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'twas 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 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 that no Succeeding Prince could deserve the Title of Tyrannus which they made to terminate with him only because they presum'd his goodness 〈◊〉 imitation Tyrant then was not apply'd as some of our Inveterate Traytors have 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 Moròs 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 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 〈◊〉 to Libel a Government I 'll forfeit my 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 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 ofevery Proviso there runs with A Be it Enacted by the Kings most Excellent Majesty 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 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 thereof against Charles Stewart Son of the Lale Tyrant and
Co-ordinate as the more modern Contenders for the Peoples Supremacy very Magisterially are pleased to Phrase it In the Reign of Edward the First the Parliament declares they are bound to assist their Sovereigns at all Seasons and in that very Sessions declared the Supream power to be his proper and peculiar Prerogative and so far from taking upon them to manage Him or His Affairs or the setting a Council over Him as a superintendent In Edward the Second's time they several times confirm'd to him the power of the Sword as his Sole undoubted unquestionable Prerogative and that he could distrain for the taking up of 〈◊〉 all that held by Knights Service and had twenty Pounds per An. and I think that allowed him to be his own Adviser when it put him into an absolute Condition to Command But I confess his Seditious and Rebellious Subjects afterward served Him just as these our Proposers did their Soveraign took upon themselves to reform his Council managed His Affairs till they did all the Kingdom too deposed him with that power of the Sword they themselves had several times in his very Reign put in his Hand as ours also denyed His Majesty the Commission of Array which they well knew the Laws allowed But as this Usage was shown to both so was it done to bind them both that both might be more easily Butchered In the following Reign of this unfortunate Prince's Son too forward to mount the Throne before his Father had thoroughly left it which he could not be said to relinquish but with his Life there I 'll grant this Republican his own Rebel Tenent was as stoutly maintained but by whom why by the very same Wretches whom too several Parliaments had condemned for the same sort of damnable Opinions and solemnly sent them into Exile too the daring and presumptuous Spencers who being the first Authors of that Seditious Sophistry that damnable Distinction of parting His Majesties Person from his political Capacity that is making Allegiance no longer Law than their King could maintain his Authority with Arms for that must be the meaning of such Treasonable Metaphysicks for if they 'll owe but Obedience upon that political account of his being a King assoon as they can but find out some blessed Expedient for the proving of him none that is Misgovernment Arbitrary Power Popish Inclinations and the like pretty Pretences to make him fairly forseit it why then truly all the Majesty vanishes like a Shadow before this New Light and if he can't hold his Scepter in his Hand with the power of his Sword why they have Metamorphosed Him into a common Man and may pluck it out with theirs And truly the Peoples Politick Capacity is such they will soon make their Kings uncapable when once they are grown so strong in the Field as not to fear it Here was the Rise of that Rebellious reasoning that run all indispensable Obligation of our Obedience to the Prince into the Capricious and Arbitrary Conjecture of the People whose Title and Deposition must depend upon his own Demeanor and that to be decided according to the diversity of thought which in a discontented Vulgar deserves the better Epithet of Distraction The good King would have a Right to his Crown as long as his kind Subjects would be pleased to think so and we have more than once found their Politicks have too soon made them uncapable to Govern and then deposed and murdered their very Persons for the want of this their politick Capacity I am sorry to say and posterity will blush to hear that such Seditious and sophisticated reasoning obtained even to the making Three mighty Monarchs in a most miserable manner to miscarry and it appears still too plain in their Prints and those too Charactered in Royal Blood that they never 〈◊〉 severing our late Soveraign's Person from his Crown till at last his Head too from his Shoulders I could not but with some passionate Digression reflect upon this pernicious Principle and so the best of it is I can be but pardonably impertinent but which I would apply pertinently to this Republicans and Parliamentary Proposition for their managing all State Affairs is one of the Consequences that may be drawn and which those Sycophants the Spencers did actually craw from this their damnable Doctrine for so they did conclude from it too as well they might That in default of him their Liege Lord his Lieges should be bound to govern the Affairs of State and what Newes now does this Devilish Democratick tells us Why the very Doctrine of two damnable Parasites whom themselves have condemned for above two or three hundred years agon who to cover their own Treason as they then too call'd it committed against the People and that but in Evil Counselling of their King invented very cunningly this popular Opinion to preserve themselves and please the Rabble they had so much 〈◊〉 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 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 Iremember 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 〈◊〉 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 Harrison the most profligate the vilest the most virulent of all the Faction concerned in that bloody Villany the MURDER 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
inseparable from the Right of Soveraignty did the Laws allow this unalterable part of the Prerogative that they have declared it Inherent even in such a sort of Soveraigns as seemed not very well qualified for an Execution of that Royal Power which the Judgment of their very Parliaments decreed to be entirely theirs They resolved it to be the Right of the Prince in the Reign of a Child They resolved it so when Subjected to the Government of a Woman The Commission of Array was revived again to King James in whose Time they resolved it such a Necessary Right of the Crown that they repealed for it the very repealing Statute of the Queen This their Oracle tells us and that in those parts of his Works which the Parliament that opposed this very power in their King themselves ordered to be Printed yet themselves could as impudently Assert against the Sense of the very Law they Published against the very Law that was reviv'd but in his very Father's Time that his Son and Successors tho necessitated for suppressing such Insurrections as themselves had raised could not Issue out such Commissions of Array tho the very preamble of the Act declares the very purpose of it was to prevent and preserve the Prince from such Rebellious Subjects And in truth the Rebels were Conscious of their Guilt and that it was which made them resolve not to know the Law But presently represented in a Declaration that this Commission was contrary to the Laws of the Land and the Libertie of the Subject tho the very express privilege the Statutable Right of all their Kings Royal Ancestors but would not those wicked Miscreants have made even the Crown an Usurpation in their King that just before declared that it was against the Laws and Liberties of the Kingdom that the Kings Subjects should be commanded to attend him at his Pleasure And ordered that if they should be drawn in a Posture of Defence for their Soveraign the Sheriffs of the County should raise Forces to suppress them and then how can the most prejudiced partial Person presume to tell us that this their Kings Commission was contrary to the Liberty of the Subjects when they set themselves in Contradiction to all the Laws of the Land in the very Declaration that denyed him his Array Their Eighth Proposition is for the Forts and Castles and that the Fortifying them be in the Parliaments power but even that too base Caitiffs your selves know to be by the very Letter of the Law in the Kings the very Charter of their own Liberties in this point confirms also the Soveraign's Right where it is provided that the King can dispence with the Services that are due for the keeping of his Castles when he sends those that ought to do them to serve in his Host By the very common Law and Custom of the Realm before there was alway such Services due to the King for the keeping of Castles And certainly they were lookt upon then to be in the Disposal of the Prince when the Subject was but a Tenant to serve him in his Fortifications And this Chapter of their very Charter I hope proves sufficiently not only that the King can command his Castles to be defended but send his Subjects any where for his Defence which the Declaration of the Commons did as Rebelliously deny But besides the taking of the Kings Castles Forts Ports or Shipping is resolved and ever was reputed Treason and were not the two Houses Traytors then by a Law before that of this King made them so by Statute when they ordered upon the London Petition and that of the Cinque-Ports that all his Majesty's Forts and Castles should be presently fortified that no Forces should be admitted into Hull without the Consent of Lords and Commons seized their Kings Shipping and made Warwick Vice-Admiral of the Fleet This was a sort of accumulated Treason whose every Individual Act was truly so as if they designed that the Statutes should not declare more things Treasonable than they could dare to commit My Lord Cooke tells us whom they cannot but believe that no Subject can build a Castle or so much as a House of strength imbattailed or any Fortress Defensible without the Soveraigns consent much less sure shall they seise those that are the Kings and Fortifie them for the People and tells us again the same in his Comment upon the very Charter of 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 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 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 Animad version 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
ruin of that from which they can reap somewhat of Advantage by its Preservation why then should we fancy Human beings and the best of Mankind Monarchs themselves whom th' Almighty has made Gods too to be guilty of so much Madness and Inhumanity Where do we find the worst of Fools designedly to destroy their Patrimony though many times through Ignorance they may waste them and that tho there were no Laws to terrifie them from turning Bankrupts or punishing them for Beggers when they have embezell'd their Substance Away then Malicious Miscreants with such sordid Insinuation such silly Suggestions against your own Soveraigns which your selves no more believe them likely to be guilty of than that they would set Fire to all their Palaces and Sacrifice themselves and Successors in the Flames But to Return to our Argument they 'll tell us perhaps What signify the Sanctions of the Imperial Laws and the Constitutions of an Absolute Empire to a Common-wealth or a Council of three States that are Co-ordinate or at most but a Monarchy Limded and mixt and where whatever power the Supream Magistrate has must have been first Confer'd upon him by the People where the Parliaments have a great part of the Legislative and their Soveraign in some sense but a Precarious Prerogative what signifies the Authority of a Britton or a Bracton whose very works by this time are superannuated who wrote perhaps when we had no Parliaments at all at least none such as now Constituted I won't insist upon in answer to all this to show the Excellency of the Civil Institutions that obtain o're all Nations that are but Civiliz'd I wont prove to them because already done That we don't Consist of three States Co-ordinate in the Legislative or that our Monarchy is Absolute and not mixt as I shortly may But yet I 'll observe to them here That the Romans themselves tho by what they call'd their Royal Law they look't upon the power of the Prince to be conferr'd upon them by the people yet after it was once so transferr'd they apprehended all their right of Judging and Punishing was past too And for their vilifying these Antient Authors and Sages of Law who did they Favour these Demagoges would be with them of great Authority and as mightyly searcht into and sifted Should I grant them they were utterly obsolete and fit only for Hat-cases and Close-stools that they both writ before the Commons came in play for their further satisfaction I 'll cite the same from latter Laws not two hundred years old and that our selves will say was since their Burgesses began And therefore to please if possible these Implacable Republicans I 'll demonstrate what I 've undertaken to defend from the several Modern Declarations of our Law For in Edward the Third's it was resolv'd that the King could not be Judged And why because he has no Peer in his Land and 't is provided by the very first Sanctions of our Establisht Laws by the great 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 〈◊〉 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 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 all the Judges and Serjeants of the time to whose Opinion it was submitted was it not upon the same Reason a Resolution of 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 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 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
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 〈◊〉 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 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 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 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 Eighth's time gives this Reason why 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 〈◊〉 next to God humble Obedience c. Who has furnisht him with Plenary Entire Power 〈◊〉 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 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 Government 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 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 from this Authority they can have no proof and from Wise Men can be gathered nothing but such as were Noble or chief of the Realm for the meaner sort and that which we now call the Commonality were then far enough from having any great share of Learning or common Understanding and then besides these Wisest of the People were only such whom the King should think Wise and admit to his Council far from being sent by their Borroughs as elected Senators King Alfred had his Parliament and a great one was held by King Athelstan at Grately ' which only tells us there were Assembled some Bishops Noble-Men and the Wise-Men whom the King called which implies no more then those he had a mind should come But the Antiquity of a Parliament or that of an House of Commons is not so much the thing these Factious Roll and Record Mongers contend for 't is its Superiority Supremacy and there endeavours to make them antient is but in order to the making their Power Exorbitant and not to be controul'd by that of their King whom in the next place this Re-publican can scarce allow the power of calling them at his Pleasure and dissolving them when he pleases But so great is the Power of Truth and the Goodness of the Cause he Opposes that he is forc't to contradict himself to desend his Paradoxes For he tells us the King is obliged with an hear say Law which his learned in the Faculty and Faction can't find out yet to call Parliaments as often as need should be that is
no particular Members questionable for what was done by the Body I consess 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 hugg themselves and shrink up in a silent Joy that they were kept out And I cannot but smile to see two or three sit upon the Bench and upbraiding the Prisoner for pulling them out of the Parliament and making themselves none 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 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 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 Houses Act that they declared designed and actually made their King a Prisoner For they told the persidious 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 High-Treason by particular Act as well as to Murder him is made so by the 25. And whatever the Mildness of 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 Restorers who stript him in his politick Capacity anticipated his Murder and then left his naked Person to be persued by the 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 Caitiff's to use even the very Lawyers own Language your selves know that a politick Body may be guilty of a most political Treason and tho the 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 against whose more dangerous Sedition there was lately made special Provision by a particular Oath Lastly to conclude the Confutation of this sad silly sort of Sophistry this Seditious Nonsense 't is shrowdly to be suspected that from the same sort of Sophisters fallacious Inferences was first insinuated that prejudicial Opinion I call it so because it looks like a Doctrine of some concerned party That Societies were not punishable in the next World for the Villanies they had committed in this That is the Members were not to suffer there for what they had acted in Relation to such a BODY here this Religious Absurdity has been publisht by some Seditious Pens from the Press I wish I could say not imposed upon Loyal ones too both from that and the Pulpit for Errors especially when coloured with the bait of Interest tho first hatcht by the Brooders of all bad Principles till well examined may delude the very best I know it may be returned with some seeming Reason that Crimes committed here as a Member of a body politick can't well in Justice be laid to the Charge of any particular Person hereafter for upon the dissolution of the natural one the Relation to such a Community â—â—asing the Guilt and Crime contracted should dye too But the Judge of Heaven has declared he won't be mockt tho they thought those of the Land might How contentedly would some of the Regicides have given up the Ghost could they have pleaded to the Almighty their Innocence of the Royal Blood from the shedding it in Parliament But tho National Sins may require reasonably the sufferings of a Nation and no more than what for this very Sin our own has since suffered therefore to suggest the single Individual the singular Sinner shall escape with Impunity hereafter because not punisht here or that because several of them suffered here for that Martyrs Blood and the Treasons of an Vniversal Body seem'd to be punisht in as general Conflagration that therefore the Criminals have superseded their sufferings in Hell and may now dare Heaven for my part seems an Opinion as ridiculous as the Popish Purgatory and their being saved by a fantastick Fire T is almost an Irreligious excuse for all manner of Crimes and Immoralities the Constitutions Circumstances of Men being so various that I dare avow scarce any Villany but may be committed by Communities or the Politick Relation of the private Person to some publick Society In short such Law and such Divinity would make the worst of 〈◊〉 that is incorporated ones fear Hell no more than they would the Hangman and baffle the Devil as well as the Gibbet And I may well here so warmly condemn these sort of damnable Doctrines when they were so hotly maintained by the rankest of our Rebels and Republicans and this very Daemon this Devil of Sedition can only countenance his Rebellious Positions with the making use of His Majesties Authority for the Ratification of his Proposals that is the Destruction of his own Person For 't is a great Truth I wish I could not say an experimented
one that the granting them these Regalia would not only be an Act to bereave him of his Crown and Dignity but would pass his very Person into the Donative a yielding up of his last Breath the making himself his own Executioner as well as a Betrayer of his Trust This Project is only the pernicious Principle improved the late Rebels falsely assumed His Authority for the Fighting against His Person but the prevailing upon him for these Destructive Grants would make Him truly Fight against Himself In all the Reigns of the three following Henries their Soveraign's Supremacy was still 〈◊〉 and that over Parliaments too tho one of them was but an Usurper on the Crown and then I am sure as great an one upon their Privileges and tho themselves had placed the First in the Throne themselves also acknowledged the Regality of the Crown of England to be Subject to none but God To the Second they acknowledged that to Him only belonged the Management of Foreign Affairs with Foreign Princes To the Third that he could constitute County Palatines and grant any Regal Rights per Letters Patents And these were Matters and Affairs themselves then declared they could not pretend to tho this Gentleman would now have them or their Counsel manage all In Edward the Fourth and the 〈◊〉 time 't was always received Law then made and should I hope hold still that State Affairs were to be manag'd by the Prince for it was then allowed for Law That if all the Common People of England should break a League by agreement with any Foreign Nation it shall still be reputed firm and unviolated if without his consent And in his very Sons that Succeeded resolved by all the Judges and Serjeants that he was the only Person in the Kingdom that could do no wrong which sufficiently declares him above all them that could and then who so fit for all absolute Power in all publick Administrations than whom the very Law presumes always to do Right and whom Reason tells us must be most impartially concerned for the publick good having no dependance upon any Superiors from whom an Apprehension of Fear or hopes of Favour might prevail upon to degenerate into that servile and sordid Complyance to prefer his own private Interest before the publick good Whatever Presumption the Law had of it then I am sure they have a Prince that justifies the Supposition now and then the most ungrateful Paradox and against Sense it self for our Seditious Souls to suggest and insinuate his Real Intentions for their Good to be nothing but Design and Plot upon them for Ill. An ORDER of Council with such Sycophants is turned into a trick of Court And their Kings Proclamations are 〈◊〉 only because they cannot conveniently resist as if the whole Board was packt only to please a designing Prince But base Villains your selves know that his aims have ever been for the publick Peace and Prosperity even at the same time your dangerous disorders have made it almost inconsistant with his own safety and security You see your Soveraign Sit and Act in a Sphere and that only He where Favour cannot charm or Fear frown into Compliance And who can be supposed then besides him less prejudic'd or more concerned for your good Would you have your Gentlemen of the Shop and Yard take their Measures of the State too We have experimented already that those made the very Government a Trade also and by those your very Properties and Lives too would be bought and sold we too lately saw some Symptoms of that state Distemper when some of the Seditious Souls had but gotten the Government of a single City and that but under a Soveraign their Supream and sure 't is an Argument unanswerable that those Salesmen of his Prerogative would assoon Barter your Properties See the sad experienced result of all the Democracies since their first Institution what was left the poor Lacedaemonians upon putting in Execution that popular Project their Petalism or Impoverisht Athens her self upon such another Order of her 〈◊〉 why both were beggar'd of their Nobility the Scum the Scoundrels of the Town turn'd the Mighty Massinello's of the State The Tod-Pole Train the product of those beggarly Elements Mud and Water Lorded it even over all the Land And those Rulers naturally retaining in this Medley this Mixture of Sway the Native Principles of that Abject Matter from whence they came still as mean as the one and restless as the other could never reduce them to composed States till they had recalled the good Governours they had Banisht before you know all this is too true and your selves too vile Caitiffs have owned it in Prints Lastly Let your Lords too be allowed for once your only as well as it is your beloved Government Let Aristocracy for once obtain for the best and Banish your Monarch set up that Idol and fall down to the Gods of your own Hands that good Government must still be of many still of as much divided Interest there would still be many then to mind the making their own Hay in the fair Sun-shine whereas should your Prince perjure himself for the minding only his private concern and neglecting the publick good which he must do if ever he is Crown'd where an Oath is administred for his very disavowing it yet still here would be pursued but the Interest of a single Person there of so many When the rash and unadvised Romans had upon that bandied Argument the Dissoluteness of their Tarquin the popular president of the Party for the Banishing of all Kings as if the Practice of a Rebellious Rome against a single dissolute Prince and that so long since could with the same Reason prevail at present for an extirpating the Government even under the best of Princes yet this very precipitous Act of Rage and Rashness was afterward even by the relenting Romans as much repented of and their Error best understood in their following Misfortunes and of which they were soon sensible too soon saw it in their subsequent sufferings for the first Frame of Government they constituted after this Expulsion was the Consular and one would think that being but of two of the 〈◊〉 among them that it might have lasted as indeed the best sort of Aristocracy coming within an Ace of a Monarch a Duumvirate yet even from those they suffered more than from the first Constitution they had abolisht their more immoderate power broke the Laws more immoderately than the Lustful Licentious and Lewd Monarch they made to fly with his Fugitive Government We shall in some other place consider the restless Revolutions they ran through from their turning out this Monarchy till they tumbled into it again This serves only to let us see that publick Administrations even in the hands but of two of the best of the People are not always the best managed What pray better can be expected when the
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 sull of Error and Schism against the Laws and the Canons 5. That there should be a Reformation in the Church and no Hugonots false Prophets fomenting Heresies against the Vicars of Christ. Mat. West pag. 332. 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 Kingof 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 mad Parliament the reverse of that of Edward the 3d. which he calls the 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 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 pretend to so much Candor and Sincerity that had so little Shadow for such a Pretention His Falshoods look'd as if he designed and thought he could have imposed upon the Government and his God and in spight of Providence to have secured himself from the Justice of that which was established and at the same time made sure of the favor of those that were for undermining it The one was to be blinded with his being Author of the Bishop's Right The other imposed upon with his Penning the Postscript But however he deceives himself the Almighty will still make good his own Word That he won't be mock'd He has denounced express Judgment against a double Heart and the Nation now deserv'd Justice To such a Sycophant With what Face can such a Rumper tell us in the tayl of his Postscript that no Passion or prejudice perverts him against the State of the Kingdom when all know that it 's being thus established not only lost him a place in the Law but disappointed him of being an Irish Judge and thus the virulency of his Pen betrays the truth of His Passion which he would Apologize against with a lye and that it can rise as high as any Furies for as deep a resentment of an esteemed Injury when the Government all the while was far from doing him any wrong But if it should meet with him now I dare swear would do him Right And this is altogether Reasonable the World should know that the best of our Rebellious Male-contents tho' they strive to palliate their Passions and Prejudices against their Governors with a show of being impartial and indifferent that 't is but a meer shadow to cloud the Fire that Glows within while truly still implacable impatient and impossible to be govern'd and that those that pretend but with Moderation to discommend many things in our Monarchy have nothing in them but the meer Malice and Spirit of Republicans And this will appear from his very first Paragraph that provokes my Pen He lets us know that the Church of England is like to fall into that of Rome by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons Fall by a Divine Fate as he makes his Holyness to say for her folly That is as he must mean by Consequence for maintaining a Divine Right For to this purpose says he Sir Robert Filmer's Books were reprinted and others for the same And truly I am so far of this Gentleman's Opinion that the good man the Pope may very likely call it a very foolish thing and laugh at the Doctrine of any Kings Divinity that endeavors to set himself above all Kings so that unkind even to himself and his Friends the Dissenters he unawares ties them up together with the Tenents of the rankest Jesuits of the Romish Religion and endeavors with the self same Arguments and Objections to set up the popular Supremacy that those Impostures do the Papal But first only let me beg a postulate or two from him that pretends to be a Christian which an Infidel or Heathen won't deny much less then one that has the Bible for an asserting it's belief viz. 1. That power in general without appropriating it to any particular Government is somewhat that is Divine not barely as it is exercised by some Humane Beings below but as it is communicated to such from their God above that is all so and hath it as one of his Attributes any of which is Infinite and adequate to the Divinity it self 2. That this power is actually communicated to some Being here below for their better Government and Subsistence No Humane Beings but such as desire to live like Beasts can well deny 3. That this part of God's Attribute so communicated to Man from his own Mouth Dominion imparted cannot cease to be Divine notwithstanding such a Communication though to a Creature Humane all that understand the least part of Divinity will assert and without any supernatural Illumination even from this natural simile of the Sun 's Light can easily comprehend which tho' it dart its rays through almost an Infinite Darkness yet wheresoever they are extended still remain Light neither is his own by the Kindness of such a Communication the less So that taking it for granted which must be that a power of Government is communicated to us here below by
brought into the Conspiracy and was not Her present Majesty sworn into this Did they not declare the King seduced by Evil Councellors and impeached several of the Seducers Were not several of the Council now impeached and declared Seducers of the King Were not the Judges then impeacht and Jenkins clapt in the Tower Were not Articles drawn against Scroggs and some of the rest declared Arbitrary Were not the Spiritual Lords excluded from their Right in Temporals and did they not now again dispute the Bishop's Right Were not the Ecclesiastical Courts then to be Corrected and that now taken into Examination Was not Manwaring and Montague censured in the House Thompson and several of our Clergy now brought on their Knees Was there not a Councill of Six whom the good old King impeached for bringing in the Scots and have we not had Six of the Senators that have suffered or fled Justice for the same Conspiracy Was not the Militia aimed at now and taken away then Was not the House of Peers Voted useless and now Betrayers of the Liberty of the Subject Lastly did not the whole House take the Covenant at St. Margarets and the Major part to have subscribed an Association now and last of all Did not the Junto at Westminster pass an Act for the King's Tryal and sign a Warrant for his Execution and now a remnant of a disbanded House propose horrid Things that made even some of the Conspirators fly out upon which 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 Villainous Author will have taken for granted That those that have the least Suspicion 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 answered 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 Observations upon the perjuries of the Popish Priests is so severe that the absolute Argument of their Guilt is drawn from their very denyal their Superstition I abhor as much as the Treasons they dyed for but I pity their Obstinacy which till I am better satisfied I shall not condemn his inhumanity is hard which unless he had good Assurance by Christians must be blamed 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 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 to make a Law 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 Soveraign 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 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 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
Theorems not to be disputed these determin our Reason even in Philosophy and the Mathematicks and why should not the Laws then in Politicks too and where 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 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 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 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 Act of Parliament in Henry the Eighth's time which provided 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 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 years after and by that Power given to nine of the Kings Council to give Judgment against 〈◊〉 Offenders of the former and 〈◊〉 this was repeal'd in the following 〈◊〉 of King Edward a Minor and almost a Child A time wherein not withstanding 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 tho the Law be not now in 〈◊〉 plain matter of Fact that there was 〈◊〉 such a Law that our Kings 〈◊〉 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 〈◊〉 less limited and that 〈◊〉 Libels lye as well as their 〈◊〉 Tongues when they tell us and would have us believe That 〈◊〉 but our late King as well as the present 〈◊〉 pretended to so much of Prerogative or had more allow'd them 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 even all those are 〈◊〉 in such Words as will 〈◊〉 the Commons 〈◊〉 being 〈◊〉 and so much concerned in the Legislative as these popular 〈◊〉 have 〈◊〉 to persuade us their People are for even they all run either in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The * King with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his Lords Spiritual and 〈◊〉 at the special Instance and 〈◊〉 of the Commons or The 〈◊〉 by and with the Assent of his Lords Spiritual 〈◊〉 and Commons and as if the past Parliaments 〈◊〉 would have provided against the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of a 〈◊〉 Age which they could hardly be thought to 〈◊〉 since it savors so much of almost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Sedition as if 〈◊〉 Anoestors had feared least some of their prostigate posterity seduced with the Corruptions of a Rebellious Age should impose upon the Prerogative of the Crown with any such Subtil 〈◊〉 of their King 's making but one of the three States and by Consequence conclude as they actually did that the two being greater than him 〈◊〉 could be his Judges and their own Soveraign's Superiors why to prevent these very Rebels and Republicans in such Factious Inferences did they for two hundred years agon in the first of Richard the Third Resolve what was signified by the three Estates of the Realm For say they That is to say the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons and even long fince that much more lately but in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in that Act of Recognition of her Right where they endeavor to advance her Royalty as much as possible they can and to make the Crown of this Realm as much Imperial there they tell her 'T is WEE your Majesties most faithful and Obedient Subjects that represent the THREE ESTATES of your Realm of England and therefore in King James and Charles the First 's time when the Commons began to be mutinous and encroach upon the Crown then they having with the help of their numerous Lawyers which were once by particular Act excluded the House and if less had Sate in it perhaps it might have been once less Rebellious too those Gentlemen knowing too well the weight of Words and what Construction and Sense Sedition and Sophistry can deduct from a single Syllable I am confident it was they contriv'd the Matter and Mcthod so as to foist in the Factious form of
Congregators which were Conventiclers then too as well as now because the general Worship establisht was not theirs the Bible in their own Language But they no way contented with an Act of Grace from the Crown and Instigated by this Incendiary this Scandal of the Reformation Knox that had taught them they might Demand with their Swords what was deny'd them by Law fell a reviling her even for such a signal favour and when she sent for some of the more furious of the Faction they came all attended with a multitude of Favourites and Force that for her Preservation she was compell'd to Command them to depart And the best of Governors might well fear the worst from such an audacious Assembly but this was so much the more offensive to them only because they were Commanded to offend her less that they throng'd into her Privy Chamber threatned her with their Arms till she was constrained to pleasure them against Law And as they then menac'd a Force so they afterward made it good with as much violence for away they went pulling down Monasteries and Churches and seconding their Sedition with what could only succeed it Sacrilege that is from Traytors to their Soveraign to be Rebels to their God And this by that Sanctified Beast that invited them to debase themselves to Brutes to be divested of Humanity was call'd a Purging of the Temple as if our Saviour Christ had countenanced an Extirpation of the Religion of some Christians But though the Queen at last granted them the free and publick exercise of their Religion though at last she only begg'd the private use of her own that was by such Seditious Subjects thought a boon too great to be begg'd by their Soveraign they Protest against it Preach against it Print against it and Assault her House of Worship break the Wax Candles with the Windows of her Chappel force their Queen Regent to fly to Dunbar and then as fairly Depos'd her for being fled though at the same time they profest against her Deposition And if we 'll believe a Loyal and Learned Author they proceeded so far in their petulant piece of Reformation that they Religiously Reform'd the very Petticoats of the Queen and the Ladies of the Court which they look'd upon as too fine for the plainness or simplicity of the Kirk How near our present Pretenders that have taken Arms for the Protestant Religion will tread in the steps of their Reforming Predecessors must be Collected from the Precedents they give us of their being but Implacable Republicans especially when we have nothing now to be Reform'd 〈◊〉 what they deny'd to the Grandmother of our present Soveraign that their King himself shall not be 〈◊〉 to exercise by himself the Religion he professes at the same time he Protests to defend all his Subjects in the establish'd Profession of theirs The Actions of the late Rebel Scot of the last Age they say squinted like their Argyle that headed them working one way when they profest to design another and they might have had as much reason to distrust the Promises of his late Declaration the Sincerity of his Son that succeeded him even in a Rebellion In the Year 1565 when the Queen of Scots was married to Henry Stewart Lord Darnly The Rebel-Lords instigated from the Preachings and Principles of this Knox the Ferguson of his Age who rail'd at the Government and reflected upon the King betook themselves to Arms and brake into open Rebellion Lord Darnly upon this Match being proclaim'd King marcht against the Rebels who fled into England and though through Intercession this Rebellious Business was Reconcil'd yet within two Years after the King was barbarously Butcher'd and Dispatcht but by whom because their Historians do not agree in it can be only best determined by Conjecture and must probably lye at their Doors that could Rebel against their Sovereign in an open War and then sure as likely to set upon Him in a secret Affassination especially when their Principles instructed them in both and their Preachers had made the Murder of their King an Oblation to their God And besides when they rebell'd also against Bothwell the Queens second Husband too as well as the first whom they forc'd to fly into Denmark seiz'd on the forsaken Queen secur'd her in an Island compell'd her to resign her Crown and if we 'll credit an Authentick Historian were not so well satisfied with her Resignation of her Sovereignty but that they consulted too to deprive her of her Life and very likely to have prevented her loving Cousin Elizabeth in England Upon the same Principles the same Seditious Daemocraticks proceeded against her Son and Successor that was after ward our own Sovereign K. James then a young Prince about 12 Years old whom they seiz'd at Ruthen carried in Triumph and Constraint to Edenburgh from which he was forc'd to contrive an Escape which he made by the Means of Collonel Stewart a Captain of his Guards but shortly afterward incited by the Seditious Insinuations of their Geneva Principles brought them home fresh hot and reeking with Blood and Rebellion by one Melvill that had come from thence but a few years before to supply not only Knox's stock of treasonable Positions but to succeed him in his Place of an implacable Incendiary his Predecessor expiring a Year or two before he came over by this Factious Fellow 's and his Associates Seducements did I say shortly after the Earl of Gowry conspire against the King and break out into an open Rebellion which he deservedly suffered for with the loss of his Head Then is this succeeded by Bothwells Rebellion who had contriv'd to seize the King at Halyrood-House but unsuccessful forc'd to fly and returning better assisted the second time effected what only he design'd at first But the King escaping to Sterling Bothwell is pronounced a Rebel by the States but yet is so well befriended by these Disturbers of all Kingly Government that they gave him the very Moneys they had collected for their beloved Brethren in the Republick of Geneva by which with other Assistances they enabled him to fight his King in the Field Then is that succeeded with a second of the Gowry's the Son of him that rebell'd before where they contriv'd to get the King to dine in their House at Perth seduc'd him up into some higher Chamber and there left him to the mercy of an Executioner from which his Cry and the timely Assistance of his Servants only rescued Him These were the Confusions Distractions and even Subversions of some States that were occasion'd by the restlesness of Implacable Republicans Emissaries of Geneva throughout France Flanders Scotland and Germany You shall see now in the next place what disturbances they have created us here in our own Isle what Plots and Conspiracies their Principles have promoted in England as if in that expostulatory Verse of Virgil there was no Region upon Earth but
what must be fill'd with their diffusive and elaborate Sedition Queen Elizabeth was no sooner setl'd in her Throne but they as seditiously endeavour'd to subvert it They libell'd her Person set their Zealots tumultuously to meet in the Night invading Churches defacing Monuments and so full at last of the Rebellious Insolencies of that Italian Republick to which they commonly repair'd to receive Instruction that her Majesty thought fit to hang up Hacket with a half dozen more of them as dangerous Subjects to her Sovereign Crown and Dignity When King James who succeeded her came to our Crown did these Malecontents that had molested him so much in Scotland disturb his Government here too as much Melvil that Northern Incendiary was as busie with his Accomplices here too to set Fire to Church and State and for that purpose publish'd several Libels against both for which being then at London he was sent to the Tower And so far had those darling Daemagogues insinuated themselves that the Hydra of a Popular Faction began to shew its fearful Faces in the very first Parliament of his Reign though in that they had so fully formerly recogniz'd his Right For in some of those several Sessions of which that consisted one of the Seditious Senators had the Confidence to affirm in the open Assembly That the giving the King Moneys might empower him to the cutting the Members Throats an Insolency that some of our Modern Mutineers upon the same Occasions have as seditiously express'd King James Dissolv'd that Parliament call'd another and that as Refractory as the former which instead of answering the Kings Request draw up their own in a Remonstrance second it with a Protestation for Priviledges representation of Religion and Popery intermedling with his Match of Spain and several Affairs of State so that he was forc'd to dissolve that Politick Body too and soon after suffer'd a Dissolution of his own Natural one dying under the Infirmities of Old Age and leaving behind him an old Monarchy rather weakned with Innovations of Republicans with the worst of Legacies to his Son and Successor A discontented People an Empty Purse with a Costly War into which he was not so much engag'd as betray'd And now we are arriv'd to what all the Stirs and Tumults of our Seditious Souls our discontented Daemocraticks in the Reign of King James did aim at and design the Destruction of the Monarchy which they could not accomplish till this of King Charles in that they never left till they laid such a Plot that at last laid all the Land in Blood and made an whole Kingdom an Akeldama For that they first quarrell'd at the Formality of his Coronation because in the Sacred Part of it the Prayer for giving him Peter's Key was first added This some silly Sots suggested to savour of Popery tho' it struck purposely at the very Popes Supremacy it self For that they begun to Tax their King for taking his Tonnage without an Act and yet refus'd to pass one that he might take it by Law unless he would accept of it in Derogation of his Royal Prerogative for Years or precariously during the Pleasure of the Two Houses when most of his Ancestors enjoy'd it for life Turner and Coke led up the dance to Sedition and reflect upon their King in their Speeches The Commons command his Secretary Office and Signet to be searcht and might as well have rifled his Cabinets too They clamour against his favouring of Seminary Priests tho' he had sent home the very Domesticks of the Queen and that even to a disgust to France and a rupture with that Crown They upbraid him for dissolving Parliaments tho' grown so insolent as to keep out the Black-Rod when he came to call them to be Dissolv'd tho' their King notwithstanding the provocations assembled another assoon and that tho' he had the fresh President of the then King of France That had laid aside his for a less presumption Thus they call'd all his Miseries and Misfortunes Misgovernments and Faults when themselves had made him both faulty and unfortunate They accuse him for favouring the Irish Rebellion tho' the first disorders in Dublin were by his diligence so vigorously supprest their Goods confiscated their Lands seiz'd their Persons imprisoned and such severities shew'd them by his Commissioners there that two Priests hang'dthemselves to prevent what they call'd a Persecution The Scot Mutinies upon the King 's restoring the Lands to the Church of which but in the minority of his Father it had been robb'd assail the Ministers in the Church in the very administration of the Sacrament because according to the Service-Book Protest against their King's Proclamations set up their four Tables at Edenburgh that is their own Councils in opposition to their King 's Hamilton had promised them as Commissioner to convene an Assembly they come and call a Parliament by themselves which tho' dissolv'd they protest shall sit still then desperate in a Sedition break out into open War Invite Commanders from abroad seize Castles at home agree to Articles of Pacification and then break all with as much Perjury Lowden their Commissioner sent to propose Peace At the same time treats with the French Ambassadour for War bring their Army into 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