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A58205
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The Readers speech of the Middle-Temple, at the entrance into his reading, Febr. 29, 1663/4 upon the statute of Magna Charta, Cap. 29.
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Reader.
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1664
(1664)
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Wing R441; ESTC R24507
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10,926
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18
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say They were somewhat too severe upon the Natives the better to make room for a new Plantation Dangelt an exaction not clear'd from the Crown he Releases The Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical and Civil this King also sâ—ver'd for before his Reign the Bishop and the Earle or their Deputites sate jointly in the Counties determining spiritual Causes in the Forenoon and secular in the Afternoon according to the pattern of the Jewish Sanhedrim which was imitated by the Christians in times primitive The Apostles and Elders which were no other than Lay-Magistrates deciding all controversies among Christians who voluntary submitted to their judgment for this see the Glossary 315. Lambert 80. and Mr. Selden on Edmerus 166. and History of Tyths chap. 14. 'T is only to be wish't that he had distinguisht their Causes as he divided their Courts for that omission has occasion'd those justlings of Jurisdiction which have since hapned between the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Courts and Common Law But more violent was this Conflict till by a Canon of the Counsel of Clarendon it was decreed That Regis justiciarius mittet in curiam sanctae Ecclesiae ad videndum quo modo res ibi tractatur The ground of Prohibitions Mat. Paris An. 1164. This the Clergy endeavoured to qualifie by Petition in Parliament 5.1 Ed. 3. nu 83. But thereto the King answered that he could not depart with his right 4. Just 339. King William in this Act designed a more regular dispatch of Causes and indeed as Pictaviensis sayes he was a Prince of Courage Spectaculum delectabile simul terribile He was sayes Matthew Paris Subjectis humilis but Rebellibus inexorabilis and deserves a memory in our Chronicles more illustrious for though his Normans at his new establishment importun'd him to connive at some oppressions yet the Law held out in title And then may we interpret the mistakes of a Prince to be his necessity or at least but as a step out of the way to avoid the Dirt manifesting that he is but Man and not more priviledged from Infirmity than his Subjects Little of good fame a revenge which bad Princes after their deaths cannot provide against in Rufus his Son have we upon Record for then sayes Paris were their Malae consuetudines exactiones injstae And this appears by that great Charter of his succeeding Brother King Henry the First who sayes Hoveden those evil customs penitus abrogavit and restor'd to opprest England the Laws of good King Edward with those emendations which his Father had added by the Counsel of his Barons so Florentius and Malmsbury King Stephen by his Charter confirms the good Laws which King Henry his Uncle had before granted with those of good King Edward and enjoins sayes Roger Bacon in his Book De impedimentis scientiae That none of the Laws of Italy the Imperial Laws should be retain'd Henry the Second ratifies the same Charter He grants what his Grandfather King Henry had granted and remits what he had remitted King John disputes it with his Nobles but was prevaild with in the Seventeenth year of his Reign to contract those former general Charters into one Grand one and this sayes the Monck of St. Albons Ex parte maxima leges antiquas regni consuetudines cortinebat Paris 246. But King John being as the Moncks report him of an unsteddy spirit recalls his Charter when the Normans being ingrafted into the English Nobility and inheritable as they thought to the English freedom contest it with their Prince and pray in aid of Lewis the French Kings Son by whose powers King John being worsted he dyes being poysoned as is supposed in a Chalice He left his Heir of the Age of Eleven years whose innocence had contracted no malice and in whom concenter'd not only the title of the Norman but also of the Royal Saxon blood for he was Grandson to Maud the Empress Daughter and Heir of Henry the First by Maud the Daughter of Malcolm King of Scots and Margaret his Wife Sister and Heir of Edgar Atheling true Heir to the Confessor The English who naturally abhor wrong and without a strong byas are just loyal forthwith desert the Forreigner and adhere to the Royal Issue The French Prince affrighted at the fervour of that generous spirit submits to terms and departs the Land King Henry the Third the Infant is Crown'd and in the Ninth year of his Reign being the Twentieth of his Age upon payment of a Fifteen of all mens movables Cap. 37. in full Parliament he gives and grants this Magna Charta whereof my Statute is a Chapter Afterwards pretending Infancy he declares this Charter Null which revives the Barons War and issues streams of English blood Yet here give me leave to note what the French Comines gives for a Maxim That no Subject ever drew Sword against his Prince but though his design prevail'd he himself suffer'd in Life Estate or Conscience And of this gives evidence That Pardon for which the Lords Petition this King Henry in Kenelworth the same Castle where they had imprisoned him Dictum de Kenelworth H. 3. Yet the result in the long run was the re-establishment of this Charter in the Twenty fifth of his Reign and in the presence of his Son the brave King Edw. 1. Mag. ch 37. and with such direful Ceremonies as were then Authentick by way of cursing and execrations to the Infringers as may astonish the Reader if he peruses Matthew Paris An. 1253. And reflects as well on such as violate the Kings Prerogative as Intrenchers upon the Subjects liberty By some as ignorant as censorious our Laws are scandal'd as introduced by Conquest whereas in truth this Charter is purely declaratory of the old Saxon as aforesaid so concludes St German Fol. 12. And in those captious points of Tenures Wardships and Purveyance I can demonstrate footsteps thereof before King William though possibly by him and his Issue improved with the honour of Kinghthood and Knights service But were the quarrel at all a grievance we have now a Prince who derives his Pedigree not only from the Norman but more ancient and direct from the Royal Saxon Line as well by Queen Margaret Sister and Heir of Edgar in the Scotch Descent as from Maud her Daughter Queen to King Henry the First in the English And for those pretended Norman innovations of Tenures Wardships and Purveyance he has been pleased to unhatch these Royalties from his Crown upon the Petition of the Parliament which is a Court de Tesgrand honour justice de que nul doit imaginer chose dishâ—nourable as we are taught in Plo. 388. In whose wisdoms it becomes people to acquiesce as their own choice and Representatives or to renounce all Rule but their own Yet may it with all submission be aver'd Those Royalties might possibly have been so refin'd to the Saxon Model as would have given an ornament and lustre to the Crown yet no pressure to the Subject But
of Liberty which from this Statute for four Centuries under Kingship we have prosperously enjoy'd nay improv'd they advance only the lusts of some few that get next in the Saddle who were heretofore not un-ominously instil'd Custodes libertatis for they took so much liberty to themselves that they left none to other Liberty sage men covet as well as factious not that liberty for every man to do that which is right in his own eys as it was when there was no King in Israel for that liberty as it occasiond the Levite to quarter out his Concubine scatter it among the Tribes to take revenge so makes it every man a slave to him that has the longest sword True liberty is that where the Rules of Law square out a man his right where the Law spurs on the good and reins in the evil where a mans Houses is his Castle because the Law is his Guard and so is it of his Goods neither to be assail'd without his own consent in person or by proxy Of liberty in this sense where of the just and honest as Cato says are only capable my Statute exalts to the English a proportion more triumphant than the freest State yea then that goodly one which was begot out of the mud and brought forth the freedome of Excise where free indeed they are but it is in purse who excise their very Pot-herbs before they eat them Our liberty is built so high that it cannot stand firm unless it be prop't up by Lords Spiritual Lords Temporal and Commons Consulere and consentire and a Soveraign with a Lâ— roy le veul to enforce If those supporters fail Suis ipsa viribus ruit this rich Fabrick sinks with its own weight For it so harmoniously intermixes the rights of Soveraignty with the liberty of the Subject that the one ballances the other nay the least jarr in the one makes a loud discord in the other Lex facit ut ipse sit Rex says Bracton well and 't is said as well Imperii majestas est tutelae salus The support of power and awe in Majesty secures peace and safety to the people The unsteddy vulgar are not to be entrusted with their own security without a check 'T is for their advantage to be rid with a strait bridle so that bridle be the Law If the reins of Soveraignty and the Law be let loose like head-strong Colts they ll run cross-ways till they bogg themselves or fall or if they get free the next that comes impounds or backs them If the Logick of this were discreetly prest it might stead the King of England in this Knowing Age perhaps no lesse than the Divinity we hear of the rights of the Kings of Israel I have a home proofe but it is a sad one when our late good King in his pious hopes of a closure let go his radical and inherent power to dissolve the Parliament thereby unwarily advancing two powers co-orinate as two Gods in Heaven whose crosse wills must needs enflame the Earth Which breach in that weighty fundamental let loose the Government and let in a deluge of misery upon us his Subjects as well as upon His Crown Without which Sarcasm in policy our Laws are so regular that a Civil War could not swell up to that length or height nor could this Statute and with it Liberty be so ore-flown as it was we know the time when the enforcing it by some learned ones that now sit high on the Bench enforc'd them to lie low in the Tower But now that we have a Soveraign who knows and builds his Government upon his and our true interest the Law and which he has pleas'd so far to honour as to give this Exercise His Royal presence I am emboldned to awaken this Statute which has so long slept and therein to evidence his Majesties indulgence and our happinesse by way of explanation In order whereunto give me leave a little to ramble into History and perhaps the length of the Journey will be recompenc'd by the goodnesse of the way Some reach the Pedigree of this Stature from the old Britans others from a mixture with the Saxons I take the Original like that of Nilus dark and uncertain or rather as a flowing in of several streams into one grand Channel The Heptarchye being reduced under one Government by that flout Prince Edbert the West Saxon be it recorded to the glory of our West and our St. King Edward in time succeeding to the whole He with the Advice of his wife Men caused one Volume Ex immensa legum congerie as Hoveden has it out of all their Laws to be compil'd Optima quaeque elegit sayes Gemitencis which seemed most equal and indifferent Quos vocari voluit communem legem And those he injoin'd to be observed through the whole as his own Law King Edward dying chaste though married and Edgar his Heir an Out-law William of Normandy makes Title to the Crown as Cousin to the Confessor and disposed by his will and that appointment ratified by the Oath of the Nobility And to keep fair with the Clergy he proffers to refer his Right to the Arbitration of the Pope whose Decrees in those dayes were Oracles Harold slights the Arbitration and so at Rome from the Pope he obtains a sentence for his Title as more pregnant than that of Harold who Sine Ecclesiastica Authoritate sayes Hoveden and against his Oath given to Duke William had usurp't the Crown This dispute determines at one Battel but it was a bloody one there being a carnage of Sixty thousand men as the Monks report it And the Duke Potentiam ex vulgi adulatione quaerens simulque magnifica pollicitus disclaims Conquest and taking his Oath to continue the good Laws of his Cousin the Confessor with free applause Rex declaratur is accepted King as Mr. Selden notes upon Edmerus And that the people might the better observe their duty and the King his Oath he caused Twelve of the most discreet men in every Shire to be sworn that without swerving either ad dextram or sinistram that is nec Prerogativae blandientes nec Privilegia dilatantes they should lay open sanctitatem the integrity of their Laws nothing adding nothing concealing Nil prevaricando mittentes so writes Hoveden And Aldred the Arch-bishop that Crowned him and the Bishop of London by the Kings Command wrote that which the Jurats had delivered and these and sayes Ingulphus his Secretary made Abbot of Crowland He proclaims to be Authentick and for ever to be inviolabiliter observed The Sum of this he compos'd as Sir Edw. Cook conjectures in the Preface to his 8th Reperit into some form of a Charter closing it with this General That all men duly keep the Laws of Good King Edward Some Laws indeed of his own he added for the advantage of his Normans which sayes Gervase of Tilbury were Effficacissimae ad pacem regni faciendam though others