the Norman Race William the First who is unjustly stiled the Conqueror as having subdued none but Harold and those that abetted him did no otherwise obtain the Crown nor ascend the English Throne save in the vertue of an unanimous and free Choice and Submission of the Peers and Body of the People Convenientibus Francis Anglis illisque omnibus concedentibus Coronam Angliae Dominationem suscepit saith the Anonimous Author subjoyned to Sylas Tailor's History of Gavelkind A Clero populo susceptus ab omnibus Rex acclamatus say Matth. Paris and Florilegus Ab omnibus proceribus Rex est Electus says Walsingham Vniversi Hilari consensu eum sibi in Regem Dominum coronari consonuerunt saith Will Pictav when it had been proposed unto them whether they would receive and admit him or not Nor did the said William only obtain the Crown by the Peoples Choice but he was made to Swear before his Coronation that he should Govern the People justly keep and observe unto them all their old Laws and consent unto the having such farther Laws Enacted as should be found needful for the Preservation and Prosperity of the Realm Se velle cunctum populum juste Regere rectam legem statuere tenere says one antiquas bonas leges inviolabiter observare says another As for William the Third and Henry the First who are the two next in the Roll and List of our Kings it is undeniable that they became possessed of the Crown by the meer Gift and Choice of the People For being advanced to the Throne in prejudice of and to the preclusion of Robert their Elder Brother they could have no other pretence clam or right unto it but what they derived from the People and were indebted for unto Parliamentary Power and Authority Our Writers do not only give us an account of their several Elections and of the Oaths by which they became bound unto the Kingdom but of the previous Conditions Promises and Tearms by which the people were influenced and prevailed upon to raise them unto and honour them with the Regal Dignity For William Rusus having promised Si Rex foret say Eadmer and Brompton se justitiam aequitatem misericordiam per totum Regnum in omni negatio servaturum That if he could be chosen and admitted King by the English he would in all things keep and observe Justice Equity and Mercy throughout the whole Kingdom he was thereupon in Regem Electus Consecratus first Elected and then Consecrated King. And as Matth. Paris tells us He was in a great Council or Assembly of the Nobility and Wise Men of the Kingdom Volentibus omnium animis with the cheerful consent of them all in Regem acceptus accepted for and admitted to be King. And for Henry the First the same Author informs us how that having called a general Council of the Nobles and People to meet at London he promised unto them provided he might be chosen King Emendationem Legum c. A reformation of those rigorous Laws which his Father and Brother had obtruded on the Kingdom and that he would frame just Laws grounded on those of Edward the Confessor and that he would likewise not only remit the Taxes which had been unduely exacted of the Subject but punish such persons as had been the Authors of them and that thereupon the whole Assembly unanimously chose him and appointed him to be Consecrated King. And as he intirely owed his Crown to the Election and Grant of the People so he as freely acknowledged it in his Charter see Hagulst where he says Sciatis me consilio Baronum Regni Angliae ejusdem Regni Regem Coronatum esse Know ye that I am Crowned King of England by the Common Council of the Barons of the said Kingdom But least any should wonder why Robert was all this while Excluded while his two younger Brothers were preferred before him and exalted to the Throne it may not be amiss to take notice of the reason of it as it is assigned by Knighton namely because the said Robert semper contrarius adeo innaturalis extiterat Baronibus Regni Angliae had been always harsh unnatural and averse to the Barons of England 'T were an easie matter to go through all the succeeding Kings to the very entrance of the Scots Race and to shew how the People of England have in all Ages exercised a Right and Power in the Disposal of the Crown but this is enough for an Essay and may serve without an enumeration of more Examples to awaken the Peers and the Representatives of the Commons of England to claim and exert that Power at this conjuncture which from the first original of the Government has belonged inseparably unto them That which now remains to be Treated of is what becomes honest men to desire and what all men have reason at this time to expect from the Wisdom and Justice of the approaching Convention in relation to the bestowing conveying and setling of the Imperial Crown of this Realm And that the Considerations which are to be here offered with all Humility as well as Modesty may both stand in the clearer light and have the greater efficacy upon the Minds of those for whom they are designed I shall briefly premise these things 1 That in the circumstances wherein we are through the Kings having withdrawn himself and forsaken the Government the Crown cannot be said to go by Descent and in the way of Inheritance but the Disposal of it falls to the Body of the People of England in their Representatives by way of Cess and Devolution There being no Death Resignation nor Demise of the fore-going Regent there can be no Heir nor any Plea for the Descent of the Crown to a person under that notion Though there may be all the Reason and Justice imaginable for granting and conveying it to the person that in another case would have been so yet there is neither Common nor Statute Law in the vertue of which it can be now said to descend Proximity in Blood may render a person fit to be taken notice of by them who are to Dispose it and Royal Qualities and Vertues may make one deserve and merit it to that degree that it would be the highest injury to the Nation and to the People themselves to bestow it elsewhere but yet for all this nothing doth Legally Entitle unto it but the Will Donation and Gift of the People 2. That in the present case nothing can determine limit or restrain those in whom the disposal of the Crown is become lodged but their own Will guided and regulated by the Measures of what is most conducible to the publick good Many things may serve to indicate and direct where it will be most for the safety and honour of the Kingdom to have it Setled but it is meerly the pleasure of the great Council and of the Representative of the Nation that can authoritatively fix it Former
if he were once vested with the Royal and Soveraign Power of Great Britain and of the Dominions annexed and belonging thereunto And as he will be an infallible mean both of extinguishing all Enmity between us and these Provinces that emulate and rival us in Trade and of bringing us and them into a happy and indissoluble Confederacy so we may easily foresee the Advantages that will unavoidably attend upon a Conjunction of their and our Marine strength 7 ly We shall hereby become formidable to our forreign Enemies France will no longer be our dread but our scorn and contempt and we shall there erect the Trophies of our Liberty as well as of our Victory whence the Advice as well as Pattern came of Enslaving us With this Prince at the head of our Government and Armies in the quality of King of England we shall not only break the Chains with which that false and tyrannous Monarch would fetter Europe but avenge both our own quarrels and those of all Christendom upon that haughty and usurping Prince and reduce him within the limits from whence our late Kings help'd to raise him contrary to all the Rules of Policy as well as of Justice 8 ly We shall by this means revive the hopes and lay a foundation for the Redemption and Restauration of persecuted and exiled Protestants As 't was in order to the Preservation of the Reformed Religion in Britain that he undertook this late Expedition wherein God hath honoured him with so great success so there are no dangers which he will not chearfully submit unto and undergo for the vindicating Religion into Freedom elsewhere and for the setling Protestants in the quiet possession of those religious and civil Liberties of which they have been perjuriously and barbarously dispossessed The eyes of the poor exiled French are upon this approaching Convention and stand prepared to date their Deliverance and Redemption from the moment in which that Assembly shall tranfer and devolve the Soveraign and Royal Power of England upon his Highness the Prince of Orange who as he â—â—th been already their chief Patron Benefactor Refuge and Sanctuaâ—y so they look upon him as the only Person under God destined by Heaven to be their Saviour and from whose Compassion Courage and Zeal they may expect the Vindication of their Wrongs and their Restoration to the free Exercise of their Religion without let or molestation under their own Figg-trees and Vines The only Objection that can be advanced against what hath been here humbly proposed and offered is That the setling of the Crown and of the Soveraign Power upon the Prince of Orange would be to the prejudice of the Princess Ann in case her Royal Highness the Princess Mary should die before her Husband To which I briefly answer these six things 1. That where there is no Claim by Descent as in our present Case there can be no Injury done to any For there can be no Wrong in with-holding what a person hath no Right to challenge 2. 'T is too probable and that to our great Grief that his Highness the Prince will be the shortest lived of the three His indefatigable Cares as well as the Weakness of his natural Constitution give us too just and doleful fears of it Now should that come to pass which I pray God to prevent the Princess Ann will receive no Injury seeing all her pretence is posterior to that of the Princess Mary 3. 'T is not impossible but that the Prince and Princess of Orange may have Children and then all will confess that the Princess Ann can receive no wrong should she and Prince of Orange out-live the Princess Mary seeing if the Crown were to go in the direct order and in the way of lineal Descent it devolveth upon the Children of the Princess Mary after her death and not upon the Princess Ann. 4. There is no great likelihood that the Princess Ann should out-live her Royal Highness the Princess of Orange and then by setling the Crown as hath been humbly proposed no damage will actually accrue unto her 5. There is a Benefit and not a Prejudice arising to the Princess Ann by the Method that hath been here offered and chalk'd out for hereby all Claim of the present pretended Prince of Wales is debarred and shut out which I think does more in point of Benefit arising to the Princess Ann than countervail all the Damage she is capable of receiving by the putting the Prince of Orange first in the Act of Setlement and Entail 6. There is nothing here desired or advised in favour and behalf of the Prince of Orange but what we should be willing to have granted to Prince George in his turn Nor do I doubt but that the Princess Ann is so good a Womaâ— and so excellent a Wife that she will be desirous to purchase so great an Honour and so real a Benefit to the Prince her Husband at the cost of a small and little more than imaginary Damage to herself FINIS
him Nor was there any thing whereby the King can be supposed to have been prevailed upon to forsake both the Government and the Kingdom but a sense of his own Guilt and an apprehension of his demerit There was neither Force nor Menace used to drive him from the one or the other only the Thoughts of a Free Parliament and of what he might be found obnoxious unto by the Fundamental Rules of the Government chased him from the Throne and out of the Nation And as we have various Presidents in all Free Nations giving countenance to what we have been doing so no Kingdoms afford more examples in Justification of it than our own However after all the Evils which this late King had done us we are willing to acknowledge the kindness we have received from him at last in his leaving the Nation and retiring beyond Sea. And that which is now incumbent upon us as we would be just both to him and our selves is to bolt the Door after him and so fore-close his Return Though we were once so foolish as to trust him notwithstanding his Religion as hoping the King would have been two strong for the Papist yet it were madness to do it a second time especially after we have seen the Monarch all along too weak for the Papal Bigot The fault is his in the deceiving us once but it would be ours should we give him an advantage of deceiving us again We have provoked him too far to think of laying our selves any more at his mercy Nor is it possible to receive any Security from him but what he hath already falsified The whole Kingdom is embarked too far to think ever of Retreating and his Misgovernment during the whole time he was permitted to Reign disableth him from being trusted with Authority any more A few little and desperate people may if they think fit talk their Necks into a Noose but they will soon find that the Nation is not to be twatled again into Slavery His very Retreating into France is a just bar against the admitting his return seeing it is morally impossible he should come back from thence but under Confederacies with that Monarch for the Extirpating the Reformed Religion every where and for the Ruining of these Nations and of all Europe Nor will those Provinces and States that lent their Forces to inable us to vindicate and assert our Rights ever suffer the King to get into a condition of wrecking his malice upon them for their kindness to us And should we be so far infatuated as to reinthral our selves it will be our fate to be neither pittied in our miseries nor relieved from them Yea God himself will laugh at our Calamities when they come to overtake us through our own wilfulness and choice But though James the Second stand unqualified and morally disabled from being any more King yet it is indispensably necessary we should have One a King being no less essential in the Body Politick of England than the Head is in the Body Natural To dream of reducing England to a Democratical Republick is incident only to persons of shallow Capacities and such as are unacquainted with the Nature of Governments and the Genius of Nations For as the Mercurial and Masculine Temper of the English people is not to be moulded and accommodated to a Democracy so it is impracticable to establish such a Common-wealth where there is a numerous Nobility and Gentry unless we should first destroy and extirpate them This is demonstrable from all Histories extant whether they be Modern or Ancient And either to hope for or to endeavour to do this in England were the highest folly as well as the most prodigious wickedness imaginable To think of precluding Kingship out of the Constitution of the English Government would lay us under a necessity of Excluding also a House of Peers which for any one to attempt would be equally as imprudent as it would be unjust Nor is the naturalness of this inference meerly supported by the practice of the late times but it deriveth its light and evidence from the nature of the thing itself For as the very end of a House of Peers is to be a skreen between the Monarch and the Commons to prevent his Invading the Priviledges of the People and their usurping upon the Prerogatives of the Crown so without our having a King they would become not only useless but burthensome Yea to shut Kingship out of the Constitution would draw after it the alteration of the whole Body of our Laws which would be of ill consequence to the whole State as well as to particular Men. There is nothing more obvious than that the Stile and Authority of King is so Incorporated with and woven into our Laws that without it they are neither intelligible nor can they be applied to the Uses and Ends for which they were Enacted and made This one of Oliver Cromwels Parliaments was sensible of and therefore advised him to exchange the Name of Protector for that of King. Which he either out of a Capricio of his own or for fear of disgusting his Army refusing to comply with gave first an opportunity and advantage to his own Creatures for the Deposing his Son and secondly paved the way and laid it open for the Restoration of the Royal Family And as the Government of England is imperfect without a King so it is not only needful that we should cure this defect in the Body Politick but that it should be done with all the Expedition that is possible For until then the Government can exert it self but in few of its proper operations nor can it either Repeal ill Laws nor Enact such good ones as we want and need Besides this is the first means of rendring us safe at home and formidable abroad Were this once accomplished Forreign Enemies would dread us and Intestine Foes shrink in their Heads Nor can any thing less check the intemperate and seditious Language of some and discourage the audacious Caballings and dangerous Machinations of others Now the Case that we are to Discourse falls not within the compass nor under the Regulation of what a King and the Two Houses of Parliament may do in the disposal of the Crown The many Statutes by which it hath been Entailed do plainly shew that they have a Right to Settle it And though they may be confined from going out of the Royal Line yet it is evident from those upon whom it hath been conferred that they are not always obliged to bestow it in the order and way that common Inheritances descend For whereas both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth succeeded to the Crown yet it could be in the vertue of nothing but the Act of Settlement of the 35 Hen. 8. seeing if the one of them was Legitimate the other could not nor as such pretend to any Title or Claim Yea our Law does expresly declare that the Prince Regnant whosoever he be may and can with