can be no more than to say that the King and the People ought not to be put in mind how many Laws have been made and renewed in all Ages for the same thing since every body knows that the new Law hath no greater obligatory Power than any of the former which his Majesty and all his Predecessors have sworn to keep and observe Kt. You do well to observe that the secret Enemies of our Legal Government do always avoid the renewing and reinforcing of our antient Laws They would have them forgotten or negligently disused and brought by Degrees to be esteemed obsolete and unnecessary Their evil Practice hath been of old to slip over the Calling of Parliaments according to Law pretending there was no great need of troubling the People and then the Omission of one was made a Precedent of doing the like again and again not only in the same King's Reign but in those of their Successors and thereby the constant Course of successive Parliaments came to be so broken and disused that the People scarce dared to demand them as their Right but rather moved for them as Acts of the King's Grace crying up those for the best Kings that used them most But my good Neighbour you ought to take notice that the true English Patriots always thought it necessary to reinforce expresly and by name the principal Statutes that concerned the Foundations of our Government and for that Reason usually made in the Beginning of Parliaments Confirmations of the most material Laws enacted in the former though not one Word was added or diminished They have caused Magna Charta it self to be confirmed near forty times not that they thought the Confirmations gave more Force to those Laws but that the Contracts Powers Obligations and Duties of their Princes and the whole Form of the legal Government might be kept in perpetual Remembrance And to that purpose they also ordained that the same great Charter should be publickly read in full County several times every Year If we would do like our Ancestors there is abundant Cause to insist upon this Bill for successive Parliaments especially upon this Revolution wherein we have engaged to God and Man to re-establish our antient Constitution with all our Rights and Liberties Yeom Sir I am ashamed to detain you longer yet your rational Discourse upon this Subject does so disquiet my Mind that I can scarce forbear being further troublesom to you You have made it apparent that many of those who pretend to settle and secure the Kingdom are contriving how to keep it unsettled they are seeking to bring us into that negligent loose uncertain arbitrary Course of Governing that was in the late Reigns and had almost ruined the Kingdom For that purpose they endeavour to avoid the Change of Things or Persons in the Administration and to leave every thing doubtful about the Peoples Rights which those Reigns seemed to call in question They have avoided the raising and vacating all false Judgments and Opinions against the Peoples Rights except the Cases of very few Persons wherein the Parliament hath taken care by special Acts. They imitate the Proceedings in the late Reigns as if they would make K. William's Government as grievous as K. James's I cannot but conclude that 't is for this Reason they shew their Fears of making a clear and plain Settlement of the Foundations of our Government in the Course of successive Parliaments to be holden unavoidably all the Designers to enslave us having always dreaded such a Settlement for several Ages Kt. I wish our Country-men were generally as well informed as you are concerning the Party that are secret Enemies to our present Government who are striving either to keep the way open for K. James's Return or at least to set up his way of governing or something so like it that the one may not be known from the other Yeom Sir many of our Country-men know well enough this sort of false-hearted Men but they for their base Compliances getting up to be our Masters under K. Charles and K. James grievously oppressed us then and have now again got such Powers and Preferments as if they had brought about the late Revolution and are so able to plague vex and crush us as they did formerly that the Country dare not speak their Minds of them or their Proceedings But pray Sir help me to shew my Neighbours how this sort of Men in their Designs of Arbitrary Power always sought to prevent an absolute Settlement of the Legal Course of successive Parliaments Kt. It would require greater Abilities than I have to shew what you desire by Reflections upon our whole History of the Contests with the Kings for our Liberties but I will tell you the Practice in our times and those just before us This sort of Men under James the First made him afraid of the sitting of Parliaments as an Eclipse of his Power and insinuated to him that the calling adjourning proroguing and dissolving of Parliaments ought to be absolutely at his Will They also raised Disputes whether Parliaments were of Right Masters of the Methods of their own Proceedings or were bound first to consider and resolve upon what the King propounded for Money or otherwise By those Means they made the sitting of Parliament uneasy to him so that he was always glad to be rid of them before the necessary Business of the Kingdom was done But that sort of Men appeared more boldly upon the Accession of Charles the First to the Crown They attempted then to invade the great Fundamental of all Liberties and Property the Power of the People of England alone to impose Money upon themselves They had the Confidence to maintain a Power in the Kings to take Tonnage and Poundage and other Monies without Act of Parliament They cannot deny that these were their traiterous Practices and Designs so long as the great Petition of Right remains upon Record Neither ought it to be forgotten how Parliaments were then brow-beaten and their Authorities questioned and slighted and the Method of their Proceedings controuled contrary to their Fundamental Rights and Privileges nor how they were tossed up and down by sudden Adjournments Prorogations and Dissolutions The Houses Studies and Pockets of divers of their Members were searched their Persons against the express Laws imprisoned and the free Debates in Parliament made subject to the restraining Power and Censure of inferiour Courts and Judges The King 's special Command and Pleasure were declared Cause sufficient to detain some of them in Prison 'till Death without Trial or being legally accused of any Offence Yet this sort of Men thought all these Practices could not secure them till they brought that King to resolve to have no more Parliaments and to forbid the People by Proclamation to make mention of Parliaments We ought to call to mind that for ten or twelve Years after all the Counsels of those Designers against our Legal Government were imployed to invent
An ENQUIRY or a Discourse between a Yeoman of Kent and a Knight of a Shire upon the Prorogation of the Parliament to the second of May 1693. Yeoman SIR your humble Servant I am happy to meet you at this Friend's House where I did not expect you Pray Sir is the News true that the King hath prorogued the Parliament to day Knight 'T is very true we are prorogued to the second of May next Yeom Were all your Bills passed that were agreed on by both Houses Kt. I wish I could tell you they were Yeom I hope Sir the King hath not refused any Publick Bills Kt. Which are those you call Publick Yeom Truly Sir those two wherein the Country reckoned themselves most concern'd are That for securing the Foundations of the Civil Government by such a constant Succession of new chosen Parliaments that their Deputies by their long continuance in that Trust may not be in danger to be corrupted by Offices or private Interests and That for preserving our Property in our Lands and Mines against the Pretences of a Royal Prerogative to take away our Mines and Oar tho wt have spent most of our Estates to discover the Mines in our Lands Kt. I am sorry to tell you that those are the two only Bills to which his Majesty would not assent Yeom Are those Bills then to be utterly lost after that both Houses have spent so much Time and Care to compose them May they not be offered to the King again as soon as the Parliament meets Kt. You seem not to know the Force of a Prorogation of Parliament which as our Lawyers have of late resolved makes void all Bills of that Session not enacted and all other Matters depending as if they had never been These are no more to be accounted Bills of Parliament but if any thing contained in either of them be desired to be hereafter enacted it must begin anew as if it had never been before either House of Parliament Yeom Sir if all the Care and Pains of our Deputies in Parliament may be thus neglected or blown away with one Breath what Hopes have we then from the Consultations of Parliament of the promised and long-expected Settlement of Liberty and Property Kt. I know no Remedy until the King shall please to cause a new Session of Parliament Yeom And is such a Session to be absolutely at the King's Will whether it shall be six Months hence or a Year or seven Years Kt. You know it was so designed and in part practised in the late Reigns and the Judges then were so corrupted that they declared notwithstanding the Laws for Annual Parliaments Vid. The minutes of the Judges Opinions in the King's-Bench upon the Arguments about bailing the Earl of Danby out of the Tower That the holding of Parliaments depended entirely upon the King's Pleasure But 't is most manifest besides the positive Laws for Yearly Parliaments that †Inter Laeges Edgari cap. 5. by the ancient Constitution of our Government they did meet of course at least twice every Year Afterwards in the Reigns of the Saxon Kings it was made a perpetual Law that a Parliament should be holden every Year once at London and the same Law was incorporated into the Laws of Edward the Confessor and from thence all the successive Kings of England to this day have been sworn to the Observance of it I must confess to you nothing prevailed with me more to concur with our King in his Pretentions to restore our Parliaments and the Laws to their due Authority than my own Knowledg that the late Civil Wars in this Kingdom and the Subversion of our Religion Laws and Liberties were principally occasioned by the Powers usurped in several late Reigns to refuse the calling of successive Parliaments and to continue the same Parliament for many Years to form them into a Compliance with their Designs of Despotick Power When I read the solemn and repeated Assurances his Majesty gave us That his Design in coming into England was to remove from the Administration of the Government those evil Ministers that had promoted the Murders and Treasons committed in attempting to set up an Arbitrary Power over the People and their Parliaments And also heard him desire the Parliament to make such an effectual Provision for their Fundamental Laws and Liberties that they might never hereafter be in danger to be again invaded I thought the Ancient Legal Course of annually chosen Parliaments would have been immediately restored and the strongest Fence made for that Constitution that the Wisdom of the Kingdom could have invented but I must tell you to my Sorrow that we are left as much to the King's Will for a Session of Parliament as evil Ministers in the late Reigns design'd we should be Yeom If this be our case it is no wonder that Mens Minds are so unquiet we are in daily imminent hazard of Confusion whilst the Government remains wholly unsettled in its Fundamentals It seems to be apparent that after the Expence of twenty Millions besides the vast Effusion of Blood we are no more secured against the Slavery we fear'd by subverting our Constitution than we were before the Convention of the People for a Settlement when King James had just abdicated the Kingdom Kt. You take it rightly If no Bill should pass to secure the certain Legal Succession of Parliaments and we should connive at the Usurpations made by the late Kings therein and seemingly approve the Turkish Doctrine of the then Judges That the holding and continuance of Parliaments depended absolutely upon the Wills of our Kings then the Supream Power vested by the Constitution in Parliaments to maintain the Laws and Statutes and preserve Justice and good Government must be acknowledged not to be the Kingdom 's Right but to arise from the Gracious Will and Pleasure of their Kings and the People must not dare to claim Liberty and Property as their due If this Point of our Constitution should remain thus unsettled and an ill King succeed his present Majesty then the free Counsels of the whole Kingdom for its Defence and Welfare appointed by our Laws to be in Parliament may by the pretence of his Prerogative be utterly rejected and despised and his Flatterers and Designers to make him absolute Master of our Laws Liberties and Lives may be exempted by him from the danger of Punishment certain Justice being to be done upon such Offenders only upon the Peoples Complaints and Impeachment of them in Parliament If the due Succession of Parliaments be not established so as the Kings cannot by any Artifices avoid their meeting an ill King may in effect authorize whom he pleases to subvert and destroy our Religion Laws and Liberties by renewing Pardons of all such Crimes as often as they can commit them I am sorry to say it but our present case is such that all the Security we have for our Religion our Laws our Liberties our Lives depends
chose them being dead and others were either grown up or had purchased Estates whose Opinions both of Persons and things might be much changed from what the Sense of the Nation was when that Parliament was first called But having got a considerable Party in the House of Commons they laboured to confirm and increase it Places and Pensions were liberally bestowed on all that could be brought over to them and 't is no wonder they gave such prodigious Sums of Money out of the poor Peoples Purses when a great part was again to be refunded into their own This scandalous Proceeding was manifest and confirmed by the open Confession of a Gentleman through whose Hands much publick Money then passed in the House of Commons the next succeeding Parliament who there acknowledged his paying annually many and great Pensions to Members of Parliament Besides thus corrupting those already in the House there was neither Pains nor Money spared to get their Friends chosen where any Vacancy happened insomuch that the Court spent 14000 l. at one Election of a Burgess for Northampton Yeom Sir you have fully satisfied me that the Ministers in that Reign were as bitter Enemies to the English Constitution about Parliaments as those in the two former that went before it but their Measures are more dangerous and likely to succeed and it was God's great Mercy that these Hirelings did not enslave us as it were by our own Consent and by colour of the Authority we had given them for our Preservation But pray Sir what was the meaning of the great Bustle all over England about Charters What made the Court so mightily labour to perswade all Corporations to surrender their old Charters and take new ones from the King Was not that done with a design to influence the Elections of Members to Parliament Kt. Yes most certainly and this was a more pernicious and dangerous Design than any put in Practice in the former Reigns This struck at the very Root of all the Liberties of England that the People should never again have a free Parliament chosen according to the Constitution but such Men imposed upon them as would servilely comply with the Court in all their Measures to enslave us They corrupted some in every Corporation to perswade the rest to surrender their Charters and where they could not prevail by Entreaties these wicked Instruments in several Towns broke open the Trunks wherein their Charters were kept and stole them away to deliver them up Where this could not be done they brought Quo Warranto's against the Charters of almost every Town in England that hath a Right to lend Members to Parliament and by means of corrupt Judges declared them void upon some Pretence or other that the present Magistrates had acted be yond or contrary to the Powers granted in them and thereby forfeited all their Rights and Privileges New Magistrates were placed thereupon in those Towns such as they could most confide in and such Clauses were inserted into their new Charters as put the Choice of their Representatives in Parliament absolutely for the future into the Power of the Court. Yeom Sir I am infinitely obliged to you for your Pains and Kindness in shewing these things to me but I stand amazed to think that there could be so many English-men found in every Reign to join in carrying on this continued Design to subvert our Constitution and enslave us What present Advantage could delude and tempt them they themselves and their own Posterity must be involved in the same Misery and Ruin they endeavoured to bring upon others Sir I have trespassed too long upon your Patience and shall not therefore trouble you further about their Designs under the late King James those being most excellently laid down and made manifest in his Majesty's Declarations when Prince of Orange published upon his coming into England but upon the whole 't is most plain That neither we nor our Posterity can be safe in our Religion Laws and Liberties till we obtain and absolute Settlement of the Legal Course of successive Parliament Kt. I will only tell you one thing more Neighbour before we part that these Kings who endeavoured to subvert the Constitution as to Parliaments were always embroiled with their People about Rights and Privileges and that when once the People had discovered these Designs in them tho they called many Parliaments yet the same Jealousies continued and they never after came to a good Understanding or had a mutual Confidence in one another Our Histories declare the Truth of this Observation in many former Princes Reigns so that I hope the King will avoid a Rock that hath been fatal to all who have struck upon it and I am confident that his Majesty will do all that a good King and honest Man can do to restore to us our Constitution having in his Declaration call'd God and Man to witness That was the Design of his coming hither FINIS