Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	act_n	house_n	parliament_n	3,356	5	6.7800	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70102	A brief justification of the Prince of Orange's descent into England, and of the kingdoms late recourse to arms with a modest disquisition of what may become the wisdom and justice of the ensuing convention in their disposal of the crown.	Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.	1689 (1689)	Wing F733; ESTC R228036	25,801	42

the concurrence of the Two Houses of Parliament Dispose Settle and Entail the Crown as shall be thought most needful and convenient For this see Rastal's second Vol. 13 Eliz cap. 1. where the words of the Statute are as follows Be it Enacted that if any person shall in any wise hold and affirm or maintain that our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth the Queens Majesty that now is with and by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient Force and Validity to Limit and Bind the Crown of this Realm and the Descent Limitation Inheritance and Government thereof or that this present Statute or any other Statute to be made by the Authority of the Parliament of England with the Royal Assent is not or shall not or ought not to be for ever of good and sufficient force and validity to Bind Limit Restrain and Govern all persons their Rights and Titles that in any wise may or might claim any interest or possibility in or to the Crown of England in Possession Remainder Inheritance Succession or otherwise howsoever that every such person so Holding Affirming or Maintaining during the Life of the Queens Majesty shall be judged a high Traytor and suffer and forfeit as in cases of High-Treason is accustomed And that every person so holding affirming or maintaining after the decease of our said Soveraign Lady shall forfeit all his Goods and Chattels Nor was the Power and Authority of Parliament for conveying and disposing of the Crown ever questioned or gainsaid till a few Mercinary People about ten years ago endeavoured to obtrude upon us a pretended Divine and unalterable Right to the Suc●ession which was the more irrational strange and to be wondered at seeing all the Race of the Stewarts after Robert the first had no other Title to the Crown of Scotland but what they derived from an Act of Parliament in prejudice and preclusion of these of the Ligitimate and right Line For the said Robert having had three Sons and one Daughter by a Concubine named Elizabeth More whom he afterwards married to one Gifford himself at the same time taking into Marriage Eufemia the Daughter of the Earl of Ross by whom he had Issue Walter and David Earls of Athol and Strathern and Eufemia that was afterwards married to James Douglass Son to the Earl of Douglass The forementioned Robert did not only upon the Death of his Wife Eufemia and of Gifford the Husband of Elizabeth More take into Wedlock his former Concubine Elizabeth More but obtained by an Act of Parliament that the Children whom he had begotten upon her in Concubinate should be Entitled unto the Crown and that his Lawful and Legitimate Children by his Wife Eufemia should be precluded and debarred And it was heretofore the more surprising unto me to find the Pensionaries and Advocates of the late Duke of York plead for a Divine and unchangeable Right of Succession seeing all the claim that the Scots Race had to the Throne of England through their being descended from the eldest Daughter of Henry the Seventh was from and by an Act of Parliament which vested the said Henry in the Crown of this Realm For tho' the fore-mentioned Henry by reason of his Marriage to Elizabeth Daughter to Edward the Fourth of the House of York had a Legal Title to the Crown of England by the Common Law yet he was so far from insisting upon and allowing it that he chose to hold and possess the Crown in the force and vertue of an Act of Parliament For as his Title by the House of Lancaster was both originally unlawful and had particular flaws and defects in it so all the claim he could pretend unto that way was in the Right of his Mother who as she outlived his advancement to the Throne several years and so she was never admitted to the Royal Authority nor suffered to sway the Scepter But that which is more peculiarly my Province at present is to enquire what Power and Right the Peers and Commons of England have in and over the Crown for the Conveying Disposing and setling of it in case of a Devolution through the Thrones becoming by one means or another empty and vacant And as to this we stand provided with many and signal Presidents of the Crowns having been Conferred and Bestowed as the General Councils and Parliaments of the Kingdom judged most conduceable to the publick Safety and Benefit but still keeping within the Sphear and Circle of the Royal Family and Line The Saxon times afford several Instances and Examples in proof and confirmation hereof if it were either needful to recount them or if the brevity to which I am bound up and obliged would allow me to represent them in their full and due light and to adorn them with the circumstances that do belong unto and enforce them But all the Presidents I shall produce from thence shall be those of Alfred and Edward the Confessor of which the latter was last and the other the first Universal Saxon Monarch Horn assureth us in his Mirrour that the People of England after great Wars Tribulations and Troubles suffered for a long time by reason of their multiplicity of Kings did at last Elect and Choose one King to Reign over them whom they made to Swear that he should not only Govern them by Law but that he should be obedient to suffer Right as well as others of his people should be Accordingly Alfred acknowledgeth in his Will subjoyned unto his Life by Menevensis that he owed his Crown to the Bounty of his Princes and of the Elders of his People Principes cum Senioribus populi misericorditer ac benignè dederunt And for Edward the Confessor he could have no Right to the Crown save by the Grant and Gift of the People seeing the Claim by Descent and Common Law was in his Nephew Edward the Son of Edmond Ironside Accordingly all our Historians lodge the Confessors whole Title to the Soveaignty in his being Electus in Regem ab omni populo The power which the people of England had in the Disposal of the Crown during the time of Saxons is confirmed unto us by that Noble Record which Sir Henry Spelman hath cited Concil Vol. 1. pag. 291. For we do there find how that in a Parliament held at Calcuth An. 787. it was Ordained and Enacted in illo conventu pananglico ad quem convenerunt omnes Principes tam Ecclesiastici quam seculares unà cum populo Terrae That Kings should be Elected by the Parliament ut Eligantur à Sacerdotibus Senioribus populi and that being chosen they should have Prudent Councellers Fearing God Confiliarios prudentes Deum timentes And this Right over the Crown and about the disposal of it which our Ancestors challenged and exercised all the time of the Saxons they have maintained and exerted with no less courage and vigour in every Age since the coming in of

common level by virtue of the Constitution and deprives him of all rightful and legal Claim of Rectoral Authority over the Society by destroying the alone Foundation upon which it was Erected and by which he became vested with it Through cancelling the Charter from which he deriveth and holdeth his Governing Power they not only make his Title to Soveraignty precarious but they do render every Claim of that kind and every Challenge of Governing the Community to be an Invasion and an Usurpation To all which I will only further add under this Head That as all Legal Government is founded upon a mutual Stipulation and Compact so the first and most absolute Obligation arising from this Agreement becomes incumbent and lyes upon the Prince towards the People whereas the Fealty and Duty which by the said Contract and Covenant they bind and engage themselves unto towards him is in order but Secundary Conditional Whensoever any Person is chosen from the rest of the Society and raised to Kingship upon a foregoing and previous Contract with the Community he becomes upon the very accepting of it bound absolutely and without reserve to govern them according to the Terms and Measures which they and he have agreed and stipulated and to Rule them by the Tenor of the Laws unto which they have circumscribed and confined him Whereas all the Obedience and Fealty which they who by that Agreement have rendered themselves Subjects owe unto their Ordained and Created Severaign do derive their Obligatory Force towards them and become due unto him upon his governing them according to the concerted and stipulated Conditions and his preserving unto them their reserved Priviledges Liberties and Rights Now as England has been the most provident and careful of all Nations in reserving unto its self upon the first Institution of and its submission unto Regal Government all such Rights Priviledges and Liberties as were necessary to render it either Renowned and Honorable abroad or Safe Happy and Prosperous at home so it hath with a Courage and Magnanimity peculiar unto it maintained its Priviledges and Liberties through a large and numerous Series of Ages and either reassured and secured them by new and superadded Laws when there were endeavours to undermine and supplant them or else hath vindicated them with a generous manly and Military Courage even to the Deposition and Abdication of Treacherous Usurping and Tyrannous Princes when more gentle mild and Senatorian Methods were found weak and ineffectual to cover and protect them to themselves and to convey and transmit them to such as were to come after The people of England hath the same Title unto and security for the enjoyment of their Liberties and Properties that our Kings have unto their Crowns or for defence of the Regal Dignity For as they can plead nothing for what they enjoy or claim but fundamental and positive Laws so the Subjects Interest in his Liberty and Property are conveyed unto him by the same Terms and Channels and Fenced about with the same Hedges and Pales Horn tells us in his Mirrour Chap. 1. That the Saxons having put an end to the Heptarchy by reason of the continual Wars that attended the Reigning of so many Kings in so narrow a compass of Land How they chose themselves one King to maintain and defend their Persons and Goods in Peace by Rules of Law and made him Swear that he should be Obedient to suffer Right as well as his People should be For according to Bracton lib. 3. c. 9. The whole Power of the King of England is to do good and not to do hurt nor can he do any thing as a King but what he can legally do And as we know no King but a King by Law so we are assured by Fortescue lib. 1. c. 8. and lib. 3. c. 9. that he Governs not his People by a Regal Power but by a Politick From thence our Princes were anciently bound to Swear at their Coronation That they would Govern according to Law and preserve unto them all their Customs and Franchises Stat. of Provis 25. Ecl. 3. Nor can we have a clearer evidence of the Legal extent of the King's Authority and of the dimension of the Obedience which the Subject is bound unto than that which we have in the Oath of Fealty which formerly used to be exacted of the Subject Namely That he should be obedient to all the King's Laws and to every Precept and Process proceeding from the same Wilkins Treat Coron c. Court Leet c. p. 140. Nor is that unworthy our observation which Hen. 1. writ to the Pope when attacqu'd by him about the matter of Investitures viz. That he could not diminish the Rights either of the Crown or of the Kingdom and that if he should be so abject and mean as to attempt it the Barons and people of England represented in Parliament would not allow or permit it Optimates mei totius Angliae populus id nullo modo paterentur 'T is upon this account affirmed of an English King That he can do no wrong because he can do nothing but what the Law impowers him For though he hath all things Subjected to his Authority while he acts according to Law yet there is nothing left to his Arbitrary Will. The several Charters especially that stiled the Great Charter in and by which our Rights stand secured Sworn and Entailed unto us and to our Posterity were not the Grants and Concessions of our Princes but Recognitions of what we had reserved unto our selves in the Original Institution of our Government and of what had always appertained unto us by Common Law and Immemorial Customs And though these Priviledges and Liberties came to be more distinctly expressed and signally ratified in the Great Charter than they had been before yet they had not only been acknowledged and transmitted down in the Laws of Edward the Confessor as the Birth right of every English-man which also William the first Norman King ratified as such but they had long before been collected into a Body by King Edgar the Saxon and were only revized repeated and confirmed by the Confessor But among all the Rights and Priviledges appertaining unto us that of having a share in the Legislation and of being to be Governed by such Laws as we our selves shall chuse is the most Fundamental and essential as well as the most advantagious and beneficial For thereby we are inabled to make such successive and continual provisions as the preservation of the Society and the promoting either of the Temporal or Eternal Welfare of the Subject shall be found to render needful or expedient And as through being possessed of so great a portion of the Legislative Power and through having a Right by several positive Laws to Annual Parliaments we can both relieve our selves from and against every thing that either threatneth endangereth or oppresseth us and furnish and accommodate the whole Community with all legal Succours and means