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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
was opposed even when moved unanimously that Treason too might be Publisht with a Nemine contradicente 't was presumed I suppose the better Pen-men were their own and I grant them the more pestilent that could spread their Contagion as fast as the Plague and to the Monarchy as mortal for almost five years the Distemper was Epidemick and the State Empericks had poysoned the body Politick almost beyond the Antidote of true Medicine and Art it Sympathis'd with Pestilence in the Natural almost incurable reigned most populously in Towns and Cities and turned every Corporation into a politick Pest-House Appeals vox Patriae Liberties of England Fundamental Rights were exposed in Capital Letters upon every Stall and that dedicated to Representatives and some Penn'd by them too for the Information of the People or in a less prepostorous Phrase for their Confusion Sedition seemed to be countenanced with suffrages and seconded as they thought with the supream power of the Nation They expected Treason should have been enacted for Law and Laws repealed that had declared High Treason 'T is almost preposterous and incredible tho' unhappily too true that more Sedition was fomented from the discovery of this Popish Plot than all the Jesuits in Hell could have raised while yet undiscovered we forged out one anothers ruin from the very deliverance and to fall with harder fate the less to be lamented by our selvs and just escapt the storm we strove to perish more miserably â—n the Port. Such was the state of affairs when some of our Loyal Hearts first ventured to stem the Tide the fierce influx of an Impetuous Rebellion that like a true torrent came rolling on with noise and clamor and threatned ruin from afar The first that opposed the Great Goliahs of their Cause that defyed too even the Armies of the living God and the strength of his Anointed was he who from his Youth had serv'd the Crown with his Pen as well as his Sword and before him too did their Dagon fall one whom they had designed formerly for a Victim when they sacrificed their Prince whom Providence reserved for their Scourge and for which since some of them have publickly curst its dispensation Libelled him in their Emblematical Representations in which I confess they neither spared their King breaking his Halter like a Dog and running for his Life and Neck and that by the very same hands of Villains that had forfeited their own to the Government and were afterward faster noosed How Zealous were our Popular Patriots against the least animadversion that was made on the most audacious Libel and even Judges themselvs arraigned for daring to execute those Laws the meanest villain could daily dare to violate How curious to enquire for the least accusation against the worthy Person above described and only because he dared to do his duty when 't was dangerous to do so It was a pretty sort of expedient tho the most absurd Politicks for the countenancing of the Popish-Plot to bring every one concerned in it that would not swallow the whole Mass of it raw crude and undigested and that before they had cook'd it up with Nartative too while their Protestant rashness at the same time precipitated them but into a Romish Doctrin of Resignation to their Senate instead of a Church and believing their house of Commons with a Faith implicite yet this was all done too and this Gentleman whose Writings only declared him a little scrupulous in matters of belief when even by the most credulous in all Ages it has been allowed to doubt and by the Great Des Cartes the wisest Philosopher as a step to the knowledg of the Truth Him 't was expedient to Metamorphose with the power of an Oath which was then Omnipotent from an avowd Protestant into a profest Papist I use that poetical Expression because they might as well have sworn him through all the transformations of Ovid into Bull Bear or Dragon born a profest Son of the Church conformed through all his Life to all its Ceremonies a Champion for her with his Pen and with it a publisht Enemy to Rome even in his own Works having about him Eyes Nose Ears And from Head to Foot all the true shapes of a Protestant Humane Creature but the Spell of Affidavit beyond that of Circe turned Him all into the Beast of Babylon all his Hair vanisht into a shaven Crown The Whore came riding on his very back and the fleecy Cowl of Priests came tumbling o're his Shoulders and the Common-Prayer he held in his Hand ran all into red Letters and the Mass-book His being a Papist and a Priest was as much credited as the Plot it self and might have had the Resolution of the House of Commons to the point of his Religion as well as the truth of the Conspiracy not a Member but was well satisfyed of his Apostacy and could Menace him in Publick with a Topham or a Tyburn And he the first Instance that under a Government yet establisht a Religion then Laboured for with Zeal who for Writing in the defence of both was forc't to fly for his security and Preservation tho as publickly cleared from the perjur'd Accusation before his King before his Council as good Judges at least as the Credulous Commons these careful Patriots being often abused by their Country-men for whom they were so Zealous Oaths Affidavits and that Cloud of Witnesses had almost obscured the light of Reason and Vnderstanding Another Worthy Person tho' unknown that at the same time blest our Land with the Benefit of his Pen while with the bounteous river he hid his head whose Ingenious Dialogues only Corrected their sawcy Libels with a smile and with a pleasant reproof of their Falshoods made them feel the smartness of his Truth Him they Libelled too for Popish Mercenary Pensioner to the Party So Zealous were they for the subverting of the Government that they could damn all that did but dare to assert it Break the very Laws of society in their Censures and what they could not prove with their Affidavits condemn upon Presumption With what sawcy Petulant Animadversions did they treat the Dean of Paul's Sermon of Separation A piece penn'd with that Judgment and Moderation that it was only envyed for being so commended and applauded by the Pen even of one of their most virulent Scriblers that had engaged Himself for the vilifying of the Church in which he was Christned and fighting against the Banner of his Christ for which he had vowed himself a Souldier * And with the subtile Insinuation of righting Vid. Hunts Postscript of her Prelates wrong'd and abused her whole Hierachy yet such an one could allow that peaceable and pious piece to be without exception but what Reason could not resist must be baffled by a Buffoon and a Pen employed to Burlesque the very Bible rather than want an answer to the Text and the sacred service of the Church prophaned Vid. Mischief
Confessor Edmunds Son only being past by because his very being was unknown and so they can only be blamed for not seeking for the right Heir among the supposed Dead Yet when this Edward had found him out he designed both him Vid. Baker Vid. Stow says they did him wrong and always it occasion'd civil War and his Son Atheling for successive Monarchs whose very name imported Hereditary and next of kin as much as our Prince of Wales while the second Harold but usurpt upon him against the sense of the Clergy who even then lookt upon it as a Violation of the Right of the Heir and also of their Holy Rites and tho Harald suggested that Edward had appointed him to be Crown'd Historians say that it was only to make him during the Minority of this Edgar a Regent and not an absolute King and Mat. Paris speaking of Edgar Atheling in the very first Leafe of his History in these very words says that to him belonged the Right to the Kingdom of England and if Birth could then give a Right I don't see how then or now any Power can defraud a Prince justly of his Birth-right And now we 'l begin our Remarks on the Norman Line upon which the very first words of Baker are these There were six Dukes of Normandy in France in a direct Line succeeding from Father to Son and yet this Inquisitive Monarch-maker lays his mighty stress his weighty Consideration on the single Suggestion of Duke William's being a reputative Bastard be it so have we not here the Majority of six to one that succeeded Lineally Legitimately and is not these then like all the rest of their Objections against the Government rather industrious Cavil then real Argument or allowing it still is it not most impertinently applyed to his present purpose to tell us that William the Conqueror was himself Illegitimate and yet succeeded his Father in the Dutchy of Normandy And therefore must we have another Natural and Illegitimate Duke to wear the Crown of England or was the Suggestion only made because they had such a Duke in Readiness that had already run the Popular Gantlet of Ambition and been sooth'd into the Prospect of a Scepter with the false Tongues of Flatterers and Sycophants or else was the Nomination of the Normans to supersede the Fundamental Laws of our Nation And our England a Dependent a Tributary to that Crown before the Conquest these Paradoxes must be reconciled by Miracle before such a ridiculous Instance can pass for Reason or Common Sense or vindicate the false suggester from Folly and Impertinence But even here too his very Assertion fails him and this Pretender to Truth both abuses his Reader with false Application and telling a Lye For this Duke William tho' a Bastard Born was not illegitimated so as to be barred the Crown and incapacitated for Inheritance for it appears as Baker says by many Examples that Bastardy was then no Bar to Succession and by the Canon and the Law of the Church that then obtain'd the Children born before Wedlock were de facto truly legitimated if he afterward espoused his Concubine and this his Factious Assistant Hunt himself allows when the Vid. Postscript p. 53. 55. Wretch endeavoured to Bastardize the Progenitors of his Sovereign and this many Writers say was the very Case of our Duke William whose Father took his Mother Arlotte to Wife afterward The Donation to William Rufus was again clearly Testimentary which might be allowed sure to a Conqueror whose will only gave what his Sword had gotten but however as I observed above in the Westminster and Malembsbury Stow. p. 124. Legatory Disposition of Canutus the Dane where he gave his conquered Kingdom to his Youngest and Norway his Paternal Right to Swayn his Eldest to whom 't was most due so here this Third Conqueror Daniel says he obtained it according to his Fathers will pag. 44. of Old Britain observ'd the same sort of Bequest and left Normandy his Fathers Inheritance and his own to Robert to whom it appertain'd in Reason and Right both these Instances no small Demonstration shewing how the Precedency of Blood even in those days obtained and with those too whom our Factious Innovator would have not to value it for their giving to any Son besides their Eldest what was theirs by Arms is no more than what we our selves do now by Laws and tho the Fewds now obtain and Entailments yet still what 's our own by purchase is unconfined and not ty'd to descend by Primogeniture but at an arbitrary Disposition of the Lord and Purchaser and which is commonly disposed of too by the Father to some of the Younger Sons and a Conqueror that purchases all by Blood and Wounds must needs be allowed as much Liberty as the Miser that obtains it by his Wealth or a Land Pedler that buyes his purchase for a Penny But tho this might be a warrantable Donation yet you may observe as if the donor had not been in it altogether Just so it never at all prospered with the Donee the very Gift it self like Pandora's Box was most fatal to those that received it a Vice like Virtue is oft a Punishment to it self as that other a reward the not suffering the Crown to descend by entail entailed what was worse a War and both Brothers assault the Testamentary Usurper at once as looking upon it notwithstanding the specious pretext of a Will but a plain wrong and where this prejudiced Historian makes this Rufus to rely on the consent of the Nobles for the Confirmation of his Fathers Will 't is evident he only called them together that by Largesses and Corruptions fair Words and Promises he might win them from assisting his Brother Robert whose Right he feared notwithstanding the advantage he had by his Fathers Will might make the Game that he had to play more than even or give Robert the better by their deserting this Rufus And that notwithstanding all his Artifices they did and Odo Bishop of Bayeux leads the dance and notwithstanding says Paris that he was their Mat. Paris An. 1088. last Edition London crown'd King their sworn King and they must be perjur'd for it they raised a War against their King William and set up Robert the First-Born for their King all declaring the Right belonged to him and this the Opinion of several of the Nobility Lords Spiritual and Temporal Persons alway I fancy qualified to recognise a Right if Religious or Lay-Judges could decide it and so well assured were they of the goodness of the Cause that they Veruntamen postea Nobiles fere omnes c. conspired for it rebelled and were banisht for it success not always attending a good Title no more than it can Justify a bad And at the last the most unfortunate end of this Testamentary Prince may serve somewhat at least to discourage the Religious from invading of a Right tho it may not
jure must be Kings they know the first of James declares his Royal Office an Heritage Inherent in the very Blood of him 1. Jacob. and also that all our Books of Law besides the Fundamental Constitution of the Land do make the Regal Power Hereditary and not Elective and such an Elected Usurpers Laws can no further oblige the Subjects of England then they they 'l submit no more then the Czars of Muscovy a pecuniary mulct must be but a bare oppression and a Capital Punishment MURDER But Will. Prynn I Pryn's That the Parliament and Kingdom are the Sovereign power a piece Printed by Order of the house of Commons Confess in another of his Treatises that he Printed will have all such Acts made by Consent of Vsurping Kings bind the right Heirs of the Crown that Reign by a just Title That all such Acts oblige them is utterly false for one of them is commonly for their Exclusion but that some are admitted to bind is as really True but that is rather upon a Political account of their being serviceable to the Publick and the Country's Good And is it not now an unaccountable boldness that the very same Cases of Usurpers upon the Crown that this Indefatigable piece of Faction publish't against the Father they fought and Murder'd should be retrieved against the Son whom the kind Heavens ev'n by Miracle so lately restor'd But at last allowing those palpable falsehoods they so much Labour for falsehoods so gross that they can be felt to be matter of Fact contradict the true sense of all Chronicle with a Seditious Supposition to be secur'd of Truth give all the Laws of the Land the Lye raze Rolls and Records the better to rise a Rebellion and grant the Kings of England have been all Elected all almost from that Union of the Heptarchy in the Saxon to that of our three Kingdoms in the Scot and sure no Soul living can conclude with them in afairer Concession than in granting the very Postulate they require yet since they then in the End of K. James tho but so lately had settled the Succession and made it Hereditary can with men of Common sense the Presidents of its having been formerly Elective prevail for an utter Subversion of such a Settlement Popery was once in England by Law Establish't and must it therefore again be Establish't by Law Certainly all succeeding Reformation must null and abolish that from which they Reform and a Repealing Act will hardly be made Declaratory of the very Statute it Repeals if these be but their best Arguments the same you see will reason us back into the very Religion of Rome we have seen several Rebellions and some even of late to have lain the Land in Blood and can such sad Sufferance be made to Prescribe for our Misery warrant some such as Bloody to succeed but since all this suppos'd suggestion must vanish like to soft Air since the Succession has been settled for so many several ages to rake every musty Record only for a sad Review of some Time of Confusion is certainly but an Impious Industry to Confound the work of the very God of Order We may as well be discontented at the Frame of his World he so well digested and plead for Prescription the Primitive Chaos CHAP. II. Remarks upon Plato Redivivus THE best Animadversion that I can make on his whole first days Discourse is that it wants none that it's Impertinence has superseded reproof and the fulsome flattering Dialogue as unsit for a serious Answer as a Farce for a Refutation out of a Sermon The great acquaintance these pretending Platonicks would be thought to have with that Sect of Philosophers did not oblige them to be so morosely reserv'd as to know none other and they may remember an Ephesian Sophy I believe as Learned too in his Politicks that was never so much tickl'd as when he saw the dull Animal mumbling of the cross-grain'd unpalatable Thistle the disputing against the Laws of the Land and the Light of Reason they 'l find as uneasie as absurd and the latter as Impious and Profane and which deserves to be assimulated to a more serious sort of Obstinacy that of so many Sauls kicking against the Pricks but the Pleasant and Ridiculous Disputants put in for another pretty Quality of that insensible Brute the length of their sordid and stupid Flattery outdoes their Original Beast and the sad Sophister would force one Smile more to see three of the same sort of Creatures for a whole day clawing one another Certainly whatever they fancy the Dialogues of Plato whatever the Favourers of his Principles can suggest surely they were never fill'd with such Fustian But that good old Philosopher did as plainly cloath his Disputes as well as himself in an honest homely Drugget of Athens Tho I confess they tell us of his rich Bed and his affectation of State which a Soul so sublime could not but Contemn while these Sectaries are such refin'd Academicks so much polish't with Travel and the breeding of the Times That all the Fops of France the Dons of Spain his Adulano of Italy seem melted down into one Mass of Impertinence they can't pass by the thin Apartments of a Page without a Congee Bon-Grace and a formal Salutation upon one anothers Excellencies the Doctor claws the Patient with his Lenitives Frications Emollients of Praise and Adulation and the Patient who in the literal sence must be said to suffer with such a Doctor if not in Body Natural I am sure in the Politick as in Cordial Affection and Common Civility he is obliged returns him the reputation of his Book De Corde for the tickling the very Auricula's of his Heart for Praise must certainly be Pleasant for an Aesculapius that sets up for a Matchiavel confutes Solomon and the Bible as he says for saying the Heart is unsearchable tho but Vid. Argument to the Book an Ordinary Divine without the Criticks Tremellius or a Munster would say that in the Text there is nothing meant but the mind But Cor hominis must not be Inscrutabile now only because the Doctor has handl'd its fibres and thus this Triumvirate of Fulsomness and Faction treat one another with their Fustian and Foppery through the whole piece I seldom care to lard our English with the least scrap of Latin but because 't is the property of such pedantick Scriblers who still most affect what is most ridiculous Foppery and Folly I 'll only give them an Argument out of the Mathematicks fora Demonstration of their agreeable Faction and Foolishness and for his Cor hominis as it relates to this Doctors Pharmacentria let him take one of Euclid's Postulates that has a greater reference to their mighty Three In English thus and if they will have Lattin Quae conveniunt uno Tertio conveniunt inter sâ— 'tis in the Margin Those that agree in one Third must needs agree among themselves The Venetian
Claws the Doctor the Dr. our English man and he the Doctor and Venetian one of them must be somewhat of the Ass among them and then 't is Demonstrable they have a great share in it all and because the great Galen of the Times is so bold with his Catharticks as to set up for his Purging of the Court of Chancery tho I Page 129. am no Practiser in it yet I shall take the pains to defend it against the Doctor in its due place and since the Mountebank for the Body Natural is here all along made an Empirick for the Diseases of the POLITICK and from his Colledg brought to the Coffee-House to talk only of the Marasmus of State I 'll give him my sence tho no States-man of this whole Work in his own Phraseology The Piece seems to me like a sort of Preparation among the Doctors a meer Amalgama the Chymical Operator understands it better than many a Politician the Marasmus 't is a Composition of meer Quick-silver and Lead tho this Political Spagyrist perhaps will call it Saturn and Mercury here this Author with the help of the Fire of his hot Brain has incorporated his volatile thoughts and his dull ones together gay Compliments and Air Faction and Hell in a lump And tho this homely Physician won't allow himself to have been abroad tho the courteous Venetian contended for his breeding in Padua Page 81. yet the frequency of Murders here too would make a Body mistrust it and however their Human Bodys escape such Principles I am sure have Poyson'd some of their Souls and thus I have plac'd my Pleasant Observation upon their Ridiculous Stuff together that I might only reflect hereafter on what they would have thought serious and I shall worth a Reflection without the Mixture of Mirth Their mingl'd Foppery must otherwise provoke a little Laughter as well as their Principles of Sedition incense and I cannot Trim my Passions so well as to keep them in a pure Medley of Mirth and Anger If any affected to the Cause or disaffected thinks his Introduction deserv's a more serious Reply let him take the pains to give it a more solid Elaborate Confutation In the Second day they wisely agreed not to play the Fool and 't is well they slept upon 't for the sake of their Senses and the first Observation of the Venetian is as long as his Noble gown down to the very heels of two Pages but for brevity you shall have it in as many words Why that our English Nation signifies so Plat. Red. Page 16. little abroad yet makes such a great sight at home our Author having been so much Conversant with Dons and French can't forbear falling to his Formality agen and after a soft sort of Compliment to the Courteous Stranger and the Government thus Thunders out his Negative Reason Evil Counsellors Pensioner Parliament Thorough pac'd Judges Flattering Ibid p. 20 Divines designing Papists French Councils So I have seen at another sort of Cabal where such Disputants use to assemble for Edification and Doctrine not Dialogue and Dispute the Jack-Pudding of their Pulpit has seem'd to whisper his God Almighty in the Ear as a common Zany does his Mountebank for Instruction and then raves out to the list'ning and Attentive Rabble his Choledochons Phlegmagogons Balms of Gilead Conscience Salve Curse ye Meroz Sword of Gideon and for this Enthusiasm too those Harleqins of their Assemblies the Burlesques of the Bible shall Blaspheme with the very Book and vouch the Almighties coming to them in a still voice and sometimes in a rushing wind and the Devil of Sedition shall be countenanced with the word of God I should hardly pardon my self the Liberty of fullying the sacred Text with so much as the repetition of such a Simile did not I know the Zealots themselves had vouch't it for a Iustification of their sudden Raptures and Inspiration and for this Preacher of the Politicks tho I never saw him in his Geer and Gestures I am sure he makes just such another Figure in his Speech on a sudden 't is all Aposeiopesis soft and fair and assoon all in Exclamation and Ecphone and these heats and lucid Interval's of raving run through his whole Work But first for his Forreigner with his Observation is it a Mathematical Postulate that our Nation is so despicable with our Neighbour's that it must be granted assoon as ask't or has he rather beg'd the Question or can the Noble Student from his Geometry measure the fame and reputation of the Kingdoms of the Earth but whatever his skill be in the Doctrine of Triangles I am sure he is much out here in his Measures and whatever reputation England has at Venice or a compleat Monarchy with a mixt Republick I am sure with better Governments it has as much esteem and when ever it loses any it must proceed from the Scandals and Infectious breath of such Authors and Seditious Vipers that wound the Reputation as well as the Bowels of their Dam. But that matter of Fact may contradict what Malice does but suggest near the very same Time this most Impudent About 80. or 81. Observation was made did they propose to our present Prince the League of Guaranty and desire HIS entrance before that of the Empire But I can tell him what once brought a Scandal indeed upon the Nation made it a reproach to it's Neighbours in a thing of the like Nature not to mention the Murder of their King for that supersedes all hopes of regaining it's former Esteem for did not the Proceedings of that Rebel Parliament make us a by-word to the Heathen and a Scandal even to the revolted Holland did not the very Turks bless themselves at the Villany and the Dutch since in Derision cut off the Tails of their Currs to let us know we made less of a Kings head than a Dogs Neck But this we mean to apply related to it's reputation upon a League too this was a Scandal also brought upon it by a Parliament this was the effect of unjustly altering the Succession And this was in the Time of Henry the 8 when the Princes of the Empire would have made him Head of the Protestant League but upon hearing of his Extravagant Parliamentary Proceedings of their repudiating what Wives he pleas'd and allowing a more cruel Divorce of a Pious Protestant Queen from her Life as well as his Bed and severing her Head from her Shoulders as well as the Crown when they saw the Senate of England so Inconsistent with themselves as to Legitimate Bastards and then make Bastards of those they thought Legitimate Then began our Nations Reputation to be low with our Neighbours Then began our Parliament's to be look't upon as insignificant and the Supream Power of our great Assembly to Forreign Councils seem inconsistent and their mighty Credit so mean that they could not be trusted and thereupon all the Leaguer's unanimously rejected Henry
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
Prince but were they the worst of Men that officiated in Publick Administration under their King such Republicans have the least reason to find fault when always in their Usurpations the greatest Fools aswel as Knaves have been commonly preferr'd What more Illiterate Blockheads did ever blemish a Bench than some of those that sate upon it in our Rebellion and for that consult the Tryal of Lilburn they Arraigned where you 'l find a clamorous Souldier silence and baffle them with his Books and invert the Latin Aphorism in a litteral sense by making the Gown yield to the Sword And for their Villany let Bradshaw alone And for that only be the best of Presidents The very Beggars and Bankrupts of the Times that bawl'd most for Property when they had hardly any to a penny or a pin were set up to dispose of the peoples Fortunes and Estates Princes as they are above all Men so generally make those their Ministers that excel others in Desert or Vertue because their persons are to be represented by them And they may aswel imagine a King would croud his Courts with Clowns to shew his Magnificence as fill his Judicatories with Fools or Knaves to distribute his Justice 'T is * Qui aliquod munus gerere debent virtutis habita ratione eliguntur Maecenas Orat. pro Monarch enough for an Oceana an Oliver or a Common-wealth to set up such ridiculous Officers Brutes beneath the Ass in the Apologue that will not so much as be reverenced for the Image they bear but even the best of Common Men whenthey are rais'd to some supreme Government prove like Beggars on Horse-back unable to hold the Reins or riding off their necks the wisest in their own ordinary administrations prove but foolish Phaetons when they are got into the Chariot set all in combustion and confusion The not being born to Govern or educated under the Administrations of a state makes them either meanly submissive in the midst of their Grandeur or insolently proud of their Office which renders them as ridiculously Great whereas Princes from an Hereditary VERTUE that consists alway in a MEAN or their nobler Education that instructs them in the Mode preserves them too from running into the sordid absurdities of such Extremes Many of such like preferable Conveniences might be reckoned up that make a Commonwealth less Eligible but for Confirmation of it it is better to have recourse to matter of Fact When did their Rome ever flourish more than under the Government of their Kings by that it was * Vid. Tacit l. 1. p. 1. Lucius Florus p. 1. Founded by that it was most Victorious and with that it alway fell Romulus himself first gave them their Religion and their †Lact. de fals rel l. 1. c. 22. God as well as the Government and with the assistance of his Numa brought them to observe some Ceremonies which the Trojans had taught them under whom did their City Triumph more both in fame riches tranquility and ease than under the Empire of Augustus And one would think that when the Controversie upon his coming to the Crown was then in Debate it should have been decided by the two famous Wits of their time in their Dialogue Maecenas and Agrippa It was submitted to their determinations and we see what was the result A MONARCHY Vid. Orat. Maecenat pro Monarch And that prâ—ferency of this most excellent Institution themselves most evidenced when upon all Exigencies and Difficulties they were forc'd to have recourse to a Dictator whom all Writers agree to have differ'd only from a King in the found of his Name and the duration of his Office the very Definition ‖ Dictator quoniam dictis ejus totus parebat populus Rom. Antiq. p. 170. of his Name implying that all were bound to obey his Edicts he had his Magister Equitum an Officer in effect the same with the Praefectus Vrbis which under their King was his Mayor And after that rash Rebellion of theirs against Royal Government after so many Revolutions of Tribunes Triumvirs Quaestors Aedils Praefects Praetors and Consuls were never at rest or quiet 'till they were setled again in their Caesars Themselves know best what the Sedition of Sylla and Marius cost them how many lives of Consuls and Senators besides the blood of the Commons Let them consult Plutarch and see the bloody Scene of Butchery and Murder Pray tell me mighty Murmurers in which was your Rome most bless'd or suffer'd least with the bloody War between Caesar and Pompey or the settlement of it in Julius himself Did it not bleed and languish as much with the Civil Wars of Augustus Antony and Lepidus as it flourish'd when reduc'd to the only Government of Octavius And would it not have been much better had those succeeding Emperors been all Hereditary when we find that for the most the Multitude and Soldiers were the makers and setters up of the bad and the destroyers and murderers of the best 'T is too Otho Vitellius Heliogab they set up Alexand Aurelianus Probus they murder d. much to tell you the story of our own Chronicles as well as their Annals how happy our Land was for a long time in a Lineal Descent of Hereditary Kings how miserably curst in the Commonwealth of England what blood it cost to establish it what Misery and Confusion it brought us when unhappily establish'd And as an Argument that the Romans flourish'd most under those Emperors see with what Veneration their Imperial Sanctions speak of their power they make it * Sacrilegii instar est c. C. 1. 23. 5. Sacriledg to disobey it they made the very memory of those that committed Treason against them to be rooted out the very ‖ Quisque vel cogitavit C. 9. 8. 5. Thought of it they punish'd with as much severity as the Commission all his Children Servants and whole Family were punish'd though unknowing of the Crime They punish'd those with the same severity that Conspired against any Minister of State because relating to the Imperial Body and that if they did but think of destroying them and even those that were found but the movers of †Ibid. Sedition were Gibbeted or Condemned to their Beasts And as Dig. 48. 19 38. those Laws made all the Sanctions of all Princes Sacred and Divine so do our * 33. Ed. 3 10. H. 7. 16. own declare the King capable of all Spiritual Jurisdiction in being Anointed with Sacred Oyl by which they give him all power in Ecclesiasticals too to render his Person the more Venerable and call the †Coke Litt. Sect. 1. fol. 1. B. The Possessions of the King are call'd Sacra Par trimonia Lands of the 1 Inst King like the Patrimony of the Church Sacred Prince and Priest were of old terms Synonimous and signified the same thing The Jews and Egyptians had no Kings but what exercised the Offices for a long