—t Râ—â— p. â—17 That the King's Office was forfitable when †Vid. The Royal and the Royalist's Pâ—â—a printed A. D. 1617. Sir Hâ—nry Ludlow said to the same effect That his Majesty was not worthy to be King of England And Prideaux was at last come to make his Speech there for Abandoning Monarchy it was so early too that they were so forward to Usurp upon the Crown that even in this Year 1625. they offer'd to search the King's Signet Office and examin'd the Letters of his Secretary of State all this was offer'd at in the very first Parliament that he summon'd all of which the King complain'd to them of by * Vid. Lord Keeper's Speech to
Pardon'd and the rest Executed In December was detected another Plot and Conspiracy carrying on One William Hill one of the Accomplices or a pretender to be so discovers it A Plot they had of confounding the Rogues as they call'd it at Whitehall imparted to him by one Baker one of Oliver's Yeomen of the Guard upon presumption that he would side with them who brings him acquainted with the rest of the Conspirators their Design was with four or five hundred Men to surprize the Castle of Windsor Riggs one of the Conspirators told him of the Arms lodg'd in Crutchet Friers that five hundred had been dispers'd that they design'd a desperate assault on Whitehall Vid. Wil. Hill Narrative prefixt to their Tryal to deliver them from the Tyranny of that Outlandish Dog for so they call'd the King That Ludlow was to be their General that all other Officers were agreed on that the Tower was to be betrayed to them Letters dispersed to amuse the People with a Massacre from the Papists one of which on the Tryal of the Conspirators was produced in the Court they told him they determin'd to rid themselves of King Queen Dukes Bishops all should go one way as they call'd it and the Insurrection was to be on the Lord Mayor's Night Upon this Discovery one Tongue and five more were Arraigned of which one Phillips and Hind confest the Fact on their knees at the Bar were pardoned the other four Convicted Condemned and Executed In March 1663. a Plot was Discovered in the North of England the principal Contrivers of it being imparted to the King were secured from proceeding further And in 1666. when the King returned from Windsor to Oxford the Pestilence being abated tho' the Plague product of their Pestilential principles remained as raging Another Conspiracy of discontented Officers is detected for Conspiring the Death of the King Plotting the surprisal of the Tower Firing the City They had two Councils sitting one in London to issue out all Orders upon the place and another in Holland that assisted them with Instructions the third of September was sworn to be the day of Design for which eight several Persons were Sentenc'd and suffer'd Death In the same Year the Rebellion broke out in Scotland at Pentland Hills where the Covenanters fought the King's Forces and were defeated In 1675. the late Lord Shaftsbury a Person eminent even in the late Combustions and the Civil War a person that was but just before preferr'd by his Prince notwithstanding the many Services he did to the Rebels and an actual being in Arms for the Parliament But he thinking himself too little obliged by the Crown that had never deserv'd the least obligation Plots for the Dissolution of that Parliament that as it had settl'd so preserv'd the very frame of the Government from being dissolv'd and because he could not compass it from the King contrives that it should pass currant that it was Dissolv'd of course because Prorogu'd for fifteen Monhs contrary to the Acts of King Ed. the Third that required one to assemble once at least in twelve The Duke of Bucks is made to move it in the House seconded by Shaftsbury Salesbury and Wharton and for that all four sent to the Tower but however had dispers'd the Design so far that the Stalls were all cover'd with Papers and Pamphlets to prove them Dissolv'd which had it been then effected had only reduc'd us to those Confusions that the unhappy Dissolution in four years after did unfortunately bring about In March 1679. the same Incendiary the Beautefeu of both Kingdoms contrives a most silly canting ridiculous Speech and said to be spoken by Shaftsbury in the House of Lords the * Vid. The whole in an Impartial Account of the Proceedings in the Parliament at London 1679. substance of it being a declaiming against the Sufferings of Scotland many Copies of which were as Seditiously sent thither so animated and incensed the zealous Scots that they soon after set upon the Bishop of St. Andrews batbarously Murder'd him and our Seditious Senate the Lower House seconding that Lord's Speech with a Remonstrance against Lauderdale they soon resolv'd for open Rebellion and that they begin at Ragland in Scotland where they come and Proclaim the Covenant burn Acts of Parliament attack'd Glascow but the result of that was that by Bothwel Bridg the Rebels were deseated all running away upon the playing of the King's Cannon in a perfect Rout and Confusion At the Sitting of the late Parliament March 1681. at Oxford there was some intimation given the King of a Plot and Design to have seiz'd his late Majesty and kept him confin'd till by that he had been made complyant to pass the Bill of Exclusion his Majesty was so far satisfied of it that he Dissolv'd them as suddenly and so frustrated the Design This was proved afterward upon Oath at a special Commission of Oyer and Terminer at the Tryal of * Vid. Coll. Tryal p 1. 9. Stephen Colledg the Joyner at Oxford who was sworn to have imparted it to the Evidence and that he rid down for that purpose thither Arm'd for which and several other Treasonable contrivances he was Arraign'd upon full Evidence Convicted Condemned and accordingly there suffer'd That Plot being prevented at Oxford by the Providence of God and the Kings the Faction still pursu'd the Conspiracy for which many Consults were held at the late Lord Shaftsbury's House which upon suspicion was searcht and himself upon Information and Evidence to the King and Council was seiz'd the result of which was they found a Paper in his own Closet Intituled An †Vid. Proceedings at the Old-Baily 24. Novem 1681. Association the Plot and Design of which was that since they could not Exclude the next Heir of the Crown by Bill and an Act of Parliament they would get Subscriptions to do it among themselves that is set their Hands and Seals to a Rebellion for the concluding Clause was absolute Treason and oblig'd them to Swear Obedience to their Fellow-Subjects and that they would Obey the Major part of Members after the dissolution of the Parliament for this he was Indicted as also for designing to compel the King to pass the Bill at Oxford for conferring with Booth Hains Smith and other of the Evidences in Treasonable Consults for saying The King ought to be Deposed and that he would never desist till he had brought England to a Common-wealth All agreeable to the very Principles he profest to the Practises and Designs he had before Engag'd in and the Discoveries of his Treasons that have follow'd since but the Grand Inquest being pact by Papilion a Partial Sheriff and compos'd of Jurors as much prejudic'd the Bill of Indictment was brought in Ignoramus an apparent Rebel acquitted and carried off in Triumph with the Shouts and Shoulders of the Rabble In July 1683. was Discover'd the bottom of all these Preliminary Plots and Conspiracies in
the Design of the most barbarous Butchery of the best of Kings our late Sovereign Charles the Second with the Assassination of his Royal Brother our present Sovereign For this they had engag'd in the Consults Men of all sorts of Conditions Lords Knights Gentlemen Lawyers Malsters Oylmen Clergy and Lay the first Contrivance was for Assassinating the Royal Brothers as they past by the Rye the House of one Rumbald coming from New-Market but Heaven turn'd a Judgment even into an act of Mercy for their Deliverance and the Fire hapning there made them prevent the Rebels in their return Then the Play-House was propos'd to be the Shambles for this Butchery and several other places but the Conspirators disagreeing in their Approbation hinder'd its execution so soon upon the Discovery of one Keeling an Accomplice touch'd with remorse or apprehension of danger All the Conspirators fly from whom Shaftsbury that Arch-Rebel was before Vid. Lord Russel's Tryal Sidneys c. fled some were afterward found out came in for Evidence upon which several were afterward Convicted and Executed At the Tryal of my Lord Russel the very Morning he was Arraigned the Earl of Essex Committed for the same Conspiracy whether out of sense of Ingratitude to his Royal Sovereign by whom he had been preferr'd to the highest station of a Subject even that of being his Vice-Roy or whether out of fear of his fate and fearful of an Ax dispatcht himself with a Razor For Defaming of the Government the next Plot is to make this a Murther of State and one Braddon out of Seditious industry deals with one Edwards a School-Boy to Testify he saw a Hand throw a Razor out of the Window with this matter well manag'd King and Council Sir Henry Capel and then the whole Kingdom must be canvast for and he having an Indefatigable Desire to fasten a Scandal on the Government as well as an Impudence not to be baffl'd or defeated to solicite the business farther one gets Speke a known Favourer of any thing that is Factious a warm spark that would be soon hot in any such pursuit to lend him a Letter of Recommendation to a Country Knight but with both their bold fronts they could put no such bad face upon the business for it was Discover'd to be the basest Design the most malicious Miscreants could undertake and they both Try'd upon an Feb. 7 1683. Information of High Misdemenor and Subornation that is the Pimps to Perjury for which one was Fin'd one thousand pounds and the other two To second this Unsuccesful Plot about Christmas last they disperse the Decemb. 1684. most Divilish and Malitious Libel that Falshood and Folly could Invent leave it at the doors of the Loyalists and its Design the same with those Suborners to fasten a Murder upon the late King our present one and some Ministers of State with such silly Insinuations as of themselves do defend them from that Villany they would affix first from their being then walking in the Tower and can the most Factious Fool Imagine Can but bare Humane Sense be so silly as to think the Contrivers of such a suppos'd Barbarity would be present at its Execution and look upon it as the likeliest way to keep it private was to appear in it publickly Preposterous Sots Do not contradict the best Evidence that of Common sense tho' you would the Coroners Another is from the Discovery of one Haly that was found Murther'd to be the Warder in whose House the late Lord of Essex lay upon which the Libeller in a long tedious impertinent Discourse Insinuates the probability of that Fellow 's being dispatch'd for fear of telling Tales but how does Heaven infatuate those Fools that it would destroy The falsify'd per-perjur'd Wretch is forc'd to beg the World Pardon in his own Postscript and to tell us the truth in spight of his design to lye that this Unfortunate Fellow that was found Dead was none of this Warder that he meant and that only the similitude of the Name made the mistake then from the disagreeableness of Bomeny's Testimony with the other Informant because not verbatim he says the same therefore they must be both false Seditious Sot Why so senseless too Will not Common reason for that very thing confirm them both to be the more truth for when there is a Conspiracy to make Affidavit of a lye there they can soon confer and commonly do too agree in words as well as substance and sense might well suggest they had learn'd their Lessons pretty perfect upon such a verbal Agreement But this Masterpiece of most Malicious Plot was with more sublimated Malice contracted into a Compendium only that it might be propagated the sooner spread the farther when in short of which Condensed or Abstracted Treason the Spirit and Essence of Sedition one Danvers was Discovered to be the Author a Villain whom the Devil in Design could not render more vile an Anabaptist for Profession an Officer of Olivers for Rebellion and now a Fugitive for fear of Apprehension for whom a Warrant was issued out Posted publisht in the Gazette and an Hundred pounds proffer'd for any to take him As these late Plots and Conspiracies were contriving all along in England so did the Scots carry on the same Treason Argyle an Hereditary Rebel that seem'd to have his Soul and Treason from Extraduce being attainted by the Law of their Land for a Factious Explanation of the Test and tho' Justly Sentenc'd to Suffer yet the Government that had given him his Estate had no design upon his Life makes his Escape out of Prison in which in effect he enjoy'd his Liberty before gets over into Holland confers with our English Fugitives then sends Letters from thence to the Scots to incite them to Rebel some of which were Intercepted upon Major Holms and known to be his own Hand Spence and Castares his own Emissaries Confessing the Correspondence they had with their Rebel Friends in England and the Cochrans Melvil Baily are found to have been here in England and Agitating the Conspiracy for which upon full Evidence the said Robert Baily was * Decemb. 24 1684. Vid. Discoveries in Scotland Printed by his late Majesties Command as also the Account come out in this King's Reign by Order of the late Printed by Authority Convicted had his Arms Expung'd himself Hang'd and his Body Quarterd But notwithstanding all this Evidence as clear as the Sun and all their deeds of Hellish darkness brought into as much light as the Lamp of Heaven it self affords Their infatuated Fools were still so much blinded and besotted as to represent it all for a Plot of the State only for involving some of them in a Conspiracy and the King must be presum'd to design upon himself only to trepan them into Treasonable Designs For this several Letters are dispers'd into the Country some of which being Intercepted were found to be one Sir Samuel Bernadiston's a
wealthy Citizen whose Estate with a great deal of Money and as little Wit serv'd only to make him more wickedly and less wisely Seditious for nothing but the pride of a Purse or the not valuing of a Fine could have made a Man guilty of so much Folly at a Season when they were in an hot pursuit of an Hellish Conspiracy and the Blood Vid. His Tryal for High Misdemeanor at Guild-Hall London Feb. 14. 1683 4. of those that had suffer'd for it hardly cold For he lets them know that the Protestant Plot is confounded quite lost that the Evidence of it the Lord Howard was to be sent to the Tower and that all the Prisoners that lay there for the same were discharged that Sidney that Suffer'd for it was Pardon'd that Braddon that was Fin'd for it was no farther Prosecuted all rank Lyes as well as lewdly Seditious And though his kind Council was pleas'd to mitigate the Information as if the Malice was not so apparent that will not mince the matter for tho' the circumstances and the plain matter of Fact make it the most malitious piece of Faction Imaginable yet moreover the very mass of his Blood was tainted with as much malice and his very Relations actual Rebels and in Arms against their Sovereign our Sir Thomas Bernadiston being a Colonel of a Foot Regiment of Rebels at the Siege of Colchester which I can make appear from an old Map of the Siege where he may see his Father or his Brother Firing upon his Majesties Subjects But these Factious Papers being prov'd upon him from his own Hand and the Testimony of his Servant that Superscrib'd them they found him Guilty without going from the Bar for which in the King's Bench he was April 14 1684. afterward Fin'd Ten thousand Pounds to the King bound to be of the Good Behaviour during Life and to be Committed till 't was paid But after all as if they did endeavour to silence their own Advocates in their Defence and that Impudence it self might not endeavour to smother their secret Conspiracies they break out into that open Rebellion for which they had Conspired and Invade the Kingdom as if they design'd only to prove the Plot For in April 1685. Argyle lands with Men and Amunition brought from Holland in one of the South-West Isles of Scotland call'd Yyle or Ila and their seizes all the Arms Horses Men and other Necessaries to make up an Army some of his Heretors come in for Assistance with some few of his Dependants and Relations of which of the most note were his Sons and one Achinbreck of which Name there is a Castle or Town near those Isles For a Month or two they kept Sailing about Boot Cantire and the rest of the Islands there abouts sometime landing then setting out again But about the nineteenth of June the Lord Dunbarton having notice that the Rebels had past the River Levin above Dumbarton Town and taking their way towards Sterling overtook them in the Parish of Killerne but being late in the Evening did not Attack them but by the Morning the Rebels were march'd off toward the River Clyde which on the seventeenth they past but pursu'd by the King's Forces and Cochran carrying them by mistake into a Bogg they soon disorder'd and dispers'd The late Argyle was set upon in his flight towards the Clyde by two of Greynock's Servants receiving a Wound on his Head dismounted his Horse and ran into the Water where a Countryman fell'd him so the Soldiers carried him to their Commander from thence to Glascow and then to Edenburgh Among these Rebels were several of the blackest Conspirators of England that were fled for the same Rumbold himself the Malster at the Rye by whose House his late Majesty was to be Murder'd as also one Captain Ayloff mention'd in the King's Declaration were both there taken Rumbold fought desperately and Ayloff so despair'd that he ript up his Belly Rumbold was afterward Arraigned for Invading the Kingdom with the rest of the Rebels had Sentence as in Cases of High-Treason and was accordingly a Jun. 29. Hang'd and Quarter'd and the next day the late Lord Argyle their Arch-Traytor b Jun. 30. Beheaded And now that their Plot might be prov'd as plain in England too About the beginning of June Monmouth landed at Lime in Dorsetshire of which he possest himself having with him three Ships brought into Town about two hundred Men some of the Seditious Souls and as silly of the Country ran in to his Assistance upon falling of the Tide as 't is thought they made an Excursion upon the Sands to the Town of Bridport which they enter'd by the Back-side and surprised in it Mr. Wadham Strangways one Mr. Coker and Mr. Harvey Officers for the King the two former they kill'd wounded the latter seiz'd some Horses and went back to their Quarters at Lime where while they lay there a Party of the King 's met some of the Rebels had a Ran-counter kill'd about twenty three and made the rest retire From thence they march'd toward Taunton seizing all the Horses they could meet with no Gentleman of Note came in to their Assistance But yet by their bare coming to that Rebellious place the Rebels were become mighty numerous some few of the Militia-Men were said to have deserted and run into the Rebels but those very inconsiderable for their number as soon as the Rebels were arriv'd to some considerable body their Leader the late Duke was pleas'd to be Proclaim'd and to set up for a mock King sending a Letter in a Stile of Majesty to the D. of Albemarle About the Twentieth of June Captain Trevanion Commander of some of his Majesties Ships found a Dogger and a Pink of the Rebel's Ships lying at the Cob of Lime some Barrels of Powder Back Breast and Head-Pieces for several Men in the Town which were all secured and his Grace the Duke of Albemarle sent into it three Companies The Rebels rambl'd about Glassenbury in Somerset and some part of Wiltshire Plundering and taking all the Horse they could and gleaning up as many Foot And both these Invanders to publish themselves Rebels in Print as well as Arms put out their Declarations of their King 's being an Vsurper and a Tyrant that had Succeeded to the Crown by all the Laws of God as well as Man One William Disney Esq was taken with his Wench in his Bed and Monmouth's Declarations Printing in his House Try'd for the Treason in Southwark upon full Evidence found Guilty Sentenc'd and accordingly * June 29. 1685. Executed And the †June 25. 1685. Parliament it self by special Act Attaint James Scot for a Rebel and a Traitor set five Thousand Pounds upon his Head which was published in the King's Proclamation afterward paid to those that took him The Rebels for some time continued forraging and rambling about the Western Counties Wilts and Somerset At Philips Norton a